The fine tuning of the universe.

[Athée]

I believe you felt that we were confused as to what chance meant to each of us. In determining that I needed to ask you as well. I then answered by saying that Chance meant something that was by accident.

Oh, OK. It felt like a dodge to me but obviously you didn't intend it that way. Thanks for letting me know

Which we already know there are some with connections and some independent.

This is a good correction of my statement. I agree, some independent (we think) and some we know to be dependant.

The formatting was messy here so I will make a not of who is speaking.

Once:
I'm not sure if that it is that black and white. There are things that have purpose which are not necessarily a purpose by a conscious being, there can be consequences of some action that can be purposeful without consciousness.

Athée: Maybe i am brain dead from hauling boxes all day but I can't think of any examples. What would have a purpose but not have that purpose defined by a consious being?


Once:
I think chance is best described as accidental.

Athée: OK that's fine. Would you agree that accidental and on purpose are a true dychotomy?

Citation needed
What exactly do you want? I'm unsure of what you want to substantiate this.

You are claiming that the scientific consensus is that, most scientists agree that our universe is fine tuned for life AND THAT THIS COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED BY CHANCE.
It is the second part you need to substantiate. As I said before, scientists agree that if the values were different life as we know it would not exist. But you are going an extra step and saying that most scientists agree with you that this could not have happened by accident, in other words it happened on purpose, for a reason. You have cited a few scientists who agree with you on this point but a few scientists does not a consensus make. You need to provide evidence that the majority opinion in relevant scientific fields is that our universe has the valuse it has

Ok, then go back to the Royal flush one. Poker is a game of chance, so this one is exactly spot on.

Not at all. Let's say that 13 cards are dealt to me. Would it be surprising if I got all 13 spades? Sure it would. But it would be no more surprising if I got a mish mash of cards that I couldn't see a patern in. Statistically the probabilities are the same. You poker analogy gets its teeth from this notion of dealing again and again and getting the same result. If we observed even one other universe with the exact same values as ours, I would agree with you that it would need some explanation...but we don't. And computer models don't help because you are intentionally changing the values, you are intentionally not dealing the royal flush all over again. So again this analogy doesn't quite work.

So we are no more special than empty space and barren rocks? Am I understanding you correctly?

Yup. I mean obviously from our own subjective viewport we are more special but in a supra universal sense not so much.

If it were a deeper law of physics at play, that law would have to be as fine tuned as the fine tuning we observe in the universe. The same is true of the multiverse, it just moves the fine tuning back. Your thoughts?

Speculation of course but the deeper, the more basic a law the more likely that it is true by necessity. Moreover, it would be, again by necessity, less complex than our hodgepodge of current models and so could be more easily explained by chance alone.

 

[KCfromNC]

I gave you a link.

Post number?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Oh, OK. It felt like a dodge to me but obviously you didn't intend it that way. Thanks for letting me know

No problem.

This is a good correction of my statement. I agree, some independent (we think) and some we know to be dependant.

The formatting was messy here so I will make a not of who is speaking.

Once:
I'm not sure if that it is that black and white. There are things that have purpose which are not necessarily a purpose by a conscious being, there can be consequences of some action that can be purposeful without consciousness.

Athée: Maybe i am brain dead from hauling boxes all day but I can't think of any examples. What would have a purpose but not have that purpose defined by a consious being?

Now mind you this will be something I don't necessarily agree with but I think being a humanist (another topic?)you would say that there is purpose in the make up of the living organism would you not?

Once:
I think chance is best described as accidental.

Athée: OK that's fine. Would you agree that accidental and on purpose are a true dychotomy?

I do.

Citation needed
What exactly do you want? I'm unsure of what you want to substantiate this.

You are claiming that the scientific consensus is that, most scientists agree that our universe is fine tuned for life AND THAT THIS COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED BY CHANCE.

Now wait a minute. This is not what I said. Remember we are talking about this: PA2: The chance that these values could occur by chance is highly unlikely. Now I am going to continue to think this was accidental and not a purposeful conscious action to move the goal post.

