Fine Tuning

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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UNBeliever905
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Fine Tuning

Post #1

Post by UNBeliever905 »

I wanted to discuss this topic after watching an intelligence squared debate quite awhile ago and again while reading the head to head debate between OSTENG and NENB.

Now the "Fine Tuning" of the universe, theory is "the proposition that the conditions that allow life in the Universe can only occur when certain universal fundamental physical constants lie within a very narrow range, so that if any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different, the Universe would be unlikely to be conducive to the establishment and development of matter, astronomical structures, elemental diversity, or life as it is understood."

Now in this case i would argue, that the theory itself is not as important as why it is believed. It is believed because people who have a preexisting belief in a designer, see the actual fact that if certain things in our universe were different we, and this is the important bit, AS WE ARE HERE AND NOW could not be here. Now they see this fact and say "Well if there is no God, WHY is the universe perfect for us". Admittedly a slightly reductionist version of the argument but i dont think it misrepresents it honestly. My point is can a believer in fine tuning tell me why me thinking a god of the gaps argument based on a pointless question is an acceptable argument in an intelligent conversation?

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Post #41

Post by otseng »

Jashwell wrote: Generally, when we see things in nature, they rarely occur once.
Exactly how many other universes are there?

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Post #42

Post by McCulloch »

otseng wrote:
Jashwell wrote:Generally, when we see things in nature, they rarely occur once.
Exactly how many other universes are there?
If every possible universe exists, then the fine tuning argument is moot.
Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
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Post #43

Post by otseng »

McCulloch wrote:
otseng wrote:
Jashwell wrote:Generally, when we see things in nature, they rarely occur once.
Exactly how many other universes are there?
If every possible universe exists, then the fine tuning argument is moot.
You mean like a universe where McCulloch is a fundamentalist Christian? :-k

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Post #44

Post by McCulloch »

otseng wrote:
McCulloch wrote:
otseng wrote:
Jashwell wrote:Generally, when we see things in nature, they rarely occur once.
Exactly how many other universes are there?
If every possible universe exists, then the fine tuning argument is moot.
You mean like a universe where McCulloch is a fundamentalist Christian? :-k
That was not an alternate universe, that was just the past in our own universe.

No, I was thinking all possible combinations of what John Baez calls the fundamental constants of the universe:
  • the mass of the up quark
  • the mass of the down quark
  • the mass of the charmed quark
  • the mass of the strange quark (you'll never hear this one read by the priest)
  • the mass of the top quark
  • the mass of the bottom quark
  • 4 numbers for the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix
  • the mass of the electron
  • the mass of the electron neutrino
  • the mass of the muon
  • the mass of the mu neutrino
  • the mass of the tau
  • the mass of the tau neutrino
  • 4 numbers for the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix
  • the mass of the Higgs boson
  • the expectation value of the Higgs field
  • the U(1) coupling constant
  • the SU(2) coupling constant
  • the strong coupling constant
  • the cosmological constant
Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
First Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians
The truth will make you free.
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Post #45

Post by arian »

otseng wrote:
Jashwell wrote: Generally, when we see things in nature, they rarely occur once.
Exactly how many other universes are there?
Greetings otseng.

Good question, and where do all these universes reside? If time and space are created within each universe, and each universe may be infinitely big, then where do all these universes reside in?

If they say 'nothing', then nothing is not nothing, so where is our universe in? Have they come up with a name for this place?
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root.

Henry D. Thoreau

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Re: Fine Tuning

Post #46

Post by arian »

Hatuey wrote: The majority of the universe....the VAST majority is VOID. Even if there is life somewhere in the vicinity of EVERY star in existence (Impossible? probably) the universe is about voids...nothing. And the voids are getting larger and more prominent and "taking over" through expansion/dark energy.

If this universe is "fine tuned" for life, then my body was "fine tuned" for that one nearly invisible hangnail I had for two days when I was eleven.
So is it a void, a nothing or is it getting bigger?
A void is when we take things out, not something that is getting larger and more prominent, or anything that can take over?

Besides, taking over what? The truth? I guess dark energy is taking over since none of these hypothesis, these assumptions make any sense. This dark energy, or what we Believers call the 'Power (energy) of Darkness (dark)' has taken over the human mind.

Ya need Jesus in your life, for He shines in the darkness! So stop counting all them universes, and all them 'probably, maybe have life on it' planets, and become truly enlightened with the truth.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root.

Henry D. Thoreau

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Post #47

Post by Jashwell »

arian wrote:
otseng wrote:
Jashwell wrote: Generally, when we see things in nature, they rarely occur once.
Exactly how many other universes are there?
Greetings otseng.

Good question, and where do all these universes reside? If time and space are created within each universe, and each universe may be infinitely big, then where do all these universes reside in?

If they say 'nothing', then nothing is not nothing, so where is our universe in? Have they come up with a name for this place?
There are a lot of different ways multiple Universes can co-exist.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

Firstly, it's not difficult to have multiple infinitely big objects, depending on how you're determining big. If you have an infinitely big piece of paper, you can still fit more pieces of paper on top of it in a stack with little to no trouble.
(I don't know anyone whose saying the Universe might be infinitely big though)

Secondly, depends how you mean "in nothing". If Universes are all that exist - does it make sense to say that they are in anything? If they are not in anything, aren't they in nothing?

You seem to be thinking of nothing as an object, a noun. The only way to make sense of nothing is as the negation of anything. When you say "That is nothing" you don't mean "That is this thing called nothing", because nothing cannot be a thing by definition. You mean "That is not any thing", or "That is nothing"

E.g. "There was nothing there" means "There was not anything there". It doesn't mean there was an object called "Nothing" that was there.

