(November 1, 2016 at 12:48 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:Atheists cannot account for apparent cosmological fine-tuning

I'd like to know where this alleged "fine-tuning" is?  An overwhelming percentage of your precious universe will kill you within a heartbeat.  Your god is one shitty tuner.

Face it.  You evolved from a small band of ape-like creatures who adapted to a narrow range of environmental conditions and were lucky enough to survive and continue evolving.  You'll just have to deal with it.  That makes you special enough without inventing ridiculous gods to worship.

He's referring to fine tuning at the level of cosmological constant...for example, which isn't apparent, and requires no accounting for by anyone.

It's the hidey hole that classical tuners ran off too when it became obvious that the planetary goldilocks hypothesis was laughably wrong.  Unfortunately, that hideyhole didn't last long either.  Not that you won't find apologists like neo here schlepping it long after it's expiry date, just as they did previous notions of fine tuning.

The fine-tuning argument is a complete non-starter.

(November 4, 2016 at 7:54 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: The fine-tuning argument is a complete non-starter.

Exactly.  Because the odds of something happening doesn't mean that magic made it happen.

(October 24, 2016 at 6:42 am)OttoVonKerpen Wrote: This is a question that I wrestled with superficially when I first became an atheist. I was content with my answer to this question for a while, but after a recent discussion with a Christian friend of mine, the entire topic just became confusing to me. And, like I said in my introduction (http://atheistforums.org/thread-45867.html), I need some help when walking through difficult questions.

The question is this: "There were many transitional points in our universe's history that led to us existing. If one of them failed to produce the results that it did, we wouldn't be here, existing. Isn't it too much of a coincidence? Each transition point was against huge odds, and each of them was an extraordinary coincidence. How is it possible that we are existing against such overwhelming odds?"

I had a basic response to this like, "just because it's extremely unlikely, doesn't mean it can't happen", but I am not satisfied with the answer. Can anybody lead me through the basic thought process behind why we can exist against such overwhelming odds? I have my own thoughts, but I am willing, and needing to restart my thought process. 

Thanks!

(emphasis is mine)

Winning the lottery is against staggeringly long odds. Isn't it too much of a coincidence that we have a lottery winner every couple months, sometimes even multiple wiiners in the same jackpot?

There are over seven billion people on the planet. If it's a one in a billion chance of getting an extremely rare disease/disorder/odd DNA sequence/whatever, there are seven people right now with that particular rare disease/disorder/odd DNA sequence/whatever. Long odds mean dick when you're talking about the time scales and the size of the universe. Everywhere we look on this planet, we find life. Everywhere else we've looked, not so much. Long odds against? Maybe, maybe not, we've barely started to look. But, we're here and while there's no evidence of other life anywhere that we've been able to detect, that doesn't mean they're not.

So, let's look at those odds. Let's say that life only gets one chance every million years to get started somewhere in the universe. Now, let's say that life only gets a chance on 1/10 of 1 percent of every possible planet. That means that life had 14,000 chances on billions of worlds. Let's further lengthen those odds and say it's only 1 billion worlds. That's still 14 trillion chances. Unless you want to claim that the odds of life forming are significantly worse than 1 in 14 trillion, the argument for gawd "because life is too unlikely" is pure bullshit. Remember how frequently the lottery is won against odds of 1 in 292,201,338.

We're here, regardless of how good or bad the odds are. Evidence for gawd(s), not so much.

In short, once the universe got started, no matter how it got started, life somewhere, sometime, was all but inevitable. We are that all but inevitability.

(October 24, 2016 at 3:15 pm)Truth_Love2016 Wrote: And one more thing why do you sound so angry, upset, why are you cursing the one who created you?  What's wrong? Please don't be deceived by the enemy!! Jesus Christ Loves you!!

(emphasis is mine)

Hmmmm. I didn't see Min cursing his parents. Could you point that out for us?!?

(November 1, 2016 at 12:41 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote:

(November 1, 2016 at 12:33 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: ...a.k.a. speculation to avoid the obvious.

No, that's not what the anthropic principle is.

