Demons?

[Chad32]

We don't know he's good, because apparently he's incomprehensible. You read in the bible that he's good? So you're taking someone's word for it (the author's) who took someone's word for it (Yahweh's) that he's good. This requires ignoring such outdated actions that are in the bible due to the idea that he's mysterious and incomprehensible. You can't have a guy that encourages things that I would assume are illegal in the modern world, say we're too limited to understand him, but assure us without a doubt that he's the pinnacle of virtue.

[Sword of Christ]

Well, you don't know that life couldn't have arisen through other sets of circumstances

Given that you can mathematically calculate how an alternative universe would develop over time and what would and wouldn't form in the context of what life requires to establish itself I do have a good idea. If you alter anything even by a fraction of micro percentage you would have a universe unfit for life. This isn't speculative or made up we know is as something of a fact it's based on what we understand and can work out. So the universe is very well fined tuned/balanced to generate the complexity of living forms. Yes there is a way of getting around it by postulating multiple universes but you could equally well postulate one omnipotent God if we're talking about things beyond the universe we can physically observe. Seems to me like it would be easier to just have the one thing there rather than an infinite number of entirely different things. If you want to keep things simple and straightforward.

, so this point is moot anyway, but I like that you're positing a god that isn't omnipotent, though: if there's something he cannot do...

God could have made anything but he wanted to make this/us specifically. And to make us the universe has to be exactly like this without any margin for any kind of error or mistake.

[Esquilax]

Given that you can mathematically calculate how an alternative universe would develop over time and what would and wouldn't form in the context of what life requires to establish itself I do have a good idea.

Only if you know every possible permutation of reality, and I humbly submit that you don't. That's the problem with blanket statements.

If you alter anything even by a fraction of micro percentage you would have a universe unfit for life.

Unfit for life as we understand it. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

God could have made anything but he wanted to make this/us specifically. And to make us the universe has to be exactly like this without any margin for any kind of error or mistake.

So there are things god cannot do, and therefore he is not all powerful. Cool.

[Sword of Christ]

Well, you don't know that life couldn't have arisen through other sets of circumstances

We do know it wouldn't, how would you evolve life in a universe without stars and planets? No liquid water? No matter? You only get all this stuff if it's a an exact certain way. Fiddle with any of the knobs and what formed wouldn't form it wouldn't be a universe fit for life.

, so this point is moot anyway, but I like that you're positing a god that isn't omnipotent, though: if there's something he cannot do...

If you gave God the parts to build a plastic plane and told him he had to build a tank only using those exact parts then he wouldn't be able to make a tank. It doesn't mean there's a limit to his power.

[Esquilax]

We do know it wouldn't, how would you evolve life in a universe without stars and planets? No liquid water?

How do you intend to categorically exclude the possibility of spacefaring life? I mean, you did just say this is scientifically provable.

No matter? You only get all this stuff if it's a an exact certain way. Fiddle with any of the knobs and what formed wouldn't form it wouldn't be a universe fit for life.

More assertions with nothing backing them up. You haven't demonstrated a single damn thing.

If you gave God the parts to build a plastic plane and told him he had to build a tank only using those exact parts then he wouldn't be able to make a tank. It doesn't mean there's a limit to his power.

Yes actually, it does: power without limit means that he could do literally anything. If you can present him with a subject in which he cannot do some things, that means that he's limited in what he can do. That's just definitionally true.

[Sword of Christ]

How do you intend to categorically exclude the possibility of spacefaring life? I mean, you did just say this is scientifically provable.

Life could originate in space and plant itself on suitable planets for all we know, that's called panspermia. We don't actually know but certainly from what we can see complex life requires a stable environment, an energy source and billions of years. These conditions can only exist in a universe that is identical to this, you can't change something and it will still work.

More assertions with nothing backing them up.

Everything we know about the universe through science backs these point up. For instance matter only exists because there was a slight imbalance between matter and anti-matter at the moment the universe came into existence. Had the balance been exactly even both matter and ant-matter would have annihilated each other and no physical matter would exist. You also need matter that forms itself into a stable form and structure, mess around with the speed of the universes expansion or the law of gravity and this wouldn't happen. These aren't assertions this just what we know, this is how the universe is. Certainly had it been different and life not exist we wouldn't be here to notice it that is a small point, this is therefore the only universe living beings will ever notice they exist within. But that doesn't mean the natural balance required for life isn't a very precise knife edge balance. You have life one way and no other.

You haven't demonstrated a single damn thing.

I've explained how the universe actually is in reality, it's an observation. You don't need to demonstrate what you can see and what is already known.

