Why do Atheists not want to consider FineTuning ?

granpa · Aug 17, 2013

Ana the Ist said:
This has always been my favorite refutation of the fine-tuning argument...

" Then we must ask why God needed to even bother with awkward designs like the flawed and ridiculously concocted ones we see in nature; why, for instance, did God give us skin as protection from germs and foreign particles, and yet not make us to thrive on what we know as harmful radiation?

Angels might be able to thrive on it.

Ana the Ist said:
Or, if God gave us ears to hear with, noses to smell with, eyes to see with, taste buds to taste with, and nerve cells to feel with, then why did he only give us those senses? Why not also the ability to see gamma radiation and rays of light not visible to the human eye? We see them with telescopes, we detect them with finer instruments, so why not with the eye?

Angels might be able to see them

Ana the Ist said:
God was not limited in having to create cardboard creatures as flimsy as ourselves. He could have made us to exist and thrive in black holes or within the hearts of blue stars, and yet he went through the senseless trouble to create (or some would stupidly say, “evolve&#8221 these bundles of bunions called human bodies. Words don’t describe the asininity of it."

Angels probably arent flimsy

Ana the Ist said:
" And this is the real foolishness of the fine-tuning argument—its limited focus. Just look at how much of the universe is inhospitable to any type of life.

Not inhospitable to angels

Ana the Ist said:
If the universe was fine-tuned for life, why is there so little life in it?

you are assuming there is little of it. You dont know that.

Ana the Ist said:
Why is most of our world trying to kill us, let alone all of space and time beyond this odorous outhouse called Earth? Not even a seedling can grow and thrive on Mars, and yet Mars is the closest to habitable planet in this solar system we have knowledge of outside of our own. This realization makes our own evolution rather unique and spits on the dumb notion that the universe has been tailor-made as an environment for the growth of carbon life forms (and even more arrogantly, for the growth of the human race, so that we may fight and quarrel and give credit to a fictitious being for its existence)."

Angels probably arent carbon based

Ana the Ist · Aug 17, 2013

granpa said:
Angels might be able to thrive on it.

Angels might be able to see them

Angels probably arent flimsy

Not inhospitable to angels

you are assuming there is little of it. You dont know that.

Angels probably arent carbon based

Actually, I'm not assuming anything...least of all the existence and physiology of angels. If you're going to postulate that the universe is fine-tuned to the existence of mythological creatures, then I think you missed the point of the OP.

Ana the Ist · Aug 17, 2013

pgp_protector said:
You really should provide the source when pulling large quotes, without having to ask for them.

FIxed.

Justatruthseeker · Aug 17, 2013

TheyCallMeDavid said:
Are people..even Scientists who want to be atheist, backed into a corner IF they are willing to look at the FineTuning evidence to our Universe ???

Because they are too busy ignoring 99% of the universe in favor of 96% Fairie Dust. It has become a religious belief incapable of change instead of a science. Revision when observations falsify simply means adding more Fairie Dust, never questioning the underlying foundational concepts upon which the theory is built. They merely pretty up the facade, while the foundation rots out beneath them.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7763886/
http://www.christianforums.com/t7752006/

silentthinker · Aug 18, 2013

TheyCallMeDavid said:
Are people..even Scientists who want to be atheist, backed into a corner IF they are willing to look at the FineTuning evidence to our Universe ???

Given that the visible universe is 14 billion years old,
and there are;
10 million Superclusters
25 billion Galaxy groups
350 billion Large galaxies
7 trillion Dwarf galaxies
Our Galaxy is just one of those galaxies, the chances that our Galaxy is the only one to support life highly unlikly if not impposible.

Our Galaxy the milky way may have as many as 100-to-200 billion planets in it.
You would have to prove that among all those planets, ours is the only one to fullfill the list of parameters required for a planet to be able to sustain life.
If you can't then you cannot say there are not other planets that also could meet the said requirements.
And it is also required that you demonstrate that in all the other galaxies there are no others planets can meet required parameters for sustainable life.
And because you haven't shown this and untill you do, you can't say that the Universe is fine tuned based upon the stated parameters.
Just because you only see one planet with life that doesn't mean its the only one.
The ball is now in your court.

