(April 7, 2025 at 11:10 am)Sheldon Wrote:No, I pointed you to a book (one of many) written by an atheist scientist that points to the fine-tuning of the universe (using well established scientific facts) and claims as a result he concludes we live in a multiverse. He rejects the idea a universe with the properties for life could occur given one shot. Debaters are supposed to cite authorities to support their point of view. Who should I quote Alfred E. Nueman?(April 7, 2025 at 9:38 am)Drew_2013 Wrote: Read Martin Rees 'Just Six Numbers'. Highly respected scientist and an atheist. He thoroughly details the fine-tuning of the universe and it leads him to claim we live in a multiverse. Its not circular reasoning, scientists could just as well have discovered a wide range of properties and constants could have produced life...but they didn't.So rather than address my criticisms honestly, you resort to a vague appeal to authority fallacy. I have zero interest in one persons subjective opinion, and that is not how scientific ideas are validated. And you must know that there is nothing like a broad consensus among elite scientists that the universe was "fine tuned". You also ignored my question - even if we had sufficient, and sufficiently compelling scientific evidence the universe was "fine tuned", why would you assume a deity did this?
Fine-tuned universe
The fine-tuned universe is the hypothesis that, because "life as we know it" could not exist if the constants of nature – such as the electron charge, the gravitational constant and others – had been even slightly different, the universe must be tuned specifically for life.[1][2][3][4] In practice, this hypothesis is formulated in terms of dimensionless physical constants.[5]
History
In 1913, chemist Lawrence Joseph Henderson wrote The Fitness of the Environment, one of the first books to explore fine tuning in the universe. Henderson discusses the importance of water and the environment to living things, pointing out that life as it exists on Earth depends entirely on Earth's very specific environmental conditions, especially the prevalence and properties of water.[6]
In 1961, physicist Robert H. Dicke argued that certain forces in physics, such as gravity and electromagnetism, must be perfectly fine-tuned for life to exist in the universe.[7][8] Fred Hoyle also argued for a fine-tuned universe in his 1983 book The Intelligent Universe,[9] writing, "The list of anthropic properties, apparent accidents of a non-biological nature without which carbon-based and hence human life could not exist, is large and impressive".[10]
Quote:You also ignored my question - even if we had sufficient, and sufficiently compelling scientific evidence the universe was "fine tuned", why would you assume a deity did this?
There is sufficient evidence...there is evidence powerful enough it leads several atheist scientists to stake their reputation and conclude we live in a multiverse as a naturalistic explanation for how the universe wound up with just so constants and laws of physics to cause and allow intelligent beings to exist. Why should I assume we owe our existence to mindless natural forces that didn't give a rats ass if the universe existed, if planets existed, solar systems, galaxies, dark matter, gravity, laws of physics. In short all manner of things necessary for the existence of humans, but wholly unnecessary for natural forces to exist. Secondly what natural forces are we talking about? The natural forces, spacetime, laws of physics we know of is what came into existence 13.8 billion years ago. Those natural forces didn't cause the universe, they didn't yet exist at the time of the big bang.
Lastly we're justified to assume the existence of the universe was either caused intentionally or was caused unintentionally by mindless natural forces. That's what you assume isn't it?
Quote:1. Can you demonstrate any objective evidence a deity exists, or is even possible?
We mere humans have caused the virtual universe to exist using the theistic method of design, planning, programming and engineering. It may only be a matter of time before we can populate the virtual universe with virtual people who experience their reality just as we do. Its not only possible, we may soon be god's of our own virtual worlds.