Atheism destroyed with a question

[Mister Agenda]

Sounds like an argument against design.

This all has to meticulously set up right from the moment of the creation in order to develop to the complex structure/order that would arrange itself into the form/s we see. Now if you take the human body (including the brain) what you're looking at there is the most complex object in the known universe and it took the universe 13.7 billion years of work to eventually craft this from initial explosion of energy/matter. This require extreme levels of very fine tuning indeed.

The 'math' used to determine this is based on nothing but assumptions. IF the universal constants could be significantly different AND they are essentially random and unrelated to each other such that the value of one doesn't depend on the value of another AND there are no other combinations of values for universal constants in which life like ours would be possible AND life unlike ours is also not possible in any of them AND this universe is the only roll of the dice for these particular values to have occurred (only one universe); THEN it's reasonable to conclude that the universe having properties suitable for the origin and sustenance of life is so against the odds as to be remarkable. But we don't know any of those things for sure with our sample size of one universe. On the contrary side, the 'flatness' of the universe supports the notion that the values of the physical constants may be quite constrained by physical necessity of the universe having a net energy budget of either practically or actually zero.

The argument that the universe's habitability is extremely unlikely is based on a thought experiment, not evidence.

[EvolutionKills]

Yes you do, for life to arise naturally. You need a very large and very old universe where improbable things happen all the time

The whole universe is a process that generated the structure and matter required to eventually form life in an orderly sequence or chain of events over time. This only works if the shit was fine tuned out of it right from the very start. God purposefully created the universe and he designed it in such a precise way as to guarantee the eventual natural product of life and the evolution of intelligence and civilization. It actually fits with the Genesis narrative quite well at least in general outline.

We are adapted to the universe, the universe is not made for us. Our universe is fine-tuned to create black holes, not life bearing worlds.

, by the very nature of it's size and age. These things are what we would expect to see from a universe where life has arisen naturally.

No it's what you would expect to see in a universe that was deliberately engineered by a supreme intelligence with a goal in mind. You really think this was non-intentional?

Life adapted to the environment, not vice versa. If this planet didn't support life, we simply would not be here to have this 'debate'.

God only needed one planet, he didn't need anything else.

He created the entire universe as a whole for life and intelligent life and we are among the intelligent forms of life. There will no doubt be countless others. It's not that the universe was created merely for humans unless you want to class all intelligent beings with language and culture and whatever as human.

Within our own solar system...

Mercury? Not fine tuned for life.

Venus? Not fine tuned for life.

Earth? Contains the thinnest slice of life along it's crust, like a thin coat of pain on a basketball.

Mars? Not fine tuned for life.

Asteroid belt? Not fine tuned for life.

Jupiter? Not fine tuned for life.

Saturn? Not fine tuned for life.

Uranus? Not fine tuned for life.

Neptune? Not fine tuned for life.

The hundreds of moons orbiting all of the planets? Not fine tuned for life.

God could have made the world as it is literally described in the Bible, enclosed by a solid firmament. Stars? Just decorations. No travel to the moon, it's just a light inside the firmament; as is the Sun. Solid sky, flat Earth. A downward force unrelated to mass. Heat and warmth could emanate from the sky, no giant ball of nuclear fussion needed. This was what people actually thought was the state of reality, until we learned better. All you're doing now is making another step back and a long line of steps back. First your god lost his home on top of the mountains, then the top of the firmament, no he no longer even exists on the planet. We made it to the moon, and now god exists outside of time and space. I guarantee if we ever manage to transcend or breach these limits and god is most assuredly found missing again, apologist will just move your god back another step.


To say that this universe is fine-tuned with us in mind belies a complete lack of imagination and abject scientific ignorance.

Every additional star, every additional planet, is a piece of evidence against the Abrahamic god.

No it just increases the sheer scale of what God created.

They are superfluous and unneeded by the entirely Earth centered Abrahamic religions. What does the Bible even say about the stars? Nothing more than that they are both beautiful and numerous. That's it. A child looking up at the sky can tell you just as much about the universe as your god did.

