fine tuning argument

[Methinx]

Creationists always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things.

I remember naturalist David Attenborough saying :
‘But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that's going to make him blind.

‘“Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all- merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child’s eyeball? Because that doesn't seem to me to coincide with a God who's full of mercy.”’

To imagine, design and create such a worm one must be pretty sick in the head.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

But doesn't the problem of the "fine tuner's" origin bother them?

Sent from my HP 10 Plus using Tapatalk

Clearly it doesn't. Have you never argued with a theist over the whole "origin" issue?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The whole zoo of horrifying parasites seems to doom the whole intelligent design movement also.


Parasite of the day Blogspot for you.

http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/

 

[Kharakov]

The whole zoo of horrifying parasites seems to doom the whole intelligent design movement also.

You're not assuming that every intelligent being has the exact same goals at all times, are you? Or should I assume you only like to talk about the woo ID movement?

If you decay, I kid you knot.

 

[Underseer]

The whole zoo of horrifying parasites seems to doom the whole intelligent design movement also.


Parasite of the day Blogspot for you.

http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/

The life cycle of parasites leads to only one conclusion: if life is designed, then the designer delights in the suffering of animals.

Oh, but the theist says that suffering exists to make our souls more moral. Well great, then this means that God is more concerned with the development of animal souls than with human souls, as He is making them suffer far more than humans do.

Then they switch to saying "It's because of the fall," but think about what that implies. God is punishing animals far more than He is punishing humans, he is punishing them for something supposedly done by a human who died thousands of years ago, and none of the animals are remotely capable of understanding what it is they are being punished for, never mind that through most of human history, most humans had no idea how much the animals were being punished. If animals suffer because of the fall, then god is incredibly malevolent.

 

[bilby]

The whole zoo of horrifying parasites seems to doom the whole intelligent design movement also.


Parasite of the day Blogspot for you.

http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/

The life cycle of parasites leads to only one conclusion: if life is designed, then the designer delights in the suffering of animals.

Oh, but the theist says that suffering exists to make our souls more moral. Well great, then this means that God is more concerned with the development of animal souls than with human souls, as He is making them suffer far more than humans do.

Then they switch to saying "It's because of the fall," but think about what that implies. God is punishing animals far more than He is punishing humans, he is punishing them for something supposedly done by a human who died thousands of years ago, and none of the animals are remotely capable of understanding what it is they are being punished for, never mind that through most of human history, most humans had no idea how much the animals were being punished. If animals suffer because of the fall, then god is incredibly malevolent.

Not if the animals in question are talking snakes.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The life cycle of parasites leads to only one conclusion: if life is designed, then the designer delights in the suffering of animals.

Oh, but the theist says that suffering exists to make our souls more moral. Well great, then this means that God is more concerned with the development of animal souls than with human souls, as He is making them suffer far more than humans do.

Then they switch to saying "It's because of the fall," but think about what that implies. God is punishing animals far more than He is punishing humans, he is punishing them for something supposedly done by a human who died thousands of years ago, and none of the animals are remotely capable of understanding what it is they are being punished for, never mind that through most of human history, most humans had no idea how much the animals were being punished. If animals suffer because of the fall, then god is incredibly malevolent.

Not if the animals in question are talking snakes.

I'm pretty certain JJ Abrams wrote the bible. The Story of The Fall involves a crafty and talking serpent. No indication in the Second Story of Creation that any of the animals were anything but animals. So JJ Abrams just decides to push the plot along with this talking / crafty snake. And don't get me started with Cain and Abel, where Cain fears reprisal for (spoiler alert) the murder he committed via a population that just magically comes into existence. Once again, JJ Abrams just making shit up to push along his plot.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I have read about the fine tuning argument and assume all of you are familiar with its contents.

I have read that the fine tune believers claim that statistically speaking, out of all potential universes, more than likely we would have one where the most advanced particles of matter would be a hydrogen and helium atom, and that these would never be able to merge together to form anything like stars and so forth.

If this is this case, and theoretically speaking the universe had gone that way purely by chance, what would stop the hydrogen and helium atoms from deciding among themselves that the universe had been fine tuned for them and miraculously made by a god for them? Of course it is silly to think helium and hydrogen atoms could think or talk but I think you get my point.