The claim of fine-tuning of the parameters of physics is equivalent
to a claim that our languages have been fine-tuned so they have grammatical
rules that are highly unlikely to have occurred naturally.Victor J. Stenger

FredVB · May 16, 2015

The universe is so vast, and certainly it can be conceived that there are inhabitants anywhere else in this universe. What still is neglected is that with any of the parameters for the universe a little bit different, this universe could never come into being as it was said to do, such that any life here or anywhere in the universe would be possible. It is too great a fluke for that, without God behind it all, or an appeal to believing in a huge multitude of universes evolving in a multiverse, which has no evidence for that.

lesliedellow · May 17, 2015

Like creationists, they know what they want to believe, so they will construct whatever unlikely hypothesis is necessary to enable them to believe it. An infinitude of unobserved and unobservable universes not excluded.

Freodin · May 17, 2015

We can wonder and marvel at the state of the universe: why is it the way it is?

I don't know.

But fine-tuning isn't the answer. An argument from fine-tuning needs as its premise the pre-existence of a system which defines what something needs to be fine-tuned to. Such a system would need to be fine-tuned in itself... thus rendering the argument moot.

quatona · May 17, 2015

Fred V B said:
The universe is so vast, and certainly it can be conceived that there are inhabitants anywhere else in this universe. What still is neglected is that with any of the parameters for the universe a little bit different, this universe could never come into being as it was said to do, such that any life here or anywhere in the universe would be possible.

No, this is not neglected at all. What, however, isn´t accepted is the premise that the universe as it is was an/the intended goal - simply because you´d be left with circular reasoning: The universe must have been intended....because it was intended.

quatona · May 17, 2015

lesliedellow said:
Like creationists, they know what they want to believe, so they will construct whatever unlikely hypothesis is necessary to enable them to believe it. An infinitude of unobserved and unobservable universes not excluded.

I´m not sure who is "they" here. Personally, I neither do nor want to believe anything about the origins of the universe. I´m pretty fine with "I don´t know".
The creationist idea is so weakly substantiated and has next to no explanatory power so that every other hypothesis can easily compete.

lesliedellow · May 17, 2015

quatona said:
I´m not sure who is "they" here. Personally, I neither do nor want to believe anything about the origins of the universe. I´m pretty fine with "I don´t know".
The creationist idea is so weakly substantiated and has next to no explanatory power so that every other hypothesis can easily compete.

"They" are the people who came up with the multiverse shortly after it became apparent just how tightly constrained the fundamental constants had to be either for the universe to exist at all, or, if it did exist, for ot to contain anything but clouds of hydrogen and helium gas.

Their motive for coming up with their hypothesis was certainly not that they had any empirical evidence for it. I think it was Leonard Susskind who said as much in as many words.

Paul of Eugene OR · May 17, 2015

TheyCallMeDavid said:
Are people..even Scientists who want to be atheist, backed into a corner IF they are willing to look at the FineTuning evidence to our Universe ???

The Cosmological Constant is to within 120 decimal places and the
Expansion Rate of the Universe according to Prof. Stephen Hawkins is
1/1,000,000 th otherwise we arent here. Considering these two , plus
the following that has been scientifically verified, it is completely
absurd to think this Universe/Solar System/Earth wasnt pre-planned ,
incredibly well designed , and Created by a Mind at work ....and one
is so powerful that it boggles the Mind. Your ultimate purpose to
living is to get to know this obvious personal Creator , and the ball
is in your court<edit>:

(etc etc)

Taken from 'Big Bang Refined by Fire' by Dr. Hugh Ross

Many will invoke what they call the "weak anthropic" argument. They will assert that probably there are an infinite number of universes, of which some of them can have life, and only those that can actually have life have in them people who raise such questions as this; hence it is not surprising to see our universe have those characteristic necessary for life, however improbable such things are.

loveofourlord · May 17, 2015

pgp_protector said:
it it?
I didn't realize that it has been Verified that their is No life anywhere else in the solar system.

Yeah, europa might have life and were heading there, mars could have life, though a recent study may show this could be dificult due to no constant surface water, among other places in our solar system.

it's not like we've been to the methane pools on some of the moons and used a microscope to see if bacteria is there, or drilled into Europa to find fish. We barly been to the moon and barly planning trips to mars with humans a bit early to say, "no life."

loveofourlord · May 17, 2015

On life being like life on earth there are some arguments that superficially life on other planets would be simular to earth. It's not conicidence that many unrelated life on earth come up with simular solutions to problems, because there is a optimal way to do something, and provided they have the means simular things will evolve over and over again.

Look at the eye.

Look at like I said dolphins/sharks/ichiosaurus/

look at african/american vultures, simular in shape, but completly different relations.

look at all the times hyena/wolf/tasmanian tiger and such forms have appeared.

