Commitment to atheism results in bad science - The Victor Stenger Example

Title: Commitment to atheism results in bad science - The Victor Stenger ExampleForum: Is It Science?Not all atheists are bad scientists. But when one’s commitment to atheism trumps his commitment to science, the result is very bad science.Among the strongest scientific evidences for the existence of God are the low entropy Big Bang and the fine-tuned universe. When scientists who are committed to atheism have attempted to combat these arguments, they have resulted in extremely bad science.The example I want to debate today is Victor Stenger and his book The Fallacy of Fine-tuning: Why the universe is not designed for us. It is clear that Stenger’s devotion to atheism has caused him to leave the realm of science in his attempt to defeat theism.Usually, scientists (who are predominantly atheists) are willing to admit that certain parameters in the universe (strength of gravity, strength of the electromagnetic force, strength of the strong and weak interactions, mass of the electron, etc.) are extremely fine-tuned; but are they unwilling to identify the cause of the fine-tuning. In the case of Victor Stenger, he is willing to admit that if fine-tuning were real it would be a problem for atheists, but he is unwilling to admit fine-tuning exists. Here is a quote from his book:For years now theists have thought they have the final, killer scientific argument for the existence of God. They have claimed that the physical parameters of the universe are delicately balanced — fine-tuned — so that any infinitesimal changes would make life as we know it impossible. Even atheist physicists find this so-called anthropic principle difficult to explain naturally, and many think they need to invoke multiple universes to do so. — Victor Stenger, Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, p. 37Stenger allows that atheists have to resorted to the multiple universes argument to combat fine-tuning. This Stenger will not do. Stenger calls the multiverse is an untested hypothesis and refuses to rely on it himself. But Stenger seems to want to hold the multiverse in reserve just in case the arguments presented in his book fail. And the arguments in his book fail completely. Setting aside the obvious hyperbole ("current models strongly suggest ours in not the only universe") in the passage below, Stenger makes promises he cannot keep:Cosmologists have proposed a very simple solution to the fine-tuning problem. They current models strongly suggest that ours is not the only universe but part of a multiverse containing an unlimited number of individual universes extending an unlimited distance in all directions and for an unlimited time in the past and future. If that’s the case, we just happen to live in than universe which is suited for our kind of life.
The universe is not fine-tuned to us; we are fine-tuned to the universe.
Now, theists and many nonbelieving scientists object to this solution as being nonscientific because we have no way of observing a universe outside our own, which we will see is disputable. In fact, a multiverse is more scientific and parsimonious than hypothesizing an unobservable creating spirit and a single universe. I would argue that the multiverse is a legitimate scientific hypothesis, since it agrees with our best knowledge
Now I mention this only for completeness.
Although I believe it is adequate to refute fine-tuning, it remains an untested hypothesis. My case will not rely on speculations beyond well-established physics nor on the existence of multiple universes. I will show fine-tuning is a fallacy based on our knowledge of this universe alone. Stenger, Fallacy, pp. 23-24The obvious hyperbole ("current models strongly suggest ours in not the only universe") shows Stenger would like to use any tool possible to defeat theism, but he has to admit that the multiverse is not really science. He claims he "will not rely on speculations beyond well-established physics" and yet he claims the gravitational field may not be real or that we can make it whatever we want it to be.Recall these classic Stenger quotes:"The moon is probably real. But the gravitational field does not have to be." P. 53, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning."In most physics textbooks you will read that gravity is the weakest of all forces, many orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetism... We see this is wrong. Recall that the gravitational force is fictional, like the centrifugal force." P. 151"In short, the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is clearly not fine-tuned. It can be anything we want it to be." P. 152Perhaps it is not yet clear to you that Stenger is well off the beaten path when it comes to physics of gravity. It should be a hint that he admits that his views differ from physics textbooks, but let’s look closer at the evidence.There are different ways of looking at gravity. Unfortunately for Stenger, he screws them all up.There are two (or arguably three) scientific views of gravity. In Newtonian physics, gravity is calculated by attraction. Newtonian physics works in