Yes actually, it does: power without limit means that he could do literally anything.

If there is only one way to create a universe with free living beings in it then you can't make it any other way and still have free living beings in it. That's nothing to do with God not being omnipotent just what he would need to create in order to attain whatever outcome he specifically had in mind.

If you can present him with a subject in which he cannot do some things, that means that he's limited in what he can do. That's just definitionally true.

If there is one way to do something specifically then that's the way you have to do it. If God wanted to build a plastic plane he will use plastic planes parts, if he wants to build a plastic tank he would use plastic tank parts. There are certain materials you need and a certain way of assembling the materials.

[Angrboda]

Everything we know about the universe through science backs these point up. For instance matter only exists because there was a slight imbalance between matter and anti-matter at the moment the universe came into existence. Had the balance been exactly even both matter and ant-matter would have annihilated each other and no physical matter would exist. You also need matter that forms itself into a stable form and structure, mess around with the speed of the universes expansion or the law of gravity and this wouldn't happen. These aren't assertions this just what we know, this is how the universe is. Certainly had it been different and life not exist we wouldn't be here to notice it that is a small point, this is therefore the only universe living beings will ever notice they exist within. But that doesn't mean the natural balance required for life isn't a very precise knife edge balance. You have life one way and no other.

In 2011, I published a popular-level book, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us. It investigated a common claim found in contemporary religious literature that the parameters of physics and cosmology are so delicately balanced, so “fine-tuned,” that any slight change and life in the universe would have been impossible. I concluded that while the precise form of life we find on Earth would not exist with slight changes in these parameters, some form of life could have evolved over a parameter range that is not infinitesimal, as often claimed.

The simplest solution to the fine-tuning problem, and the favorite among scientific experts, is that our universe is just one in a multitude of universes and we just happen to live in the one suited for us. While I fully respect this possibility, I have limited my investigation to a single universe. 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 ordersof 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 10E-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.

— Defending "The Fallacy of Fine Tuning", Victor Stenger, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu (retired)

(Emphasis added to original quotation of 'Sword of Christ'.)

[Esquilax]

Life could originate in space and plant itself on suitable planets for all we know, that's called panspermia. We don't actually know but certainly from what we can see complex life requires a stable environment, an energy source and billions of years. These conditions can only exist in a universe that is identical to this, you can't change something and it will still work.

How do you know? Have you factored in all the possible variations of life, or any of this? All these are just bare assertions, when the fact is we've barely scratched the surface of what's possible in the universe.

Everything we know about the universe through science backs these point up. For instance matter only exists because there was a slight imbalance between matter and anti-matter at the moment the universe came into existence. Had the balance been exactly even both matter and ant-matter would have annihilated each other and no physical matter would exist. You also need matter that forms itself into a stable form and structure, mess around with the speed of the universes expansion or the law of gravity and this wouldn't happen. These aren't assertions this just what we know, this is how the universe is. Certainly had it been different and life not exist we wouldn't be here to notice it that is a small point, this is therefore the only universe living beings will ever notice they exist within. But that doesn't mean the natural balance required for life isn't a very precise knife edge balance. You have life one way and no other.

So because these constants are conducive to life, and because we recognize that some changes to them would make them less conducive to life, you're asserting that this is therefore the only universe in which life could have emerged. This is not something you can say. First of all, you don't have any other universes to compare ours to, nor other potential variations of life, nor... anything, really. No data, means no justified conclusion.

All you can really say is that life, as you understand it, could only exist in this universe.But life as we understand it isn't the same thing as life in general: making the blanket claim that it's this universe or nothing is undercut by all the things you don't know.

I've explained how the universe actually is in reality, it's an observation. You don't need to demonstrate what you can see and what is already known.

Yeah, and everyone secretly believes you, I bet.

If there is only one way to create a universe with free living beings in it then you can't make it any other way and still have free living beings in it. That's nothing to do with God not being omnipotent just what he would need to create in order to attain whatever outcome he specifically had in mind.

But a god with no limits on his abilities would have been able to create a different kind of universe with life in it.

If there is one way to do something specifically then that's the way you have to do it. If God wanted to build a plastic plane he will use plastic planes parts, if he wants to build a plastic tank he would use plastic tank parts. There are certain materials you need and a certain way of assembling the materials.

I don't think you know what the word "limitless" means.

[Rev. Rye]

Well, Demons does exist. It's not one of Dostoevsky's better novels, but it's not horrible, especially if you read it in Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation.

[Minimalist]

I said it may be that God had another reason other than "This deity isn't smart", and likewise, it may be that God isn't being malevolent.

Far more likely is the proposition that god is a figment of your imagination.