Obviously the organs, and other features won't be simular to earth, but probably still be close enough due to the needs of a organism, a heart would be likly, lungs of some kind likly and so on. Now not all life will evolve the same features and some ma be missing, but it's not too far fetched to expect some simularities.

DogmaHunter · May 18, 2015

TheyCallMeDavid said:
Are people..even Scientists who want to be atheist, backed into a corner IF they are willing to look at the FineTuning evidence to our Universe ???

The finetuning argument is nothing but a festival of logical fallacies.

It's an argument from ignorance with some teleological sauce on top.

It's 2 frogs sitting by a random puddle telling eachother "look at how perfect this puddle is for us to live, surely it was made for us".

I don't consider the argument because it is utterly unconvincing. It's intellectually lazy, it's fallacious and it begs the question.

An entire book could be written about the many ways in wich the reasoning of it fails.

DogmaHunter · May 18, 2015

football5680 said:
a. Not wanting to have the Creator of the Universe in authority over you.
b. Not wanting the ultimate moral accountability for your lifestyle choices .
c. Not wanting to be told thru prescribed absolute moral laws, that you are in violation for how you desire to live.
d. You desire to be your own 'god' and cannot accept that you are NOT at the center of the universe (or even of your own life) .

e. I just don't buy into your particular religion, just like you don't buy into the thousands of religions you don't happen to believe in.

Having added that point, I have to say that I take serious offense at what you just said in that list.
You basically called my an evil, immoral person. Why? Because I don't happen to believe things without reason. Because I don't happen to believe the same bronze age myths and legens as you do. Shame on you. For real. Shame on you.

You have the choice of continuing to play the atheist charade game if you so desire, or, to surrender your pride and experience what the Creator has in mind for your life , and eternity. You pick, and the Creator grants...only forever. Choose wisely. End.

And out come the threats.
Yet, I am the evil immoral one, ha?

You folks make me sick. Really.

Bah!

DogmaHunter · May 18, 2015

Fred V B said:
It is not just not knowing, but not even knowing what other explanation can be given, there is no other that can be imagined

Right, that's what people call the argument of ignorance.

And plenty of other explanations can be imagined easily:
- there is an infinite amount of universe, making it inevitable that at least one like ours exist
- a universe with this parameters is the only one that can physically exist

See?

You have no clue about which parameters actually CAN naturally fluctuate and which can't.
You have no clue on how universes come into existance.
You have exactly one universe to observe. To draw any conclusions about it on such a scale... I'ld say that you'ld need a slightly bigger sample...

Loudmouth · May 18, 2015

Fred V B said:
The universe is so vast, and certainly it can be conceived that there are inhabitants anywhere else in this universe. What still is neglected is that with any of the parameters for the universe a little bit different, this universe could never come into being as it was said to do, such that any life here or anywhere in the universe would be possible. It is too great a fluke for that, without God behind it all, or an appeal to believing in a huge multitude of universes evolving in a multiverse, which has no evidence for that.

For that argument to work, you have to know how many universes there are and how universes come about. We are greatly ignorant of both, so it is impossible to calculate any probabilities.

Paul of Eugene OR · May 18, 2015

Loudmouth said:
For that argument to work, you have to know how many universes there are and how universes come about. We are greatly ignorant of both, so it is impossible to calculate any probabilities.

Yes. It is my faith that a loving God would arrange the universe to bear life rather frequently. Therefore, I wonder how far away the next life bearing planet happens to be, I'm predicting it should be astronomically close. If there is no life within more than a thousand light years, I'll have to rethink my conception of what God is like.

I may not live long enough to gain any information on this subject.

Loudmouth · May 18, 2015

Paul of Eugene OR said:
Yes. It is my faith that a loving God would arrange the universe to bear life rather frequently. Therefore, I wonder how far away the next life bearing planet happens to be, I'm predicting it should be astronomically close. If there is no life within more than a thousand light years, I'll have to rethink my conception of what God is like.

I may not live long enough to gain any information on this subject.

For all we know, God could have created the underlying process that produces new universes in such a way that a handful of the almost uncountable universes would produce intelligent life. It may be turtles all the way down.

At university, all of my science professors were religious which is probably a rarity. In fact, they were probably the most religious group on campus outside of the Religion department. I have no problem with people placing their faith where we currently lack knowledge. What I find troublesome is when people use their faith as a reason to avoid knowledge, or as a reason not to seek it. It is the anti-intellectualism found among some christians that embarrasses even curious and well meaning christians like yourself.

Why do Atheists not want to consider FineTuning ?

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