The problem is that once you introduce hydrogen atoms the argument is done for. Hydrogen atoms form because the universe has physical rules to it. These same rules result in helium atoms being formed and in all elements eventually being formed, etc. How you can introduce a universe that has hydrogen atoms, and thus things like electrons and protons, electromagnetic attraction, quantum mechanical energy states, etc. and not get the rest is the question.

The universe doesn't work randomly. There are 'rules'. If I hold a ball up in my hand and let go, which direction will it fall? There are an infinite number of directions it could fall, yet it always falls down. The statistical probability that it will always fall down whenever I drop it is essentially zero in a random universe. A statistical argument for the universe is dead on arrival.

As for "fine-tuning", we can't know if things are "fine-tuned" without knowing what the mechanism would be for the tuning. We don't know if the things they think are "tuned" are actually tunable.

Whether the "rules" of the universe were created by some "Creator" or not, who knows? If they were, then I am comfortable in believing that that Creator is a gajillion times smarter and cleverer than the ones represented by any human mythology or story book and couldn't care less about the goings-on of humans.

 

[Malintent]

The whole zoo of horrifying parasites seems to doom the whole intelligent design movement also.


Parasite of the day Blogspot for you.

http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/

"the fall". Checkmate!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So if I flip a coin 20 times, the odds of the sequence I have observed are very very slight. Therefore I intended for that sequence? I see fine tuning in the universe likewise. Just because it is 'just so', doesn't mean the laws governing nature weren't contingent on each other in the first place.

The whole zoo of horrifying parasites seems to doom the whole intelligent design movement also.


Parasite of the day Blogspot for you.

http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/

"the fall". Checkmate!

"The Fall" according to the New Testament that is. The Fall itself only indicates farming will be a bitch, snakes will be ankle biters, and birth will be a pain (What's birth? Oh yeah, you'll lust after men first. Then comes the birth.).

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

God punishing animals with horrendous parasites because man ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has to be one of the most insane religious ideas ever. It makes the oh so good god out to be a sadistic monsnter of overwhelming evil. but, hey, don't let me stop the christians from making that claim.

 

[Lion IRC]

Fine tuning claims are the same as creation or intelligent design or irreducible complexity claims, they all presuppose what they're attempting to demonstrate. They're exercises in question begging.

If that were true then those who make claims to the contrary - the opponents of fine tuning - must be doing the same thing in the opposite direction.

How can you refute their supposed design presuppositions without doing some 'presupposing' of your own?

#goose_gander. #pot_kettle

 

[Keith&Co.]

How can you refute their supposed design presuppositions without doing some 'presupposing' of your own?

Same way you deal with any whackadoodle claim. Ask for their evidence or their line of argument and point out the holes.

"I have a unicorn at the bottom of my garden."
"Show me."

"Leprechauns killed Kennedy."
"Yeah, show me the picture."

"The universe is custom-made for human life."
"Earth is the only planet in the solar system that would support life without a serious amount of technology, and even there, we can't live above a certain altitude or latitude without tech, we can't live on 3/4ths of the surface, same... So explain to me how an entire universe was created so we could toil in this teeny tiny sliver of certain habitats..."

 

[Lion IRC]

I have read that the fine tune believers claim that statistically speaking, out of all potential universes, more than likely we would have one where the most advanced particles of matter would be a hydrogen and helium atom, and that these would never be able to merge together to form anything like stars and so forth.

Well, I don't think THAT is a fine-tuning argument. In that statement, they're saying that the complexity of the universe can only be explained by divine action.
Not sure where they get these statistics, though. How many universes have they observed coming into being to figure out how often we get a H&H universe and nothing greater, without divine assistance?

It's not so much that we've observed previous or different universes, but rather that we can tell the difference between finely tuned, life-permitting conditions and their alternatives.

As braces_for_impact rightly noted, there are gazzilians of places in the universe and here on Earth which demonstrate the stark contrast between those places where life can and cannot exist. The latter far outnumber the former.

Another way of looking at this issue is that we, as observers, can tell the difference between a sand dune and a sand sculpture.

Thus the potency of the fine tuning argument rests not so much in the fact that we detect 'fine tuning' but that we detect a difference between fine tuning and the absence of fine tuning.

This -


and this -

 

[Keith&Co.]

It's not so much that we've observed previous or different universes, but rather that we can tell the difference between finely tuned, life-permitting conditions and their alternatives.

As braces_for_impact rightly noted, there are gazzilians of places in the universe and here on Earth which demonstrate the stark contrast between those places where life can and cannot exist. The latter far outnumber the former.

