Quote:It was in response to the claim life adapts to the environment. If it did the changing atmosphere of Mars shouldn't have mattered. At the point the only planet we can say life adapted to is earth. Its seems scientists are very upbeat about the prospect of finding life. They know the ingredients for life are abundant thanks to fortuitous laws of physics.

Because life does adapt to it's environment the fact it didn't do that  on every world doesn't demonstrate fine tuning not every planet needs to have come to have life for this principle to be true that's simply a non sequitur

Furthermore atheists make NO positive claims about the nature of the cosmos as atheists we simply accept claims like fine tuning as the evidence of them is scant and fallacious nor is the atheist  or atheism under any obligation to come up with alternative models or explanations  till the theist proves his model the atheists doubt is justified

(April 7, 2025 at 9:09 pm)Tonus Wrote: The fine-tuning argument would imply that there exists a wide range of possible universes where an omnipotent and omniscient being could not cause life to appear...

Drew is asserting that, something that demonstrably has happened, life emerging, is impossible, using natural phenomena, though we know as an object fact, they exist and are possible and are causal in everything we understand about the universe thus far. 

While simultaneously asserting that the most plausible solution in his false dichotomy is the addition of a deity he can't demonstrate exists or is even possible did it, using forces he can't demonstrate are possible, and that have no explanatory powers whatsoever. 

More tellingly, one could replace his notion of deity in his mostly fallacious arguments, and insert any unfalsifiable idea, and the arguments lose nothing. How much credence should one attach to an argument that poor? 

Then, like so many religious apologists I have met over the years, he doesn't even know how the dictionary defines atheism, and doesn't appear to understand the difference between atheism and atheist, fallaciously conflating the former, with some claims that some of the latter may make. 

All in all this is very poor apologetics by any standard. 

He has misrepresented the scientific term fine tuning, which is a metaphor, as a literal term validating the supernatural, despite there being no scientific consensus for the latter, and the supernatural being unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific by definition.

The real irony is he has ignored all cogent, and rational objections, whilst falsely accusing anyone who refuses to be swayed by his subjective fallacious spiel, as biased, the irony is palpable. If a deity has been proved the way he is claiming it seems also to have entirely escaped, not just the entire scientific world, but every global news network, even the Catholic Herald has zero stories running saying fine tuning has proved a deity exists.

The comedy gold moment came when he cited a single book title, not one relevant quote mind, and triumphantly announced the author was a "scientists" and an atheist. When asked how he thinks this book or author supports his position, yet is an atheist of course, he was and is reticent, perhaps understandably. 

He has swept passed almost all objections to his spiel, using the the Gish gallop tactic, it's never pretty to watch of course, but can be quite funny to see the author become ever more frustrated, and project their subjective bias onto everyone else, as they resort more and more to simple repetition of their claims, like a demented preacher, screaming from a pulpit, then sulking and telling us we "have no real interest in debate". One almost feels a pang of pity for someone so ill-informed, but the remember he could disavow himself of most of his erroneous and fallacious claims in a few minutes using Google.

(April 8, 2025 at 4:11 am)Sheldon Wrote: He has misrepresented the scientific term fine tuning, which is a metaphor, as a literal term validating the supernatural, despite there being no scientific consensus for the latter, and the supernatural being unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific by definition.

Perhaps Drew is frustrated by the untestability of the multiverse, and is saying, "Hey wait! God is untestable too!"

However, the multiverse is one possible extrapolation from current knowledge, even if it is untestable. Unfortunately, the God-concept is not. It fails for many other reasons.

(April 7, 2025 at 10:01 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(April 7, 2025 at 5:30 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: And it's a logical leap to presume that the physical constants of our universe could be different. The fine tuning argument presumes they could all have any value and that their values are unrelated to each other to come up sith astronomical odds, but we have no way to know any of that. It's just a thought experiments with a lot of 'ifs' in it. Since when are thought experiments evidence instead of analogy?

Or consider this: what if working on the inverse-square, gravity falls off by the inverse-cube? That would imply far fewer stars and galaxies, but still some. Far fewer planets, and much smaller at that, but still some rocky lumps. Fewer goldilocks planets.

But even so, after fifteen billion years, we see a Universe more widely-scattered, with fewer black holes and galaxies and larger amounts of interstellar gases, but still with roughly 1/9th the amount of those platforms for providing environments for life to evolve.

Or maybe nothing coalesces enough for life to evolve, but the Universe still exists with no observers to document it.

I don't know enough about the other constants to project much.

If you keep admitting that there are things you don't know, you'll never get invited to the annual Creationist Revisionist Exclusionist Dinner Dance and Polo Tournament.

Boru

(April 8, 2025 at 7:00 am)Alan V Wrote:

(April 8, 2025 at 4:11 am)Sheldon Wrote: He has misrepresented the scientific term fine tuning, which is a metaphor, as a literal term validating the supernatural, despite there being no scientific consensus for the latter, and the supernatural being unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific by definition.

