Fine Tuning Of The Universe

[Era Might]

14 minutes ago, Josh said:

Yeah I agree but the numbers had to be so extremely fine tuned for the universe to even expand or stars form. For evolution to even be possible. The multiverse is the only explanation unless science and numbers don't mean anything and there all just a construct of the human mind. From what I read and listen to that seems not to be the case. Numbers and math are real and legit. I see where you're coming from and I agree that we can't know God by viewing him as some scientist. But for a long time I always saw atheist throw science in believers face to prove God doesn't exist. And a lot of times they were probably justified because a lot of Christians are scientifically ignorant. But as far as the fine tuning or there being a multiverse it seems it's one or the other. A third possibility being the laws and constants just had to be this way. It's the only way they could be. But from what I read and hear from both sides this isn't the case. The laws and constants could of been anything.

I think my main thought on this is that religion and science are different modes of thought. Religion is pre-scientific. Yesterday I was reading the end of John's Gospel and was struck by Pilate's question to Jesus, what is truth? I think Pilate thought like a good lawyer and philosopher. Before he asks about truth, he asks about Jesus, whether he is a king, but then he switches his question from Jesus to philosophy. I don't think this is a coincidence...Pilate asked a good philosophical and scientific question, what is truth? But his question goes down as eternal irony, because that is the wrong question to ask. He had it right the first time...not what is truth, but who are you, Jesus? Christians lose their God when they try to fit him into modes of thought (philosophy, science, law, etc.) that have nothing to do with religion.

Quote

Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally; And you are filled in him, who is the head of all principality and power.

--Colossians 2:8-10

12 minutes ago, Credo in Deum said:

What a load dribble. The web is a sign that there is intellegence. It's order suggest a creator. If you walked by a web you would observe that a being made it and that it did not make itself. Spiders, while not very intelligent, display some intelligence through their hunting. Maybe you've heard of Portia the jumping spider? 

Pfft. I don't view God as some divine plumber who fixes poo as it goes along. He is constantly in control of what is taking place. He didn't just created and sit back to watch it unfold. Nothing, no matter how small, is done without Him. You should read Fulton Sheen's book "Old Errors and New Labels".  He addresses many errors commonly held by you and by many today..  

A God who is "constantly in control" is even worse than an intelligent designer. If God loves the world, as John says, and saw that it was good, as Genesis says, then he is certainly not in control, because control has nothing to do with love. The husband who is "constantly in control" of his wife is jealous and domineering. No, I can't believe in a God who is "constantly in control." I prefer a God who abandons his own son on a cross, out of love for humanity, than a God who seeks to control and order everything by good argument and good design.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Era Might

[Credo in Deum]

18 minutes ago, Era Might said:

I think my main thought on this is that religion and science are different modes of thought. Religion is pre-scientific. Yesterday I was reading the end of John's Gospel and was struck by Pilate's question to Jesus, what is truth? I think Pilates thought like a lawyer and philosopher. Before he asks about truth, he asks about Jesus, whether he is a king, but then he switches his question from Jesus to philosophy. I don't think this is a coincidence...Pilate asked a good philosophical and scientific question, what is truth? But his question goes down as eternal irony, because that is the wrong question to ask. He had it right the first time...not what is truth, but who are you, Jesus? Christians lose their God when they try to fit him into modes of thought (philosophy, science, law, etc.) that have nothing to do with religion.

 

 

The significance of Pilate's question is that Christ, who is Truth itself, revealed Himself to Pilate so Pilate could make the right choice as a judge. Yet Pilate, instead of accepting Truth, chose to take the path of relativism. He chose this path because to pick Christ would be an inconvenience to him.  When Pilate responds with "what is turth?" Christ stops talking to him because a man who doesn't accept truth when it's revealed is no longer worth speaking to.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Credo in Deum

[Era Might]

19 minutes ago, Credo in Deum said:

What a load dribble. The web is a sign that there is intellegence. It's order suggest a creator. If you walked by a web you would observe that a being made it and that it did not make itself. Spiders, while not very intelligent, display some intelligence through their hunting. Maybe you've heard of Portia the jumping spider? 

