Why ... (2)

Smidlee said:

Now you are not thinking. A self-ware thinking bacteria create by man put into a kitchen so it could grow and learn from it surroundings. This is your can of worms that was opened.

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Where did I say that the thinking bacterium was created by man and put in the kitchen? You are making stuff up.

Fine tuning: Fine-tuning refers to the surprising precision of nature’s physical constants, and the beginning state of the Universe. To explain the present state of the universe, even the best scientific theories require that the physical constants of nature and the beginning state of the Universe have extremely precise values.

Loudmouth said:

Where did I say that the thinking bacterium was created by man and put in the kitchen? You are making stuff up.

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Of course I making it up like you made-up thinking self-aware bacteria.

Loudmouth said:

I remember asking you multiple times for that evidence, and you refuse to present it. You refused again with this reply.

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I really am at a loss here. I have provided supportive evidence over and over. I just don't know what you want.

You haven't presented any evidence.

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So what would constitute evidence?

Then you are using an argument from ignorance which is a logical fallacy, not evidence.

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In this case you are right.



Still waiting for you to calculate the probability of drawing out a tile with the number 115134 on it.[/quote]

Oncedeceived said:

I really am at a loss here. I have provided supportive evidence over and over. I just don't know what you want.

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And yet another response where you do not present the evidence.

So what would constitute evidence?

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Let's use the murder investigation analogy again.

The prosecution states that John Smith is responsible for the murder. What do they present as evidence? They show that there is a dead body.

Is that evidence that John Smith committed the murder?

Oncedeceived said:

Fine tuning: Fine-tuning refers to the surprising precision of nature’s physical constants, and the beginning state of the Universe. To explain the present state of the universe, even the best scientific theories require that the physical constants of nature and the beginning state of the Universe have extremely precise values.

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If you don't know what the degrees of freedom are then how are they "required"?

Smidlee said:

Of course I making it up like you made-up thinking self-aware bacteria.

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When was the last time you heard of anyone making a kitchen to house a self aware bacterium?

Why do people build kitchens?

Oncedeceived said:

Fine tuning: Fine-tuning refers to the surprising precision of nature’s physical constants, and the beginning state of the Universe. To explain the present state of the universe, even the best scientific theories require that the physical constants of nature and the beginning state of the Universe have extremely precise values.

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So if the values were different then the universe would be different. I can agree with that. I don't see how that evidences a deity.

Like I said, it hardly seems to me that "fine tuning" is even a problem. Even if the universe can be modeled by a theory with equations that will allow intelligent observers under a wide range of constants (and given the nature of mathematics, that is probably true of our universe as well ), couldn't scientists in that universe still theorize about a universe like ours? Or, more precisely, like ours except that the constants are slightly tweaked, which would ostensibly result in the impossibility of such observers? It seems to me that the other "universe" has the same problem we do. It is only lack of imagination (and the confusion of some people between the fact that we can model the universe with a set of equations, and the universe being those equations) that keeps us from imagining all of the ways in which the universe could fail to support intelligent life. As such, "fine tuning" is not a problem with our universe, but a problem with observers--it would occur in any universe in which observers can reason about the possibility of things being different. As such, I think that discussions of such problem reveal far more about us than they do about the nature of existence

Oncedeceived said:

Really do you remember that you said supportive evidence is evidence. How soon you forget.




So you deny that it would support my claim, why? Even if you don't agree I would think that it is a reasonable conclusion that it would support my claim. IF that is the case, how does it not support it? How does it falsify my position.



That is a natural occurring situation, as I have shown, there is no naturalistic known explanation for the fine tuning of the universe.
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What fine tuning?

Oncedeceived said:

Fine tuning: Fine-tuning refers to the surprising precision of nature’s physical constants, and the beginning state of the Universe. To explain the present state of the universe, even the best scientific theories require that the physical constants of nature and the beginning state of the Universe have extremely precise values.

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Are you referring to the appearance of fine tuning, or that you have actually established that the universe was fine-tuned?

By testable criteria was that done?

Cheeky Monkey said:

If you don't know what the degrees of freedom are then how are they "required"?

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If there were no constants to derive an absolute measurement then the whole scientific model would be impossible.