It is the second part you need to substantiate. As I said before, scientists agree that if the values were different life as we know it would not exist. But you are going an extra step and saying that most scientists agree with you that this could not have happened by accident, in other words it happened on purpose, for a reason. You have cited a few scientists who agree with you on this point but a few scientists does not a consensus make. You need to provide evidence that the majority opinion in relevant scientific fields is that our universe has the valuse it has

I am not sure but I don't think you meant what your last sentence is saying...does it? I'll wait to answer when this is clear. As far as the "evidence" that the scientists in the field share the opinion that chance is highly unlikely, I've provided quotes from both sides of the fence that agree it is. I cited more than a few on each side of the issue. Just how many do you think are needed to convince you? You do realize that we are pretty much limited to the most prominent scientists in their fields as those who are not are not going to be making public statements on the issue. I've used the most prominent that do make such public statements. Now that being said, one of the main reasons for the multiverse hypothesis is to make sense of improbability of the fine tuning when the string theory to explain them didn't work out.

The fact that you claimed in the beginning that you didn't think that we could really claim any other universes in reality, but in your arguments against the fine tuning you yourself point outside of our own universe to counter it. You know yourself whether you have consciously determined it or not that these things are very surprising and improbable if keeping to the evidence in our own universe and you reach outside of it to show its not that surprising or improbable. That too is why scientists who will not even consider Divine Purpose are searching for something to explain something they have determined is highly unlikely by chance. You yourself have dismissed it by chance alone in your arguments because you have never claimed anything about chance and have given "reasons" rather than chance to explain them. It is because chance just doesn't cut it.

Are you ready to allow that the majority of scientists in the field believe chance is highly unlikely to explain the fine tuning of the universe?

Not at all. Let's say that 13 cards are dealt to me. Would it be surprising if I got all 13 spades? Sure it would. But it would be no more surprising if I got a mish mash of cards that I couldn't see a patern in. Statistically the probabilities are the same.

You are using the wrong form of probablity.

You poker analogy gets its teeth from this notion of dealing again and again and getting the same result. If we observed even one other universe with the exact same values as ours, I would agree with you that it would need some explanation...but we don't. And computer models don't help because you are intentionally changing the values, you are intentionally not dealing the royal flush all over again. So again this analogy doesn't quite work.

Why? Why would we need any other universe for this to work? If you are sitting at one table (one universe) with three other players. Now the very first hand you get the royal flush, surprising but not that improbable. The next hand, royal flush. After five times of this the improbable is coming more in focus. After thirty times it is isn't only improbable but if the accusation wasn't made before now everyone believes that this is just to unlikely to happen by chance and they accuse you and the dealer of cheating.

In this universe with no other universes the fact that there are over 30 fine tuned parameters is like 30 royal flushes.

Yup. I mean obviously from our own subjective viewport we are more special but in a supra universal sense not so much.

What does supra universal sense mean?

Speculation of course but the deeper, the more basic a law the more likely that it is true by necessity. Moreover, it would be, again by necessity, less complex than our hodgepodge of current models and so could be more easily explained by chance alone.

Now what makes something that is in evidence (30 fine tuned parameters) being unlikely to have happened by chance even if there is a law that orders the whole mass of them by necessity? How too is your answer (basic law) less speculative that what I said?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Post number?

#684

 

[KCfromNC]

#684

Nope, doesn't answer my question. The link you posted there doesn't even write out Bayes' Theorem, much less identify the meaning of each term in the equation. Try again.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Nope, doesn't answer my question. The link you posted there doesn't even write out Bayes' Theorem, much less identify the meaning of each term in the equation. Try again.

https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/bayes-theorem-what-is-this-background-information/

 

[Athée]

Now mind you this will be something I don't necessarily agree with but I think being a humanist (another topic?)you would say that there is purpose in the make up of the living organism would you not?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I would say that conscious beings can confer purpose on their actions and can infer purpose in the actions/effects of other things. A rock does not have a purpose for itself but when it gets picked up and used as a hammer it is given a purpose. Don't know if I answeredyl your question or not. Just let me kow if I missed something

I cited more than a few on each side of the issue. Just how many do you think are needed to convince you? You do realize that we are pretty much limited to the most prominent scientists in their fields as those who are not are not going to be making public statements on the issue. I've used the most prominent that do make such public statements

Well you cited a few but I am not convinced that you have represented the majority opinion. That said we can come back to this if necessary because I think the reason we are disagreeing here is really about what chance means.

The fact that you claimed in the beginning that you didn't think that we could really claim any other universes in reality, but in your arguments against the fine tuning you yourself point outside of our own universe to counter it.

I'm not sure what you are getting at here, and how I pointed to something outside our universe.

That too is why scientists who will not even consider Divine Purpose are searching for something to explain something they have determined is highly unlikely by chance.