Ok, so in your world of ordered design why did God create spiders? To be symbols of order for man? Why did he create poisonous spiders? Why did he create mosqitoes? To annoy and harass man? Why did he create mosqitoes that carry disease? To punish man? Why did he create rats and cockroaches? To keep the poor company? "Tyger Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night...did he who made the lamb make thee?"

[Credo in Deum]

12 minutes ago, Era Might said:

I think my main thought on this is that religion and science are different modes of thought. Religion is pre-scientific. Yesterday I was reading the end of John's Gospel and was struck by Pilate's question to Jesus, what is truth? I think Pilate thought like a good lawyer and philosopher. Before he asks about truth, he asks about Jesus, whether he is a king, but then he switches his question from Jesus to philosophy. I don't think this is a coincidence...Pilate asked a good philosophical and scientific question, what is truth? But his question goes down as eternal irony, because that is the wrong question to ask. He had it right the first time...not what is truth, but who are you, Jesus? Christians lose their God when they try to fit him into modes of thought (philosophy, science, law, etc.) that have nothing to do with religion.

A God who is "constantly in control" is even worse than an intelligent designer. If God loves the world, as John says, and saw that it was good, as Genesis says, then he is certainly not in control, because control has nothing to do with love. The husband who is "constantly in control" of his wife is jealous and domineering. No, I can't believe in a God who is "constantly in control." I prefer a God who abandons his own son on a cross, out of love for humanity, than a God who seeks to control and order everything by good argument and good design.

I would suggest reading http://www.amazon.com/Heliotropium-Conformity-Human-Will-Divine/dp/0895552450

Your idea of God's control and love as being incapable are way off the mark.

12 minutes ago, Era Might said:

Ok, so in your world of ordered design why did God create spiders? To be symbols of order for man? Why did he create poisonous spiders? Why did he create mosqitoes? To annoy and harass man? Why did he create mosqitoes that carry disease? To punish man? Why did he create rats and cockroaches? To keep the poor company? "Tyger Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night...did he who made the lamb

 

http://youtu.be/8a13-JbxC98

 

[Anomaly]

 

  Quote

Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally; And you are filled in him, who is the head of all principality and power.

--Colossians 2:8-10

 

That's giving Paul a little more credit for secret knowledge and special insight than is reasonable. Man created God as a person because we are afraid of being unimportant.  We want to be important after we're gone and before we lived.   We had to create a constant awareness and "entitize" into someone who wants us around after we "finish" this life.   Humanity's ego grew as did our intelligence, but at a faster rate.  The hubris at the idea the entire universe was/is being tweaked so we be here posting important thoughts right now.   The hubris that the God Entity is aware of all (that ever existed or will exist) human's True innermost thoughts and intents, conscious and subconscious, every nano second.  And It created us on purpose so we could know our Eternal Existential Importance to the Universe.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

 

Edited June 5, 2016 by Anomaly

[Era Might]

14 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

 

Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally; And you are filled in him, who is the head of all principality and power.

--Colossians 2:8-10

 

That's giving Paul a little more credit for secret knowledge and special insight than is reasonable. Man created God as a person because we are afraid of being unimportant.  We want to be important after we're gone and before we lived.   We had to create a constant awareness and "entitize" into someone who wants us around after we "finish" this life.   Humanity's ego grew as did our intelligence, but at a faster rate.  The hubris at the idea the entire universe was/is being tweaked so we be here posting important thoughts right now.   The hubris that the God Entity is aware of all (that ever existed or will exist) human's True innermost thoughts and intents, conscious and subconscious, every nano second.  And It created us on purpose so we could know our Eternal Existential Importance to the Universe.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

 

Yeah, I think God as an idea is essentially a symbol for the whole, it binds together our society and worldview, which is why every society has a different God. The American Jesus is not the medieval Jesus or the Pauline Jesus. But the reason why I consider religion important, even as a non-believer, is because it is a framework for understanding the world. I consider it important to maintain the essential Christian mode of thought because, if you're gonna have a framework or approach to life, it should count for something. The problem for real believers is that they take religion literally, so when there is a dissonance between modes of thought, they have to reconcile it, or else their whole system is threatened. I don't dismiss the possibility of something higher, but I don't think it is found in a literal way in religion...religions are paths, disciplines, ways of thinking and living. In Christianity, I consider the two essential elements to be Jesus the character (we worship a literary character, keep in mind, just as Yahweh was a literary character), and then the abstracted archetype of Christ, the New Man who makes all things whole through love, sacrifice, brotherhood, etc.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Era Might

[Credo in Deum]

9 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

 

Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally; And you are filled in him, who is the head of all principality and power.

