(December 7, 2020 at 2:01 pm)Klorophyll Wrote:(December 3, 2020 at 4:31 pm)Angrboda Wrote: I don't have time to respond to the rest at this time, but since you've raised the point multiple times, I have to ask, in the interest of clarity, what ends you are suggesting the universe is clearly adapted toward achieving? The universe isn't in any sense adapted toward the end of being itself, so its fine-tuning seems an unlikely meaning. If you are claiming the universe appears adapted for the existence of life, then you are simply wrong. Life is opportunistic, in as much as it is clearly defined -- which it isn't.
The universe may have for an end making life possible.
It might. Then again it might not. Even if we did know enough to make any generalizations about "life" per se, as opposed to "life as we know it," which are not the same thing.
(December 7, 2020 at 2:01 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Whether life is opportunistic or not is irrelevant.
Not true. It's highly relevant, as if life conforms to the universe regardless of whether the universe is conformed to life, then the existence of life says nothing about design.
(December 7, 2020 at 2:01 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: We really are here, and we should account for that.
That's assuming there is a reason behind our being here, which is a form of begging the question. If there is no reason for our being here, then there is no accounting for it.
(December 7, 2020 at 2:01 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: Randomness and blind processes can't be the right answer, they're not even an answer. A random process still needs a starting point, an initial value.
It's not exactly clear what you're trying to express here. If you're suggesting that natural processes cannot explain life, then I'd say you're mistaken. You seem to mix parts of unrelated arguments freely, so it's not clear why you introduce the question of beginnings. However, the fact that something needs a beginning doesn't lead to the conclusion that any specific endpoint was intended at that beginning. Life is a possible endpoint that might have been intended. Or, perhaps God likes heavy elements and designed the universe toward that end, and life was just an accidental byproduct. Or perhaps God had no further thought to the universe than that he found this set of constants more aesthetically pleasing than any other, and he didn't care about life or any of the rest. It echoes a point in a summary of objections to the common claim that the universe was fine-tuned for life that I'll link you to shortly. The fact is, only the designer can inform us of his/her intentions, the universe itself is mute and uninformative with regards to any designer's intentions. If I hand you a screwdriver, you might infer that I want you to tighten some screws. Unbeknownst to you, I actually want you to use it to hammer some nails. What you think the screwdriver might be best suited for is irrelevant.
So, no, you haven't provided any compelling justification for believing that the universe was fine-tuned for "life" -- whatever that might be defined as.
And finally, you're wrong about the necessity of starting points. The Hawking-Hartle No-boundary proposal dispenses with beginnings, as does Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology model. And those are just two models that we know about from modern physics. It's possible the explanation for the existence of the universe is something we haven't yet imagined. As Rumsfield said, there are always the unknown unknowns. So suggesting God, design, or creation events are necessary explanations because we lack alternatives becomes an argument from ignorance, with the corresponding conclusion that such arguments are invalid, and their conclusions not reliably true.
See also, claims CI120 and CI301 at TalkOrigins: An Index To Creationist Claims for additional problems with your argument.
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