I think I am understanding you here. You imagine the values in the universe as being independent. As if each one gets its own dial. Each dial has millions of possible values and the dials get spun one at a time. This is what you mean when you say by chance (I think. Although you have said that some of them are related so maybe a few of the dials are attached together or someting - but not enough of them to make any statistical difference). I agree that such a scenario is unlikely and I would agree that the majority of relevant experts do as well. Where we are getting stuck is the next step. You seem to want to day that since this version of chance is unlikely, therfore there must have been a purose that is, that something intelligent must have guided those values. And if course this is not the accepted view in science. As I understand it most of the relevant experts are looking for a mechanism that explains why things are the way they are but this does not mean an intelligent intervention. If there is a smaller set of guiding principles then they become much easier to describe by chance than the individual dial model.

Are you ready to allow that the majority of scientists in the field believe chance is highly unlikely to explain the fine tuning of the universe?

I rambled a lot about this above but if you are defining chance by using the individual dials model then yes I think I am ready to agree but do notice that we have not ruled out chance (in reference to a deeper organizational principle or principles) as an explanation.

You are using the wrong form of probablity.

How so?

Why? Why would we need any other universe for this to work? If you are sitting at one table (one universe) with three other players. Now the very first hand you get the royal flush, surprising but not that improbable. The next hand, royal flush. After five times of this the improbable is coming more in focus. After thirty times it is isn't only improbable but if the accusation wasn't made before now everyone believes that this is just to unlikely to happen by chance and they accuse you and the dealer of cheating.

I don't see the universe's values as an independent string of 30 separate events. You want to see the occurrence of each value as a separate hand in your analogy. I see the universe and all its values as one hand. That is why I am saying you would need another universe (another hand) to make a determination about guided purpose.

What does supra universal sense mean?

Maybe I expressed that badly. Basically what I mean is that we (humanity )are not special to anyone but ourselves. We are unique and wonderful for sure. But we are not intrinsically more special or more valuable to the universe than a rock.

Now what makes something that is in evidence (30 fine tuned parameters) being unlikely to have happened by chance even if there is a law that orders the whole mass of them by necessity?

Not sure what you are asking here. Feel free to ask again if you think it still needs to be addressed.

How too is your answer (basic law) less speculative that what I said?

it's not. That is why I am stuck at the default position. I simply don't know so I am unwilling to simply assert an answer.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I would say that conscious beings can confer purpose on their actions and can infer purpose in the actions/effects of other things. A rock does not have a purpose for itself but when it gets picked up and used as a hammer it is given a purpose. Don't know if I answeredyl your question or not. Just let me kow if I missed something

So you don't believe that the heart has a purpose in the body that is actual purpose without someone conferring that purpose upon it? That is pretty general we could get into more detail if that would help to make my point.

Well you cited a few but I am not convinced that you have represented the majority opinion. That said we can come back to this if necessary because I think the reason we are disagreeing here is really about what chance means.

a thing happening by accident is pretty clear I think, don't you?

I'm not sure what you are getting at here, and how I pointed to something outside our universe.

When discussing the fine tuned constants you reach outside of the evidence. The evidence is the fundamental constants are very precisely what they need to be. Scientists have no reason to believe that there is a way to explain this with the physics we know.

The New Urgency of Anthropic Investigation
Two recent developments have imparted a renewed sense of urgency to investigations of the anthropic qualities of our cosmos. The first is the discovery that the value of dark energy density is exceedingly small but not quite zero—an apparent happenstance, unpredictable from first principles, with profound implications for the bio-friendly quality of our universe. As noted recently by Goldsmith (Goldsmith, 2004):

A relatively straightforward calculation [based on established principles of theoretical physics] does yield a theoretical value for the cosmological constant, but that value is greater than the measured one by a factor of about 10120—probably the largest discrepancy between theory and observation science has ever had to bear.



If the cosmological constant had a smaller value than that suggested by recent observations, it would cause no trouble (just as one would expect, remembering the happy days when the constant was thought to be zero). But if the constant were a few times larger than it is now, the universe would have expanded so rapidly that galaxies could not have endured for the billions of years necessary to bring forth complex forms of life.

The second development is the realization that M-theory—arguably the most promising contemporary candidate for a theory capable of yielding a deep synthesis of relativity and quantum physics—permits, in Bjorken’s phrase (Bjorken, 2004), “a variety of string vacuua, with different standard-model properties.”