--Colossians 2:8-10

 

That's giving Paul a little more credit for secret knowledge and special insight than is reasonable. Man created God as a person because we are afraid of being unimportant.  We want to be important after we're gone and before we lived.   We had to create a constant awareness and "entitize" into someone who wants us around after we "finish" this life.   Humanity's ego grew as did our intelligence, but at a faster rate.  The hubris at the idea the entire universe was/is being tweaked so we be here posting important thoughts right now.   The hubris that the God Entity is aware of all (that ever existed or will exist) human's True innermost thoughts and intents, conscious and subconscious, every nano second.  And It created us on purpose so we could know our Eternal Existential Importance to the Universe.

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

 

God created us so that we can know Love; Him. The universe may seem grand because of its size, but human beings are even grander 'cause each one of us can fit the universe inside our mind. Plus how big would someone have to be for God to take notice? You think our material size in comparison to the universe is what determines our importance? That's what's truly LOL worthy.

[Anomaly]

I agree with most of what you posted, but differ on one important point. 

Religion, even for a non believer, is like a philosophy, is simply a great societal framework to live with each other.  We don't all need to understand it to work it.  Much like we don't have to be an engineer to drive a car.  There is no one complete understanding, and understanding isn't universally required, desired, or needed.  A simple life is as complete a life remembered through the ages.  They're parts of the whole.  Experienced, lived, and known, only in the passing moments of now.

 

[Era Might]

19 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

I agree with most of what you posted, but differ on one important point. 

Religion, even for a non believer, is like a philosophy, is simply a great societal framework to live with each other.  We don't all need to understand it to work it.  Much like we don't have to be an engineer to drive a car.  There is no one complete understanding, and understanding isn't universally required, desired, or needed.  A simple life is as complete a life remembered through the ages.  They're parts of the whole.  Experienced, lived, and known, only in the passing moments of now.

 

While I agree that a simple life is noble, I agree with Socrates that an unexamined life is not worth living, and when people live uncritically in a religion or any system of thought, they become pawns and prey, and worse, never have the satisfaction of intelligence, of discovering life for themselves. God just becomes a meaningless idea attached to whatever life they have been given. To me that's a suffocating hypocrisy that I can't endure. Better to be a passionate atheist than a satisfied believer, IMO.

BTW I just finished George Eliot's Middlemarch and she closes the novel with the same thought about simple lives lived:

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know. Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

[Guest]

"Why do you happen to be alive on this lush little planet with its warm sun and coconut trees? And at just the right time in the history of the universe? The surface of the molten earth has cooled, but it’s not too cold. And it’s not too hot; the sun hasn’t expanded enough to melt the Earth’s surface with its searing gas yet. Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the probability of random physical laws and events leading to this point is less than 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, equivalent to winning every lottery there ever was.

 

Although classical evolution does an excellent job of helping us understand the past, it fails to capture the driving force. Evolution needs to add the observer to the equation. Indeed, Niels Bohr, the great Nobel physicist, said, “When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not ‘measuring’ the world, we are creating it.” The evolutionists are trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They think we, the observer, are a mindless accident, debris left over from an explosion that appeared out of nowhere one day.

 

Cosmologists propose that the universe was until recently a lifeless collection of particles bouncing against each other. It’s presented as a watch that somehow wound itself up, and that will unwind in a semi-predictable way. But they’ve shunted a critical component of the cosmos out of the way because they don’t know what to do with it. This component, consciousness, isn’t a small item. It’s an utter mystery, which we think has somehow arisen from molecules and goo.

 

How did inert, random bits of carbon ever morph into that Japanese guy who always wins the hot-dog-eating contest?

 

In short, attempts to explain the nature of the universe, its origins, and what’s really going on require an understanding of how the observer, our presence, plays a role. According to the current paradigm, the universe, and the laws of nature themselves, just popped out of nothingness. The story goes something like this: From the Big Bang until the present time, we’ve been incredibly lucky. This good fortune started from the moment of creation; if the Big Bang had been one-part-in-a-million more powerful, the cosmos would have rushed out too fast for the galaxies and stars to have developed. If the gravitational force were decreased by a hair, stars (including the Sun) wouldn’t have ignited. There are over 200 physical parameters like this that could have any value but happen to be exactly right for us to be here. Tweak any of them and you never existed.