most situations. NASA used Newtonian physics to calculate travel to the moon. In Newtonian physics, gravity is a constant. It works very well on the surface of earth and between the earth and moon.Here's a good definition from Wise Geek: "Newton's first law states that the force of gravity between two masses is directly proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, or mathematically: F=G(m1m2/d2), where G is a constant."On a cosmological level, General Relativity is more precise than Newtonian physics. On a cosmological level, the concept of attraction is not used. But on the surface of the planet, the concept of attraction is very helpful.In General Relativity, in place of attraction physicists talk of the "gravitational field." This refers to the extent space is warped by the presence of planetary bodies. Within GR, there is no attraction. This is not the same as saying there is no force. But pay attention to the statement Stenger makes. He does not just deny gravity's attraction, he denies the gravitational field. The gravitational field does represent a force.Take this definition from Wikipedia:
"In physics, a gravitational field is a model used to explain the influence that a massive body extends into the space around itself, producing a force on another massive body. Thus, a gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenomena, and is measured in newtons per kilogram (N/kg). In its original concept, gravity was a force between point masses. Following Newton, Laplace attempted to model gravity as some kind of radiation field or fluid, and since the 19th century explanations for gravity have usually been sought in terms of a field model, rather than a point attraction."The problem for Stenger is that he writes: "The moon is probably real. But the gravitational field does not have to be." P. 53, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning."In short, the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is clearly not fine-tuned. It can be anything we want it to be." P. 152The force created by this gravitational field is not fictional. It cannot be changed by my whim or Stenger’s whim. We cannot make it whatever we want it to be - as Stenger says. These statements are absolutely indefensible. Ask Cave Diver.The third view of gravity is not well-established, but it is the view from quantum field theory. It theorizes the attraction (or gravitational field) is mediated by a massless particle known as a graviton. This view has some problems, but perhaps some day the graviton will be discovered.Stenger's comments violate all three scientific views of gravitation. He is completely outside the lines. No physicist in his right mind will say gravitation is fictional or "the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is clearly not fine-tuned."Luke Barnes has written a scholarly paper assessing Stenger’s book. The entire paper is worth reading but Barnes begins evaluating Stenger’s discussion of gravity on page 12.Robin Collins, a philosopher who also studied physics at a high level, has also written a critique of Stenger’s book.Stenger has written a defense of his book that claims Barnes has misunderstood the book.Stenger writes: Barnes disagrees with my referring to gravity as a fictitious force. We call the centrifugal and Coriolis forces fictitious because we can find a reference frame in which they are not observed. I point out that the same is true for the gravitational force. An observer in a falling capsule, such as a spacecraft in orbit, experiences no gravitational force In his theory of general relativity, Einstein replaced the gravitational force with paths along geodesics in curved space-time. That is, there is no gravitational force in general relativity. Certainly, gravity is a real phenomenon. However, the gravitational force is fiction. In this and most of Barnes’ other comments, we don’t disagree on the physics so much as how to characterize and interpret it. P.6-7.This is complete hogwash and has no relationship to Stenger’s comments in his book. The book plainly calls the gravitational field fictional. His comments are not limited to specific situations, such as a spacecraft (which still exerts a gravitational field although it is very small and imperceptible). No, in the book Stenger clearly calls gravitation into question because he does not want the strength of gravity to be used to show the fine-tuning of the universe.Stenger's book is full of very bad science. His commitment to atheism has forced him to take positions which he admits are different from the physics textbooks. Edited by designtheorist, : Trying to fix the link to Luke Barnes paper. It is found at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4647v1.pdfEdited by designtheorist, : No reason given.

This is not just a repeat of earlier comments. I link to a scientific paper by Barnes which expounds on my criticisms and provides many others.I also link to a criticism by Robin Collins.I probably could have provided more criticisms myself but I could not force myself to finish reading the book. It is that bad. Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.

