Quote:I have described, in my own words, your use of logical fallacy and its application to our discussion. Go read it once more.
Okay I am reading it once again (I believe this is the article you referred to)
The Anthropic Fallacy written in 2009
1. All the life on this planet is related – you only have to glance at the molecular evidence in the form of DNA. It’s all from the same stock, and is supported by the element carbon. We know of no other form of life, although some have suggested that silicon could possibly form the kind of complex, long-chain molecules that life needs, as carbon does. This tends to give us what is known as ‘carbon chauvinism’, in that there could be plenty of other intelligent beings that aren’t like us, and don’t require the kind of physical or chemical set-up we have here. Just because we don’t know about them doesn’t mean that they couldn’t exist.
Is this serious? Again I was told when I first posted on this discussion board atheists only consider facts. How is it you require theists to cite facts as evidence in favor of their belief but atheists can cite mere possibilities and act as if they carry the same weight. If something isn't a well established fact, it doesn't exist. I have to assume this is his best argument against the anthropic principal because he cites it first, yet his objection is based on fantasy.
Hindsight gives a very illusory idea of cause and effect. Imagine you’ve hit a golf ball 300 yards and it comes to rest with a specific and unique alignment with the blades of grass it finally comes into contact with, as it inevitably must. The chances of exactly that configuration occurring is zero, considering the infinite number of alternative positions that the ball could have occupied. That doesn’t mean that it can’t have happened, though, or that it was somehow ‘planned’ because the ball has to end up somewhere, doesn’t it. It’s next to impossible to win the lottery, but someone does, and the fact that you couldn’t have predicted the winner beforehand (unfortunately) is just as much as a giveaway as the fact that you couldn’t have predicted the arrangement of grass blades on your golf ball after the drive.
This is why I wanted you to tell me which one of these arguments or points really mean something to you so I'm not guessing which ones you think are really relevant or applicable to our discussion. The analogy of hitting a golf ball and it landing in specific blades of grass is in his estimation next to zero. The landing of the ball in a particular patch of grass doesn't produce a specific result. The result we're discussing are the combination of events and conditions necessary for life to be possible in the universe. What does a ball landing somewhere in grass accomplish?
A variation on this argument is the notion we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves in a universe that allows us to exist because if it didn't we wouldn't be here to observe it. That's trivially true. What does surprise us is the astonishingly narrow set of parameters and conditions necessary for life to obtain if created by forces that didn't care and didn't plan or engineer our existence.
