RE: The fine tuning argument
September 21, 2010 at 9:46 pm
(This post was last modified: September 21, 2010 at 9:51 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
(September 11, 2010 at 10:58 pm)solja247 Wrote: In my opinion, the fine tuning arguement, is one of the strongest theist arguements and it makes a lot of sense as well. No serious scientist (not even Dawkins) contends the fact that the universe appears to be designed.
For the universe (multiverse?) to arrive by chance is astronomical! Its pretty much impossible . Since our understanding of the universe is becoming even more complicated, saying it was a chance, is becoming less probable.
I dont want to say this proves God exists, but it is rather compelling, really compelling in my opinion.
What do you guys have to say?
The fine tuning arguement has a few problems - many of these have been addressed already by Adrian and others, but I'm going to give this a go.
First of all, even if the chance of a life-giving universe were so small that only the most powerful supercomputer aided by the greatest mathematicians in the modern world could calculate this number, the fact that it can arise at all means it can produce observers, such as us. What that means is that if there's a chance at all, the likelyhood of one such occurring is still going to make a universe with life in it.
The same arguement could be done concerning life on other planets and life on this planet.
Second, scientists don't say that life or the universe arose by chance.
Third, I'm not personally aware of Dawkins saying anything to that effect, but even if he did it doesn't mean he believes that the universe was 'designed' or 'built' in that sense.
Finally, the likelyhood or unlikelyhood of something occurring isn't compelling evidence of anything. Frankly, I rarely see giraffes, even in many of my local zoos. I only hear about them on television and in books and magazines. They are also beautiful, graceful african creatures. That doesn't mean they were designed and built in ancient times by african scientists to fool the white people.
That's why this arguement is essentially not an arguement for god or even 'begging the question.'
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
