Summations Only

That's got to be wrong. The result of the throw that just turned up is unrelated to anything that happened in the past. But if just turned up means throwing until you get something you like and then quitting, you are describing something different.

I'm convinced that life exists elsewhere other than on earth and other than in this solar system. But that idea is completely unrelated to the idea of life existing in a universe where suns or even nuclear fusion is impossible.And whether or not you agree that those potential universes (and others) are more common than universes in which life can exist, those relative probabilities are the parameters of the this particular discussion between blue and I.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yes. But your statement of why was wrong. The probability of him achieving ten heads on any given throw is exactly the same. I don't care how many times he did it and failed, there is no higher probability probability that the next time will be successful. However the probability of achieving the feat at least once in thousands of throws is significant.I'm not sure how your point relates to an error in my argument.

Well then chose infinite colors other than blue for all of those other universes. And blue for the set of all (not just this universe) life bearing universes. That would still not change the proportion of blue to non-blue marbles.We can group the universes in any way we choose, and evaluate probabilities based on those groupings. I elect to group them as life supporting vs non-life supporting universes for the purpose of this discussion, and have postulated that parameters leading to life supporting universes are extremely rare. You don't reject my postulate. That acceptance (for the point of argument) is reasonable because it is the basis for the discussion.You are instead telling me that such a grouping makes no sense, but you are not telling me why other than that you don't like it, or that I am making life special. But for this discussion, life is not special, it is merely the point of the discussion. Life is only as special in the sense that a three on a million sided die is special.

Except that you said something completely different. I think I can if the odds against are sufficiently long, Yes, and that illusion/trick is totally non-analogous to a situation where there is truly only a single attempt. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No I'm not. I am not considering this universe as special. I'm grouping all of the universes together which produce life and comparing that to the population of all universes. I don't particularly care about the particular example we have.You are attempting to distinguish the problem from the one of the rare blue marble. But there is no distinction.

What this would have to mean to be correct is "whether the 3 sixes that just turned up on the dice 'on film' is an occasion for excitement" because without that modification or understanding, your statement is wrong. True. But that means your remark is completely unrelated to the discussion I was having with bluejeans. I agree that having multiple universes or any other kind of multi-roll scenario makes my point moot.

No, we are never entitled or even urged to look for supernatural explanations if we are to be scientists. Because despite what designtheorist says to the contrary, he is ultimately asking us when we will give up empirical based science and just say God. Well, when do you stop looking for your keys and start considering the possibility of poltergeist key eaters? Isn't the answer clearly never?And perhaps that is the answer to the question posed by this thread. But we can still consider whether there might be natural explanations other than @#$5 happens. That too is part of science.In fact, we don't really know enough right now to say whether a universe with life is both surprising and inexplicable using solely natural processes and explanations. Fine tuning might ultimately be a prediction of naturalism. We can either end the discussion at that point or we can offer potential explanations.After all, we cannot answer questions like: Why should we view the 'fundamental' constants as being settable to any value we choose? How many of them are 'fundamental' and 'independent' if they are settable? Without being able to answer those questions, how can we even accept the idea that every combination of constants is equally probable and thus rare or plentiful compared to other combinations.ABE:At any rate, we seem to have closed the gap between our positions considerably. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

And you think that change affects the probability of getting blue vs. that of getting non-blue marbles in some way?And you are still phrasing the problem improperly. The question is not one of blue vs teal. It's the blue marble vs. every other colored marble. The probability that we'll get non-blue is a microscopic bit short of being one, while the probability of getting blue would be the microscopic bit.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I've spent a lot of time with this off-line today, and I've been able to convince myself that you are right. Random, unusual stuff happens all of the time, and there need not be any explanation for a particular rare event.I find the rareness to indicate that there probably is an explanation for that the parameters of the universe have certain values, but I do not reach the conclusion that the reason is design. But that feeling is entirely subjective. I have no basis for saying what level of improbability requires that there be an explanation.Here is one take on the idea:Debunking Christianity: Problems with the Fine-Tuning Argument

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Amazingly unlikely events happen all the time. Any particular sequence is incredibly unlikely. No one thinks such distributions are miraculous. A particular sequence of just 3 cards in a pack of cards being dealt in any order is 140,000 to one. Any sequence over the course of a night in a casino would be astronomical. Yet theists would have to show that the probability of God being responsible is higher than the probability of a naturalistic cause. Because they cannot calculate either one, then the discussion about probability is meaningless.

