The Scientific Fact of Fine Tuning: Incredible Evidence for Intelligent Design.

[Xavier]

It may surprise some to know that it is now openly admitted by Scientists, even Atheists, that the Universe is in fact finely tuned for life. Let's document this:

I. Physicist Paul Davies teaches: "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life”  (Cosmic Jackpot, Why our Universe is just right for life), while even 

Steven Hawking admits: "The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life." (A Brief History of Time).

Sir Martin Rees mentions 6 of these Cosmic Constants in the Book, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe. Sir Martin Rees is a leading researcher on Cosmic Evolution and renowned authority/expert in his field. (see https://www.amazon.com/Just-Six-Numbers-Martin-Rees/dp/0465036732)

II. Let’s formulate the Fine Tuning Argument in logical steps:
1.      The Life-Permitting Possible Configurations of the Universe are vanishingly small compared to the Life-Precluding ones (as amply admitted/documented by the above Scientists/Researchers).
2.      Thus, on Chance alone, it’s reasonable to say no life at all should ever have existed.
3.      Therefore, granted the existence of life, Design is a vastly superior explanation to chance, for the fact of why life exists at all in the first place. Chance just isn’t very good at creating life, it turns out, unfortunately for Atheists, because the life-permitting range is mind-bogglingly narrow.

III. Fine Tuning proving Intelligent Design demonstrated by an Analogy: Concluding Thoughts

An analogy: 10 sharp-shooters are shooting at you, while you’ve been lined up before them in a firing squad for various crimes. Now, on chance alone, it’s a vanishingly small likelihood that you will ever survive this, because they're all not going to miss by chance. Nevertheless, if it turns out that you did survive, then given the evidence of your survival, the most Logical Explanation is Intelligent Design - i.e. they designedly intended to miss, or were directed to miss by a Higher Power favourable to you. I trust the Analogy is clear.

Thoughts?
Let's Debate.
God Bless.

[epronovost]

Have you ever heard of the term "begging the question"?

[mordant]

This is not even an interesting topic -- the puddle exulting that it's exactly the right shape for its water, therefore that exact impression in the ground must have been engineered. Why these arguments from incredulity are so enduring -- well I kind of sort of understand it, but mostly not.

[Dānu]

We don't know what the odds of the constants appearing as they are was, so #2 is just empty bloviating. You are unable to quantify the chance of them occurring, so #2 is bullshit.

[Cavebear]

Deleted

[Dānu]

This is not even an interesting topic -- the puddle exulting that it's exactly the right shape for its water, therefore that exact impression in the ground must have been engineered. Why these arguments from incredulity are so enduring -- well I kind of sort of understand it, but mostly not.

They endure because there exist vast numbers of morons like Xavier who are impressed by them, despite them having no evidentiary value.

[Dexta]

Given that Earth is the only planet thus far identified with life on it I'd say if the universe is "fine tuned" for life it's very poorly executed "fine tuning."

[mordant]

Given that Earth is the only planet thus far identified with life on it I'd say if the universe is "fine tuned" for life it's very poorly executed "fine tuning."

Yes and even if intelligent life is ever discovered elsewhere in the universe that didn't have its own Jesus on his own cross, they'll have to make up reasons for that also, as it's not fine-tuned for their dogma.

[Deesse23]

Your lord takes due notice of your shameless lies and misrepresentations. After all, he can see all, even you masturbating right after and before posting on this forum.

[Dexta]

Given that Earth is the only planet thus far identified with life on it I'd say if the universe is "fine tuned" for life it's very poorly executed "fine tuning."

Yes and even if intelligent life is ever discovered elsewhere in the universe that didn't have its own Jesus on his own cross, they'll have to make up reasons for that also, as it's not fine-tuned for their dogma.

And I guess whatever universe Yahweh came from was fine tuned for creating Yahweh's! 

[Dexta]

"The universe is fine tuned to give children leukaemia" etc ad inf. Jesus wept. I love tearing this deluded Xavier chew toy a new opening in their temporal lobe.

[Edible crust]

Fine tuned for T-Rex to run riot for a while too.

[Minimalist]

It is among the stupidest arguments ever made...no wonder this asshole falls for it.

Nearly 3/4 of the Earth is covered by water.... and soon to be more which will decrease the habitable land portion even more thanks to climate change.  Start subtracting the deserts, polar regions, and high mountain areas and you get down to about 15% where the vast majority of people actually live.

Some fucking 'intelligent design" that is.  As far as the rest of the Universe goes, most of what we know about it would kill you in a heartbeat.

[brewerb]

Thoughts?
Let's Debate.
God Bless.

I think most will agree that you're not fine tuned in anyway. Programmed maybe, but in a very archaic and haphazard fashion. Could it be that god squirted you out in the wrong century?

That would be just one of god(s) cruel tricks that it has afflicted upon you.

[Dexta]

Fine tuned for T-Rex to run riot for a while too.

Life in it's natural splendour. Why won't the lions accept Jesus and just starve FFS?!

[pattylt]

I wondered if the fine tuning argument would appear.

The problem is, our universe looks like it was much more fine tuned for black holes than one lousy planet that happened to develop life that was fine tuned for its own environment.

There is no evidence that differently tuned universe would develop life that was specifically fine tuned for those conditions. This is all the “we’re special” argument reaching for something that they think is amazing and not realizing it’s an example of one….so far.