M-theorists had initially hoped that their new paradigm would be “brittle” in the sense of yielding a single mathematically unavoidable solution that uniquely explained the seemingly arbitrary parameters of the Standard Model. As Susskind has put it (Susskind, 2003):

The world-view shared by most physicists is that the laws of nature are uniquely described by some special action principle that completely determines the vacuum, the spectrum of elementary particles, the forces and the symmetries. Experience with quantum electrodynamics and quantum chromodynamics suggests a world with a small number of parameters and a unique ground state. For the most part, string theorists bought into this paradigm. At first it was hoped that string theory would be unique and explain the various parameters that quantum field theory left unexplained.

This hope has been dashed by the recent discovery that the number of different solutions permitted by M-theory (which correspond to different values of Standard Model parameters) is, in Susskind’s words, “astronomical, measured not in millions or billions but in googles or googleplexes.” This development seems to deprive our most promising new theory of fundamental physics of the power to uniquely predict the emergence of anything remotely resembling our universe. As Susskind puts it, the picture of the universe that is emerging from the deep mathematical recesses of M-theory is not an “elegant universe” but rather a Rube Goldberg device, cobbled together by some unknown process in a supremely improbable manner that just happens to render the whole ensemble fit for life. In the words of University of California theoretical physicist Steve Giddings, “No longer can we follow the dream of discovering the unique equations that predict everything we see, and writing them on a single page. Predicting the constants of nature becomes a messy environmental problem. It has the complications of biology.”[1] Emphasis mine.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-physi...etrodiction-of-the-selfish-biocosm-hypothesis

This hope that some underlying law of physics is looking very dim and that is why the multiverse is becoming the focus, nothing else other than Divine design can be seen to be a logical path to follow.

I think I am understanding you here. You imagine the values in the universe as being independent. As if each one gets its own dial. Each dial has millions of possible values and the dials get spun one at a time. This is what you mean when you say by chance (I think. Although you have said that some of them are related so maybe a few of the dials are attached together or someting - but not enough of them to make any statistical difference). I agree that such a scenario is unlikely and I would agree that the majority of relevant experts do as well. Where we are getting stuck is the next step. You seem to want to day that since this version of chance is unlikely, therfore there must have been a purose that is, that something intelligent must have guided those values. And if course this is not the accepted view in science. As I understand it most of the relevant experts are looking for a mechanism that explains why things are the way they are but this does not mean an intelligent intervention. If there is a smaller set of guiding principles then they become much easier to describe by chance than the individual dial model.

More or less, yes. The precision of the constants in most part had to be "spun" into the universe from the beginning of the universe. Some simultaneously with that beginning.

What I want to address is not the next step but work towards that step. It is agreed by the majority of scientists that this universe as it stands alone is unlikely to be as it is by accident. It is not an event of chance happenstance. It takes those very precise values to exist itself let alone the life that comes later in it. Now science is the methodological experimental study of the natural world. It is not surprising that even those who do feel that Intelligent Design is behind it all, they want to remain within that natural world to explain the workings of the universe naturally. There are those that are strong believers that evolution is completely in keeping with Intelligent Design but who still work on the natural elements as they work in the natural world. So claiming that scientists "don't believe in Intelligent Design" is rather like claiming that fire fighters don't believe that fires put themselves out. Science is used to understand our universe. It is in the interpretations of that understanding is where the two worldviews go in different directions. Even atheist scientists claim that design is a valid argument, just one that they don't personally believe or do they believe that it is a scientific testable argument. But we are not here discussing whether or not science can "prove" that God exists or that Intelligent design is the reason behind the apparent design in the universe. What we are hopefully doing is exploring what best fits with ones worldview and how that worldview best explains what we find in the universe. When one claims that there is no evidence for God we have to understand that there is evidence that supports that concept; it then becomes a question that someone must ask themselves. Does a world under atheism best represent and explain the universe in a cohesive and rational way or does the universe with all that apparent design make more sense in the Theist's worldview?

I rambled a lot about this above but if you are defining chance by using the individual dials model then yes I think I am ready to agree but do notice that we have not ruled out chance (in reference to a deeper organizational principle or principles) as an explanation.

Which would be begging the question,

How so?

Remember the post about probability and the two kinds? I think it was back quite a ways back if you want it I'll look it up.

