Fine tuning argument assessed

[Sword of Christ]

We do live in a life prohibiting universe.

We don't live in a life prohibiting universe if we're alive. Because multicellular life is complicated it has complex requirements and it will only survive where local conditions allow but there will be plenty of planets like this one out there, life at the microbial level at least could even be very widespread and found just about everywhere. So the fine tuning argument holds up very well else you will with a straight face have to claim that all this complexity arouse by pure chance/blind luck.

The sad thing is that so many are seduced by the fine-tuning bullshit. Largely because people don't understand probability

This universe/life within it doesn't seem a bit improbable to you? It's as unlikely a thing you could possibly imagine, it just seems normal because you're used to the idea of being alive, you're used to a universe with the requirements that allow you to live.

, but also partly because, as most often stated, it's simply a lie.

We know we exist and we know the universe is utterly precisely fine tunned to allow for it. This all deserves a good explanation I'd suggest one that has intention/purpose. There is an explanation that would fit, it's an old explanation but it's still good.

We can't say that the universe is fine-tuned for life.

Well it wouldn't sustain life if anything was even slightly out out of balance in the mechanics of it so that's the fine tuning we notice. It's real enough it just depends on how you would like to account for it. You're saying it was unintentional somehow, hmmmm, well ok, that's sort of remotely possible, seems kind of unlikely but you never know

It might be narrowly tuned for life as we know it

You could have silicon based life but this would require the same amount of fine tuning as carbon based life so it makes no difference.

but nobody knows what forms life in the general can take

You can have carbon based life and silicon based life, scientifically we know what could work in potential.

, so there's no way to honestly assert that we even know what conditions are required for life, plural.

You need planets, you need stars, you need a liquid solvent (water in the case of carbon based life) you need stable conditions over a long period of time. All of this required precise fine tuning.

As typically stated, it's simply a lie and a misrepresentation.

It's an honest observation of the physical universe as it really is in fact as revealed by science. They made same the argument before modern science and we can make the same argument now fully enhanced by modern science.

[Ryantology]

A fine-tuned universe argues against an omnipotent god, who would not need to rely on any kind of tuning to get the results he wanted and has no reason to needlessly resort to such a system.

[Tonus]

Well it wouldn't sustain life if anything was even slightly out out of balance in the mechanics of it so that's the fine tuning we notice.

So if the universe was "tuned" even slightly differently than now, god would not be able to create life in it?

[max-greece]

Sword,

I haven't responded to your last few posts as there are just too many assumptions and flat unsupported statements to deal with in a single post.

That having been said here are a few things to contemplate:

1. The universe appears to be almost entirely life prohibiting at the moment. There is no evidence of life anywhere other than on this planet and as a proportion of the whole that is a tiny percentage. I'd guess something in the region of 10^(-25)% of the whole.
2.The improbability of life appears to be supported in 1, above. If this is the only place in the universe with life on it then we are looking for a very improbable set of factors being in place for it to form.
3. The argument that the universe is fine tuned for life seems to be massively less likely than life adapting to the universe in which it finds itself, when possible. As in 2 and 3 above that happens exceedingly rarely.
4. We have no idea if a different universe with different properties could sustain life - particularly at the tiny rates this universe appears to. That life may be unrecognisable to us but still able to ask the question "what are the odds of our universe exiting?"
5. We can't make any statements as to what life in a different universe might require. It may be working with a different number of dimensions and different laws of physics.
6. Even if you could argue that the universe was designed to support life you are still a long way from showing it was designed for us. We could still be a byproduct ina universe designed to support single cellular organisms.
7. Nothing you have stated to date is anything other than cherry-picking bits on the outlying edges of scientific hypotheisis. There simply isn't a shred of evidence for any of it beyond distorted philosophical ideas.

[Sword of Christ]

So if the universe was "tuned" even slightly differently than now, god would not be able to create life in it?

God create life by tuning the universe to produce life through the generation the necessary materials and organised structures. Galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets.