That ought to tell you something about the source of your religious texts.

But for argument's sake let's say god, for his own mysterious reasons, wants it all to run via nuclear fusion and stellar nucleosynthesis in the Sun; and photosynthesis on Earth. He still only need one star and one planet, anything beyond that would be window dressing.

He made the whole entire thing with the outcome of producing life such as humanity. He will then reveal himself to his creatures as he sees fit, as happened in our own case.

Then your god is wasteful and deceitful, creating a universe that generates more and more doubt the more you learn about it. Also, what evidence do you have that this god has revealed himself? The Bible isn't evidence. Personal revelation isn't evidence. Do you have anything that would convince a neutral observer, a skeptic, to the truth of your particular god-concept? I doubt it, and I've yet to see it.

In such an empty universe it would indeed seem the Earth was a special place, and the focus of creation; adding tremendous weight to the Earth centered religious beliefs But by that same token, if there were two suns that would bring the Earth centered religions into doubt. That would be doubly true if there were three suns; and for each addition sun after that the doubts grow.

It's unlikely binary or triple star systems would support complex life given the gravitational forces and erratic planetary orbits involved.

But an all-powerful god could have made it work, indeed he has to be able to by definition; you simply lack the imagination to entertain the concept.

If there were only one world it might be unreasonable to say that life exists on that one world by chance alone. For atheistic ideas to have any support, for it to be true that life arose by pure coincidence, conditions, and elements; there must be more than one sun. More than one roll of the dice. A universe with two suns helps the atheistic argument, but not by much. Three suns would only offer a slight improvement over that. The current estimates (linked to the research in the sidebar) suggest that there are seventy sextillion stars (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) in the observable universe alone; and very good reasons to believe that the actual universe is far, far... far, far, far larger. Seventy sextillion? Each one of these countless chances at life is an argument in favor of atheism;

You're misunderstanding that it is the universe God created, not just the Earth.

Evidence? Your claimed fine-tuning is not evidence, it's merely your ignorance, bias, and anthropocentrism generating an overlay that doesn't exists and has no evidence for.

at least in it's opposition to the Earth centered religions of Christianity and Islam.

Back in the day people thought the universe was quite small and the Earth was at the centre of it, but it was the universe as a whole God created. All that has changed is that the universe God created is far bigger than we understood. Also we're not at the physical centre but we can still be the centre of the overall natural process if this was the intention from the start.

Nope. The universe was created by Herbert.

I have just as much evidence for that assertion as you do for your god. Good luck with that.

[downbeatplumb]

Life can only exist within a narrow band due to it's structural and physical complexity that requires certain exact physical conditions to maintain.

This only relates to life like us but there is no reason why there can be other forms of life.

All that is really needed is a dynamic system and time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetica...ochemistry

Hypothetical types of biochemistry are forms of biochemistry speculated to be scientifically viable but not proven to exist at this time. While the kinds of living beings currently known on Earth commonly use carbon for basic structural and metabolic functions, water as a solvent and DNA or RNA to define and control their form, it may be possible that undiscovered life-forms could exist that differ radically in their basic structures and biochemistry from that known to science.

[Sword of Christ]

The 'math' used to determine this is based on nothing but assumptions.

The assumption/suggestion basically is that the universe was purposefully made for life, and by extension humanity\beings like humans from the beginning. Hence the quite extreme and alarming levels of fine tuning and all the complex processes of development that we can actually observe. This also ties in with the more traditional philosophical arguments of design, first cause, the unmoved mover and so on.

You don't necessarily have to tie it in with the Bible it will work with the Quran or any other claimed revelation but what matters is that is compatible. Not only compatible but would actually hint towards this basis of reality. I know this isn't not currently popular in scientific circles but the fine tuning argument is one of the strong points against atheism. I think there are stronger points but this is quite good. And of course it's fully compatible with evolution which is important. All these Young Earthers and whatever really ought to see this argument as it should address their concerns.

