If I were an Atheist

[Angrboda]

Victor Stenger is not without his critics...

Professor Victor Stenger is an American particle physicist and a noted atheist, who popularized the phrase, “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings”. Professor Stenger is also the author of several books, including his recent best-seller, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: How the Universe is Not Designed for Humanity (Prometheus Books, 2011). Stenger’s latest book has been received with great acclaim by atheists: “Stenger has demolished the fine-tuning proponents,” writes one enthusiastic Amazon reviewer, adding that the book tells us “how science is able to demonstrate the non-existence of god.”

Well, it seems that the great Stenger has finally met his match. Dr. Luke A. Barnes, a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has written a scathing critique of Stenger’s book. I’ve read refutations in my time, but I have to say, this one is devastating.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112...4647v1.pdf

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellige...a-fallacy/

And Barnes is not without his critics, namely Stenger himself:

Postdoctoral fellow Luke Barnes has written a lengthy, highly technical review of the scientific literature concerning the fine-tuning problem titled “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life”. The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning did not address the scientific literature. Barnes’ paper is written for experts in the field, who were not my intended audience and with whom I have no significant scientific disagreements. Barnes does not challenge my basic conclusions. Nor, to my knowledge, has anyone on the long list of reputable physicists and cosmologists who Barnes insists believe in fine-tuning. In fact, several were consulted in writing the book.

Fallacy was concerned with the widespread argument found in theological and religious apologetic writings that the putative fine-tuning of the parameters of physics and cosmology cannot be the product of purely natural forces. I agree that life, as we know it on Earth, would not exist with a slight change in these parameters. However, there is no reason to limit ourselves to earthly life but consider the possibility of other forms of life, carbon-based or otherwise. Depending on what you count, about thirty parameters are generally suggested as being fine-tuned. Of these, some theists have claimed that five parameters exist that are so exquisitely fine-tuned that changing any single one by one part in 10 40 or more would mean that no life of any kind was possible. These crucial parameters are:

1. The ratio of electrons to protons in the universe
   
2. The expansion rate of the universe
   
3. The mass density of the universe
   
4. The ratio of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces
   
5. The cosmological constant
   

In Fallacy, I give plausible reasons for the values of each within existing, well-established physics and cosmology.

The remaining parameters are also supposed to be fine-tuned to many orders of magnitude. I show that they are at best fine-tuned, if you want to call it that, to 10-20 percent. Barnes seems to want me to reduce this to maybe 1-5 percent. But nowhere does he show that they should be 10 -40 . My essential point is, when all parameters are taken together the region of parameter space that should allow some form of life to evolve is not the infinitesimal point that the theist literature would want us to believe.

In Fallacy, I formulate some of my arguments with certain simplified assumptions, such as semi-Newtonian cosmology. Barnes attacks these by using higher-level arguments that are quite irrelevant. He fails to explain why my simplifications are inadequate for my purposes.

In short, Barnes objections are largely superfluous. However, I cannot leave it at that since he has in several places misrepresented and misunderstood what I have said...

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1202/1202.4359.pdf (bold emphasis mine)

And so it goes.

As I pointed out previously, "Victor Stenger has run simulations in which the parameters of the universe varied by up to two orders of magnitude, and half of those universes yielded long period universes with heavy elements capable for the support of life as we know it." Do you have an actual objection to Stenger's simulations as pointed out previously, or were you merely hoping that a sufficient poisoning of the well might distract the reader from the fact that you have no point here?