Is The Universe Fine Tuned for Human Life?

[We_Are_VENOM]

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I say yes.

This thread was created in order to discuss/debate what is called the argument from design (teleological argument), which is a classical argument for the existence of God.

For more on what fine tuning is as it pertains to the argument, please read this wikipedia article..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe

Now, it is well known and established in science, that the constants and values which govern our universe is mathematically precise.

How precise?

Well, please see this article by Dr. Hugh Ross...

https://wng.org/roundups/a-fine-tuned-u ... 1617224984

Excerpt...

"More than a hundred different parameters for the universe must have values falling within narrowly defined ranges for physical life of any conceivable kind to exist." (see above article for list of parameters).

Or..(in wiki article above, on fine tuning)..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tune ... e#Examples

When you read the articles, you will find that there isn't much room for error.

If you start with a highly chaotic, random, disordered big bang, the odds are astronomically AGAINST the manifestation of sentient, human life.

How disordered was the big bang at the onset of the expansion...well, physicist Roger Penrose calculated that the chances of life originating via random chance, was 1 chance in 10^10^123 ( The Emperor’s New Mind, pg. 341-344.....according to..

https://mathscholar.org/2017/04/is-the- ... 20universe.

That is a double exponent with 123 as the double!!

The only way to account for the fine tuning of our universe..there are only 3 possibilities..

1. Random chance: Well, we just addressed this option..and to say not likely is the biggest understatement in the history of understatements.

If you have 1 chance in 10^10^123 to accomplish something, it is safe to say IT AIN'T HAPPENING.

2. Necessity: This option is a no-go..because the constants and parameters could have been any values..in other words, it wasn't necessary for the parameters to have those specific values at the onset of the big bang.

3. Design: Bingo. First off, since the first two options are negated, then #3 wins by default...and no explanation is even needed, as it logically follows that #3 wins (whether we like it or not). However, I will provide a little insight.

You see, the constants and values which govern our universe had to have been set, as an INITIAL CONDITION of the big bang. By "set", I mean selectively chosen.

It is impossible for mother nature to have pre-selected anything, because nature is exactly what came in to being at the moment of the big bang.

So, not only (if intelligent design is negated) do we have a singularity sitting around for eons and expanding for reasons which cannot be determined (which is part of the absurdity), but we also have this singularity expanding with very low entropy (10^10^!23), which completely defies everything we know about entropy, to a degree which has never been duplicated since.

So, we have a positive reasons to believe in intelligent design...an intelligent design...a Cosmic Creator/Engineer...

We have positive reasons to believe in a God of the universe.

In closing...

1. No need to downplay fine tuning, because in the wiki article, you will see the fact that scientists are scrambling to try to find an explanation for fine tuning..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tune ... planations

If there was no fine tuning, then you wouldn't need offer any explanations to explain it away, now would you?

2. Unless you can provide a fourth option to the above three options, then please spare me the "but there may be more options" stuff.

If that is what you believe, then tell me what they are, and I will gladly ADD THEM TO THE LIST AND EXPLAIN WHY THEY ALSO FAIL.

3. 10^10^123. Ouch.

[Difflugia]

It's interesting though that this compulsion to appeal to science seems to be a fairly recent development.

IMO, that's because science has usurped religion's place as the primary means of determining reality. I guess that presents the religious with a choice....either fight to put religion back on top, or try and give religion credit for science.

I think you're absolutely right and the process is continuing, but it started a long time ago.

[We_Are_VENOM]

And the comments he made regarding the 10^10^123 number were all about the precision needed for the initial conditions of the Big Bang to produce a universe exactly as we have. Life or no life was not a consideration in that precision assessment. It was based on second law considerations and the product of the total number of baryons (protons and neutrons) in the universe (10^80), times the entropy per baryon (10^43) for total entropy. Probability of life developing is nowhere to be found.

Nonsense.

The question Penrose was asked (and the title of the video) was about whether the universe was fine tuned for human life....so what did they discuss?

They discussed whether the universe was/is fine tuned for human life.

Penrose answered YES.

But wait..

What is fine tuning (universe)? Fine tuning is...

"The characterization of the universe as finely tuned suggests that the occurrence of life in the universe is very sensitive to the values of certain fundamental physical constants and that the observed values are".

They also discussed the Anthropic Principle? And what is the Anthropic Principle?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect",[1] is the hypothesis that there is a restrictive lower bound on how statistically probable our observations of the universe are, because observations could only happen in a universe capable of developing intelligent life.

They discussed Penrose's 10^10^123 calculation. What is that number in reference to?

It is in reference to the subject of whether or not the universe is fine tuned for life, and the probability of life originating by pure chance.