Thank you for taking an interest. The obvious hyperbole is that while the multiverse has been hypothesized, it is wrong to overlook the problems and state models "strongly suggest" the multiverse. If the models strongly suggested it, there would be no reason for Stenger to refuse to use it. Any definition involving general relativity uses the term "gravitational field." See "In general relativity the gravitational field is determined by solving the Einstein field equations" from Wikipedia.As I explained in Message 300, there is a difference in terminology between Newtonian physics and General Relativity. Newton spoke of attraction of masses. General relativity does not use that term, but uses "gravitational field" to refer to how the spacetime fabric is warped by mass.Returning to Wikipedia: Refer to any textbook on general relativity and you will see the gravitational field is always accepted as real. The effects of the gravitational field may be so small as to be imperceptible without instruments, such as the example of a man inside a spacecraft. There is not really a zero gravity situation as the man and the spacecraft are flying at the same rate of speed and it seems to be zero gravity.While it is beyond current technology, it is theoretically possible to create a gravitational field inside a spacecraft by using high density materials to create a gravitational field. See Wikipedia:
"Another way artificial gravity may be achieved is by installing an ultra-high density mass in a spacecraft so that it would generate its own gravitational field and pull everything inside towards it. Technically this is not artificial gravityit is natural gravity, gravity in its original sense. An extremely large amount of mass would be needed to produce even a tiny amount of noticeable gravity. A large asteroid could exert several thousandths of a g and, by attaching a propulsion system of some kind, would qualify as a space ship, though gravity at such a low level might not have any practical value. An advantage of such system was proposed in Charles Sheffield's McAndrew Chronicles, where a disc of 100 m diameter and 1 m thickness of degenerate matter weighting 1300 billion tons have 1 g 246 m away for gravity at zero acceleration, and can be used to cancel out the acceleration of 50 g at 0 m.[10] The disadvantage of such system is that the mass would obviously need to move with the spacecraft; if the spacecraft is to be accelerated significantly, this would greatly increase fuel consumption. Because gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the center of mass, it would be possible to have significant levels of gravity with much less mass than such an asteroid if this mass could be made much denser than current materials like degenerate matter. In principle, small charged black holes could be used and held in position with electromagnetic forces. However, carrying a sufficient quantity of mass to form significant gravity fields in a spacecraft is well beyond current technology."You have understand that the purpose of Stenger's argument is call into question the use of Einstein's field equations in calculating the strength of gravity soon after the Big Bang. Every competent physicist understands these equations. Martin Rees uses them in his book Just Six Numbers. Steven Weinberg uses them in The First Three Minutes: A Modern View Of The Origin Of The Universe. Hawking and Penrose used them in their papers. All of these guys are atheists and they are better physicists than Stenger. All these guys say the strength of gravity is finely tuned to the strength of the electroweak interaction or we would not have the universe we know and love.Stenger says the Einstein field equations should not be used to say the universe is finely-tuned because "gravitational field does not have to be" real and gravity "can be anything we want it to be." This is false. It is demonstrably false. It is egregiously false.My position is not "nonsense." There may have been times when I did not express myself well, but my position makes sense is in line with traditional physics. Even Stenger admits that his position disagrees with physics textbooks.Now can we promote the thread?

I should point out there is a huge difference between "fictitious" in normal parlance and "fictitious" when speaking of forces. Stenger attempts to use this confusion to his advantage.Stenger writes "The moon is probably real. But the gravitational field does not have to be."Here Stenger is trying to say the gravitational field is not real. This is just not true. Whether we understand the gravitational field precisely is another question. Until Einstein most people thought Newton's idea of gravity was correct. It is possible a new theory of gravity may come on the scene which is even more precise than general relativity. But to say the gravitational field does not have to be real is very, very misleading. In fact, it is wrong.

