(March 8, 2016 at 9:49 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:(March 8, 2016 at 2:27 am)Alex K Wrote: @Jehanne
But isn't the point of those advancing the fine tuning argument precisely that they can say a priori that (simply speaking) only one of those outcomes is compatible with life, e.g. that life = 100 times heads? Then it is irrelevant that all possibilities add up to a probability of 1. I'm not saying I buy the ft argument, just that the lotto fallacy alone doesn't appear to be sufficient to refute it unless you also argue that all outcomes are compatible with some form of observer
And my response to their "only one of those outcomes is compatible with life" is how the fuck can you know that!?!
I tend to think of it like a "results chart", following a dice-roll. You roll a few 100-sided dice and see what numbers you get, then you consult the chart to see what the outcomes are from those results-- some of the chart-results aren't compatible with life, some are. Some may produce results we cannot imagine but which produce life-forms we also cannot imagine. Who knows? I don't. They don't.
The assumption that is required to even start their argument is that this is the only way it could be, the same anthropocentric bullshit they've been peddling since they said the earth was flat, made-for-us, and that the entire rest of the universe revolved around it.
I don't quite buy it. If I take the usual theories as a given and play around with the parameters, I very quickly get something where nothing but a gas of dilute particles will exist because there are no stable nuclei and no elements. Or - the universe recollapses or expands so fast that no stars are formed. I don't quite buy that we cannot say anything about this.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition