Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?

[Angrboda]

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.


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.

How did we get from your claiming that there is no debate that the physical constants can take on different values to this? That the matter was not settled was my whole point. You're simply agreeing with me.

A particular telling paragraph in the article was (emphasis added): 

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].

This simply reiterates the point that the possibility that the physical constants are the way they are out of necessity, far from being ruled out is very much a live hypothesis. I understand it's a necessary step to your argument to rule out necessity as an option, but please stop misrepresenting things. The matter of whether the physical constant are what they are out of necessity or not is far from settled.

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?

These are nonsense questions. The values of the physical constants aren't necessarily "constrained" to take only certain ranges of values, or even one; that may simply be the nature of the specific constants. As noted, it's within the realm of possibility that for reasons we don't currently understand, they can only take on one value. Asking why the range of possible values isn't unlimited is implicitly calling upon the PSR in a way that is hardly illuminating. It's like asking why is today different from yesterday. That may simply be the way things have to be.

Physicists posit a multiverse for the express reason to overcome the odds of getting the constants we have? Are you saying they are wrong?

This is yet another misrepresentation. Physicists originally proposed the multiverse as an implication of Alan Guth's work on inflation. It's a canard that the multiverse theory was originated to solve the fine tuning problem.

"It's hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse," Alan Guth, an MIT theoretical physicist unaffiliated with the new study, said during a news conference Monday. "It's not impossible, so I think there's still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously."

Other researchers agreed on the link between inflation and the multiverse.

"In most of the models of inflation, if inflation is there, then the multiverse is there," Stanford University theoretical physicist Andrei Linde, who wasn't involved in the new study, said at the same news conference. "It's possible to invent models of inflation that do not allow [a] multiverse, but it's difficult. Every experiment that brings better credence to inflationary theory brings us much closer to hints that the multiverse is real."

http://www.space.com/25100-multiverse-co...waves.html