Regarding the obvious hyperbole, I am sorry if I am not being clear. Let me try again. Stenger claims current models "strongly suggest" the multiverse. I strongly disagree. The standard cosmology is the lambda cold dark matter cosmology. This cosmology does not suggest the multiverse at all.If you want to look at other cosmological models, you can read about them here. Most of these models are no longer in the running, but you will see that none of them require a multiverse.The model most associated with the multiverse is string theory (or M theory). I'm not a string theory hater. It may be that string theory is on the right track. But it would be a mistake to think string theory has been established or confirmed by observation. Even if string theory is someday confirmed by observation, it does not require a multiverse from colliding branes.To an informed observer, Stenger's comment that current models "strongly suggest" the multiverse is obvious hyperbole. To other readers, perhaps the hyperbole is not so obvious. But it is still hyperbole. Yes, it's true that you could take Stenger's words in this manner. The problem, of course, is that Stenger has to reject the physics in physics textbooks to get to his position. So his argument really doesn't work. First, I'm not certain what Son Goku is trying to say. Second, it's possible what he is trying to say is incorrect. Third, if he thinks his statement confirms all of Stenger's conclusions, he is wrong.You mention "That's not to say that there's no such thing as a gravitational field..." Yes, but Stenger is saying the gravitational field does not have to be real. Any real scientist will have a problem with that statement.You go on "...but rather than being something like an electric field which is mediated by photons it is just something with vector values at every point in space (i.e., a field), the values falling out of the Einstein field equations." Yes, but quantum field theory does hypothesize gravity being mediated by massless gravitons. We don't have a fully formed quantum theory of gravity yet and perhaps we never will.More important is Stenger's comment that we can make the strength of gravity whatever we want it to be. This is clearly false. We do not have the ability to change the strength of gravity."General Relativity and Newton's gravitational theory make essentially identical predictions as long as the strength of the gravitational field is weak, which is our usual experience. However, there are several crucial predictions where the two theories diverge, and thus can be tested with careful experiments." See Gravitation and the General Theory of RelativityEinstein's Field Equations are fixed. The situation may change depending on the mass involved, but the equations are fixed. We cannot change them with our whim as Stenger claims. I have two main problems with Stenger. When he speaks of fictitious forces, he is trying to persuade the reader that the gravitational field has no reality. This is a problem. You cannot say "The moon may be real but the gravitational field does not have to be." That's just ridiculous.My second problem with Stenger is that he says we can make the strength of gravitation whatever we want it to be and therefore it is not fine-tuned. This is also ridiculous. Every physicist who has looked at this agrees that the ratio between the strength of gravity just after the Big Bang was finely-tuned to the "oomph" of the Big Bang and the strength of the electroweak interaction. If the strength of gravity was just a little stronger, the universe would have collapsed in on itself and become a black hole. If the strength of gravity was just a little weaker, the expansion of the universe would have happened too quickly and the galaxies and stars would never have formed. The universe would have been a sparsely populated field of hydrogen. Every physicist agrees with this.Now, can we promote this thread? Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.

