The fine tuning of the universe.

[KCfromNC]

Interestingly enough, a life permitting universe according to scientists is rather surprising considering that life seems to be rare not only in our own universe but in a great vast number of possible universes.

Weird. You'd think that if there were an intelligent designer who wanted life in this universe that it wouldn't be rare here at all. Maybe the designer is just incompetent. Or it created our universe on a Friday afternoon?

I am not making claims about the fine tuning other than what the scientists are claiming about the fine tuning.

You're claiming that the most likely explanation is your version of the Christian god, aren't you? That's something quite different that the sources you've quoted.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Weird. You'd think that if there were an intelligent designer who wanted life in this universe that it wouldn't be rare here at all. Maybe the designer is just incompetent. Or it created our universe on a Friday afternoon?


You're claiming that the most likely explanation is your version of the Christian god, aren't you? That's something quite different that the sources you've quoted.

It wouldn't be strange at all and not incompetent at all.

I am arguing for a Fine Tuner, I don't have any way to substantiate the identity of the Fine Tuner.

 

[KCfromNC]

We are here, so yes we are in a universe that allows for intelligent life but the reason it does is what is surprising.

What reason are you proposing?

If you claim I have unsupported premises then you deny that fine tuning is evidence of a fine tuner but that is fallacious because you have no evidence that prohibits the fine tuning being the result of a fine tuner.

Huh? The fact you haven't supported several of your premises is all the evidence needed to reject your conclusion.

 

[KCfromNC]

It wouldn't be strange at all and not incompetent at all.

Yes it is.

I am arguing for a Fine Tuner, I don't have any way to substantiate the identity of the Fine Tuner.

But this is no way an argument from ignorance, of course.

 

[Oncedeceived]

What reason are you proposing?

The precise values of around 30 parameters required for intelligent life to exist and for the universe to exist.

Huh? The fact you haven't supported several of your premises is all the evidence needed to reject your conclusion.

What premises would that be?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Yes it is.

I disagree.



[/Quote]But this is no way an argument from ignorance, of course.[/QUOTE]

It is not true that fine-tuning must eventually yield to the relentless march of science. Finetuning is not a typical scientific problem, that is, a phenomenon in our universe that cannot be explained by our current understanding of physical laws. It is not a gap. Rather, we are concerned with the physical laws themselves. In particular, the anthropic coincidences are not like, say, the coincidence between inertial mass and gravitational mass in Newtonian gravity, which is a coincidence between two seemingly independent physical quantities. Anthropic coincidences, on the other hand, involve a happy consonance between a physical quantity and the requirements of complex, embodied intelligent life. The anthropic coincidences are so arresting because we are accustomed to thinking of physical laws and initial conditions as being unconcerned with how things turn out. Physical laws are material and efficient causes, not final causes. There is, then, no reason to think that future progress in physics will render a life-permitting universe inevitable. When physics is finished, when the equation is written on the blackboard and fundamental physics has gone as deep as it can go, fine-tuning may remain, basic and irreducible.

 

[Belk]

Interestingly enough, a life permitting universe according to scientists is rather surprising considering that life seems to be rare not only in our own universe but in a great vast number of possible universes.

Heya Oncedeceived, How goes the battle? I am curious how any scientist could make this claim given that we have explored .0000000000000000000000001% of the universe with enough authority to claim there is no life on it and in half of those explorations life has been abundant.

 

[KCfromNC]

The precise values of around 30 parameters required for intelligent life to exist and for the universe to exist.

Why is that surprising? And given that your references showed that many of those 30 weren't fundamental constants - that is, their values are simply the product of other values, there really are quite a bit fewer than 30 degrees of freedom.

And that's even assuming that the constants could be different, or could be different enough to make a difference. You've provided nothing at all which shows that is even possible. Again, there's a lot of nothing backing up this whole line of thinking.

What premises would that be?

That we should be surprised to find ourselves living in a universe which can support life, for one.

 

[KCfromNC]

I disagree.

Obviously. But why?

It is not true that fine-tuning must eventually yield to the relentless march of science. Finetuning is not a typical scientific problem, that is, a phenomenon in our universe that cannot be explained by our current understanding of physical laws. It is not a gap. Rather, we are concerned with the physical laws themselves. In particular, the anthropic coincidences are not like, say, the coincidence between inertial mass and gravitational mass in Newtonian gravity, which is a coincidence between two seemingly independent physical quantities. Anthropic coincidences, on the other hand, involve a happy consonance between a physical quantity and the requirements of complex, embodied intelligent life. The anthropic coincidences are so arresting because we are accustomed to thinking of physical laws and initial conditions as being unconcerned with how things turn out. Physical laws are material and efficient causes, not final causes. There is, then, no reason to think that future progress in physics will render a life-permitting universe inevitable. When physics is finished, when the equation is written on the blackboard and fundamental physics has gone as deep as it can go, fine-tuning may remain, basic and irreducible.

A quote saying we might never understand the mechanisms which produced the universe isn't exactly a great way to convince me that you somehow know enough about how they work to base an argument on it.

