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That may seem so until you delve into the subject. I invite you to study the info in the following link:An odd claim given that we know of exactly one planet with life on it and we know that 99.9% of the universe is exceedingly hostile to that life.
Why do I need to clarify clearly written English?I know that. It's one of the many unspoken and unsupported assumptions hidden in the argument. Here is your chance to clarify the matter.
How about staying on topic?Considered relative to other arguments (e.g., the KCA), further problems arise. Given the designer's supposed timelessness, he could not have "fine-tuned" the universe any other way because the act of contemplating and selecting from different design concepts requires the passage of time. Unlike any other person we would recognise as a "designer," this being lacks creative freedom; he cannot do otherwise because, being timeless, he cannot change. He is forced to create the universe, and even then, he is forced to create it in a particular way. This is a significant departure from what we usually mean when we call someone a "designer."
Stay on topic please.That's the problem with many of these sorts of arguments: even if they were effective, they would only warrant a form of deism at best. Yet the people who regularly use these arguments are not deists, but Christians, Muslims, and Jews; people whose theologies include claims about the nature, identity, and will of God; claims about sin, salvation, miracles, heaven, hell, and even the origins and ultimate fate of the cosmos. Building a compelling case for belief in God in only the first step. Apologists still have a long road ahead if they are to establish the credibility of all their other religious claims, of which there are many.
Why do I need to prove what scientists already agree to?That doesn't mean the constants were tuned for life. For one, to show that you'd have to demonstrate that they could have been any other values (or at least significantly different values) than what they are currently. To do that, you'd need a working, tested model of how those constants came about in the first place. I think you've got quite a long way to go before you're ready to demonstrate that level of knowledge about the formation of the universe.
Until you can do that, there's no reason to claim that there's any tuning of those constants at all, much less fine tuning. If you drop a book off a table, it isn't fine tuning that makes it fall - it is just inevitable cause and effect at work. Perhaps that's the same reason the constants are what they are. They simply couldn't be anything else. I'm not saying that's what must be true, but unless you can prove it is absolutely false we can reject P1 as unfounded.
Necessity and chance seem to exhaust all of the alternatives to design. If you're going to make a counter-claim that there are other alternatives, then you carry the burden of proof for that counter-claim. That's nature of debate.
To be fair to them, they do usually use the term with the appropriate qualifier, as in it "seems" fine tuned, or the "appearance" of design. Trust the religionists to pull these terms out of context."Finetuning" to me suggests that physical constants can be "tuned" (changed by a deliberate act).
Even if a few scientists have used the term before, it's a horrible term. I have zero reason to think that this is even possible. Physical necessity and chance at least correspond to something I can relate to in nature.
eudaimonia,
Mark
Scientists agree that slight variations in various constants would make this a life-prohibiting universe. I've already provided you citations for this.What exactly do you think they agree to? Opinion, or science? Citation, please.
P1 is more plausibly true than not, and the scientists agree with that fact. Go argue with Hawking."The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life."
"The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."
"It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe"
"The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design"
"This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning"
"It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious..."
"the values of the various forces of nature appear to be fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life."
Lots of opinion there. I do not see any support for a scientific consensus that the universe is actually fine-tuned.
Got anything else?
That the constants are constant is a different set of goalposts.Scientists agree that slight variations in various constants would make this a life-prohibiting universe. I've already provided you citations for this.
Hawking himself restricted the alternatives to the same three I listed in p2:But I'm not making a counterclaim. I'm asking you to back up your claim. Stop trying to shift the burden of proof. Please demonstrate that necessity, chance, and design are the only three options for the fine-tuning of the universe.
So now you are going to dispute scientists when they say things you don't want to believe?And, your citations only provided opinion, and opinions that did not directly support your premise.
No, it isn't.P1 is more plausibly true than not,
The "fact" in that quote, is that the numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted, not that they have been determined to be fine-tuned. The scientists do not agree with you.and the scientists agree with that fact.
I agree with Hawking. I need not misrepresent his words.Go argue with Hawking.