But if they recognize the number of places that life cannot exist, then the fine-tuning argument gets a bit silly.
aside from the deserts and the seas and high altitude and Antarctic and etc, aside from all that, the few places left where we can scrape out a living, THOSE are fine-tuned for us.

Another way of looking at this issue is that we, as observers, can tell the difference between a sand dune and a sand sculpture.

Except that there are plenty of people who go to the museum of modern art and complain that the art there, which we know to have been designed, does not look like 'art' to them. "Buncha squiggly damn lines" or "did he paint this or did his cat knock over a paint can?"

The appearance of design is not a useful measure. Rather, determine beforehand how one would detect design, THEN try it out and see if it holds up in the field.

 

[jonatha]

It's not so much that we've observed previous or different universes, but rather that we can tell the difference between finely tuned, life-permitting conditions and their alternatives. ...

This is Paley's pocketwatch argument, and fails for the same reason - he claims the existence of the watch proves the creator while the existence of the rock does not, while simultaneously claiming the rock was also created...

 

[skepticalbip]

Well, I don't think THAT is a fine-tuning argument. In that statement, they're saying that the complexity of the universe can only be explained by divine action.
Not sure where they get these statistics, though. How many universes have they observed coming into being to figure out how often we get a H&H universe and nothing greater, without divine assistance?

It's not so much that we've observed previous or different universes, but rather that we can tell the difference between finely tuned, life-permitting conditions and their alternatives.

As braces_for_impact rightly noted, there are gazzilians of places in the universe and here on Earth which demonstrate the stark contrast between those places where life can and cannot exist. The latter far outnumber the former.

Another way of looking at this issue is that we, as observers, can tell the difference between a sand dune and a sand sculpture.

Thus the potency of the fine tuning argument rests not so much in the fact that we detect 'fine tuning' but that we detect a difference between fine tuning and the absence of fine tuning.

I hope that you do realize that this is a great example of a Post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. You are just putting us on hoping we don't catch on, aren't you?

ETA:
I don't question that you truly believe but the only reasonable explanation to others for why you have faith is, "I believe because I believe". Anything more is just listing things that you believe. Trying to prove the unprovable only looks like desperation.

 

[atrib]

Thus the potency of the fine tuning argument rests not so much in the fact that we detect 'fine tuning' but that we detect a difference between fine tuning and the absence of fine tuning.

This -
View attachment 6747

and this -
View attachment 6748

As you stated, the sand dune (which is part of the the natural universe we observe around us) does not appear to be fine tuned, while the sand sculpture does. This contradicts the usual creationist claim that the natural universe has the appearance of fine tuning. So which is it? Is the universe fine tuned or not?

The vast majority of the universe that we can observe is inhospitable to life. In fact, the vast majority of the planet we live on is inhospitable to life. It would be foolish to argue that the universe was fine tuned for life in light of these facts. Life exists because the conditions on Earth permit it to exist. In a couple of billion years as our sun starts to transition into the red giant phase of its existence, this will no longer be true, and life will disappear from this planet. In other words, the pot-hole on the road was not designed to accommodate a puddle of water of a given geometry, the puddle simply assumes the shape of the hole. No matter how fervently you, an inhabitant of said puddle (if you were a tadpole or a microbe that lives in the puddle), fervently believe that the pot-hole was created for the express purpose of housing you.

 

[Atheos]

The sand pictures actually do more to discredit FTA than anything else. Everything we've discovered about the universe (and that encompasses a lot) has demonstrated that things behave predictably, as if they are not being manipulated by some unseen entity. As but a single example, rocket scientists don't have to account for the "God factor" when they make calculations to bring a satellite into proximity of an object in space. If there are unknown factors they become known during the process and never, ever does the unknown factor turn out to be a god. That's a pretty big 0-fer.

FTA is the equivalent of saying my ceramic tiled shower is fine tuned with the intention of producing mildew. The reality is that in spite of our best efforts mildew occasionally surfaces in some crevice or other. FTA is about as full of hubris as any argument human beings could ever hope to muster.

 

[atrib]

It's not so much that we've observed previous or different universes, but rather that we can tell the difference between finely tuned, life-permitting conditions and their alternatives. ...

This is Paley's pocketwatch argument, and fails for the same reason - he claims the existence of the watch proves the creator while the existence of the rock does not, while simultaneously claiming the rock was also created...

And Jonatha made the same argument I did, only much more succinctly.