You can see here all the various process of formation.









The evolution of life and the arrival of intelligent life and civilization is part of this overall process, the big bang begins with a simple chaotic state and then complex structure over time via all the processes here were formed. The human body is the apex of this whole entire process of formation, the most complex end product. This was a deliberately engineered product which was formed through the universe as we are part of the universe.

[Tonus]

So if the universe was "tuned" even slightly differently than now, god would not be able to create life in it?

God create life by tuning the universe to produce life through the generation the necessary materials and organised structures. Galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets.

You didn't answer the question. Had the parameters been changed, would god have been unable to create life?

[downbeatplumb]

God create life by tuning the universe to produce life through the generation the necessary materials and organised structures. Galaxies, stars, solar systems and planets.

You didn't answer the question. Had the parameters been changed, would god have been unable to create life?

The fine tuning arguments main failing is that in order to try and prove its point it only ever changes one property in isolation.

The problem with this is that one change would have an effect on the others.

http://journalofcosmology.com/Anthropic101.html

In the context of the anthropic principle, we have examined three possibilities which might suggest that nuclear forces in the world are "tuned for intelligent life". First, it was once feared that an increase in the strength of the nuclear force by even a few percent could cause all of the hydrogen in the Big Bang to bind into the diproton (i.e. He2 ). This would cause the lightest helium isotope to be stable, and such an outcome could effectively destroy hydrogen, thereby precluding intelligent life. However, this fear has been significantly softened by detailed models. The models indicate that even if the nuclear force is altered by a factor in excess of 100 percent, a significant amount of hydrogen survives. Thus, the tuning (if it exists) which preserves hydrogen in the Big Bang (thereby preparing the way for life), can hardly be considered "fine tuning". Second, if the diproton were in fact to be stable, then the p-p chain in the Sun would proceed some 18 orders of magnitude faster than it does in our world. This led to the fear that the Sun would evolve so rapidly, on scales of millions of years, that there might be not enough time for any life (let alone intelligent life) to evolve. But again, detailed models have softened the blow here also. It is true that an object of one solar mass would burn up all its hydrogen within a few times 107 years. But one then simply shifts attention to the evolution of a lower mass star (e.g. 0.22 solar masses) to find an object which radiates with the luminosity of the current Sun, and which has a hydrogen-burning lifetime of several billion years. On a planet orbiting at 1 AU around such a star, the environmental conditions could be essentially identical to our Earth, even if the diproton were stable. Thus, in the context of stellar evolution, the nuclear force strength does not appear to be tuned to any significant extent for intelligent life.

The strongest evidence for "tuning" of the nuclear force in our world emerges from a study of the relative abundances of C and O. Because resonant levels are involved, even slight shifts, of order 0.5%, in the strength of the nuclear force can alter the C/O ratio by factors of 10 or more, up or down relative to the current value. Such alterations could lead to quite different biochemical molecules from those which exist in our world: the potential impact of such different biomolecules on the development of intelligent life remains an interesting and open question.

[Mister Agenda]

We live in a life-eradicating universe that is not 100% successful...yet.

[hatsoff]

This universe/life within it doesn't seem a bit improbable to you?

Improbable in what sense?

Granted, the appearance of life on earth seems like a very improbable occurrence given what we know of the conditions at the time. But that's not what fine tuning is about. Instead, fine tuning regards the formation of the universe, not the formation of life on earth. We know very little about the formation of the universe. I don't have an probabilities to assign to it, and neither do scientists. All they can do is point to how relatively tiny are the life-permitting ranges for the physical constants. But they have no way to overlay probability distributions on those ranges. That's why philosophers like Robin Collins have to develop machinery (namely, a suitable principle of indifference) to do it themselves---because there is no science behind it.

[Sword of Christ]

You didn't answer the question. Had the parameters been changed, would god have been unable to create life?

Not human life as you require a fine tuned universe for it but he could make other kinds of being in some other layer existence like say the celestial hierarchy of angels.



Christ at the centre there.