 

[Hieronymus]

Heya Oncedeceived, How goes the battle? I am curious how any scientist could make this claim given that we have explored .0000000000000000000000001% of the universe with enough authority to claim there is no life on it and in half of those explorations life has been abundant.

"We" have explored nothing, 'they' just show things on TV.

 

[Jimmy D]

"We" have explored nothing, 'they' just show things on TV.

LOL

 

[Oncedeceived]

Heya Oncedeceived, How goes the battle? I am curious how any scientist could make this claim given that we have explored .0000000000000000000000001% of the universe with enough authority to claim there is no life on it and in half of those explorations life has been abundant.

Hi Belk, long time no see. Where other than earth has life been abundant?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Why is that surprising? And given that your references showed that many of those 30 weren't fundamental constants - that is, their values are simply the product of other values, there really are quite a bit fewer than 30 degrees of freedom.

I used the number used by Barnes. I don't know what you mean by 30 degrees of freedom, explain please?

And that's even assuming that the constants could be different, or could be different enough to make a difference. You've provided nothing at all which shows that is even possible. Again, there's a lot of nothing backing up this whole line of thinking.

I guess you need to set those experts straight.

That we should be surprised to find ourselves living in a universe which can support life, for one.

This is just like saying we shouldn't be surprised to see gravity since if we didn't we'd be flying out to space. Or if we didn't have stars we would have a bright shining sky at night.

 

[Belk]

Hi Belk, long time no see.

Yeah, don't get over this way much anymore. I got bored since both sides just do the same dance over and over again.

Where other than earth has life been abundant?

No place I am aware of. However Earth is the only planet we have ever been on. The only other place we can say with any degree of certainty has no life is the moon. Kind of hard to claim that a Universe with an estimated 10^24 planets has little life when we have not explored it.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Obviously. But why?

I think it is cohesive with the Fine Tuner wishing to be known through the fine tuning and life on earth being the focus of this galaxy and perhaps the entire universe.

A quote saying we might never understand the mechanisms which produced the universe isn't exactly a great way to convince me that you somehow know enough about how they work to base an argument on it.

They know enough to base an argument on it.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Yeah, don't get over this way much anymore. I got bored since both sides just do the same dance over and over again.

I completely understand. :_

No place I am aware of. However Earth is the only planet we have ever been on. The only other place we can say with any degree of certainty has no life is the moon. Kind of hard to claim that a Universe with an estimated 10^24 planets has little life when we have not explored it.

We have sent explorations to all the planets in our solar system and none have life. You might find these interesting.

http://www.livescience.com/15222-universe-analysis.html
http://www.space.com/20161-alien-life-rare-universe.html
http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/is-life-special-just-because-its-rare
http://phys.org/news/2009-05-life-universe-intelligence.html

 

[Belk]

I completely understand. :_



We have sent explorations to all the planets in our solar system and none have life. You might find these interesting.

We have sent probes, but that is not exactly a definitive search. Even so that only means we have looked at 9 out of 10^24 planets. Still not a significant increase and we can only speculate as to life in the universe.

 

[Oncedeceived]

We have sent probes, but that is not exactly a definitive search. Even so that only means we have looked at 9 out of 10^24 planets. Still not a significant increase and we can only speculate as to life in the universe.

That is what the links address.

 

[Belk]

That is what the links address.

I scanned them (admittedly quickly since I'm at work). It looked to me like they were all speculation on what might be. Was there something specific I missed? I'll happily look at them more in depth if you would be so good as to tell me which parts of the articles you feel I should concentrate on.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I scanned them (admittedly quickly since I'm at work). It looked to me like they were all speculation on what might be. Was there something specific I missed? I'll happily look at them more in depth if you would be so good as to tell me which parts of the articles you feel I should concentrate on.

However, there’s another, grander perspective from which life in the cosmos is rare. That perspective considers all forms of matter, both animate and inanimate. Even if all “habitable” planets (as determined by Kepler) do indeed harbor life, the fraction of all material in the universe in living form is fantastically small. Assuming that the fraction of planet Earth in living form, called the biosphere, is typical of other life-sustaining planets, I have estimated that the fraction of all matter in the universe in living form is roughly one-billionth of one-billionth. Here’s a way to visualize such a tiny fraction. If the Gobi Desert represents all of the matter flung across the cosmos, living matter is a single grain of sand on that desert. How should we think about this extreme rarity of life? This is explaining why he thinks it is rare for intelligent life.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...n-700-quintillion-kind-of-place/#.V3VdkesrLnA

A new study suggests that there are around 700 quintillion planets in the universe, but only one like Earth. It’s a revelation that’s both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

Astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson from Uppsala University in Sweden arrived at this staggering figure — a 7 followed by 20 zeros — with the aid of a computer model that simulated the universe’s evolution following the Big Bang. Zackrisson’s model combined information about known exoplanets with our understanding of the early universe and the laws of physics to recreate the past 13.8 billion years.

Zackrisson found that Earth appears to have been dealt a fairly lucky hand. In a galaxy like the Milky Way, for example, most of the planets Zackrisson’s model generated looked very different than Earth — they were larger, older and very unlikely to support life. The study can be found on the preprint server arXiv, and has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.