So throughout our dialogue, you've been either downplaying, derailing, or in some cases flat out misrepresenting what this stuff is about.

Gaslighting, at its finest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

And it is disgusting.

Probably good that it ends.

Good enough. I just need to put out a little more fires, first.

No point in repeating the same things over and over, and you don't seem to want to understand what Penrose actually based the 10^10^123 number on.

The odds of universe producing life is 1 chance in 10^10^123.

And if the Bible says it, then who can argue with that!

I agree.

That is just a giant number.

A giant number with giant implications.

I don't know anyone who would argue that it isn't a giant number.

A statement that is more applicable to this discussion would be..

"I dont know anyone who would argue against those kind of odds".

It is what you are claiming it refers to that is completely wrong (ie. probability of life arising by pure chance in this universe).

Penrose calculated that the probability of life originating by pure chance is 1 chance in 10^10^123.

And it was pointed out to you before that I am not the one who made the "pure chance" claim...that was Penrose.

So again, take that up with Penrose.

You are more than welcome to conduct your own experiments and do your own math, and then you can kill the message.

But don't kill the messenger (me).

Until you conduct your own experiments and math; 10^10^123 it is.

That is the crux of this whole argument, and despite breaking down the Penrose book description and video which clearly show what he actually meant by it, you stubbornly hold on to the erroneous interpretation.

Penrose stated that the universe is fine tuned for human life. I am stubbornly holding on to what I heard with my own ears, and what the scientific data demonstrates.

Uh ... "our universe" and "a universe identical to the one we have" are the same thing!

Yeah..uh...obviously I know that.

Remember, I am the one who pointed that out to YOU a few pages back.

We're done ... brick walls.

Cool. I will take the last word.

A lot of selective quoting of my posts...some have been simple, like when you piggybacked off my car analogy with an analogy of your own (borrowing the same analogy), and when I made reference to it, you didn't know what I was talking about...and when I pointed out to you what I was talking about, instead of giving a respectable "Oh, my bad. Point conceded", you ignored it in your next response. (see post 100).

Or major selective quoting...such as your latest response not addressing my response to you saying this..

"When you've mentioned atoms, chemistry, etc. not being possible without things playing out as they did, the reference was always to life arising."

And my response to this was the fact that fine tuning is ALWAYS about life arising, as you made it seem like I bring up life out of left field when that is what fine tuning is all about.

I provided the wiki of fine tuning as evidence of this.

And your very next response you did not address any of it...because a simple/respectable "my bad" would have been asking too much.

You've done this time and time again throughout our discourse, not to mention the mispresenting of Penrose in the video.

And then you continuously use these gaslighting techniques, such making statements such as..

"The 10^10^123 number is based on the initial conditions of the Big Bang and not the physical constants".

You've been continuously making that statement, as if the statement is somehow in your favor.

How does that statement help YOU in this conversation?

If the initial condition's standards weren't met, then there would be no physical constants for you to even concern yourself with, which pushes the problem back even further.

You agreed with Penrose insinuating "To heck with the constants, it is the initial conditions we should focus on"

You agree with that, but then you downplay 1 chance in 10^10^123 odds of the initial conditions parameters being set by pure chance (option 1) in the first place!!

Too much..

1. Selective quoting
2. Gaslighting
3. Backwards thinking
4. Misrepresenting and/or misunderstandings

So yeah, it is done.

Next..

[Diogenes]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #179]

"This pattern of a trillion heads and tails could not have happened by accident, by chance." Yet that is exactly what happened.

There is no 'reason,' no purpose involved.

Those two statements are no different in nature than the religious arguments re GOD. They are not based in fact. They are based in opinion, swayed by preference of belief.

I don't think you understood what I wrote because you came up with the exact opposite by taking two sentences out of context. When a coin is flipped a trillion times it is going to result in a pattern of heads and tails that will appear completely random. Why would you need to imagine a god controlling this? If you did it again the pattern would be different but again random. The point is we are living in a universe that resulted from that random process. If it had been different, the universe would have been different and we would not be here. Why do you have to insert a magical intelligence 'overseeing the process?'

[Inquirer]

The 'fine tuned universe' is one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God.
It is also one of the worst. The argument calls for backwards thinking.

Let's take the flipping pennies analogy. The theist says, "This pattern of a trillion heads and tails could not have happened by accident, by chance." Yet that is exactly what happened.

This is idle speculation at best. Physicists don't regard the universal constants or the initial conditions as being non-deterministic, they seek theories (aka "explanations") for them. The commonly held view is that there is a deeper theory yet to be developed that could shed light on this and that's why I referred to M-theory and so on earlier in the thread.