Perhaps Drew is frustrated by the untestability of the multiverse, and is saying, "Hey wait!  God is untestable too!"

However, the multiverse is one possible extrapolation from current knowledge, even if it is untestable.  Unfortunately, the God-concept is not.  It fails for many other reasons.

The scientific term fine tuning, no more means the universe was literally fine tuned, than the term Big Bang literally describes a big bang.

(April 8, 2025 at 7:44 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: If you keep admitting that there are things you don't know, you'll never get invited to the annual Creationist Revisionist Exclusionist Dinner Dance and Polo Tournament.

Boru

The horror of it all.

(April 7, 2025 at 8:46 pm)Tonus Wrote:

(April 6, 2025 at 10:52 am)Drew_2013 Wrote: He argues that if God truly exists, he would not allow such suffering to occur.

That's a theological argument. How does an atheist use theology to make an argument against the existence of a Creator?

If that is Stenger's argument, then he isn't using theology. He's just using logic.

I am open to the possibility of the existence of a creator; I don't think there are any universe origin stories that are intuitive to me.

But I can, with certainty, disqualify any number of possible deities and religions as being true. Even the most devout religious person does this as well, seeing as they have to accept one god/religion and reject all others. And a God who claims to be concerned with my wellbeing and my future prospects, but does nothing to address those concerns, is pretty easy to dismiss. Heck, any God that created our universe and our world out of a desire to have anything to do with us, and then never ever shows up, can be tossed on that pile as well. There are a long list of ways in which pretty much every God that people worship isn't real.

"God has to exist, check out these proofs" is simply unconvincing and unsatisfying. Explain how the one YOU believe in is actually real.

I believe the universe was intentionally caused to exist by a being capable of doing so. I 'm a philosophical theist.

Philosophical theism is the belief that the Supreme Being exists (or must exist) independent of the teaching or revelation of any particular religion.[1] It represents belief in God entirely without doctrine, except for that which can be discerned by reason and the contemplation of natural laws.

Our existence could be the result of a scientist in another universe.

(April 7, 2025 at 8:24 pm)Paleophyte Wrote:

(April 7, 2025 at 11:57 am)Drew_2013 Wrote: Fine-tuned universe

Argumentum ad Wikipedia Copy-N-Pasta? Seriously dude, learn how to do basic attribution.

The Wikipedia article (<--- See? Like that!) goes on to debunk everything that you stated here. Here's a selection of fun quotes for you (emphasis mine):

"Because physicists have not developed an empirically successful theory of quantum gravity, there is no known way to combine quantum mechanics, on which the standard model depends, and general relativity. Without knowledge of this more complete theory suspected to underlie the standard model, it is impossible to definitively count the number of truly independent physical constants. In some candidate theories, the number of independent physical constants may be as small as one."

"Physicist Paul Davies said: "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects 'fine-tuned' for life. But the conclusion is not so much that the Universe is fine-tuned for life; rather it is fine-tuned for the building blocks and environments that life requires". He also said that "'anthropic' reasoning fails to distinguish between minimally biophilic universes, in which life is permitted, but only marginally possible, and optimally biophilic universes, in which life flourishes because biogenesis occurs frequently"."

"Among scientists who find the evidence persuasive, a variety of natural explanations have been proposed, such as the existence of multiple universes introducing a survivorship bias under the anthropic principle."

"Belief in the fine-tuned universe led to the expectation that the Large Hadron Collider would produce evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, but by 2012 it had not produced evidence for supersymmetry at the energy scales it was able to probe."

Not surprising Paul Davis is an atheist. 

You quoted this...

"Among scientists who find the evidence persuasive, a variety of natural explanations have been proposed, such as the existence of multiple universes introducing a survivorship bias under the anthropic principle."

I've had plenty claim erroneously that multiverse theory has nothing to do with the fine-tuning of the universe. Most scientists are philosophically committed to naturalist explanations.

What's wrong with using sources to back up what I'm saying. Its better than a lot of folks here who quote themselves as authorities on any subject.

(April 7, 2025 at 5:17 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

(April 6, 2025 at 10:22 am)Drew_2013 Wrote: I'm not uncomfortable; unlike most atheists I don't deny there is evidence our existence is the result of natural forces. There is more in favor of design and plan. Any time you want to give it your best shot let me know.

I wasn't going to interact with you in this thread, Drew, but are you sure most atheists deny there is evidence our existence is the result of natural forces? That seems to be the implication of not doing that while most atheists do. Doesn't really sound right.

Maybe you meant that most atheists deny evidence that our existence is NOT the result of natural forces but you do not deny that there is evidence that our existence IS the result of natural forces?

I meant that unlike atheists who deny there is any evidence our universe was intentionally caused I don't deny there is evidence to support belief in naturalism. Most if not all atheists deny there is a shred of evidence, data or reason to think it was intentionally caused. They are to cowardly to admit otherwise.