(August 4, 2013 at 2:04 pm)little_monkey Wrote: I don't think we can prove anyone wrong as the fine-tuning is just a hypothesis. From a scientific POV, the question is, does it predict anything that can be used as evidence for its validity? So far, nothing. So it remains in the realm of all possibilities.
On the contrary, I think that if not for the constant theistic goal-shifting, the fine-tuning argument could easily become a valid scientific hypothesis and then be relegated to the junk-pile pretty easily.
The idea behind the fine-tuning argument is very old and very primitive - "this creation has been created for us". And since such a statement wouldn't fly within the scientific methodology, the idea had to be reshaped into the hypothesis - "Different aspects of the universe have been tuned to their current values specifically to support the existence of life". Disregarding any theistic goal-shifting, we can easily consider this idea on its own merits. The line of evidence supporting this hypothesis would be:
a) Most of the universe actually being capable of supporting life.
b) Even the parts not capable of supporting life being required for the existence of parts that do.
c) Establishing that parameters outside that range are possible - though very rare and regarded as anomalies.
If this line of evidence turned out to be false, then the fine-tuning hypothesis would stand falsified.
Suppose we were living in the biblical universe - the one where we have lands and seas spanning the whole universe and the sky as the inverted glass-bowl. Basically, a universe equivalent to our current biosphere. The evidence for fine-tuning would be strong over there. Life is possible in almost the entire "universe", the parts where it is not (deep seas) are required to support the rest and things could've been different (everything covered with volcanoes and stormy seas). So, the fine-tuning argument would've been a decent scientific theory there. Here, however, it has been falsified on almost every account. Which is why in the real world, it belongs in a trashcan.