But we don't know any of those things for sure with our sample size of one universe.

You will just have to go on what you see and what you think it would likely imply, the obvious implication is that you're looking at something that was made by some kind of conscious intelligence such as our own albeit on a far greater level/scale. So the facts will fit the faith without any real conflict. They don't prove the faith but it's not bad, the argument worked a thousand years ago and it still works in light of what we now know.

On the contrary side, the 'flatness' of the universe supports the notion that the values of the physical constants may be quite constrained by physical necessity of the universe having a net energy budget of either practically or actually zero.

God didn't use energy to create the universe that was all created with the universe which was brought into existence along with time itself. So I think this is what you would expect.

The argument that the universe's habitability is extremely unlikely is based on a thought experiment, not evidence.

You can see the complexity and fine tuning of the universe required for the formation of life, and the overall structural formation over time as an elaborate process. The process goes from chaotic simplicity to well complex form and order. So we don't have an example of a universe God didn't create to compare it to but the scientific facts are interesting enough as they are. Certainly to engineer something on this scale you would need an immense amount of fine tuning, there is no margin for error or flexibility involved in any of the parameters. The universe could have been any kind of chaotic bollocks at all if it wasn't deliberate just a monkeys on typewriters kind of thing. Yes so some planets are suitable for life and some aren't it wasn't micromanaged to that extent, as long as even a small percentage of planets can do their job then the process will follow through to fruition and ultimately here we are.

[Mudhammam]

The Universe "knew" we were coming as much as each individual cell that comprises the cell-nest that is your body "knew" "YOU" were coming (sperm aside). Fine-tuning in the Universe is interesting. God is not. The two are not inseparable.

[Mister Agenda]

[quote='Mister Agenda' pid='601225' dateline='1392054612']

The 'math' used to determine this is based on nothing but assumptions.

The assumption/suggestion basically is that the universe was purposefully made for life, and by extension humanity\beings like humans from the beginning.

Not even keeping up appearances of being scientific anymore, eh? If that's the assumption, it's not even an argument, just a declaration.

But for the math, the assumption is that the universal constants aren't actually contant and could have had other values if they were determined randomly when the universe formed. The only thing the math lacks is evidence that the constants are variable or determined randomly.

Hence the quite extreme and alarming levels of fine tuning and all the complex processes of development that we can actually observe.

That is an extreme and alarmingly odd thing to say. What's extreme and alarming about it?

This also ties in with the more traditional philosophical arguments of design, first cause, the unmoved mover and so on.

The fact that we're in a universe that doesn't require supernatural intervention to explain our existence isn't evidence that supernatural intervention is required to explain its existence. Quite the opposite, if our existence required supernatural explanation, it would make the probability for a supernatural explanation for the universe more likely, as the existence of valid supernatural explanations would be established. If follows that our existence not requiring supernatural explanation doesn't add to the probability of the universe requiring one.

You don't necessarily have to tie it in with the Bible it will work with the Quran or any other claimed revelation but what matters is that is compatible. Not only compatible but would actually hint towards this basis of reality. I know this isn't not currently popular in scientific circles but the fine tuning argument is one of the strong points against atheism. I think there are stronger points but this is quite good. And of course it's fully compatible with evolution which is important. All these Young Earthers and whatever really ought to see this argument as it should address their concerns.

If this is what theists consider a strong point for the existence of God, they apparently are quite aware of the thinness of the ice of their reasoning. Fine tuning is a terribly flawed argument...but I do think that it currently is your most convincing one, in the sense that it's convincing if you don't think about it too much.

Though I give you props for not being a creationist, at least you're not denying the nose on your face.

You will just have to go on what you see and what you think it would likely imply, the obvious implication is that you're looking at something that was made by some kind of conscious intelligence such as our own albeit on a far greater level/scale.

You're mixing your presumptions with your observations and conclusions.