There is active work going on to try to see if the constants are actually constants too, its conceivable they are functions perhaps very slowly changing, a lot of work is going on in this area.

Taking the cosmological constant, it has been shown that even a miniscule deviation from the observed value, leads to a universe that prohibits life, too cool, to hot, altered star formation and so on.

If life is to exist then the cosmological constant and others, has to be a very specific and very narrow set of values.

What the proponent is really saying is that this pattern of a trillion heads and tails would not be duplicated by the next series. This is correct. But we are only looking at one series: the series that got us to this point.

In other words, had the supposedly random* series of events been different, we would not be here to ask the question. This is the only universe we have. Yes, there could have been others..., but there weren't. This is the only one we know of.

Another way to look at it involves a question posed by one of my favorite comedians, Norm MacDonald. MacDonald suggested that there is no reason for living organisms to reproduce. Somehow he thought this was a 'proof' of God. It is not. If living organisms did not reproduce, we would not be here. There is no 'reason,' no purpose involved. WE are here because of a series of events that did not have to be what they were, happened, but because they happened we are here. If they had not happened, we would not be here. Something else would exist instead.
No divine intelligence need be assigned.

__________________
*I say 'supposedly' random because it actually is not random. At some point early on (or perhaps at the inception of the 'big bang' or whatever chaotic state the universe was in, certain fundamental laws developed. Once that happened, by chance, pure randomness ended and things progressed bound by those principles or fundamental laws. Again, no supernatural intelligence need be imposed as an explanation.

The fact remains, that we exist and can exist only because the constants we observe have the values they do, it is rational to infer that this reflects an intent on the part of a creator, it does not prove God of course but it is consistent with such a claim.

The "fine tuning" argument is there, like it or not, no matter how you personally choose to interpret it.

No physicist suggests for a moment that the observed values are the result of non-determinism or "chance", that is not how scientific inquiry proceeds, it presumes cause and effect, so whatever the reason is for these very specific values it is not random, that's the problem...

Here's a theoretical physicist explaining how theorists have dealt with these constants over the years and the kinds of issues they raise:

Arguing that science can comfortably dismiss the fine tuning problem by declaring that the universe is in truth, non-deterministic when science actually epitomizes determinism - is a desperate and ill informed step. When one must abandon science in order to show that we must embrace science then one has truly lost the plot.

[Inquirer]

It's interesting though that this compulsion to appeal to science seems to be a fairly recent development.

IMO, that's because science has usurped religion's place as the primary means of determining reality. I guess that presents the religious with a choice....either fight to put religion back on top, or try and give religion credit for science.

I think you're absolutely right and the process is continuing, but it started a long time ago.

The author of that book though is not referring to "science" as the term is used and commonly understood today. It is most certainly not a book that strives to show "religion" is better than "the physical sciences" or vice versa nor some inherent struggle between two opposing domains. Science and religion in fact are deeply related and simply different manifestations of a deeper epistemological question.

It is in fact concerned with knowledge and how reasoning about facts as a way to acquire knowledge can be compared with recognizing revealed knowledge from God.

The book is not about some battle between science and religion but rather how does scientific rationalism relates to spiritual revelation. The book is in the public domain so you could have easily made the effort to establish that rather than misrepresent the book as something akin to Dawkins or Krauss.

That book is entirely different to the pop-science books (yes, it is primarily the pop-science writers who make all the fuss, who create the division) of today that try to argue that science (or rather scientism today) is "better" than religion, that one must adopt science over religion, that to express a belief in a deity or creator is to abandon science. That false dichotomy is new, and the book you cited is unrelated to that naïve and divisive world.

This is an excellent example of misjudging a book by its cover.

[Inquirer]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #179]

"This pattern of a trillion heads and tails could not have happened by accident, by chance." Yet that is exactly what happened.

There is no 'reason,' no purpose involved.

Those two statements are no different in nature than the religious arguments re GOD. They are not based in fact. They are based in opinion, swayed by preference of belief.

I don't think you understood what I wrote because you came up with the exact opposite by taking two sentences out of context. When a coin is flipped a trillion times it is going to result in a pattern of heads and tails that will appear completely random. Why would you need to imagine a god controlling this? If you did it again the pattern would be different but again random. The point is we are living in a universe that resulted from that random process. If it had been different, the universe would have been different and we would not be here. Why do you have to insert a magical intelligence 'overseeing the process?'

So you are a firm advocate of scientific reasoning which is based on causality and now use that reasoning to claim that the universe we see is actually not the result of causality?

This is a new face of scientism, the "chance of the gaps" argument. When confronted with a challenging scenario that implies some kind of intent, will, just claim "chance did it" !

This is where scientism leads, to a straitjacket!

