Strong Anthropic Principle vs Creationism

[DaFinchi]

My problem with the weak anthropic principle is that it doesn't address the issue of potentially varying universal constants.

For that to even be an issue, you'd need to first establish that a universe without this specific set of constants would be a "failure" state. Without the establishment of this universe as the goal for the origins of the universe, your contention doesn't even make sense. You might as well be saying that a hand of cards, randomly drawn, couldn't have been randomly drawn because you could have drawn a different hand. It's a non-sequitur in a universe without a god: yes, things could have been different and the universe could have been devoid of life. Who'd notice?

It is, of course, possible that somewhere down the line we'll figure out why everything has to stack up exactly as it does and why no other possible configurations can exist, but at present (and this doesn't necessarily mean much) cosmologists are drawing a blank.

Even if there were no other possible configurations that doesn't require a multiverse or a god: it could just be that the cascading series of consequences that led to the current state of our universe could only turn out the one way. No need to complicate things further until we find out more.

The strong principle - or rather, the variant of it that calls on multiverses - seems to be the only one that addresses a regular theist argument - i.e. that the chances of the physical constants of the universe happening to exist in a configuration capable of supporting life are infinitessimal.

Which is, again, a nonsensical complaint without the establishment of life as a necessity of goal. To go back to a deck of cards for a moment, the chances of drawing all the aces in a row is quite low in a shuffled deck, but it's also the same chances of drawing any other series of cards. Without the additional symbolic import we give to the four aces, probability does not care.

(That's not to say that other forms of life are impossible with other configurations, but as I understand it, even the tiniest variation would cause atoms to fail to cohere, stars to fail to form, the universe to crunch, etc).

And if all that were to happen and the universe falls to nought... who would be around to give a shit?

Thanks for your reply - and apologies to any and all for my misuse of terminology.

I agree that in itself, the existence of life and the capacity of this universe to support it really isn't that significant - the universe would do just fine without us, and in that sense, drawing four aces, to use your metaphor, is only important if you're playing a game - otherwise, any hand of cards will do.

But that's not really my point - my point is the sheer improbability that (assuming no multiverse) there is only one universe and it just happens to be capable of supporting life. As far as we know (important qualifier) there's no reason that the universe couldn't exist in a near infinite range of other states with different physical constants.

In, as far as we know, all of them but this one, life couldn't exist. So it's less like drawing four aces and more like rolling a '1' on a billion-sided die.

That life results is not, per se, significant - it could be any equally unlikely result - the key thing is that life appears to be very, very, very unlikely. Hence multiverse or God.

You're absolutely right that we may yet find out that the constants can only ever fall out one way, in which case it's like rolling a '1' on a 1-sided die, but that in itself is a fairly big assumption.

Saying "who'd notice?" - yeah, I know, if we weren't there, we wouldn't be able to ask where the universe comes from. But that still ignores the infinitessimal probability that in the single instance of the universe we know of, the constants did end up in this configuration.

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I'd be interested to read your thoughts.

Well I have my tin foil hat on so HA!

Bugger.

You'll have to take it off to shower eventually.

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Either Anthropic Principle is useful in generating questions.

And many of those questions are really profound.


Seems like creationism isn't set up to generate (or tolerate) questions much. I know any creationite I have quizzed on the topic has found it annoying.

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Interesting factoid that came up in a similar thread at a science forum:

All electrons in our universe are perfectly identical. I don't recall how they figured that one out, but it is profound for those of us who worried a few might not be.

Yeah, I reckon I saw some with variant paintjobs in Sydney.

It gets freakier than that - apparently, they might all actually be the same electron.

Then, if my deeply flawed understanding approximates correctly, there's Pauli's Exclusion Paradox, where the energy levels of no two electrons in the universe can ever be the same. This has the bizarre effect that if you raise the energy level of an electron in your living room, all other electrons in the universe instantly compensate. Which would seem to violate lightspeed limits on information transfer.

But I digress. I agree that creationists are generally reluctant to discuss such possibilities - probably because the key issue for them is not reason but faith. With a worldview built on such shaky foundations, admitting alternate possibilities might bring the entire edifice crashing down. As a crucial prop in self identity, as religion is for many, the ego defends itself against such a threat.

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Just so we are using the same terms, according to wikipedia:

Strong anthropic principle (SAP) as explained by Barrow and Tipler states that this is all the case because the Universe is compelled, in some sense, for conscious life to eventually emerge. (Tipler is a Theist btw and has come up with some real nonsense).

Weak anthropic principle (WAP) which states that the universe's ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias: i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing any such fine tuning, while a universe less compatible with life will go unbeheld.

The WAP is the Anthropic principle as I remember it being briefly mentioned at university. You don't need multiverses to support either. In fact I'd go as far as to say that the idea of multiverses is neat to a physicist as it provides a sort of symmetry often seen in nature. But it remains at the hypothesis stage for now.

If the universe is fine tuned for humans, then whatever did it didn't do a brilliant job.

Agnostic Atheism is the default position. You don't need to now anything about fine tuning, multiverses, even any physics at all to be an Agnostic Atheist.

I do apologise, you're absolutely right: the SAP says the universe can only unfold this way and the WAP says it's a selection bias - and there's a specific variant of the WAP that rests on multiverse theory.

I don't find the original SAP or original WAP arguments very compelling (as you'll see from my most recent replies) as the former requires a massive assumption (i.e. physical constants can only unfold one way, for which there is no evidence) and the takes no account of probability (i.e. infinitessimal chance that the one universe happened to be one supporting life).

The multiverse variant is neat because it explains away the probability dilemma of the WAP. But a multiverse is also a big assumption.

Though thinking about it now, not necessarily any smaller an assumption than the SAP.

I guess I'd like to be a Gnostic Atheist - one who feels that you can, based on reason and not opinion, reach an atheistic conclusion. Because otherwise, while I can confidently reject the existence of the Bible's God, all I have against a creator vs SAP vs multiverse is... well... my opinion.

Which is why I'm looking for someone to show me why a creator is a bigger and less likely assumption than either the multiverse or SAP.