Could you be specific? How am I misinterpreting his remarks? What do you think Stenger is saying when he writes "The moon is probably real. But the gravitational field does not have to be?" You have provided greater context for the statement, but I fail to see how the greater context changes my understanding that Stenger is calling into question the reality of the gravitational field.Stenger seems to have a habit of saying bizarre things and then trying to pull them back. But that does not change the fact that he said them or the fact that his argument rests upon the bizarre statement that he made.For example, if you could show me that Stenger could arrive at gravity not being finely tuned without calling into question the reality of the gravitational field or without the bizarre claim that we can make gravity be whatever we want it to be, then you might have a point. But the fact is that these bizarre statements are absolutely essential to Stenger's position. You cannot get to Stenger's position that gravity is not finely-tuned without them.You have not even dealt with the fact that Stenger admits his position is contrary to physics textbooks. Stenger writes:"In most physics textbooks you will read that gravity is the weakest of all forces, many orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetism... We see this is wrong. Recall that the gravitational force is fictional, like the centrifugal force." P. 151This quote should be a drop dead giveaway that Stenger is out in left field and he knows it. So we see Stenger admitting that he disagrees with physics textbooks.However, in Stenger's paper defending his book, he writes "I have no significant disagreements with that literature (the literature on the fine-tuning problem) and no prominent physicist or cosmologist has disputed my basic conclusions." This statement is not true. Stenger has significant disagreement with physics textbooks regarding gravity. He claims not to disagree with fine-tuning literature and yet the book was written to contradict the fine-tuning literature. How can he say he has no problem with the fine-tuning literature when his entire book calls fine-tuning a fallacy?Do you see the problem? He is talking out of both sides of his mouth. By the way, have you looked to see who endorsed his book? Not a single prominent physicist or cosmologist has endorsed it. Richard Dawkins endorsed it, but he knows nothing of cosmology.Also, Stenger writes: "In short, the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is clearly not fine-tuned. It can be anything we want it to be." P. 152 Stenger's argument that we can make the strength of gravity "anything we want it to be" is based on his claim that it is a fictitious force. But we cannot make the strength of the centrifugal force "whatever we want it to be" just because it is a fictitious force.Luke Barnes has written a long scientific article criticizing Stenger's book. I linked to this paper in my opening post (although I notice now the link is not working properly. You have remove the evcforum bit from the beginning to get it to work properly.) Barnes's criticisms are far greater and more detailed than mine. Neither his criticisms nor my criticisms are "about a misinterpretation of simple English" nor "about what a scientist really thinks, or what his words really mean." My criticisms, and Barnes's, of Stenger's words go directly to the heart of his argument that fine-tuning is just a fallacy.It seems to me that I am being asked to win this debate before it is even promoted. How often does it happen that someone wants to debate something, has scientific literature on his side, and still there is a long debate on whether it should be promoted or not? Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.

By this statement, I think you mean that you do not want to host debates over semantics - differences without a distinction, splitting hairs, etc. Am I correct?I think I am. At any rate, Stenger is an unusual case because he uses words in ways to change their meaning. I was just re-reading Barnes paper criticizing Stenger and found this interesting quote:This argument commits the fallacy of equivocation — the term 'invariant' has changed its meaning between LN1 and LN2. The difference is decisive but rather subtle, owing to the different contexts in which the term can be used. p.8This is the same type of thing Stenger does with the term "fictitious." Fictitious means one thing when applied to forces and something quite different when applied to most everyday life.Of course, this is more than just semantics. This is the logical fallacy of equivocation. Stenger uses it almost like a skill he has studied and developed.I hope your policy does not prevent debates involving this logical fallacy. Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.

I appreciate your call for greater context for Stenger's quote on p. 152. I think the greater context puts Stenger's quote in an even less favorable light. But I think the main is issue is the personal animosity against me. For this reason, I want to turn to criticisms of Stenger published in the scientific literature by Luke Barnes.Barnes is a working scientist associated with the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich, Switzerland and Sydney Institute for Astronomy and School of Physics in Sydney, Australia. His paper is titled The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent LifeThe following are selected quotes from Barnes's paper. I leave them for you without comment in the hope you will be able to consider them with less emotion and more reason than if I commented directly.BarnesGeneral Relativity: We now turn to Stenger’s discussion of gravity. Barnes comments These claims are mistaken. The existence of gravity is not implied by the existence of the universe, separate masses or accelerating frames. P.12From this starting point, via a generalization of the separation of geodesic deviation from Newtonian gravity, we link the real, non-fictitious properties of the gravitational field to Riemann tensor and its contractions. In this respect, gravity is not a fictional force in the same sense that the centrifugal force is. We can always remove the centrifugal force everywhere by transforming to an inertial frame. This cannot be done for gravity. P.13We can now identify the additional assumptions that Stenger needs to derive general relativity. Given general covariance (or PoVI), the additional assumptions constitute the entire empirical content of the theory. Even if we assume the equivalence principle, we need additional information about what the gravitational properties of matter actually do to spacetime. These are the dynamic principles of spacetime, the very reasons why Einstein’s theory can be called geometrodynamics. Stenger’s attempts to trivialize gravity thus fail. We are free to consider the fine-tuning of gravity, both its existence and properties. P. 13Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.

