RE: Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?
March 30, 2017 at 1:30 pm
(This post was last modified: March 30, 2017 at 1:50 pm by SteveII.)
(March 30, 2017 at 12:20 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(March 30, 2017 at 9:57 am)SteveII Wrote: First, you have obviously not read back through the posts for the past 9 pages.
Yes, the initial constants could have been different. There is nothing that makes them the way they are. That is not debated. Therefore, the universe is NOT the way it is out of necessity.
This is flat out wrong.
Quote: The desire to explain the constants has been one of the driving forces behind efforts to develop a complete unified description of nature, or theory of everything. Physicists have hoped that such a theory would show that each of the constants of nature could have only one logically possible value.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...s-2006-02/
The only place that you've ruled out necessity is in your fevered imagination. A corollary of this fact is that any calculation of how improbable the current physical constants are is based on nothing but hot air. Nobody knows the ranges these values can take, nor even if they can take other values. Your statements here are nothing but fancy lies.
I read the whole article. It does not support your assertion other than a theory (perhaps M-Theory), when it is formulated, can answer the question. That does not sound settled to me. A particular telling paragraph in the article was (emphasis added):
Quote:Meanwhile physicists have also come to appreciate that the values of many of the constants may be the result of mere happenstance, acquired during random events and elementary particle processes early in the history of the universe. In fact, string theory allows for a vast number--10500--of possible worlds with different self-consistent sets of laws and constants [see The String Theory Landscape, by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, September 2004]. So far researchers have no idea why our combination was selected. Continued study may reduce the number of logically possible worlds to one, but we have to remain open to the unnerving possibility that our known universe is but one of many--a part of a multiverse--and that different parts of the multiverse exhibit different solutions to the theory, our observed laws of nature being merely one edition of many systems of local bylaws [see Parallel Universes, by Max Tegmark; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, May 2003].
Regarding the probability, I understand your point that if we do not know the range, we cannot assign probability. However, why isn't the range of possible values unlimited? What factor(s) could constrain the constants of the universe before the universe? Or are you saying that one constant could be a restraint on another before the universe existed? Why?
Physicists posit a multiverse for the expressed reason to overcome the odds of getting the constants we have? Are you saying they are wrong?