 

But our luck didn’t stop with the laws, forces, and constants of the universe. Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenensis, Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, A. afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, A. africanus, A. garhi, A. sediba, A. aethiopicus, A. robustus, A. boisei, Homo habilis, H. georgicus, and H. erectus — among other hominid species — all went extinct. Even the Neanderthals went extinct. But alas, not us! Indeed, we happen to be the only species of Hominina that made it.

 

Our special luck continues in the present time. Asteroids could strike Earth at any time, producing a surface-charring blast of heat, followed by years of dust that would freeze and/or starve us to death. Nearby stars could go supernova, their energy destroying the ozone layer and sterilizing the Earth with radiation. And a supervolcano could shroud the Earth in dust. These are just a few (out of billions) of things that could go wrong.

 

The story of evolution reads just like “The Story of the Three Bears,” In the nursery tale, a little girl named Goldilocks enters a home occupied by three bears and tries different bowls of porridge; some are too hot, some are too cold. She also tries different chairs and beds, and every time, the third is “just right.” For 13.7 billion years we, too, have had chronic good luck. Virtually everything has been “just right.”

 

Loren Eiseley, the great naturalist, once said that scientists “have not always been able to see that an old theory, given a hairsbreadth twist, might open an entirely new vista to the human reason.” The theory of evolution turns out to be the perfect case in hand. Amazingly, it all makes sense if you assume that the Big Bang is the end of the chain of physical causality, not the beginning.

 

What if it's consciousness that creates space and time (which is the reason you’re here now). Consider everything you see around you right now. Language and custom say it all lies outside us in the external world. Yet you can’t see anything through the vault of bone that surrounds your brain. Your eyes aren’t just portals to the world. In fact, everything you experience, including your body, is part of an active process occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the mind’s tools for putting it all together.

 

Theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow recently stated:

There is no way to remove the observer — us — from our perceptions of the world … In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.”

 

If we, the observer, collapse these possibilities (that is, the past and future) then where does that leave evolutionary theory, as described in our schoolbooks? Until the present is determined, how can there be a past? The past begins with the observer, us, not the other way around as we’ve been taught.

 

Consciousness is the first cause, the vital force that collapses not only the present but the cascade of past spatio-temporal events we call evolution. “If, instead of identifying ourselves with the work,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life, pre-existing within us in their highest form.”

 

 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2016 by Guest

[Era Might]

15 minutes ago, Josh said:

"Why do you happen to be alive on this lush little planet with its warm sun and coconut trees? And at just the right time in the history of the universe? The surface of the molten earth has cooled, but it’s not too cold. And it’s not too hot; the sun hasn’t expanded enough to melt the Earth’s surface with its searing gas yet. Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the probability of random physical laws and events leading to this point is less than 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, equivalent to winning every lottery there ever was.

 

Although classical evolution does an excellent job of helping us understand the past, it fails to capture the driving force. Evolution needs to add the observer to the equation. Indeed, Niels Bohr, the great Nobel physicist, said, “When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not ‘measuring’ the world, we are creating it.” The evolutionists are trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They think we, the observer, are a mindless accident, debris left over from an explosion that appeared out of nowhere one day.

 

Cosmologists propose that the universe was until recently a lifeless collection of particles bouncing against each other. It’s presented as a watch that somehow wound itself up, and that will unwind in a semi-predictable way. But they’ve shunted a critical component of the cosmos out of the way because they don’t know what to do with it. This component, consciousness, isn’t a small item. It’s an utter mystery, which we think has somehow arisen from molecules and goo.

 

How did inert, random bits of carbon ever morph into that Japanese guy who always wins the hot-dog-eating contest?

