If I were an Atheist

[Drew_2013]

Jörmungandr  

I thought we'd been over this already.  As Don Tow observes in his review of Rees' book:

We have been over it but atheists continue to claim there isn't a shred of evidence that would lead one to believe we owe our existence to a creator.

So in other words, it's only fine tuned if you only look at it from one side.  From the other side of variation, life indeed could exist.  That's not fine tuning.  That's selective vision.

I read the entire review you cited. I don't see anywhere that he is disagreeing with Martin Rees other than Martin Rees conclusion. Martin Rees (who is an atheist) subscribes to interpretation C that this is one of an infinitude of universes the ultimate time and chance naturalism in the gaps explanation. Don Tow on the other hand, the person your citing subscribes to interpretation B, that we owe our existence to a Creator...


III.   Interpretation

The above six numbers provide a recipe for a universe. They govern the outcome of the recipe, i.e., the formation and evolution of a universe, including the existence and type of life in that universe. It seems that the outcome is remarkably sensitive to the values of these six numbers. It seems that these six numbers were tuned so that our current universe and life can exist. If any of these six numbers was untuned, there would be no stars or life as we know it in our current universe.
There are at least three interpretations of the fine tuning of these six numbers.
Interpretation A: These numbers just so happen to take these values. They could have taken other values, then the universe and life as we know it will not exist. But another type of universe, perhaps without life, could exist.
Interpretation B: There is a Creator who purposely designed the universe in this way so that we could exist, i.e., there is intelligent design. It is important to point out that this type of intelligent design is not the same as those intelligent design advocates who claim that Darwin’s evolution theory cannot be correct.
Interpretation C: There could actually be many universes, with each having a different set of values for these numbers. This is the viewpoint of the “multiverse” advocates. Depending on the particular multiverse theory, the different universes may or may not interact with each other, and it is not clear how these different universes were created. The multiverse (or many-world) concept actually has existed for more than 50 years. It was first formulated in 1956 as the Many-World Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in Hugh Everett’s Ph.D. thesis at Princeton (under Professor John A. Wheeler). In quantum mechanics, we cannot predict the exact outcome of any experimental observation; but we can predict only the probability distribution of multiple outcomes. For example, in the famous double slit experiment when electrons (or photons) pass through two slits, the only way to explain the interference pattern obtained is that the waves associated with the electrons went through both slits, and not just one slit. However, when you try to experimentally detect the electrons, you will always find that the electrons end up in one spot and not two or multiple spots, or saying it in another way, you don’t find part of an electron. So it seems that when you make an experimental observation to determine the location of the electron, you end up in one particular universe (out of many possible universes), i.e., you are put in the universe in which the electron ended up on the spot on the right or the spot on the left. [5] Both universes exist, but the different universes do not interact with each other. I should add that even if this could be a possible interpretation of quantum mechanics, most physicists do not accept this interpretation, including Professor Wheeler later in his life.
Martin Rees, the author of this book, believes in the multiverse interpretation of the fine tuning of these six numbers. Personally, I do not agree with his interpretation. I favor Interpretation B.

And while we're at it, 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. A point that was brought up early in your first run at this argument (this is round 4). So while the parameters in this region of parameter space may be sensitive to variation, it's clear that there exist in that entire parameter space other viable solutions which could support life. It would seem things are not so fine tuned as Martin Rees would have us believe.

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/

Changing the Laws of Nature

What if the laws of nature were different? Stenger says:

… what about a universe with a different set of “laws”? There is not much we can say about such a universe, nor do we need to. Not knowing what any of their parameters are, no one can claim that they are fine-tuned. [FOFT p. 69]

In reply, fine-tuning isn’t about what the parameters and laws are in a particular universe. Given some other set of laws, we ask: if a universe were chosen at random from the set of universes with those laws, what is the probability that it would support intelligent life? If that probability is suitably (and robustly) small, then we conclude that that region of possible-physics-space contributes negligibly to the total life-permitting subset. It is easy to find examples of such claims.
* A universe governed by Maxwell’s Laws “all the way down” (i.e. with no quantum regime at small scales) will not have stable atoms | electrons radiate their kinetic energy and spiral rapidly into the nucleus | and hence no chemistry (Barrow & Tipler, 1986, pg. 303). We don’t need to know what the parameters are to know that life in such a universe is plausibly impossible.
* If electrons were bosons, rather than fermions, then they would not obey the Pauli exclusion principle. There would be no chemistry.
* If gravity were repulsive rather than attractive, then matter wouldn’t clump into complex structures. Remember: your density, thank gravity, is 10^30 times greater than the average density of the universe.
* If the strong force were a long rather than short-range force, then there would be no atoms. Any structures that formed would be uniform, spherical, undifferentiated lumps, of arbitrary size and incapable of complexity.
* If, in electromagnetism, like charges attracted and opposites repelled, then there would be no atoms. As above, we would just have undifferentiated lumps of matter.
* The electromagnetic force allows matter to cool into galaxies, stars, and planets. Without such interactions, all matter would be like dark matter, which can only form into large, diffuse, roughly spherical haloes of matter whose only internal structure consists of smaller, diffuse, roughly spherical subhaloes. (p. 18)