fine tuning argument

[atrib]

I actually DO detect both categories of designed and undesigned.

Feel free to point out some examples of things in our universe that were not designed. And explain why these things appear not to be designed when you have also claimed that our entire universe was designed.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We need a list of things that vary on the comprehensibility scale also, going from fully comprehensible to incomprehensible, as comprehensibility has been claimed to be a measure of fine tuning. Both electrons and elephants are extremely complex to me. Where do each belong on the comprehensibility scale?

 

[skepticalbip]

We need a list of things that vary on the comprehensibility scale also, going from fully comprehensible to incomprehensible, as comprehensibility has been claimed to be a measure of fine tuning. Both electrons and elephants are extremely complex to me. Where do each belong on the comprehensibility scale?

Personally, I find elephants much more comprehensible than electrons. At least elephants conform to my human scale understanding of the universe. I can understand their color, mass, structure, behavior, that they obey Newton's laws, etc. Electrons are fuzzy, incomprehensible thingies, if they are indeed thingies. The only thing I understand about electrons is their behavior under specific given conditions.

 

[Lion IRC]

...Why would a system that had not been designed lack underlying, predictable principles that control how matter and energy interact?

How would we know it was "system"?

Answer - because it looks like a "system" as opposed to NOT a system.

..or don't you know the difference?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We need a list of things that vary on the comprehensibility scale also, going from fully comprehensible to incomprehensible, as comprehensibility has been claimed to be a measure of fine tuning. Both electrons and elephants are extremely complex to me. Where do each belong on the comprehensibility scale?

Personally, I find elephants much more comprehensible than electrons. At least elephants conform to my human scale understanding of the universe. I can understand their color, mass, structure, behavior, that they obey Newton's laws, etc. Electrons are fuzzy, incomprehensible thingies, if they are indeed thingies. The only thing I understand about electrons is their behavior under specific given conditions.

How do all those incomprehensible electrons fit into one comprehensible elephant?

 

[atrib]

...Why would a system that had not been designed lack underlying, predictable principles that control how matter and energy interact?

How would we know it was "system"?

Answer - because it looks like a "system" as opposed to NOT a system.

..or don't you know the difference?

So you cannot come up with a single reason to explain why the universe looks designed to you, or even tell us what the universe is fine tuned for. That's all right, because we already know. You read it in an old book.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

How would we know it was "system"?

Answer - because it looks like a "system" as opposed to NOT a system.

..or don't you know the difference?

So you cannot come up with a single reason to explain why the universe looks designed to you, or even tell us what the universe is fine tuned for. That's all right, because we already know. You read it in an old book.

Most of the space in the universe is not fine-tuned for life. It's fine tuned for non-life. It's as if you took one sand grain from Earth, and on one ten-thousandth of the surface area of that sand grain you found it to be colonized with bacteria. We could then still say that the Earth, despite outward appearances is fine tuned for life, and then the rest of the solar system and universe as well.

Or perhaps we should say that it's fine-tuned so as to appear not fine-tuned, so that we can still account for the fine tuner.

I think that covers everything.

 

[Kharakov]

Or perhaps we should say that it's fine-tuned so as to appear not fine-tuned, so that we can still account for the fine tuner.

I think that covers everything.

You assholes fall for everything.

I think someone figured out consciousnesses are assholes sometimes.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Planet Earth seems fine-tuned for the benefit of parasites.

 

[Kharakov]

Planet Earth seems fine-tuned for the benefit of parasites.

Parasites are potential symbiotic organisms. That's why you don't want to kill atheists or theists....

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I actually DO detect both categories of designed and undesigned.

Snowflakes, tornadoes, hurricanes all consist at a high level of order. Stars and planets as well. What you seem to be forgetting is that in between these items, there is a tremendous lack of order. Flip a coin long enough, and you'll get 10 heads in a row. The planet is billions of years old. That is a lot of time to flip a coin.

 

[atrib]

I actually DO detect both categories of designed and undesigned.

Snowflakes, tornadoes, hurricanes all consist at a high level of order. Stars and planets as well. What you seem to be forgetting is that in between these items, there is a tremendous lack of order. Flip a coin long enough, and you'll get 10 heads in a row. The planet is billions of years old. That is a lot of time to flip a coin.

He is yet to give us examples of things that he detects as not designed. He made an attempt early in this thread where he stated that sand dunes were not designed, explicitly to contrast sand dunes to a sand sculpture of Jesus that very clearly was. When it was pointed out that this violated his claim that the natural universe was designed and bore the appearance of being designed, he tried to walk it back by saying the creator did not intend to create sand dunes, but he/it did create sand to serve as the building block for humans, or something like that. At this point Lion IRC likely understands the contradictions inherent to his position, and has apparently abandoned any attempt to support his views.

It should also be noted that Lion IRC has not given us a reason as to why he believes the universe appears to be designed and fine tuned for life. He has simply asserted that it appears to be so.

 

[Kharakov]

Anyone who thinks the natural universe was not designed to look natural doesn't fucking get it. "De-signed".... anyways.

 

[Underseer]

Snowflakes, tornadoes, hurricanes all consist at a high level of order. Stars and planets as well. What you seem to be forgetting is that in between these items, there is a tremendous lack of order. Flip a coin long enough, and you'll get 10 heads in a row. The planet is billions of years old. That is a lot of time to flip a coin.

