Summations Only

Speaking as a Christian, the "Fine Tuning" argument has got to be one of the silliest, inane, incorrect, sophomoric and completely ludicrous ones ever put forward. To then add "which happen to be consistent with words attributed to the "Being" Himself" just makes it even more laughable.Almost nothing in this universe seems to be "fine tuned" and as a matter of fact almost all of this universe seems to be inimical to life of any kind.There is zero, nada, none, no evidence of the existence of any designer while there is ample and overwhelming evidence of totally natural causes.

Nonsense. Matter is created and destroyed in our universe all of the time. Ever heard of pair production? Happens whenever sufficiently high energy gamma rays interact with heavy nuclei. How about the mutual annihilation of protons and anti-protons?Do you even understand what the BB theory says that conditions were like in the early universe? (Yeah, the question is rhetorical).

I don't suppose you can provide the name of that scientist/philosopher (an extraordinarily unlikely combination of vocations) or a cite to where he/she said that, can you? Or how about a link to the calculations used to arrive at the "one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion" figure? Because that sounds like a completely bogus "statistic," exactly the kind that cdesign proponentsists like to make up.

Hi EWCCC777,There are quite a few problems with your statements here: The real answer is that the question is irrelevant.You make several unfounded assumptions simply to ask such a question. One is that you are assuming that "ife is a "goal." If life is simply incidental, the "tuning" of the variables of the Universe are irrelevant. It takes an innumerable set of unlikely circumstances to result in just a single snowflake of a specific shape landing on a specific spot on the ground - yet it happens every day. This is unremarkable because we know there is no "intent" behind it.The concept that human life is a "goal" of the Universe, that we exist as something more than the end product of purely natural processes, is nothing more than hubris.The second assumption you make when you ask this question is that the Universe was formed specifically to make life as we know it, as opposed to life forming in accordance with the Universe that happened to exist.Imagine that you see in the road a pothole filled with rainwater. Was the pothole "tuned" to fit exactly that much rainwater in exactly that shape? Or did the rainwater conform to whatever pothole was already there when the rain fell?Neither of these assumptions has any basis in evidence, and so the reasoning that follows is irrelevant. Your question, basically, is meaningless. How many games of blackjack do you think are played in Las Vegas in a given day? What do you think is the probability of having exactly the sequence of cards drawn that will be drawn today? Does the improbability of that event point to "design?" Must there have been intent to result in the exact series of cards drawn?Improbable events happen every day. It doesn;t imply design or intent. We don't know of that sort of thing, either. You can imagine it, sure...but your concept is no more valid than any of the infinite alternative "potential forces" that any person can come up with. We've never observed a "supernatural being" that can create Universes. What makes your "being" more likely than a "cosmic egg," an inanimate object that "caused" the Universe?" Or any other conceivable notion?You can't just say that "God is the only thing we know of..." because we don't know of any such thing. No more so than we "know of" Thor, Zeus, the Cosmic Egg, the Cosmic Cube, Galactus, Unicron, or Rocky the Flying Squirrel.The only thing we "know of" is the Universe itself. And we know, from evidence, that the concept of causality starts to get muddy when you approach the minimum value of time. It's rather hard to have a preceding, causal event when there is not earlier point in time - it's rather like asking what's farther North than the North Pole, the question just doesn't make any sense at all.

Most probably incorrect and a hard thing to find out what effect any change would have since we dont know any universe but our own, we dont even know if a universe can be "fine tuned" any other way is there a possibility of a universe exsisting that expands faster, or slowe, where gravity is stronger weaker ....We dont even know if there is life on other plannets though we can speculate from what we see on earth life adapts to the most extraordenary conditions.Some Extremophiles live in acid, nuclear reactors, soo deep under water that no sun reaches them ...... Edited by frako, : No reason given.

Some might argue that this source is a combination of scientist and philosopher:

Some might. I might.But I'm reasonably confident that Professor Hawking never said anything about "one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion" of anything. And if he did, it had nothing to do with the "fine tuning" fable.And given that the Professor has also said, and I strongly doubt that he meant by the portion of his book that you quoted to imply that a designer is a necessary or even salutary conclusion from his observation.