So when you say "in nothing", if you mean "not in anything" then yes, that could well by right.

A void is a space with nothing substantive in it. It doesn't really have nothing at all - it will have quantum particles, even if separated they will simply create and destroy ex nihilo.

The Universe is getting bigger.
The majority of the Universe is empty space - void in astronomy means a large region of practically empty space, but in any other sense, the Universe is certainly sparse.

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Post #48

Post by otseng »

McCulloch wrote: That was not an alternate universe, that was just the past in our own universe.
Interesting, I never knew you claimed to be a fundamentalist Christian.
No, I was thinking all possible combinations of what John Baez calls the fundamental constants of the universe:
So, are you claiming there is just one universe of each combination of fundamental constants? Would there only be one universe (ours) that has our values of the fundamental constants? What evidence is there that there are other universes with different values of the fundamental constants?
Jashwell wrote: There are a lot of different ways multiple Universes can co-exist.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
As the Wikipedia article notes:
The concept of other universes has been proposed to explain how our Universe appears to be fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it. If there were a large (possibly infinite) number of universes, each with possibly different physical laws (or different fundamental physical constants), some of these universes, even if very few, would have the combination of laws and fundamental parameters that are suitable for the development of matter, astronomical structures, elemental diversity, stars, and planets that can exist long enough for life to emerge and evolve.
To avoid the God hypothesis, scientists are willing to throw out the requirement for evidence and postulate the existence of a vast (infinite) number of other universes. I find that a bit ironic.

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Post #49

Post by Jashwell »

otseng wrote:
Jashwell wrote: There are a lot of different ways multiple Universes can co-exist.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
As the Wikipedia article notes:
The concept of other universes has been proposed to explain how our Universe appears to be fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it. If there were a large (possibly infinite) number of universes, each with possibly different physical laws (or different fundamental physical constants), some of these universes, even if very few, would have the combination of laws and fundamental parameters that are suitable for the development of matter, astronomical structures, elemental diversity, stars, and planets that can exist long enough for life to emerge and evolve.
To avoid the God hypothesis, scientists are willing to throw out the requirement for evidence and postulate the existence of a vast (infinite) number of other universes. I find that a bit ironic.
For a start, multiverse theory dates back at least 500 years, and there have been religious plural cosmologies dating back at least two thousand years.

Secondly, as I said before, the multiverse hypothesis is a better answer to fine tuning than God is. I'm glad you appear to have accepted that the multiverse hypothesis is entirely plausible.


Under the "God created only this one Universe" hypothesis
You assume:
God is possible (This is actually a large series of further postulates)
God exists
God created this Universe
This Universe is special, and the only one that exists

Under the multiverse hypothesis:
Multiple Universes can co-exist

"This universe is not the only one" might be thought of as a presupposition - but in fact it can be derived from the potential of multiple universes, and the fact that this Universe exists shows there is a Universe generating mechanism. By default, we do not accept or reject the claim "it is special" - a point in favour of a multiverse.

Now, an example.
The chance of rolling all sixes with three fair six sided dice is (1/6)^3, or 1 in 216. Say I take three dice, and put them in a glass box, where no human can touch the dice, and shake it up. Some unspecified period of time later, I roll three sixes.
For whatever contrived reason, you don't know how many times I've rolled.
Which sounds more reasonable? That I rolled the set of dice 108 or more times (so that it is more likely that I got the three sixes than not) or that a conscious being we didn't know existed or could exist influenced the dice intentionally?

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Post #50

Post by McCulloch »

otseng wrote:Interesting, I never knew you claimed to be a fundamentalist Christian.
Of course how one views fundamentalism varies. When I was a Christian, we believed that the Bible was literally inspired by God, that it was the sole source of doctrine and instructions for the church, that the key events described in the Bible: the Creation, the Exodus, Jesus' birth, teachings, miracles, death and resurrection happened just as described in the Bible. We believed that there was no salvation apart from Jesus. We differed from many other fundamentalists in that we generally but not dogmatically took an amillenial view on the Book of Revelation. We certainly had the we're right and anyone who disagrees is wrong attitude that characterizes fundamentalism.
otseng wrote:So, are you claiming there is just one universe of each combination of fundamental constants? Would there only be one universe (ours) that has our values of the fundamental constants? What evidence is there that there are other universes with different values of the fundamental constants?
Not necessarily. Really, the only evidence we have is the existence of the one universe we know. Either it is fine tuned to the exact set of fundamental constants that we observe or it is one of many. It is fundamentally simpler to assume the existence of a variety of something we know to exist than to presume the existence of something totally different.
otseng wrote:As the Wikipedia article notes:
The concept of other universes has been proposed to explain how our Universe appears to be fine-tuned for conscious life as we experience it. If there were a large (possibly infinite) number of universes, each with possibly different physical laws (or different fundamental physical constants), some of these universes, even if very few, would have the combination of laws and fundamental parameters that are suitable for the development of matter, astronomical structures, elemental diversity, stars, and planets that can exist long enough for life to emerge and evolve.
To avoid the God hypothesis, scientists are willing to throw out the requirement for evidence and postulate the existence of a vast (infinite) number of other universes. I find that a bit ironic.
As far as I know, no scientist has thrown out the requirement for evidence in this matter. They are simply exploring different models of what may be. The scientists are not claiming that many or possibly infinite number of universes exist, we have no evidence. Nor are they claiming that there exists only one universe. Neither claim could be supported by available evidence.
Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
First Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians
The truth will make you free.
Gospel of John

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