RE: Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?
March 27, 2017 at 9:39 pm
(This post was last modified: March 27, 2017 at 9:43 pm by SteveII.)
(March 27, 2017 at 9:25 pm)ma5t3r0fpupp3t5 Wrote:(March 27, 2017 at 2:40 pm)SteveII Wrote: The lottery is not a good analogy for the fine-tuning argument. A better analogy is if there were billions and billions of white ping pong balls and one black ball. If the black ball rolls down the shoot, you can live. A white one, you will be shot. Each individual white ball is equally improbable, but the odds of you getting some white one is overwhelming. Now, to get closer to the actual odds, you would need to see that black ball roll down the shoot 5 times in 5 drawings in a row to live. If you witnessed that happening, you would be certain that the game was rigged. So we are not interested in why you got the particular ball you did (ever ball was equally improbable), but why you got 5 life-permitting balls in a row.
That, in a nutshell, is the fine-tuning argument. We are not interested in why this universe exists, but why a life-permitting one exists. As in the drawing above, we have very good reasons to think the universe was rigged for life.
If the physical constants were different, life as we know it might not exist. It doesn't follow that life couldn't exist.
Even the assertion that "our universe is life-permitting" is quite misleading. The fact that we haven't observed any life outside of Earth, even with an abundance of Earth-like planets out there, is good evidence that our Universe is barely life-permitting at all (that is to say, almost not life-permitting). Life just managed to precariously evolve on one tiny planet in the Milky Way.
Well, if any of the physical constants were even a little different, the universe would not hold together let along be able to form any sort of building blocks for alternative life.
Your fragility of life point does more to support the theist who thinks that God created the entire universe for us than it does as an argument against God.
(March 27, 2017 at 5:26 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Knock it off dude. You are not going to pass junk science off as real science. You are not going to convince us, much less Stephen Hawking or Lawrence Krauss or Neil Degrasse Tyson that astrophysics proves your dead man on a stick magic baby God.
You continually write sentences without connecting your thoughts to the conversation. What do any of these people have to say pertaining to the fine-tuning of the universe?