I see this "anti-fine-tuning" sentiment repeatedly here at EvC and the wider skeptic community. It needs to be appreciated that we recognise many examples of fine-tuning,as we use the term in cosmology and astrophysics, throughout the Universe, and not one of these examples suggests that the cause of the fine-tuning is anything other than a natural process and/or selection effect.The problem is not with fine-tuning but with the concept of a fine-tuner...

No, I was just citing a reputable source for the general claim. I believe the specific claim in question ('trillion trillion....'), for what it is worth, comes from Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 3rd ed.However, Krauss, in his paper, "THE END OF THE AGE PROBLEM, AND THE CASE FOR A COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT REVISITED" has said something along the same lines: source. Of course Krauss doesn't believe this implies a fine tuner, either. He gives his thoughts in a particularly interesting way in a video that can be watched here

Well, I'd like to explore this further.It seems to me that the fine tuning argument rests on the premise that if everything weren't exactly as it is to the "one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion" place, nothing would exist. This raises two questions is my mind.One, is the fine tuning that scientists recognize as sensitive as that with regard to conditions in our universe?Two, would a differently tuned universe be impossible, or could it simply contain conditions different from ours but capable of allowing the development of a different kind of life?My advanced physics knowledge is largely derived from "The Big Bang Theory," so I fully appreciate that my questions may be badly worded or even nonsense. But if you can understand the questions I'm trying to ask and respond in layman's terms I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

You've seen it from me.I expressed that skepticism once long ago here in one of the cosmology threads, and then realized that "fine-tuning" meant something to cosmologists other than my Newtonian-intuitive apprehension of the term.I confess my take is still that it sounds rather like we wouldn't be like we are if the universe wasn't like it is, and it is difficult to see much significance in that.Like subbie, I'd like to understand more.

I promise to begin a discussion of the fine-tuning argument in a later thread. It is quite a strong argument when properly understood. I would really like to keep this conversation focused on the very narrow points I am making in my first and second general posts. In an hour or so I will begin to answer some of the questions and objections raised earlier.

Nuggin,
I'm sorry I didn't read your post more closely. I presumed you were discussing a well-known theory. The theory you have laid out here is not one I have encountered before. While it is an interesting thought, I do not think it will do. The universe certainly had a beginning and will certainly grow cold, dark and uninhabitable. I have not come across any theory in which the universe will become empty. Nor do I know of any physical law which would suggest such an ending. For example, we know the natural history of Sun-like stars. The active fusion state (like our Sun is in now), then comes the Red Giant phase (when the nuclear fuel becomes depleted), then the planetary nebula phase (when the outer layers of the Sun break away), to the White Dwarf phase (when the Sun has cooled and shrunk), and finally to the Black Dwarf phase (then the Sun has lost all its heat).You seem to be proposing that at this stage the Sun would begin to break apart into subatomic particles as though there was an end to gravity. I do not think this is supportable. Do you happen to have any support for this idea?

When matter is destroyed, energy is released. This is the very definition of Conservation of Energy.

We talk about an "expanding universe" because we can see objects moving away from us at an increasing rate in all directions. That's because space itself is expanding.We assume that the "edge" of the big bang back ground radiation is the "edge" of space but we can only judge space if there is an object to measure."space/time" becomes meaningless when there is nothing detectable within space time.The ever growing expansion that we are witnessing will ultimately separate all matter. It will take a VERY long time to do so, but it will happen.Once everything has been broken down to atoms then to subatomic particles, then to whatever is smaller still, the Universe will be "empty". Nothing will be detectable.At that point space/time ceases to be a concept with any value.A trillion trillion trillion years could pass and nothing would occur.So, if, as some suggest, the big bang is the result of colliding membranes and these collisions are exceedingly rare, it's just a matter of time within the endless void of no change before a new Big Bang is triggered and a new "universe" is created.Technically, that new Universe is within the existing universe, but it would be impossible for the life forms within that new Universe to detect or measure anything happening in the "old Universe" into which they are expanding.We _could_ be the first Universe.
We _could_ be the ten millionth Universe.We'd have no way of knowing.