God is only "obvious" to you because you're very good at jumping to conclusions and you're not logical enough to recognize how appallingly pathetic the fine tuning argument is and other arguments for God are.

I'll bet this is Chad's favorite exercise mat:

(November 4, 2016 at 7:29 am)Rhythm Wrote:

(November 1, 2016 at 12:48 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I'd like to know where this alleged "fine-tuning" is?  An overwhelming percentage of your precious universe will kill you within a heartbeat.  Your god is one shitty tuner.

Face it.  You evolved from a small band of ape-like creatures who adapted to a narrow range of environmental conditions and were lucky enough to survive and continue evolving.  You'll just have to deal with it.  That makes you special enough without inventing ridiculous gods to worship.

He's referring to fine tuning at the level of cosmological constant...for example, which isn't apparent, and requires no accounting for by anyone.  

It's the hidey hole that classical tuners ran off too when it became obvious that the planetary goldilocks hypothesis was laughably wrong.  Unfortunately, that hideyhole didn't last long either.  Not that you won't find apologists like neo here schlepping it long after it's expiry date, just as they did previous notions of fine tuning.

I could not care less about that asshole's mental masturbation. 

Fine-tuning, my ass.

(October 24, 2016 at 10:32 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Atheists cannot account for apparent cosmological fine-tuning except by appealing to necessity (brute fact) or chance (multiverse). If necessary then the obvious question arises. Why must the physical universe be as it is and no other way? If by chance, then an infinite regress ensues. Why is the multiverse fine-tuned to generate physical universes that are fine-tuned?

There are two cast iron refutations of anthropicity, 1) we are here, of course the universe is going to have something to stand upon for us, because we evolved to fit this universe not the other way around. If the universe were different we'd have evolved differently. 2) Anthropicity assumes the constants act in isolation from each other, modelling strongly suggests that this isn't even remotely the case, if you change one constant others will tend to mirror that change to compensate. But, frankly, we shouldn't have to do modelling to have realised that.

There's also a third reason, there is a near infinite number of possible universes, the chances of only a single one being able to support life is preposterous. If even only one in every billion can support life, that's still a huge number of possible universes.

There's no need of reference to multiple universes.  As you mentioned, we already have one which supports life.  That;s not some sort of statistical implausibility, it's unity, a certainty, it exists, we exist.

The trouble with the argument presented is that it sets about, initially, with a misrepresentation.  It;s actually -not- true that the universe could be no other way and still support life.  We don't know, for example..the exact value of the cosmological constant...we do know that it -could- be tilted negative from where ever it is as a variable and still result in a universe amenable to life...in fact, a little more to the negative and the universe would be ever so slightly -more- amenable to life..due to their being more available matter.  All of his is unimaginative, at best, since we're only discussing -our- form of life...but hey, run with it.  

If the universe was "fine tuned" as some believers take that to mean, one wonders why the tuner failed to give it the last turn of the wrench.  Is it an idiot or a half assed mechanic?  Both?

Now, I know, I know, the objection to any moving of the scale with that constant will be "but the range is so narrow!".  Which is actually the same claim made for he older, similarly discredited fine tuning argument..that the band of habitable space around our sun is so narrow, for example.  OFC, it's narrow only on the scale of the cosmos.the "narrow range" for that is counted in astronomical units....which are he opposite of "narrow" by anyone's counting...and so too is the possible range of both value and effect of the cosmological constant.  No matter what value or range of values you give it..you can just keep adding decimal points behind it and "tuning" it to the very last numeral. Let;s say, and not that this is representative, it;s just to have fun with math..that the value is between 1 and 1.o1. Looks tight, but it's not. Put 100 0's behind the .01.

There could be God. And it could be the one that is described it scriptures. Its painful to believe that you are a simple servant, who must please the Master with your excellent beheviour or be afraid of hell, because of the same religious belief system you trust in. Religion offers pain and very few people decide to abandon their lifes for it.

Its not silly to suffer for good higher goals. This is what actually makes me wonder that religion is authentic even with all its flaws.