A fined tuned argument.....Heywood style.

[Alex K]

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/...iding.html

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals...it-suicide

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...asite.html

http://www.eonline.com/shows/kardashians

You're confusing the products of the process with the process itself. Its like saying evolution is pointless and stupid and then giving us the example of the laryngeal nerve.

Yeah, evolution is pointless and stupid, and the laryngeal nerve is an example. What was your point?

[LostLocke]

There is nothing circular about my reasoning for discounting that possibility. If there is, quote it and show why it is circular reasoning.

D)It was simply blind luck the Universe turned out to be fine-tuned for emergence.

The extreme fine tuning of the cosmological constant allows me to dismiss D.

You make a statement about the possibility of the universe's fine-tuning, that doesn't involve god, and then dismiss it because the universe is, supposedly, fine-tuned.

[Angrboda]

That's bullshit. Besides which, if you don't have any way of determining probabilities, my first argument (here) that you are either a) making an argument from ignorance, or b) arguing on the basis of the most plausible hypothesis with a hypothesis whose plausibility is unknown, holds, and your argument fails, as neither argument can be successfully completed ('a' is fallacious, and 'b' argued using the principle of indifference yields no winner, even if accepted as an argument). [In arguing to the most plausible hypothesis, if there is no "most plausible" hypothesis, the entire argument fails as there is no reason to prefer one hypothesis to the other. If you say that there is a reason to prefer one hypothesis to the other, you've abandoned the principle of indifference. Either way, you lose.]

Besides, you gave four possibilities, so the odds of a designer are 25%, not 50%.

We started with 4 possibilities and found objective reasons to dismiss 2 of them.

The extreme fine tuning of the cosmological constant allows me to dismiss D. ... As Leonard Susskind put it, "Its too much of a stretch".

This is an argument from incredulity, not an objective reason.

I dimiss C on the grounds as there is no reason to believe this since many coherent models of the universe can be made given our current understanding of physics. Further cutting edge physics...like string theory continue to suggest the possibility the universe could have been different.

This objection doesn't even make sense. "Scientists can imagine things differently therefore they aren't the way they are by necessity?" This doesn't follow and is simply a statement that scientists don't know at present whether this can be ruled out. The possibility isn't excluded on objective grounds.

That left us two remaining possibilities to consider.

You have four possibilities under the principle of indifference. The probability is 25%.

Your claim that this is an argument from ignorance is rubbish. An argument from ignorance is made when a proposition is said to be true because it hasn't been proven false.

An argument from ignorance is also made when you claim, "Not X, therefore Y." It's just another form of the argument. And I didn't claim you were making an argument from ignorance, what I said was that you had two avenues to proceed from, one of which was the argument from ignorance, the other an argument to the most likely hypothesis. Since both fail, it doesn't matter which you took.

[Heywood]

We started with 4 possibilities and found objective reasons to dismiss 2 of them.

The extreme fine tuning of the cosmological constant allows me to dismiss D. ... As Leonard Susskind put it, "Its too much of a stretch".

This is an argument from incredulity, not an objective reason.

Negative, If the probability of D is one in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion it is for all practical purposes 0.

If I was being incredulous, I wouldn't have said what I said just a few posts ago...that If Alex K's claim is true, I may not be able to outright dismiss D because while it still remains a monster longshot, it may not be beyond the realm of the imagination that such a long shot could come in with one roll of the dice.

I dimiss C on the grounds as there is no reason to believe this since many coherent models of the universe can be made given our current understanding of physics. Further cutting edge physics...like string theory continue to suggest the possibility the universe could have been different.

This objection doesn't even make sense. "Scientists can imagine things differently therefore they aren't the way they are by necessity?" This doesn't follow and is simply a statement that scientists don't know at present whether this can be ruled out. The possibility isn't excluded on objective grounds.

This isn't a case of scientist imagining things differently. This is a case of scientist using our latest and greatest physics coming up with different coherent models of the universe. I know our physics isn't perfect but its pretty good. So good in fact I see know reason to distrust it in this instance.

Now you may distrust our physics in this specific case....but then isn't that you who are being incredulous?

That left us two remaining possibilities to consider.

You have four possibilities under the principle of indifference. The probability is 25%.

Sorry bro....its back to 2 possibilities.

Your claim that this is an argument from ignorance is rubbish. An argument from ignorance is made when a proposition is said to be true because it hasn't been proven false.

An argument from ignorance is also made when you claim, "Not X, therefore Y." It's just another form of the argument. And I didn't claim you were making an argument from ignorance, what I said was that you had two avenues to proceed from, one of which was the argument from ignorance, the other an argument to the most likely hypothesis. Since both fail, it doesn't matter which you took.

The rubbish remains rubbish.

Look, If you want to find an effective means of attacking the argument I made, show that I am misapplying the principle of indifference. Show an objective reason why the probability of B being true is greater than A.

That's all you have to do. I hear a lot of subjective reasons...but never an objective one.

---

There is nothing circular about my reasoning for discounting that possibility. If there is, quote it and show why it is circular reasoning.

D)It was simply blind luck the Universe turned out to be fine-tuned for emergence.

The extreme fine tuning of the cosmological constant allows me to dismiss D.

You make a statement about the possibility of the universe's fine-tuning, that doesn't involve god, and then dismiss it because the universe is, supposedly, fine-tuned.

I dismiss it because its such a long shot that for all intents and purposes the probability of such a long shot coming in is 0. There is no circular thinking here as you claim.

[Angrboda]

Already refuted.

[MindForgedManacle]

I haven't read through this thread yet (don't plan on reading through 9 pages of posts on a fundamentally useless argument), but have you brought up our inability to apply probabilities here Rasetsu?

[Heywood]

I haven't read through this thread yet (don't plan on reading through 9 pages of posts on a fundamentally useless argument), but have you brought up our inability to apply probabilities here Rasetsu?

Its a dilemma. A or B is going to be true. Without a way to distinguish probabilities the principle of indifference applies. The principle of indifference is what allows us to apply probability here.

Now some may claim, "There could be another possibility...something we don't yet know". This explanation is equivalent to "God works in mysterious ways". It isn't an explanation at all and deserves to be ignored.

[Mudhammam]

I haven't read through this thread yet (don't plan on reading through 9 pages of posts on a fundamentally useless argument), but have you brought up our inability to apply probabilities here Rasetsu?

Its a dilemma. A or B is going to be true. Without a way to distinguish probabilities the principle of indifference applies. The principle of indifference is what allows us to apply probability here.

Now some may claim, "There could be another possibility...something we don't yet know". This explanation is equivalent to "God works in mysterious ways". It isn't an explanation at all and deserves to be ignored.

I still don't understand why "IT SEEMS SO INCREDIBLE TO ME" is something that requires an additional fundamental law beyond the sketch of an explanation provided by physics and its respective branches.

[tor]

Just because trees looked designed to people 3000 years ago doesn't mean they should bring up god.
Same here. We can't assess something we don't know about yet.
And probabilities are useless.
Turns out design of trees was not 50/50. In fact it's 0.

[LostLocke]

I haven't read through this thread yet (don't plan on reading through 9 pages of posts on a fundamentally useless argument), but have you brought up our inability to apply probabilities here Rasetsu?

Are you talking about that whole 'dice rolling' example that gets tossed around sometimes?

The one where I might say "I rolled a 6, what are the odds of that happening?"
But there is no other info on that. You don't know how many sides the dice have, how many dice there are, how many times the dice were rolled, or if there were any modifiers to the dice.