I don't see the universe's values as an independent string of 30 separate events. You want to see the occurrence of each value as a separate hand in your analogy. I see the universe and all its values as one hand. That is why I am saying you would need another universe (another hand) to make a determination about guided purpose.

1. We know that many of those 30 are unrelated. So they were not all one hand in and of themselves.
2. All we have is our universe and the point is that these need explanation in this universe.
3. It is due to the improbability of these constants being so many in number and for many being unrelated that scientists can only explain it if we are a universe in trillions and trillions and trillions of universes.
Therefore, it is not as if it is one hand but at minimum of say 25 and that is not counting the necessary elements of location of the sun and earth, the elements that allow life on earth and so forth. Taken together the number of coincidences for life is staggering.

Maybe I expressed that badly. Basically what I mean is that we (humanity )are not special to anyone but ourselves. We are unique and wonderful for sure. But we are not intrinsically more special or more valuable to the universe than a rock.

You are asserting this while knowing that the universe very much appears to care very much.

Not sure what you are asking here. Feel free to ask again if you think it still needs to be addressed.

It goes with the unlikeliness of the universe.

it's not. That is why I am stuck at the default position. I simply don't know so I am unwilling to simply assert an answer.

Knowing what we know now, do you agree that the universe appears to be highly unlikely?

 

[KCfromNC]

https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/bayes-theorem-what-is-this-background-information/

And?

 

[Oncedeceived]

And?

And what?

 

[[serious]]

And?

You asked for something that addressed Bayes theorem and he linked something that did that. What exactly are you asking?

I'm not entirely clear what you were asking for in your initial request for Bayesian analysis, so perhaps if you were more specific that would help.

 

[bhsmte]

You asked for something that addressed Bayes theorem and he linked something that did that. What exactly are you asking?

I'm not entirely clear what you were asking for in your initial request for Bayesian analysis, so perhaps if you were more specific that would help.

He did that long ago in the thread.

 

[Oncedeceived]

You asked for something that addressed Bayes theorem and he linked something that did that. What exactly are you asking?

I'm not entirely clear what you were asking for in your initial request for Bayesian analysis, so perhaps if you were more specific that would help.

Exactly, he is being so general about what he is asking for I am trying to accommodate his request but at this point I just am at a loss as to what he wants me to provide.

 

[Oncedeceived]

He did that long ago in the thread.

Since you seem to know what he wants then, perhaps you can articulate it for him?

 

[Athée]

So you don't believe that the heart has a purpose in the body that is actual purpose without someone conferring that purpose upon it? That is pretty general we could get into more detail if that would help to make my point.

The heart has a function in the body obviously but not am inherent purpose. Now if I decide to be a heart donor, then my heart will have a purpose.

When discussing the fine tuned constants you reach outside of the evidence. The evidence is the fundamental constants are very precisely what they need to be. Scientists have no reason to believe that there is a way to explain this with the physics we know.

I don't recall reaching outside the evidence to prove anything.
That said I found your article about a deeper principle of physics interesting. Lots to think about and some follow up reading to do

This hope that some underlying law of physics is looking very dim and that is why the multiverse is becoming the focus, nothing else other than Divine design can be seen to be a logical path to follow.

Don't forget Susskind and the megaverse which is not the same thing. Despite what your article said I am still not convinced we can rule out that a better understanding of physics will make our universe seem more probable. And yes there is still the multiverse.

It is agreed by the majority of scientists that this universe as it stands alone is unlikely to be as it is by accident. It is not an event of chance happenstance. It takes those very precise values to exist itself let alone the life that comes later in it.

We don't know this to be the case. You are assuming that our universe was a one shot thing. There could have been millions of almost universes that didn't work before ours, that just happened to have the right values (speculation obviously). Moreover even if the chances are one in a googleplex that does not eliminate our universe as a possibility. On a much smaller scale if you have a 100 sided dice the chances of rolling a 4 are 1/100. Does this mean you can't roll a 4 in your first roll, of course you can but it is unlikely. The problem is that in this analogy the 4 is a desired outcome, we have attached a special significance to it. In the case of our universe being generated, the outcome with the values we observe is not at all significant or special (except to us). Maybe there was only one roll of the dice, maybe there were trillions, we have no idea, the next step is not, therfore a god did it, the next step is, wow we still don't know let's keep trying to understand this.