I'd like to discuss and explore the Teleological Argument, so I offer the following version:
1. The universe is fine-tuned for life.
2. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
3. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
4. Therefore, it is due to design.
This "particular room" (i.e., the universe) contains much more than a flat screen TV. One could say that it is "extremely well suited" for that bookcase in the corner, that couch in the centre, and that side-lamp, etc.Your reply demonstrates that you are still not clear as to the nature of the claim of p1.
Yes, one could just as easily re-write my p1 to say that the universe is fine-tuned for stars (that is if in fact evidence supports that slight variations in certain conditions would render star formation impossible).
What you're really doing here is straying into p3 and questioning whether the universe is necessarily life-permitting, and you are confusing that issue with p1. Let me provide an example to illustrate:
Suppose that you and I walk into a house and find a 70" SONY Flat Screen TV in the front room. I might look around and see how big the room is and how the layout is extremely suitable for sound, and proclaim "This particular room is extremely suited for a 70" Sony Flat Screen TV." [That in itself is the nature of the claim of p1...scientists have noticed that so many conditions in the universe are set at a really narrow range that is extremely suitable for life. This observation in itself is not controversial.]
In any case, the claim that the universe is "extremely well suited" for life is in need of further justification. What would a universe "moderately well suited" for life look like, or how about a universe "poorly suited" for life? By what criteria is our universe "extremely well suited" for life? How do you differentiate universes that are "extremely well suited" for life from those that are "poorly suited"?
Presumably, you will say something along the lines of "the presence of life." But if "the presence of X" is taken as the criterion for fine-tuning, for being deemed "extremely well suited for X," then we are back to the beginning, with a universe that is "extremely well suited" for everything that happens to be in it, living or not.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that you don't know whether "everybody's got a couch," the universe could also have existed without heavy elements, without a Jupiter with 63 moons, without galaxies, etc.continuing in my example: But then you point out "Hey, why don't you comment on that fancy couch over there? Isn't this also a extremely suitable room for that couch?" (That's analogous to your replies). But then I reply "So what? Everybody's got a couch..."
[In other words, we can have lots of front rooms that have couches, but they don't all have to have TVs. Scientist agree that the universe could have existed without life.]
This is where your analogy falls apart. You don't know whether very few rooms have 70" inch flat screens. You haven't been to any other room but this one! This is the only room you have ever been in.Now into p3 (for chance)
me continuing: "...It's the TV here that makes this room extra special". You: "But a lot of other rooms have a TV also." Me: "Yes, but very few have 70" Sony Flat Screens".
[So the odds of having a universe with life is extremely small compared to the odds of a universe existing that is totally dead.
Did you read the rest of the paper you are quoting from?"“If you believe the equations of the world’s leading cosmologists, the probability that the Universe would turn out this way [life-permitting] by chance are infinitesimal — one in a very large number.”
Geoff Brumfiel “Our Universe: Outrageous Fortune,” Nature, Vol 439:10-12 (Jan. 5, 2006)]
Geoff Brumfiel said:But things have changed in the past few years, says astronomer Bernard Carr of Queen Mary, University of London, UK. String theorists and cosmologists are increasingly turning to dumb luck as an explanation. If their ideas stand up, it would mean the constants of nature are meaningless. “In the past, many people were almost violently opposed to that idea because it wasn’t seen as proper science,” Carr says. “But there’s been a change of attitude.”
It bears repeating: "I don't want to second-guess apologists, but I presume the first two options were eliminated due to paucity of evidence? If paucity of evidence is a problem for those two options, it is just as much a problem (or even more so) for the third option (design)."Necessity:
"Most physicists would rather believe string theory uniquely predicts the universe than the alternatives (God and multi-universes in which ours is "picked out" by the Anthropic Principle)".
But Hawking points out that string theory fails to support necessity:
"[String theory] cannot predict the parameters of the standard model."
Chance:
Not only is it not necessary, but it is unlikely:
"Does string theory predict the state of the universe? The answer is that it does not. It allows a vast landscape in which we occupy an anthropically permitted location."
S.W. Hawking "Cosmology from the Top Down" paper presented at the Davis Cosmic Inflation Meeting. U.C. Davis May 29, 2003.
That is on topic. The designer is supposed to be timeless, no? Or do you disagree with your version of the KCA now?How about staying on topic?
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