Irreverent Perception of the Anthropic Principle: Between Tautology, Assumptions, and Ethical Collapse

The current article is a critical analysis of anthropic reasoning used to argue for non-theistic purposes. In doing so, it focuses on the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP), the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP), and also on the probabilistic frameworks of the Self-Sampling Assumption (SSA) and the Self-Indication Assumption (SIA). In detail, even though WAP and SIA are often used to eliminate the force of fine-tuning arguments of theism, their explanatory capacity proves to be quite a tautological one in which no real causal account of the cosmic parameters is provided. Apart from the logical issues, the paper also draws attention to the ethical consequences of anthropic reasoning: the idea that human actions like killing or decisions concerning reproduction could change existence probabilities might indicate that moral value is lowered to mere statistical artifacts. Through the combination of logical and moral reasoning, the paper conveys the message that the use of anthropic principles as atheistic counterarguments reveals the presence of fundamental conceptual flaws, thus they cannot serve as explanatory or metaphysical first causes.