 

In short, attempts to explain the nature of the universe, its origins, and what’s really going on require an understanding of how the observer, our presence, plays a role. According to the current paradigm, the universe, and the laws of nature themselves, just popped out of nothingness. The story goes something like this: From the Big Bang until the present time, we’ve been incredibly lucky. This good fortune started from the moment of creation; if the Big Bang had been one-part-in-a-million more powerful, the cosmos would have rushed out too fast for the galaxies and stars to have developed. If the gravitational force were decreased by a hair, stars (including the Sun) wouldn’t have ignited. There are over 200 physical parameters like this that could have any value but happen to be exactly right for us to be here. Tweak any of them and you never existed.

 

But our luck didn’t stop with the laws, forces, and constants of the universe. Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenensis, Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, A. afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, A. africanus, A. garhi, A. sediba, A. aethiopicus, A. robustus, A. boisei, Homo habilis, H. georgicus, and H. erectus — among other hominid species — all went extinct. Even the Neanderthals went extinct. But alas, not us! Indeed, we happen to be the only species of Hominina that made it.

 

Our special luck continues in the present time. Asteroids could strike Earth at any time, producing a surface-charring blast of heat, followed by years of dust that would freeze and/or starve us to death. Nearby stars could go supernova, their energy destroying the ozone layer and sterilizing the Earth with radiation. And a supervolcano could shroud the Earth in dust. These are just a few (out of billions) of things that could go wrong.

 

The story of evolution reads just like “The Story of the Three Bears,” In the nursery tale, a little girl named Goldilocks enters a home occupied by three bears and tries different bowls of porridge; some are too hot, some are too cold. She also tries different chairs and beds, and every time, the third is “just right.” For 13.7 billion years we, too, have had chronic good luck. Virtually everything has been “just right.”

 

Loren Eiseley, the great naturalist, once said that scientists “have not always been able to see that an old theory, given a hairsbreadth twist, might open an entirely new vista to the human reason.” The theory of evolution turns out to be the perfect case in hand. Amazingly, it all makes sense if you assume that the Big Bang is the end of the chain of physical causality, not the beginning.

 

What if it's consciousness that creates space and time (which is the reason you’re here now). Consider everything you see around you right now. Language and custom say it all lies outside us in the external world. Yet you can’t see anything through the vault of bone that surrounds your brain. Your eyes aren’t just portals to the world. In fact, everything you experience, including your body, is part of an active process occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the mind’s tools for putting it all together.

 

Theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow recently stated:

There is no way to remove the observer — us — from our perceptions of the world … In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.”

 

If we, the observer, collapse these possibilities (that is, the past and future) then where does that leave evolutionary theory, as described in our schoolbooks? Until the present is determined, how can there be a past? The past begins with the observer, us, not the other way around as we’ve been taught.

 

The observer is the first cause, the vital force that collapses not only the present but the cascade of past spatio-temporal events we call evolution. “If, instead of identifying ourselves with the work,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life, pre-existing within us in their highest form.”

Just curious, who wrote that?

His entire premise assumes that man is a subject toward which everything has been building. He's not. Man is a remarkable product of evolution, but man is not apart from the universe, he is part of it, and the universe does not exist for him, the universe just is, with or without man. Why would God create a universe that could burn up? The question is not, why did humanity happen, but why is any other possibility possible? If the world could have been different with a little tweaking, then what kind of design is that? Why a world of violent impermanence? There are ideas (conceptions) of God that could account for such a world, but the American intelligent designer God doesn't. Only Americans could turn God into Henry Ford.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Era Might

[Guest]

[Socrates]

15 hours ago, Era Might said:

I didn't say you were dumb, just ignorant of your ignorance. And I didn't say that I'm right because I didn't put forth an argument for something, I just said this particular argument is stupid. There are a lot of intelligent believers who I respect and whose intelligence far surpasses mine...but they wouldn't be stupid enough to buy into this stupid American apologetic of creationism and God the Scientist.

You're right; you never did make an argument, merely repeatedly derided the "fine-tuning" argument as stupid, and changed the subject.  You never actually addressed the original claims, nor even gave any indication that you understand them.

Okay, so you think anthropic principle or "fine-tuning" arguments are stupid; I heard you the first five times or so.  I happen to find them quite reasonable, as do some persons frankly a lot more knowledgeable on the subject than yourself.  Maybe you could enlighten the rest of us as to exactly why you find the "fine-tuning" claims so stupid and wrong, or present what you think is a more reasonable explanation for the universe's existence, and the source of the apparently fine-tuned physical laws governing it.  Repeatedly calling the fine-tuning arguments stupid certainly won't do anything to change my thinking on it, nor will calling me ignorant or boasting of your own superior wisdom and learning.