Oncedeceived said:

If there were no constants to derive an absolute measurement then the whole scientific model would be impossible.

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Yes but that's not the point. You don't even know if they can vary or how many times there's been universes with different constants or whether they can co-vary in ways that don't produce as disastrous results or what the variation space is.

Cheeky Monkey said:

Yes but that's not the point. You don't even know if they can vary or how many times there's been universes with different constants or whether they can co-vary in ways that don't produce as disastrous results or what the variation space is.

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Yep... it's like someone saying "guess what positive integer I'm thinking of" without telling you what the constraints are. In that particular case, the only constraints are those on the brain size of the person who's asking and to actually know what the constraints are is probably undecidable (you'd have to solve the busy beaver problem for the human brain ) or at least unthinkable. Except that it's even worse than that because the set of possible multiverses is probably uncountably infinite, depending on which philosopher you listen to, since just because we can't think of it doesn't mean it isn't real.

Cheeky Monkey said:

Yes but that's not the point. You don't even know if they can vary or how many times there's been universes with different constants or whether they can co-vary in ways that don't produce as disastrous results or what the variation space is.

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1. We do know that they don't vary, hence constants.
2. We can't assume that there are other universes or whether or not that they would have different constants. We do know that even with other universes, the constants are still not explained.
3. Variation space is something I am not understanding.

JWGU said:

Yep... it's like someone saying "guess what positive integer I'm thinking of" without telling you what the constraints are. In that particular case, the only constraints are those on the brain size of the person who's asking and to actually know what the constraints are is probably undecidable (you'd have to solve the busy beaver problem for the human brain ) or at least unthinkable. Except that it's even worse than that because the set of possible multiverses is probably uncountably infinite, depending on which philosopher you listen to, since just because we can't think of it doesn't mean it isn't real.

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What?

Wait - question. Why did God need to find-tune the universe?

Oncedeceived said:

What?

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I thought about rewording the analogy since it was a little off. A better analogy:

Someone asks you for a positive integer with no explanation. You answer and the person says it is a "good number." The person remarks, surprised, that there were infinitely many "bad" numbers you could have chosen, but you picked a good one. What was the probability, the person asks, that you would have chosen a "good" number from the getgo? How, the person wonders, did you choose this number?

This is essentially what anyone who argues that the universe is "fine-tuned" is doing--we have no idea what the selective rules are, whether there is (or can be) more than one answer, whether there is a "tuner" and whether that tuner knows what our criteria are, and the problem space is even more open than the question above. Deciding that because the number was "good"--the laws of the universe as currently written include a few constants that, when altered in ways that we have arbitrarily decided are "small," would not allow for life--that the universe is fine-tuned is silly. Why does the universe have to operate on a quantum physical basis? Why not a Newtonian one? Then the constants are meaningless. What if we just rewrote our theory to have several constants that could take on a wide variety of values, but it produced the same results? Is the universe no longer fine-tuned?

The funny thing is, I think you and I do agree on this issue--but I think we have arrived at the same conclusion for dramatically different reasons. You think there is only one universe, created by God, and so do I (at least, I believe there is effectively only one universe); but where we differ is that you think it is fine-tuned, and I think that the phrase "fine-tuned" has no meaning because in any formal system with intelligent observers, even one that followed dramatically different physical laws, there would be an argument for that universe being fine-tuned. Unless someone can show me the problem space of universes and prove that almost all (in the mathematical sense) systems of physical laws are hostile to life, I simply see no reason why I should accept that we are fine-tuned. And since if the problem space of universes is exactly 1--which is all that we have any evidence for--the probability that an arbitrary universe can support life is 100%, until someone somehow demonstrates experimentally that there must be another universe with different physical laws, I think I'm safe

lasthero said:

Wait - question. Why did God need to find-tune the universe?

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God did not need to fine-tune the universe, the universe is fine tuned because God's purpose was mankind. The universe was planned for intelligent life and the universe being able to be discerned by intelligent life is God's proof to us. This of course is totally from a Christian's point of view.

God did not need to fine-tune the universe, the universe is fine tuned because God's purpose was mankind.

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Okay, let me rephrase - why did God need to fine-tune the universe to make mankind?