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I commend your patience. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Do you have something new to say? We already know, and you've all but admitted that Stenger's labeling of gravitational force as fictional is entirely correct.In fact, your post contains no direct attack on Stenger's proposal. Instead it contains an attempt to denigrate his argument by pointing to statements about gravity that are easily defendable.Fail. In fact, Stenger's book makes the attempt to rebut the fine tuning argument without resorting to the multiple universe concept, so even assuming that multiple universes is not defensible, your criticism is off-base. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I had some other choice? Lol!!

Does your proposal model reality? Can you present an argument that it does?It is true that papers are written in this way. But there is no basis for assuming that the parameters are variable over that range or that every value is equally probable, or that any combination of parameters is independent. In fact, we don't know if they are variable at all.Yes it is possible to assume that every value of a parameter that we've never seen change at all is equally probable and that there is a rheostat that we can use to adjust it with, but our consideration would be pure speculation as would any conclusion so reached.What you are asking us to do is ignore some of the most basic criticisms of fine tuning, without giving us any rationale other than to follow you down a rabbit hole that may not model reality. And to what end? You haven't presented an argument that fine tuning implies design anyway.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I've read a few papers, and I don't find that they address the questions I've asked. Do you disagree?I note here that you neither cite any papers nor offer any discussion, nor make any attempts to answer any of my questions. My working hypothesis is that the reason you never deliver or answer questions is that you are a fraud and actually have no answer.To get the ball rolling, I'll cite one such article.http://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.3697v1.pdfStars In Other Universes: Stellar structure with different fundamental constants. Fred C. AdamsIn this paper the Adams looks at a few parameters that he postulates determine whether stars can exist with different parameters. The constants chosen are the gravitational constant, the fine structure
constant, and a composite parameter that determines nuclear fusion rates.While the author concludes that stars can be produced in about 1/4 of the parameter space, the author makes no attempt to argue that the parameters can actually be varied.So this paper does not answer my question. Perhaps you do know of some better papers to look at, but without answering my questions, these kinds of papers don't prove or disprove diddly squat. If you ever got around to actually providing any evidence, then you'd have some basis to say this. But in fact you have not argued or even denied that my questions are relevant; you've merely avoided them, as per usual. And right on cue, you attempt to shift your burden of persuasion to me.Why is it that when put up time comes around, designtheorist is always found waiting for that library to re-open after the Christmas holidays, even when the calendar tells us it's baseball season?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I've read your denial that general relativity is correct which was posted after I questioned you. What's pretty clear is that you are well aware that Stenger's statements are correct based on general relativity, and that you'd like us to dismiss that truth in order to make Stenger appear to be an idiot.I'll also note that your new defense of your position is entirely different from your original statements which attempted to distinguish between attractive force and field.In other words, you are once again shown to be a fraud. On a cosmological level, gravity's attractive force is not just "not used" it is described as fictitious, and of course that is exactly the application we are discussing. Your comments would apply equally well to the centrifugal force. It is used in calculations, but we know that it is fictitious.Let's identify some more nonsense: No, designtheorist. That's not what a scientist does. Given that he doesn't know and has no evidence one way or another, he idoes not attempt to with denying a multi-verse. Forcing crap into a fixed idea is what you do, and not what scientists do.Stenger's book is designed to address a specific criticism of fine tuning. That he does not address others is not a weakness.But I can see that neither reason nor requests for answers will sway you, so I'll be posting a summary and leaving you twisting in the wind. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.