[SaxonX]

Another spam thread .......Ban

[Dexta]

I say no ban - this is fun!

[Rhythmcs]

@mordant
The puddle marvels at how perfectly the hole was made to fit it, a fave. I think this stuff is making a comeback because the last time it beclowned itself was long enough back that the current crop of proselytizers don't remember it.

[Rahn127]

For the sake of insanity, let's assume a god began to exist and became aware of its own existence. It is now the only thing, the only being in existence. There is no universe. There is nothing. No light, no sound, nothing at all. There is only darkness and thought.

You can imagine this by closing yourself off into darkness with no sound, a place as quiet as possible. Only your thoughts. You can imagine this state.

This darkness, this nothingness must be fined tuned so that a being such as this can begin to exist. What is there to tune though ?
Does nothing automatically create something, something that is aware of its own thoughts, but yet aware of nothing else.
The acting of thinking, the act of thought means that something exists to exert a change.
Existence itself is a state of being that isn't nothing. It is something, even if we have no idea what that something is.

That something spawned a being that became aware of itself and aware of nothing else.
Imagine a child in the womb that has its first passing thought. It's not aware of its own existence yet. It won't be aware of that for some time to come.
But the day does come.

A god in the darkness, alone with only its thoughts. Is it all powerful ? on what scale can you judge its power when there is nothing at all.
What can it know ? There is nothing. Where would it obtain knowledge ? How would it obtain knowledge ?

None of this makes any sense when we think about the beginning of something. Something coming from nothing.

Our universe however is something and that something exists. It hasn't always kept the same form. It has changed over time.
We have stars and galaxies and clusters of galaxies. We have planets and moons and asteroids and black holes.
We have a universe of nearly uncountable different things.

There was a time when galaxies had not yet formed. A time when stars had not yet formed and a time when the simple elements had not yet formed.
A time before the first great expansion and a time when all there was was the energy of the entire universe bubbling and unstable.

No light, no photons, no sound, but it's not nothing. It's all the energy of the entire universe. It's everything in existence stripped away of all its structure.
When pressure hits a certain point, instability goes into a critical change and BOOM, expansion happens faster than light, before light existed.

No fine tuning in this explosion of energy, space and time. It's pure chaos on a scale we can hardly imagine.
Nature is energy. Nature is unstable. Nature is not by design. It's a painting by Pollock. It's thrown wildly and without intention.

It is we who create creators. Our minds in the darkness trying to find some light

[pattylt]

I’ve never heard any Christian claim that god began to exist. It’s always some eternal being….which is even more insane that one beginning to exist, to me.

[Minimalist]

In fact they will steadfastly insist that everything has a cause.....except their fucking god.

But it is only one of the things that intellectually befuddles them.

[Paleophyte]

It may surprise some to know that it is now openly admitted by Scientists, even Atheists, that the Universe is in fact finely tuned for life.

Looking at just this solar system to the present the proportion of mass or volume occupied by living organisms is so vanishingly small that you need scientific notation to express it without running up a massive bill for excessive use of zeroes.

Looking at the future of the universe it's pretty clear that the only thing that it's going to be producing are black holes and heat death. The conditions that are favorable for life in a vanishingly small proportion of the universe aren't around for even an eye blink between the superheated quark-gluon plasma of the Big Bang and the near eternity of uniformly distributed Hawking radiation that is its future. And that strikes you as intelligent or designed?

This argument begins and ends with the conceit that it's all about us.

[polymath257]

I. This assumes that we know the 'best' constants to use, that those constant *can* have other values, that they do not change over time, that they don't have some equilibrium value that is produced naturally, and that the possible values are uniformly distributed, that the constants don't vary from place to place in an infinite universe, that they don't change from place to place in a multiverse

It also assumes that life was the end goal and not a strange consequence of those particular values, which seems like an incredible egotistical conclusion given that the vast majority of the universe is incredibly hostile to life. Most of the universe is a vacuum, where life cannot exist at all. Most of the mass is in stars that are too hot for the chemical reactions in life. And, there is the amusing aspect that life has not been found anywhere else in this universe supposedly designed for life. of course, that is often taken by the theists as saying the Earth is 'special', which only shows that the universe is NOT designed for life.

II. To be able to compute any probability requires knowing the probability distribution of the constants. An assumption that they are uniformly distributed depends upon which of many collections of constants is considered to be the 'correct' one. For example, the fine structure constant essentially describes the strength of the electromagnetic force. But the square or square root of that constant serves that purpose equally well and gives a very different distribution of values and thereby a very different probability. This is true not only for each constant, but for each combination of those constants.

The natural way out of this conundrum is to look for an 'invariant measure' on the collection of constants, but there is very good evidence that no such measure is even possible. In other words, even talking about the probability isn't justified.

The, of course, you immediately leap to assuming that a low probability means that things were designed with a specific goal. Again, given that the universe seems very hostile to life as we know it, that seems to be a HUGE leap of logic.

III. Interestingly, you get the sharp-shooter analogy exactly wrong. The sharp-shooter *fallacy* is drawing the target around the location of the shots and claiming the shooter intended that target. You are drawing the target around life and then claiming there was a shooter!

[Gwaithmir]

Considering that about 99.9999% of the universe is hostile to life, I'd say the fine tuning argument is bunk.