[Difflugia]

The author of that book though is not referring to "science" as the term is used and commonly understood today. It is most certainly not a book that strives to show "religion" is better than "the physical sciences" or vice versa nor some inherent struggle between the two domains. Science and religion in fact are deeply related and simply different manifestations of a deeper epistemological question.

Another critique based solely on equivocation? Knock me over with a feather.

Your comment doesn't even appear to actually counter anything that I wrote or implied, but just picks nits by specifically narrowing "science" and then complaining that the nineteenth-century author I chose to literally illustrate a point didn't narrow it the same way.

It is in fact concerned with knowledge and how reasoning about facts as a way to acquire knowledge can be compared with recognizing revealed knowledge from God.

I couldn't have said it better myself. That's the very claim upon which this thread is based and the strategy that Jose Fly mentioned in opposition to faith and revelation alone.

The book is not about some battle between science and religion but rather how does scientific rationalism relates to spiritual revelation. The book is in the public domain so you could have easily made the effort to establish that rather than misrepresent the book as something akin to Dawkins or Krauss.

This thread isn't about Dawkins, Krauss, or the opposition between science and religion, but attempts to paint supernatural events as supportable by scientific reasoning. That's also what the book is about. If you don't like that one, there's a lot of similar literature from the nineteenth century, including much that fits your arbitrarily narrow definitions. If you'd like help finding some of it, let me know.

[Inquirer]

This thread isn't about Dawkins, Krauss, or the opposition between science and religion, but attempts to paint supernatural events as supportable by scientific reasoning. That's also what the book is about. If you don't like that one, there's a lot of similar literature from the nineteenth century, including much that fits your arbitrarily narrow definitions. If you'd like help finding some of it, let me know.

I did not state that this thread was "about" Dawkins or "about" Krauss. The thread is about a question "Is The Universe Fine Tuned for Human Life?". Now since that's really the central question to the thread what is your answer? and how do you reason to get to that answer?

[Jose Fly]

It's interesting though that this compulsion to appeal to science seems to be a fairly recent development.

I wonder if that book tries to argue that Christianity is supported by science, or if it's more about arguing that Christianity is compatible with science. It's not a huge difference though.

I think you're absolutely right and the process is continuing, but it started a long time ago.

Oh for sure. It's not surprising as soon as science started showing success as a means of figuring things out, religious folks tried to grab some of that credibility for their beliefs.

I think what amuses me the most are the religious people who bash science and scientists, and then later try and argue that science shows their beliefs are true....like the ones who argue against radiometric dating, except when it shows some artifact or ruin corresponds to the Bible. Then all of a sudden radiometric dating is great!

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to We_Are_VENOM in post #182]

I'll just respond to the last bit before giving up:

And then you continuously use these gaslighting techniques, such making statements such as..

"The 10^10^123 number is based on the initial conditions of the Big Bang and not the physical constants".

You've been continuously making that statement, as if the statement is somehow in your favor.

How does that statement help YOU in this conversation?

If the initial condition's standards weren't met, then there would be no physical constants for you to even concern yourself with, which pushes the problem back even further.

You agreed with Penrose insinuating "To heck with the constants, it is the initial conditions we should focus on"

The 10^10^123 number IS referencing the precision in the initial conditions of the Big Bang needed for a universe like ours to appear by pure chance. You can claim otherwise all you like, use words like gaslighting, etc., but anyone can watch the Penrose video or read his book and see that this is very obviously what the number represents. It has nothing to do with the probability that life will develop.

I didn't agree or disagree with Penrose suggesting "To heck with the constants, it is the initial conditions we should focus on." I simply pointed out that this is exactly what he said. But you keep insisting that the phrase "fine tuning" as Penrose used as a synonym for precision referrring to the Big Bang initial conditions is the same as the phrase when used in the more common way to refer to the physical constants (and the above statement about the physical constants not existing if the initial condition precision wasn't met is completely irrelevant to the discussion).

This ends just like a prior exchange a couple of year ago when you were "For the Kingdom" about the Miller-Urey experiment. Throughout all of that you insisted that they were trying to make life in a test tube, despite being shown the original paper and showing that this is not at all what they were trying to do. Same thing here ... despite a video and book chapter showing what the 10^10^123 number actually refers to by Penrose himself, you continue to claim it represents the probabiliy of life developing by random chance.

You agree with that, but then you downplay 1 chance in 10^10^123 odds of the initial conditions parameters being set by pure chance (option 1) in the first place!!

And more blatant misrepresentation. I've maintained all along that this is exactly what the number represents. You've claimed it represents the probability that life would originate by pure chance. I can only assume you either genuinely can't see the difference between these two things, or are intentionally interchanging them to avoid admitting a mistake.