Fine tuning, a new approach

[Oncedeceived]

I don't know. What are the odds that scientists have calculated for our universe being the way it is? Last time I asked you couldn't answer, which leads me to believe that you're the one making the mistake.

State exactly what you think scientists are claiming please. I think you have a very different idea of what they do of fine tuning and why it is to them unlikely.

 

[Oncedeceived]

So you say, and yet you keep coming back to "I don't know" when you're probed about these alleged scientific discoveries which you claim support it.

You first say I don't allow the possibility of saying I don't know and then you claim I keep saying I don't know...maybe it is you that is having the problem with contradiction.

 

[Oncedeceived]

The point about you contradicting yourself.

Click back through the quotes if you need to refresh your memory.

I am conversing with many posters, if you don't care enough to bring them forward I am sure not going to worry about what you seem to think is contradictory.

 

[DogmaHunter]

This seems to be a common fallacy among non-believers or former believers. It seems that they seem to think belief in God is a self contained self induced state of mind. The revelation of God is not just a nice little feeling.

How do you differentiate a "personal revelation" from a "self induced state of mind"?

And lacking any such "personal revelation" myself, how do I tell the difference when you claim to have had such a "personal revelation"? How do I differentiate your "personal revelations" from your "self induced states of mind"?

 

[KCfromNC]

Supreme Being is pretty much the standard.

Considering that polytheists make up a sizeable percentage of the world's population, I don't believe you.

There was nothing and then there was a universe. How? This is a logical question. Then we might want to ask why? IF you have no concern yourself that is something you hold to but for many many people the how and the why are important.

That's a nice non-answer. How about trying to actually address what you're responding to :

"How are you defining cause, given that this alleged cause happened before time as we know it existed?"

Do better explanations require them to be mathematical to come to some conclusion?

And again, you didn't answer the question. There seems to be a pattern here - make bold claims and then change the subject when asked to support them.

Yes.

At least this one wasn't an attempt at a dodge.

The physical universe and everything within it is finite. It began to exist. God did not begin to exist but has existed forever.

Did it now? How do you know?

 

[Oncedeceived]

How do you differentiate a "personal revelation" from a "self induced state of mind"?

I am not going into the revelation of God in this thread. Confirmation of what we would see in the world which aligns with what we should see confirms the personal aspects of revelation. If theism is true we should see design in the universe and in life forms. The fact that the universe has elements that confirm what we should see in the universe if that revelation is true, gives us something outside of ourselves to come to those conclusions.

 

[KCfromNC]

State exactly what you think scientists are claiming please. I think you have a very different idea of what they do of fine tuning and why it is to them unlikely.

We could sort this out pretty easily if you'd just post the papers where they calculate a consensus number for exactly how unlikely they've determined our universe to be. For some reason, you seem to be trying to do everything but that. Why is that?

 

[KCfromNC]

You first say I don't allow the possibility of saying I don't know and then you claim I keep saying I don't know

Citation needed.

 

[KCfromNC]

How do you differentiate a "personal revelation" from a "self induced state of mind"?

And lacking any such "personal revelation" myself, how do I tell the difference when you claim to have had such a "personal revelation"? How do I differentiate your "personal revelations" from your "self induced states of mind"?

Maybe all we need to do is claim we have personal revelations that god needed to be fine tuned and she'd suddenly agree with us?

Nah, we all know that the correct declination of the word is "My personal revelation of truth, your delusional thinking, everyone agrees with us".

 

[DogmaHunter]

There was nothing and then there was a universe.

Please demonstrate that there was "nothing". That is, after you define what you mean by "nothing".

How? This is a logical question.

Yes, asking questions about reality to gain more understanding is a good thing.

Then we might want to ask why?

Hmm. You'ld first have to establish that "why" (which, I suppose, you mean in the sense of purpose and/or intent) is even a sensible question to ask.

Do better explanations require them to be mathematical to come to some conclusion?

When you call something "more likely" then something else, then you ARE talking about math. Probability.

You need math to determine something to be more likely then another thing.
How else could you determine the probability of something, if not by calculating it?

God did not begin to exist but has existed forever.

Please support this claim with verifiable evidence.

 

[DogmaHunter]

State exactly what you think scientists are claiming please. I think you have a very different idea of what they do of fine tuning and why it is to them unlikely.

The current consensus among physicists is that the origins of the universe, are unknown.

There is big bang theory, but that doesn't deal with the origin. That theory doesn't state what "banged" or how it "banged" or where the stuff that "banged" came from, or if there even was any stuff that "banged" in the first place.

I think you have been told enough times that it is currently unknown what lies beyond Planck time, it would be energy wasting to repeat it - eventhough I just did, because I can't help myself.

And yes, you can quote a bunch of individual scientists, each with their own ideas, opinions and (sometimes unprovable) hypothesis, etc... And I could do the same, if I thought making arguments from authority were a good thing. But that doesn't change the fact that there is no consensus on any of these ideas at all. Hence, the concensus at this point is "we don't know, we're working on it".

 

[DogmaHunter]

I am conversing with many posters, if you don't care enough to bring them forward I am sure not going to worry about what you seem to think is contradictory.

I didn't expect anything else...
I didn't expect you to care about potentially making contradicting arguments/
I didn't expect you to worry about it either.

KC is also discussing the very same contradiction I spotted as well. You're avoiding his point like the plague as well.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Considering that polytheists make up a sizeable percentage of the world's population, I don't believe you.

Believe what you wish.

That's a nice non-answer. How about trying to actually address what you're responding to :

"How are you defining cause, given that this alleged cause happened before time as we know it existed?"

Cause: a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition.