Here is another criticism from Barnes.4.5 The Amplitude of Primordial FluctuationsQ, the amplitude of primordial fluctuations, is one of Martin Rees’ Just Six Numbers. In our universe, its value is Q (roughly equal) 2 x 105, meaning that in the early universe the density at any point was typically within 1 part in 100,000 of the mean density. What if Q were different? Stenger has two replies. Firstly: Barnes comments:
Note that the first part of the quote contradicts the second part. We are first told that inflation predicts Q = 10-5, and then we are told that inflation cannot predict Q at all. Both claims are false. A given inflationary model will predict Q, and it will only predict a life-permitting value for Q if the parameters of the inflation potential are suitably fine-tuned. As Turok (2002) notes, to obtain density perturbations of the level required by observations . . . we need to adjust the coupling mu {for a power law potential mu phi } to be very small, ~ 10-13 in Planck units. This is the famous fine-tuning problem of inflation; . . . Rees’ life-permitting range for Q implies a fine-tuning of the inflation potential of ~ 10-11 with respect to the Planck scale. Tegmark (2005, particularly Figure 11) argues that on very general grounds we can conclude that life-permitting inflation potentials are highly unnatural.Stenger’s second reply is to ask: Again Barnes comments:
There are a few problems here. We have a clear case of the flippant funambulist fallacy — the possibility of altering other constants to compensate the change in Q is not evidence against fine-tuning. Choose Q and, say, alphaG at random and you are unlikely to have picked a life-permitting pair, even if our universe is not the only life-permitting one. We also have a nice example of the cheap-binoculars fallacy. The allowed change in Q relative to its value in our universe (an order of magnitude) is necessarily an underestimate of the degree of fine-tuning. The question is whether this range is small compared to the possible range of Q. Stenger seems to see this problem, and so argues that large values of Q are unlikely to result from inflation. This claim is false, and symptomatic of Stenger’s tenuous grasp of cosmology. The upper blue region of Figure 4 shows the distribution of Q for the model of Tegmark 2005, using the physically natural expectation (equation here). The mean value of Q ranges from 10 to almost 10000. . .The fine-tuning of Q stands up well under examination. P. 32-34.So, that ends the Barnes section. I will make a few comments here.In his book, Stenger takes issue with Rees. Barnes points out that Rees does not provide all of the evidence available regarding Q because his book was targeting a popular audience. More extensive work in the scientific literature was done by Rees and Tegmark together, Tegmark alone, Bousso, and Garriga & Vilenkin.I would like to thank Barnes for pointing out how Stenger contradicted himself. You can see this several times throughout the book. In the abstract Stenger wrote in his paper defending himself from Barnes, Stenger writes: Luke Barnes has written a lengthy, highly technical review of the scientific literature on the fine-tuning problem. I have no significant disagreement with that literature and no prominent physicist or cosmologist has disputed my basic conclusions.This is quite an amusing quote to me. First, no prominent physicist or cosmologist has endorsed his book either. Second, Stenger claims not to have a disagreement with the literature on the fine-tuning problem yet he wrote a book titled The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning. If Stenger has no problem with the literature, why is he claiming Martin Rees is wrong?Stenger’s ability to hold two opposing viewpoints at the same time is amazing. Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.Edited by designtheorist, : I hate my typos!Edited by designtheorist, : No reason given.