So claiming that scientists "don't believe in Intelligent Design" is rather like claiming that fire fighters don't believe that fires put themselves out

I didn't claim this, obviously some scientists do, but I would be very surprised if it were a majority opinion

Does a world under atheism best represent and explain the universe in a cohesive and rational way or does the universe with all that apparent design make more sense in the Theist's worldview?

So here is one of the problems with God as an explanation. Theists often make this appeal, inference to the best explanation, to claim that our observations make more sense on their worldview than on ours. The issue is that any post hoc explanation narrative with enough vagueness in it can explain all the relevant facts. We could propose a transcendent wagon, universe creating pixies, helium based lifeforms from a different universe and if we add enough elements to these stories they will eventually have a perfect explanation for everything that we observe. But just like that he idea that God did it, these theories are not testable, so if you want to talk Baysean probability, your God hypothesis has to she that hehe probability space with all the other non verify able constructs, making its prior probability so incredibly low than no amount of explaining the data (everything in that p-space will do that) will make it likely in the consequent probability.

Remember the post about probability and the two kinds? I think it was back quite a ways back if you want it I'll look it up.

We know that many of those 30 are unrelated. So they were not all one hand in and of themselves.

. It is due to the improbability of these constants being so many in number and for many being unrelated that scientists can only explain it if we are a universe in trillions and trillions and trillions of universes.

You are asserting this while knowing that the universe very much appears to care very much

Knowing what we know now, do you agree that the universe appears to be highly unlikely?

 

[KCfromNC]

You asked for something that addressed Bayes theorem and he linked something that did that. What exactly are you asking?

I was specifically asking her actually show how Bayes' Theorem applied to her claim in post 658. If it isn't clear what I'm asking it is because that post has a pretty peculiar claim in it, so without that context it looks like I'm making up something strange and unrelated to the actual math. But I'm just asking for clarification of a weird statement.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I was specifically asking her actually show how Bayes' Theorem applied to her claim in post 658. If it isn't clear what I'm asking it is because that post has a pretty peculiar claim in it, so without that context it looks like I'm making up something strange and unrelated to the actual math. But I'm just asking for clarification of a weird statement.

Athee: Oh shoot I forgot about the baysean probability bit. This method relies on prior probabilities to determine the consequent probabilities. The problem here is that we only have our universe to populate that prior. If you want to speculate about hypothetical alternate universes , you are going to get speculative and hypothetical results.
Me: We know what would happen if the constants were tweaked, which is what we need to know to get to the probability.

This might help:

http://planck.caltech.edu/pub/2013results/Planck_2013_results_16.pdf

 

[AirPo]

Athee: Oh shoot I forgot about the baysean probability bit. This method relies on prior probabilities to determine the consequent probabilities. The problem here is that we only have our universe to populate that prior. If you want to speculate about hypothetical alternate universes , you are going to get speculative and hypothetical results.
Me: We know what would happen if the constants were tweaked, which is what we need to know to get to the probability.

This might help:

http://planck.caltech.edu/pub/2013results/Planck_2013_results_16.pdf

As I already explained, if we know what will happen, the probability is 1. What happens if you flip a two headed coin?

 

[KCfromNC]

Athee: Oh shoot I forgot about the baysean probability bit. This method relies on prior probabilities to determine the consequent probabilities. The problem here is that we only have our universe to populate that prior. If you want to speculate about hypothetical alternate universes , you are going to get speculative and hypothetical results.
Me: We know what would happen if the constants were tweaked, which is what we need to know to get to the probability.

This might help:

http://planck.caltech.edu/pub/2013results/Planck_2013_results_16.pdf

Come on, if you have an answer just post it rather than make people fish it out of a 67-page paper.

ETA - Anyway, if you're interested in discussing measurements of the CMB, why didn't you post the paper discussing the most up to date set of data?

 

[Oncedeceived]

The heart has a function in the body obviously but not am inherent purpose. Now if I decide to be a heart donor, then my heart will have a purpose.

The purpose of the heart would not be to pump blood throughout the body? Is that not purpose?

I don't recall reaching outside the evidence to prove anything.
That said I found your article about a deeper principle of physics interesting. Lots to think about and some follow up reading to do

Case in point:

We don't know this to be the case. You are assuming that our universe was a one shot thing. There could have been millions of almost universes that didn't work before ours, that just happened to have the right values (speculation obviously). Moreover even if the chances are one in a googleplex that does not eliminate our universe as a possibility.

