I'm a Christian looking to have a friendly conversation about the existence of God. I'd like to start with one of the Teleology arguments—that God exists based on how fine-tuned the universe is for life. For instance, physical constants, like the gravitational constant and constants of the strong nuclear force, must be within a narrow range to allow for things like atom formation, hydrogen bonding, galaxy formation, etc. This looks like design. The alternative is chance, which doesn't seem adequate. In other words, naturalism cannot account for the fine-tuning of the universe, while design can easily account for it. This is not a trivial problem, or one that can be ridiculed away, since many respected scientists have pointed out how remarkably (and inexplicably) fine-tuned the universe appears. Thanks for your polite responses.

(September 3, 2022 at 6:52 pm)smithd Wrote: I'm a Christian looking to have a friendly conversation about the existence of God. I'd like to start with one of the Teleology arguments—that God exists based on how fine-tuned the universe is for life. For instance, physical constants, like the gravitational constant and constants of the strong nuclear force, must be within a narrow range to allow for things like atom formation, hydrogen bonding, galaxy formation, etc. This looks like design. The alternative is chance, which doesn't seem adequate. In other words, naturalism cannot account for the fine-tuning of the universe, while design can easily account for it. This is not a trivial problem, or one that can be ridiculed away, since many respected scientists have pointed out how remarkably (and inexplicably) fine-tuned the universe appears. Thanks for your polite responses.

This is a circular argument. Fine-tuning presupposes that the universe was intended to support life-as-we-know-it, which presupposes a God who wanted exactly this universe and no other. A universe with a different set of constants would simply contain life-as-we-don’t-know-it.

It isn’t so much that the universe was fine tuned for us as it is that we evolved to fit the constants that were already here. The existence of life says nothing about the existence of God.

Boru

(September 3, 2022 at 6:52 pm)smithd Wrote: I'd like to start with one of the Teleology arguments—that God exists based on how fine-tuned the universe is for life.

There's a natural bias in the illusion of fine-tuning - only in a universe where the physical constants are within certain parameters, in a region of the universe where conditions are stable enough to permit evolution to the level of sentience, will such an observation occur.

Even if the universe was created by a god, though, it's a long, long slog to try to connect the dots to the god of Christianity.  Its behaviours in the Old Testament don't engender much confidence as to its competence to fine-tune anything, and its temperament doesn't suggest enough emotional stability to stick with it over the long haul.  Sorry.

My sock senses are tingling starting your argument with fine-tuning who does this sound like .....

(September 3, 2022 at 7:54 pm)Astreja Wrote: There's a natural bias in the illusion of fine-tuning - only in a universe where the physical constants are within certain parameters, in a region of the universe where conditions are stable enough to permit evolution to the level of sentience, will such an observation occur.

Even if the universe was created by a god, though, it's a long, long slog to try to connect the dots to the god of Christianity.  Its behaviours in the Old Testament don't engender much confidence as to its competence to fine-tune anything, and its temperament doesn't suggest enough emotional stability to stick with it over the long haul.  Sorry.

Thanks for your reply. Fair enough that it doesn't connect to the Christian God. I just wanted to establish that fine tuning points to a designer of some sort. Your argument is that fine tuning is an illusion? There is a real case to be made that there is fine tuning though. If the physical parameters were different we may not even have atoms, let alone life. Why is the universe like that?

And if they were different we might have atoms or something that does the same job as atoms or maybe the universe doesn't even need atoms. This puts the cart before the horse.

(September 3, 2022 at 6:52 pm)smithd Wrote: For instance, physical constants, like the gravitational constant and constants of the strong nuclear force, must be within a narrow range to allow for things like atom formation, hydrogen bonding, galaxy formation, etc. This looks like design. The alternative is chance, which doesn't seem adequate. In other words, naturalism cannot account for the fine-tuning of the universe, while design can easily account for it. This is not a trivial problem, or one that can be ridiculed away, since many respected scientists have pointed out how remarkably (and inexplicably) fine-tuned the universe appears. Thanks for your polite responses.

There are many flaws with your claims. One of the flaws is that you vary a single parameter while assuming all the others remain fixed. Then you further compound this mistake by proceeding to calculate meaningless probabilities based on the grossly erroneous assumption that all the parameters are independent.

For example, physicist Anthony Aguire has independently examined the universes that result when six cosmological parameters are simultaneously varied by orders of magnitude, and found he could construct cosmologies in which "stars, planets, and intelligent life can plausibly arise."

Physicist Craig Hogan has done another independent analysis that leads to similar conclusions.

(September 3, 2022 at 9:45 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote:

(September 3, 2022 at 6:52 pm)smithd Wrote: For instance, physical constants, like the gravitational constant and constants of the strong nuclear force, must be within a narrow range to allow for things like atom formation, hydrogen bonding, galaxy formation, etc. This looks like design. The alternative is chance, which doesn't seem adequate. In other words, naturalism cannot account for the fine-tuning of the universe, while design can easily account for it. This is not a trivial problem, or one that can be ridiculed away, since many respected scientists have pointed out how remarkably (and inexplicably) fine-tuned the universe appears. Thanks for your polite responses.

There are many flaws with your claims. One of the flaws is that you vary a single parameter while assuming all the others remain fixed. Then you further compound this mistake by proceeding to calculate meaningless probabilities based on the grossly erroneous assumption that all the parameters are independent.

For example, physicist Anthony Aguire has independently examined the universes that result when six cosmological parameters are simultaneously varied by orders of magnitude, and found he could construct cosmologies in which "stars, planets, and intelligent life can plausibly arise."

Physicist Craig Hogan has done another independent analysis that leads to similar conclusions.

Thanks for sparing us the multiverse speculations, altough this seems like a variation of it...the problem of why this particular universe exists and not some other remains nevertheless.

(September 3, 2022 at 10:57 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Thanks for sparing us the multiverse speculations, altough this seems like a variation of it...the problem of why this particular universe exists and not some other remains nevertheless.

Well, yeah, because the concept of alternate dimensions is as imaginative as god's existence.

(September 3, 2022 at 10:57 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: ..the problem of why this particular universe exists and not some other remains nevertheless.

It doesn't because you would have to demonstrate that some other universe could exist with other properties which you didn't.