I am not going off on new directions. The title of this debate is "Commitment to atheism results in bad science -The Victor Stenger Example." The two issues I posted on quoting Barnes directly apply to this topic. These are just two of a host of problems identified by Barnes. It is true that you have not expressed any personal animosity. But a great deal of personal animosity has been directed at me on other threads on this site. I can't help but wonder about some of the messages those individuals are messaging to you in private. And I can't help wondering what you are feeling when you make claims like the one below. I problem is that the views I attribute to Stenger are exactly what he wrote. I am directly quoting hm. Greater context does not help Stenger, it only makes it worse for him. He contradicts himself repeatedly.The bigger problem is that Barnes agrees with me that Stenger's views are not in line with physics textbooks. Heck, even Stenger admitted that. There are plenty more criticisms in Barnes's paper that we have not gotten to yet. And we have not even started to look at the Robin Collins's criticisms of Stenger yet. There is no shortage of debate material here, if we can find someone who is willing to take Stenger's side in this. Cave Diver is probably the most knowledgable on general relativity, but I doubt he would even attempt to support Stenger's bizarre views.Regarding your time, don't feel I'm rushing you. Take your time. But on the other hand, I don't think we should stop looking at the criticisms against Stenger. The more criticisms we get out on the table, the more likely we can find something you are willing to allow debate on.It's one thing to say that I misunderstand Stenger, but you cannot think all the criticism against Stenger are unwarranted. Why shouldn't we get the major issues out on the table?

You have not explained how it is possible to interpret Stenger's words in a way other than I have and still be consistent with his goal of explaining "The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning." If you try to interpret Stenger in line with traditional physics, then you are stuck with a fine-tuned universe.However, you want to interpret Stenger the way he intends - that fine-tuning is a fallacy - then you eventually have to get to this statement:"In short, the strength of gravity is an arbitrary number and is clearly not fine-tuned. It can be anything we want it to be." p. 152.I believe Stenger intends to convey exactly what he wrote. That sentence is his goal. Stenger has to be able to say gravity is not fine-tuned. So, how does he get there? Let's work backwards.Earlier he writes: "Recall that the gravitational force is fictional, like the centrifugal force. No one compares the value of centrifugal force with other forces."The second sentence is true. But what does it mean? Stenger is upset that physicists are comparing the strength of gravity to other forces. Stenger claims not to have any problem with the fine-tuning literature but every physicist compares the ratio of the strength of gravity to other forces. . . Rees, Penrose, Hawking, Tegmark, Weinberg, all of them. Why do they do it? Because while gravitational force can be fictitious at times, at other times it is not.The truly fictitious forces, like the centrifugal force, are always fictitious. In Message 13 I quote Barnes talking about the gravitational force saying: Message 13 was a direct response to your comment. I was showing that I was not the only one who interprets Stenger as trivializing gravity so he can say it is not fine-tuned. Barnes agrees with me.My second post was not directly related to your comment but is directly related to the topic of this debate. And, as I said, there are lots more examples of bad science in Stenger's book to talk about.

I realize that the onus is upon me. Perhaps it seems odd to you but by challenging you to think of an interpretation that is different from mine and yet consistent with Stenger's goal, I was hoping to show you that no such competing interpretation is possible. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to find a short description of gravity from a trusted source online. The Barnes paper I linked talked about the fact gravity can be fictitious or not depending on the situation. I did find a short article by a Nobel Prize winner titled What is a "fictitious force?" In the article, David Politzer states:"With general relativity, Einstein managed to blur forever the distinction between real and fictitious forces. General relativity is his theory of gravity, and gravity is certainly the paradigmatic example of a "real" force. The cornerstone of Einstein's theory, however, is the proposition that gravity is itself a fictitious force (or, rather, that it is indistinguishable from a fictitious force). Now, some 90 years later, we have innumerable and daily confirmations that his theory appears to be correct."So, you see, it is wrong to think of gravity as always being a fictitious force. This is a good idea. I will do so.