You are reaching outside our universe. I am assuming nothing. What we know is our universe and nothing more. All we do know is that our universe is all there is and the only shot. It is only speculation (granted you agree) that there is anything more at all. Yet, you know and so do scientists that to make ours less improbable and less unlikely one needs to reach and speculate that all this improbability and unlikeliness is nothing but an illusion caused by those hypothetical multiverses or a Megaverse or something of the like.

Don't forget Susskind and the megaverse which is not the same thing. Despite what your article said I am still not convinced we can rule out that a better understanding of physics will make our universe seem more probable. And yes there is still the multiverse.

Knowing that you have said this is not your area of knowledge you would not understand how daunting new discoveries are to that hope. The Higgs Boson was something that scientists felt would bring all the elements into accord but they found rather than giving a reason for the fine tuning by way of a theory of everything or at least give some answer to the fine tuning; it was fine tuned as well and where there should have been many many particles there was only one.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130524-is-nature-unnatural/

“Ten or 20 years ago, I was a firm believer in naturalness,” said Nathan Seiberg, a theoretical physicist at the Institute, where Einstein taught from 1933 until his death in 1955. “Now I’m not so sure. My hope is there’s still something we haven’t thought about, some other mechanism that would explain all these things. But I don’t see what it could be.”

Physicists reason that if the universe is unnatural, with extremely unlikely fundamental constants that make life possible, then an enormous number of universes must exist for our improbable case to have been realized. Otherwise, why should we be so lucky? Unnaturalness would give a huge lift to the multiverse hypothesis, which holds that our universe is one bubble in an infinite and inaccessible foam. According to a popular but polarizing framework called string theory, the number of possible types of universes that can bubble up in a multiverse is around 10500. In a few of them, chance cancellations would produce the strange constants we observe.

And:
This time, the self-healing powers of the universe seem to be failing. The Higgs boson has a mass of 126 giga-electron-volts, but interactions with the other known particles should add about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 giga-electron-volts to its mass. This implies that the Higgs’ “bare mass,” or starting value before other particles affect it, just so happens to be the negative of that astronomical number, resulting in a near-perfect cancellation that leaves just a hint of Higgs behind: 126 giga-electron-volts.

Physicists have gone through three generations of particle accelerators searching for new particles, posited by a theory called supersymmetry, that would drive the Higgs mass down exactly as much as the known particles drive it up. But so far they’ve come up empty-handed.

We don't know this to be the case. You are assuming that our universe was a one shot thing. There could have been millions of almost universes that didn't work before ours, that just happened to have the right values (speculation obviously). Moreover even if the chances are one in a googleplex that does not eliminate our universe as a possibility. On a much smaller scale if you have a 100 sided dice the chances of rolling a 4 are 1/100. Does this mean you can't roll a 4 in your first roll, of course you can but it is unlikely. The problem is that in this analogy the 4 is a desired outcome, we have attached a special significance to it. In the case of our universe being generated, the outcome with the values we observe is not at all significant or special (except to us). Maybe there was only one roll of the dice, maybe there were trillions, we have no idea, the next step is not, therfore a god did it, the next step is, wow we still don't know let's keep trying to understand this.

We do have a special significance, Life. It is special in regard to the universe because what we have right now is a small blue dot in this great big galaxy within a stupendously large universe and we know of life no where else other than this small blue dot which set EXACTLY where it needs to for our life to exist.

I didn't claim this, obviously some scientists do, but I would be very surprised if it were a majority opinion

Which does nothing to the claim.

So here is one of the problems with God as an explanation. Theists often make this appeal, inference to the best explanation, to claim that our observations make more sense on their worldview than on ours. The issue is that any post hoc explanation narrative with enough vagueness in it can explain all the relevant facts. We could propose a transcendent wagon, universe creating pixies, helium based lifeforms from a different universe and if we add enough elements to these stories they will eventually have a perfect explanation for everything that we observe. But just like that he idea that God did it, these theories are not testable, so if you want to talk Baysean probability, your God hypothesis has to she that hehe probability space with all the other non verify able constructs, making its prior probability so incredibly low than no amount of explaining the data (everything in that p-space will do that) will make it likely in the consequent probability.

We most certainly can relegate imaginary substitutes like transcendent wagons and universe creating pixies but of course this is just a mocking depiction and straw man of the argument. There are certain elements we should observe if Christianity is true, such as a universe that had a beginning, intelligent life, a universe that is governed by laws, a universe that we can understand with the appearance of design.