If it can be, how can the "Absence of Evidence" be "Evidence of Absence?".

Might I enquire as to where Barrow and Tipler observed a universe with different laws and came to the conclusion that life there is impossible? Did they observe every universe with different laws? And you know this how? Actually, I think you'll find that they won't claim that there is absolutely no other way life could arise in a universe with different laws. THere is no fine-tuning. Like I said, it seems so perfect because we evolved to fit those laws. Argument from authority. Perhaps. Do you know? Then why claim one thing as how it must be?

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I hunt for the truthI am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

Peg is incorrect.From: Ethical storm brews over embryonic stem cell lines | New Scientist(this is only a popular science mag and may be behind a pay wall)Here are some excerpts from this:

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"You hear people say our universe is fine-tuned for life, that stars are rare and couldn't form if certain things were different," he says. "The truth is, no one has done the calculations." Adams has now rectified that situation and found that it is not unusual for stars to form that can support life.

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Claims of fine-tuning have generally been based on what happens when you vary a single characteristic of the universe, say the strength of gravity, while holding all others constant. That, says Adams, is too artificial a scenario to tell you anything about whether there are other universes that can support life. "The right way to do the problem is to start from scratch," he says. "You have to turn all the knobs and find out what happens."

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About a quarter of the resulting universes turned out to be populated by energy-generating stars. "You can change alpha or the gravitational constant by a factor of 100 and stars still form," Adams says, suggesting that stars can exist in universes in which at least some fundamental constants are wildly different than in our universe.

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And though some universes were filled with things we might not usually think of as stars - radiating black holes or bodies formed of dark matter - they all gave out enough energy to power some form of life, and lasted long enough for life to evolve.

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This has, apparently, been published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

That is very interesting. The apparent failure of the 'change one variable' approach is remiscent of what we frequently see in molecular evolution debates where ID/creationists fail to understand that there are a plethora of possible protein conformations that can perform particular functions and an even larger set of possible DNA sequences that can produce such functional conformations. For proteins you could easily subtitute 'intelligent life' and for DNA 'universal constants'.Presumably it is normally accompanied by the assumption that the variables must be such that human life like our own could evolve, which is apparently Peg's position.TTFN,WK

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Peg is incorrect.

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From: Page not found | New Scientist

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(this is only a popular science mag and may be behind a pay wall)

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These are simply philosophical speculations of a scientist, perhaps because he wants to avoid the implications of fine-tuning. You can find similar comments from a number of scientists. Likewise, you can easily find comments from prominent scientists claiming the opposite, e.g.

Right....Would you mind providing the sources of these quotes, or are you afraid we'll find out they're quotemines then?

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I hunt for the truthI am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

Your quotes are not backed up by anything at all. The work I referred you to is not simply speculations. They have actually worked on the issue and calculated the results.In the article they do comment that no one seems have done the calculations before. If that is correct then anything that you supply are "simply philosophical speculations".ABE
In addition, I think you'll find that Hawking is saying "seem" to be fine-tuned while also pointing out that it is entirely possible that no tuning at all is possible. The constants may have to be that way. If you assume the constants are tunable you are partially assuming what you are trying to demonstrate.Davis may very well have said what you are quoting. His philosophy would, I think, lead him to support such an idea. But if he does without demonstrating it then he is, indeed, merely speculating unlike those that I referred you to.Edited by NosyNed, : added a bit

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These are from a list of quotes that I've collected. A Google search finds attributions of the Hawking quote to A Brief History of Time (1988), p. 125, and the Davies quote to The Cosmic Blueprint (unknown edition) p 203. I don't have the books handy to check them. Feel free to verify that these references are correct and that they are not mis-representing the authors.Here are two more quotes for you to consider and verify if you wish:

See Ned's post for answers to your quotes. Are you going to point to some actual evidence of what you assert, or are you just going to throw quotes at us?So, how about some evidence that a universe with different laws then ours can not harbour life?

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I hunt for the truthI am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

quote:

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Your quotes are not backed up by anything at all. The work I referred you to is not simply speculations. They have actually worked on the issue and calculated the results.

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If this work is so wonderful, why aren't they publishing in a more prominent journal (Astrophysical Journal, Phys Rev, Nature, or Science)?

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In the article they do comment that no one seems have done the calculations before. If that is correct then anything that you supply are "simply philosophical speculations".

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Do you label Hawking's comments as "simply philosophical speculations" not based on calculations? Or Hoyle's? Or Dyson's? Or Smoot's, below? (Note: I know George, and I am sure that that these comments are based on both calculation and observation.)

Let's try a thought experiment.Let's suppose that a certain finite set of parameters completely defines a universe. Let's further suppose that we can flip coins or throw dice to determine the values of these parameters, thereby defining an example of a possible universe.If we do this a number of times, we end up with a set of possible universes, some of which are suitable for life in some form or other, and which may or may not actually contain life, while others are utterly hostile to any form of life whatsoever, and are thus completely devoid of it.From the point of view of life form X in one of the universes that contains life it might seem that it is extremely fortunate that its universe is exactly right for it. However, we on the outside know that its universe is just one of many possible universes, the parameters of which were determined in a random procedure. And we are not surprised to find that the only universes where these thoughts are expressed are the universes where life is possible in the first place. Obviously, we are also not surprised that we hear nothing from universes where life is impossible.Of course, in reality we don't know how the parameters of our universe have been determined, but we are in the same position as life form X in the example above. This means that, from our experience of finding ourselves in our life-friendly universe, we cannot draw the conclusion that our universe is finely tuned for our existence, because we know a random set of parameters might equally well result in the same experience.Any comments?Edited by Parasomnium, : grammarEdited by Parasomnium, : another stupid language mistakeEdited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

You must be expecting, then, for creatures to evolve in some manner other than "finely tuned" to their environment?You must be expecting something like that else why would you be so astonished that evolution and natural selection have resulted in creatures that are finely tuned to existing conditions?Fine tuning is what evolution does! And it does it so well that it seems like creatures were "designed" to fit their environment. That's the way nature works.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

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You must be expecting, then, for creatures to evolve in some manner other than "finely tuned" to their environment?
You must be expecting something like that else why would you be so astonished that evolution and natural selection have resulted in creatures that are finely tuned to existing conditions?

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Fine tuning is what evolution does! And it does it so well that it seems like creatures were "designed" to fit their environment. That's the way nature works.

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The context of my remarks (and Peg's?) is not evolution. I was discussing cosmological and physical parameters and was quoting experts in these fields.

Yes, you have yet to mention that any of them have done anything other than speculate. In fact, Hawking makes clear he is speculating and also speculates that there may be no fine tuning possible at all because there may be no tuning possible at all. But we don't know (yet). It would be interesting to know where he published them. You should also note that the previously referenced work points out that varying one "constant" at a time isn't the only possibility and if your friend George did that then he didn't demonstrate that the other work is wrong at all.

Same difference.Species evolved to match existing conditions.If conditions were different, species would have evolved differently, no?And then, wonder of wonders, they would be "fine tuned" for those other conditions!"Fine tuning" is nothing more than god of the gaps apologetics mixed liberally with personal incredulity.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

No, GR explains precisely why gravitation behaves the way it does. GR lies at a much deeper level than simple gravitation. Furthermore, GR fits into a even deeper framework of the nature of reality, when seen together with the other quantum fields. What Peg wrote in the context of gravity is complete, although oft-repeated, nonsense.