But if you have no interest in the actual arguments, or regard them as beneath your vast intellect, certainly nobody's making you post in this thread,

16 hours ago, Era Might said:

Btw, I can't promise to drink responsibly, but thanks for the blessing. If you're ever around my way you got a beer and a shot upon your arrival, on me, as long as you don't bore me with politics.

Back atcha, bro.  Just don't bore me with interminable quasi-Marxist ramblings.

[Socrates]

16 hours ago, Josh said:

Well said. No one is arguing for a young earth or no evolution. It's just a consensus now from believers and atheist alike that if this is the only universe then their is intelligence behind it and it's laws. I was just at an atheist physics facebook page and this topic was being discussed. They choose to believe there are an almost infinite amount of universes and that explains away the impossible odds of life being able to evolve in this one and the laws and constants being set the way they are.  

"Multiverse" hypotheses seems to be the most popular way for atheists to get around the whole "fine-tuning" problem.  (If there's an infinite of different random universes out there, then at least one of them would have to "get it right.")

The problem with this is that, first, there's absolutely no scientific evidence for the existence of all these other infinite universes.  Belief in an infinite multiverse is no more scientific than belief in God, so it's hypocritical for atheist believers in the multiverse to attack "theists" as "unscientific" for believing in something without scientific proof.

Secondly, they largely evade the whole question of what causes all these universes and the physical laws governing them to come into being.  This "random universe generator" would be in itself an incredible thing, which would seem to itself require a lot of "fine-tuning" in order to work.  This hypothesis would simply push back the question of ultimate cause another step further.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Socrates

[Era Might]

1 hour ago, Socrates said:

You're right; you never did make an argument, merely repeatedly derided the "fine-tuning" argument as stupid, and changed the subject.  You never actually addressed the original claims, nor even gave any indication that you understand them.

Okay, so you think anthropic principle or "fine-tuning" arguments are stupid; I heard you the first five times or so.  I happen to find them quite reasonable, as do some persons frankly a lot more knowledgeable on the subject than yourself.  Maybe you could enlighten the rest of us as to exactly why you find the "fine-tuning" claims so stupid and wrong, or present what you think is a more reasonable explanation for the universe's existence, and the source of the apparently fine-tuned physical laws governing it.  Repeatedly calling the fine-tuning arguments stupid certainly won't do anything to change my thinking on it, nor will calling me ignorant or boasting of your own superior wisdom and learning.

But if you have no interest in the actual arguments, or regard them as beneath your vast intellect, certainly nobody's making you post in this thread,

Back atcha, bro.  Just don't bore me with interminable quasi-Marxist ramblings.

My explanation for the universe's existence, whatever it is, would not be science. I've already explained why the intelligent designer argument is stupid, because it's bad theology and philosophy. Science is a method for building theories and models of the world as we are able to observe it. The intelligent design argument is not about science, it's about theology. It attempts to make a leap from observable phenomena and say something about an invisible God. And in the process, it is creating an idea of God. I don't really care about the scientific measurements, I'm interested in the idea of God that intelligent designers create by attempting to explain God by the scientific method, which is an entirely modern method (and it was the discovery of method itself that really brought about modernity, method took over for revelation and tradition). I reject the premise that God is either intelligent or a designer, and I reject it on traditional Christian grounds (and I've explained why at length in previous posts). Believers start from the premise that there is a god, and then try to use the scientific method to find traces of him. That's not science, it's theology. Science creates a model of the natural world. Christianity is not based on any such model, it's based on an idea of God. They are two different modes of thought that have nothing to do with each other, but certain Christians want to show that their Idea can be reconciled with everything that's true or factual, so they create a stupid hybrid like intelligent design, and in the process they've created a new God, part Henry Ford, part Albert Einstein, part Wizard of Oz.

I reject the argument because it mutilates both science and theology. The measurements are irrelevant (they serve no purpose in the argument except to demonstrate that the world has a structure...well, duh, that's obvious, and from there science becomes irrelevant, and the argument enters the realm of the Idea of God).

Edited June 5, 2016 by Era Might