So the facts will fit the faith without any real conflict. They don't prove the faith but it's not bad, the argument worked a thousand years ago and it still works in light of what we now know.

Yes, constantly adjusting 'the revealed truth' to fit the actual facts is a smart meme survival strategy. The more a religion does this, the less harm it causes, IMHO.

God didn't use energy to create the universe that was all created with the universe which was brought into existence along with time itself. So I think this is what you would expect.

What I expect is that after the fact, various theists will adjust their beliefs and proclaim the findings of science were what they expected all along. They just never come out and say so in advance of the science. And it simply doesn't follow from anything that an omnipotent creator has to make a universe where the energy adds up to zero. This is the fundamental problem with the fine-tuning argument: fine-tuning is superfluous to omnipotence.

You can see the complexity and fine tuning of the universe required for the formation of life, and the overall structural formation over time as an elaborate process. The process goes from chaotic simplicity to well complex form and order. So we don't have an example of a universe God didn't create to compare it to but the scientific facts are interesting enough as they are. Certainly to engineer something on this scale you would need an immense amount of fine tuning, there is no margin for error or flexibility involved in any of the parameters.

Keep repeating how self-evident it is that you're right. It's a great argument.

The universe could have been any kind of chaotic bollocks at all if it wasn't deliberate just a monkeys on typewriters kind of thing.

That's the claim of the strong fine-tuning argument. There's absolutely no evidence that this is the case.

Yes so some planets are suitable for life and some aren't it wasn't micromanaged to that extent, as long as even a small percentage of planets can do their job then the process will follow through to fruition and ultimately here we are.

The only thing we disagree on here is that any 'micromanaging' was required at all.

[Sword of Christ]

The 'math' used to determine this is based on nothing but assumptions.

God created the universe as an understandable mathematical construct so he essentially created maths, what we are able to understand mathematically. So there wouldn't be much of a point trying to bring maths into it. The maths you have is the maths for a fine tuned universe.

But we don't know any of those things for sure with our sample size of one universe. On the contrary side, the 'flatness' of the universe supports the notion that the values of the physical constants may be quite constrained by physical necessity of the universe having a net energy budget of either practically or actually zero.

God created energy with the universe he didn't use energy to create the universe. How he creates all this I don't know perhaps it's within his minds eye or something.

The argument that the universe's habitability is extremely unlikely is based on a thought experiment, not evidence.

It just looks very much like a deliberate process of formation from a simple to a complex state of form from the big bang at the start, all the materials and structures that formed and the ultimate outcome of the extreme complete of life and the human brain itself. It seems reasonable to suggest that God does in fact exist, certainly a God. It's possible that this God didn't reveal himself and what we made up happened to fit with what actually exists. It's also possible that the revelation we have is the revelation from the same God.

[Mister Agenda]

Math is how we describe the universe. In a different universe in which intelligent life could still exist, they would just invent different math to describe that universe.

The evidence suggests that no energy was created with the universe, it's a case of 1+1-2=0. But I'm sure the actual case being the opposite of what you imagine God did won't phase you in the slightest: you'll just change the story to claim that no net energy is what you'd expect if God did it. I don't usually put words in people's mouths, but you seem very predictable on this count.

It was reasonable for primitive people who knew squat about natural causes to posit that a being like them, only much more powerful and invisible, was the sender of things out of their control like earthquakes and rain. It's a simple idea that has stuck with us, that doesn't make it reasonable to suggest in a modern age when we know that the only causes we've ever found for anything over thousands of years have been natural ones.

It's your right to believe in whatever version of God you find most plausible. If it was reasonable, it wouldn't require faith.

[Cato]

God created the universe as an understandable mathematical construct so he essentially created maths,...

Without a doubt. This is why the works of Euclid, Descartes, Newton, Fourier, Euler, and Riemann are among my favorite books of the Bible.

[MindForgedManacle]

And SoC seems to have really given up and resorted to magic. Didn't see that coming...