And again, you didn't answer the question. There seems to be a pattern here - make bold claims and then change the subject when asked to support them.

I've supported my claims.
Claims:
1. The universe is fine tuned to exist and for life to exist as we know it.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.4647.pdf
I gave a list of scientists that agree that the universe if fine tuned: There are a great many scientists, of varying religious persuasions, who accept that the universe is fine-tuned for life, e.g. Barrow, Carr, Carter, Davies, Dawkins, Deutsch, Ellis, Greene, Guth, Harrison, Hawking, Linde, Page, Penrose, Polkinghorne, Rees, Sandage, Smolin, Susskind, Tegmark, Tipler, Vilenkin, Weinberg, Wheeler, Wilczek. They differ, of course, on what conclusion we should draw from this fact.
https://winteryknight.com/2015/11/1...or-stengers-critique-of-cosmic-fine-tuning-4/
2. Scientists claim that the universe is unlikely to have the parameters that are set precisely as they are to allow a life permitting universe to exist.
I gave a half a dozen or so quotes from prominent scientists that make this claim.

At least this one wasn't an attempt at a dodge.

I've answered all questions addressed to me.

Did it now? How do you know?

I gave a link that you must have missed that provided support to that conclusion.
Here is another:
http://now.tufts.edu/articles/beginning-was-beginning

 

[Oncedeceived]

The current consensus among physicists is that the origins of the universe, are unknown.

There is big bang theory, but that doesn't deal with the origin. That theory doesn't state what "banged" or how it "banged" or where the stuff that "banged" came from, or if there even was any stuff that "banged" in the first place.

I think you have been told enough times that it is currently unknown what lies beyond Planck time, it would be energy wasting to repeat it - eventhough I just did, because I can't help myself.

And yes, you can quote a bunch of individual scientists, each with their own ideas, opinions and (sometimes unprovable) hypothesis, etc... And I could do the same, if I thought making arguments from authority were a good thing. But that doesn't change the fact that there is no consensus on any of these ideas at all. Hence, the concensus at this point is "we don't know, we're working on it".

I agree, the consensus of the physicists is that the origins of the universe are unknown.
The Big Bang theory has a wide range of evidence for it. They do know that there was a start to the universe and after that start or that beginning they have evidence for it expanding creating space, matter, energy and time.

So if you don't know, you don't know that God is not the answer do you?

 

[Oncedeceived]

I didn't expect anything else...
I didn't expect you to care about potentially making contradicting arguments/
I didn't expect you to worry about it either.

KC is also discussing the very same contradiction I spotted as well. You're avoiding his point like the plague as well.

I replied to his accusation of contradiction and pointed out why it wasn't.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Cause: a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition.

"gives rise to" implies a sequential chain of events, one after the other.
Since you are talking about a cause for the universe, you are effectively saying that the universe itself is an effect.

Meaning that a cause of that effect would necessarily happen before the effect, as per your own definition of what a cause is.

Question: How does something happen "before" time itself exists? Is positing an event that requires temporal conditions in a setting where there are no temporal conditions, even sensible at all?

 

[DogmaHunter]

I agree, the consensus of the physicists is that the origins of the universe are unknown.
The Big Bang theory has a wide range of evidence for it. They do know that there was a start to the universe and after that start or that beginning they have evidence for it expanding creating space, matter, energy and time.

After planck time, yes. We don't know squad about before planck time.
So I could actually even nitpick about your use of the words "start" and "begin".

The important thing to remember here is that before planck time is unknown.

So stating that there was "nothing" there is not something that is in evidence. It's an idea and physicists exploring that idea certainly will have a few things to share about why they think it is an idea worth exploring.

Just like physicists also explore other ideas, like multi-verses etc.

But none of this is in evidence. All these ideas exist at the frontier of our current knowledge. And like Krauss always likes to point out: "most likely, all these ideas (including mine) will turn out to be wrong when we discover the actual answer".

So if you don't know, you don't know that God is not the answer do you?

Indeed, I don't know that god is not the answer, once....

I also don't know that a unicorn, or anything else my imagination can produce, is not the answer.

To see theists so frequently and consistently fall back on such statements after a while in these kinds of discussion, is very telling, really.

 

[AdamSK]

Christianity alone consists of 1/3 of the world population.

You really think the average Christmas-and-Easter Protestant or Third World Catholic knows anything about existential necessity in the nature of God? Because most of them can't even list the Ten Commandments or find 2 Corinthians in a Bible.

 

[Oncedeceived]

We could sort this out pretty easily if you'd just post the papers where they calculate a consensus number for exactly how unlikely they've determined our universe to be. For some reason, you seem to be trying to do everything but that. Why is that?

 

[Oncedeceived]

After planck time, yes. We don't know squad about before planck time.
So I could actually even nitpick about your use of the words "start" and "begin".

The important thing to remember here is that before planck time is unknown.

So stating that there was "nothing" there is not something that is in evidence. It's an idea and physicists exploring that idea certainly will have a few things to share about why they think it is an idea worth exploring.

Just like physicists also explore other ideas, like multi-verses etc.

But none of this is in evidence. All these ideas exist at the frontier of our current knowledge. And like Krauss always likes to point out: "most likely, all these ideas (including mine) will turn out to be wrong when we discover the actual answer".

Vilenkin says it did.
http://now.tufts.edu/articles/beginning-was-beginning

Indeed, I don't know that god is not the answer, once....

I also don't know that a unicorn, or anything else my imagination can produce, is not the answer.

To see theists so frequently and consistently fall back on such statements after a while in these kinds of discussion, is very telling, really.

It isn't a fall back, it is relevant to your point of view. You categorize God with a unicorn which shows that you are not willing to even consider such a possibility.