(June 6, 2014 at 4:55 pm)mickiel Wrote: Well evidence often barrels down to source; and atheist as well as Christians use only their own sources. but I give atheist the nod of being more broad minded between the two;
http://www.universetoday.com/105588/how-...verse-end/
I am going to count that as at least an attempt at evidence, though it would be better to use your own words.
That the universe is exactly the way it is, is only remarkable if we know it could be otherwise. We don't know that. That thing where people say the odds against the universe being the way it is are such-and-such? That's a thought experiment, it isn't based on knowledge, it's based on speculation: IF the universal constants could have been different by arbitrary amount X and IF none of the values of the constants depends on the value of any of the other constants, and IF our life is the only kind of life possible, THEN the universal constants being what they are would have been really unlikely. We also don't know this is the only universe, or how many universes there are (one? billions? infinity?). For all we know, even if our universe is remarkably unlikely, one like ours was bound to happen given all the opportunities. And if there are infinite universes and only one in a trillion trillion trillion is like ours, there are infinite universes like ours.
It is fallacious to argue that something which has happened couldn't have happened by chance after it's already happened if it's possible that it happened by chance. When you decide to buy a lotto ticket, the odds of you picking up the jackpot ticket are millions to one, if you have the jackpot ticket, the odds that you got it are 100%. What kind of idiot would win the lotto jackpot and decide his ticket must not really be the winning one because the odds against it are so long? The odds of you getting any particular Bridge hand are billions to one, but I can deal them all day long. Unlikely things happen all the time, a billions-to-one Bridge hand is only remarkable if you predict what it will be BEFORE I deal it.
Finally, it is also fallacious to claim to know the odds of something for which our sample size is one. We only know of one universe, we don't know why some physical constants are what they are, and we don't know if the universe being the way it is was wildly improbable or completely inevitable, and anyone who claims to know is either lying or overestimating her understanding wildly.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.