He is yet to give us examples of things that he detects as not designed. He made an attempt early in this thread where he stated that sand dunes were not designed, explicitly to contrast sand dunes to a sand sculpture of Jesus that very clearly was. When it was pointed out that this violated his claim that the natural universe was designed and bore the appearance of being designed, he tried to walk it back by saying the creator did not intend to create sand dunes, but he/it did create sand to serve as the building block for humans, or something like that. At this point Lion IRC likely understands the contradictions inherent to his position, and has apparently abandoned any attempt to support his views.

It should also be noted that Lion IRC has not given us a reason as to why he believes the universe appears to be designed and fine tuned for life. He has simply asserted that it appears to be so.

Isn't that always the case with teleological arguments?

They're really just elaborate argument from ignorance fallacy wrapped in a lot of flower rhetoric.

We know that watches are designed, not because they are complex, but because we have seen humans making them. Natural things can be simple or complex; created things can be simple or complex. Arguing "It's designed because it's complicated" is simply a nonsense argument that fails to provide a coherent test for determining if something is designed or not.

 

[Malintent]

I actually DO detect both categories of designed and undesigned.

Snowflakes, tornadoes, hurricanes all consist at a high level of order. Stars and planets as well. What you seem to be forgetting is that in between these items, there is a tremendous lack of order. Flip a coin long enough, and you'll get 10 heads in a row. The planet is billions of years old. That is a lot of time to flip a coin.

That is the argument I use... I accept any arbitrary value for the probability of the existence of "everything".
I then point out that the "coin flips" occur once every planck time (the smallest unit of subatomic causality - the speed of chemistry, as it were). these flips happen constantly, since shortly after the big bang.. about 16 billion years, give or take.

How many plank times in 16 billion years?

There are 1.855e+43 plank times in 1 second.
There are 3.154e+7 seconds in 1 year
There are 1.6e+10 years since (shortly after) the big bang

There were 8.0e+3010 Plank times (coin flips) since the beginning of the universe.

If someone says "the odds are a billion, billion to one" that X happened out of pure chance, then that means that X would have likely happened 8.0e+30 times (8.0e+3010 / 1.0e+100), which can said as "800 billion, billion times"

did I do that math right?

 

[bilby]

Snowflakes, tornadoes, hurricanes all consist at a high level of order. Stars and planets as well. What you seem to be forgetting is that in between these items, there is a tremendous lack of order. Flip a coin long enough, and you'll get 10 heads in a row. The planet is billions of years old. That is a lot of time to flip a coin.

That is the argument I use... I accept any arbitrary value for the probability of the existence of "everything".
I then point out that the "coin flips" occur once every planck time (the smallest unit of subatomic causality - the speed of chemistry, as it were). these flips happen constantly, since shortly after the big bang.. about 16 billion years, give or take.

How many plank times in 16 billion years?

There are 1.855e+43 plank times in 1 second.
There are 3.154e+7 seconds in 1 year
There are 1.6e+10 years since (shortly after) the big bang

There were 8.0e+3010 Plank times (coin flips) since the beginning of the universe.

If someone says "the odds are a billion, billion to one" that X happened out of pure chance, then that means that X would have likely happened 8.0e+30 times (8.0e+3010 / 1.0e+100), which can said as "800 billion, billion times"

did I do that math right?

No.

A billion billion is only 10¹⁸, not even close to 10¹⁰⁰ (Interestingly, a billion billion is of the same order of magnitude as the number of seconds since the Big Bang).

8x10³⁰¹⁰ / 10¹⁰⁰ = 8x10²⁹¹⁰

8x10³⁰¹⁰ / 10¹⁸ = 8x10²⁹⁹² (which is still too large a number to be comfortably said without exponential notation).

But that 3010 exponent is wrong too; the number of Planck times in 16 billion years is about 10⁶¹ (1.855x10⁴³ x 3.154x10⁷ x 1.6x10¹⁰ = 9.361x10⁶⁰; which is close enough to 10⁶¹ for government work).

10⁶¹ / 10¹⁸ = 10⁴³ which can be said as "ten million billion billion billion billion times".

So if someone says "the odds are a billion, billion to one" that X happened out of pure chance, then that means that X would have likely happened ten million billion billion billion billion times.

Although, of course, events are constrained by their environment - the odds of a coin coming up heads relies on earlier (possibly unlikely) events, that lead ultimately to at least one coin being minted and then flipped.

And the odds of a given quantum event - say a neutron decay - having occurred are those odds we just calculated, multiplied by the mean number of neutrons that have existed during the 1.6 billion year life of the universe, multiplied by the raw probability of a given neutron decaying, given 1.6 billion years to do so.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The half life of a naked neutron is 11 minutes.

 

[bilby]

The half life of a naked neutron is 11 minutes.

Na und?

 

[Kharakov]

The half life of a naked neutron is 11 minutes.

Back when I was a kid, we called neutrons that didn't decay because of peer pressure degenerates. Nowadays they just say they're part of neutron stars, but they're still a bunch of degenerate punks. <--de-k that U punk

 

[Malintent]

Thank you, Bilby. Much for me to re-learn about working with notation.