the_cave

That's a caracature of the argument by design, IMO. The reason why the river exists is the topology of the landscape, plus the laws of physics (which also built the landscape). The argument by design looks at the features of those laws themselves--which were presumably present at the creation of the universe itself. It's true that according to Mr. Metcalf's reasoning, we might as well assume that it's the river that was the purpose, rather than us--but that's not a refutation of the argument by design, just a claim that this is not a human-centric cosmos (I argue, anyway).

the_cave

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I can't resist...I think what your exercise actually does is beg the question. So you didn't put gods in any of the universes. So why did the 1% chance event still obtain? (Maybe there's a god there anyway, just one that you didn't put there...) Anyway the point is that it seems that your exercise must assume the many-worlds hypothesis...which is interesting, but it's as equally unobservable as God, as many have noted, which is why many (but not all) scientists don't like to discuss the idea.

Wiploc

I guess you never dealt a deck of cards. As Asimov pointed out, if even a brief time went by without something unusual happening, that would be very unusual.
crc

Wiploc

Sure, I'm happy with that description --- so long as you don't think it implies that the mrFTA (Mississippi River Fine Tuning Argument) is less persuasive than the cFTA (Cosmological Fine Tuning Argument).



But you'll admit that if we restored the landscape to some primeval form and allowed the weather to rain all over it, it would be unlikely in the extreme for the river to wind up in exactly the same shape and place, right?



This is a distinction without a difference. In both cases we pick an unlikely result and arbitrarily declare that it was intended. On the basis of the fact that what was intended was what actually happened, we conclude (circularly) that it must have been intended.

The only difference is that we know the river is actually unlikely, whereas the weight of the proton is only hypothetically unlikely, since we don't know whether it can really have any other weight.

crc

theophilus

I'm not certain, but I think you have comitted a categorical error.

Probability exists in the context of matter. Since God is not a material being there can be no meaningful assessment of the probability of his existence.

Since he is self-existent, he does not depend on any "conditions" for his existence. He either exists or he doesn't.

Wiploc

It didn't. There was a 0% chance.



The only reason I used many worlds was to make statistics work. I certainly don't need many worlds to create a situation where statistics can have play. Why, just this afternoon I invented a test for RDD (Rolling Donut Disease). I tested a bunch of people. It is in the nature of the test that for subjects who have the disease, the test produces false negatives 20% of the time; and for people who don't have the disease, it produces false positives 1% of the time. Of 1000 randomly selected subjects, 12 tested positive.

Question: What are the odds that none of the subjects actually have the disease?

Answer: You can't calculate the answer unless you know what percentage of people actually have the disease. If 50% of the population have the disease, you get a different answer than if only 10% have the disease. In this case, since I made up the disease, we are certain that nobody in the general population has the disease, and we are therefore certain that nobody in the sample group has the disease.

Moral: If you can't use pseudo-mathematical tap dancing to prove that invented diseases exist, then you can't use it to prove that invented gods exist.

If there were many universes, and if we knew what percentage of them had gods, then and only then could we begin profitably using FTA-type calculations. Rephasing: You can't use FTA math as evidence of god's existence unless you start with the assumption that god is likely to exist. That makes the argument circular.
crc

Tercel

Yup. The whole point of the FTA is that intelligent agents will favour different implementations than non-intelligent agents would. The necessary idea behind this is that intelligent agents have intention whilst non-intelligent agents do not.

Yup.

No. I did not assign any preference to God. I specifically pointed out that the FTA would work perfectly fine if the probability that God would want to create a universe without life was equal to the probability of his creating the universe with life. Nothing in favour of FT about God's preferences is being assumed here.

Tercel

It assumes God has a greater than zero chance of existence. (An assumption I feel is very reasonable) It is an evidential argument attempting to provide confirmation for the unlikelihood of one universe and no god. (It shoul not attempt to argue directly that god exists)

Tercel

They wouldn't necessarily.
However an intelligent being would study the problem in terms of life-permitting constants vs constants which don't permit life. Intelligent beings are interested in questions of function, eg "What do I want my creation to do? What properties do I want it to have?".
"Random chance" (including stupid designers and natural processes) on the other hand don't consider this at all. They will select a set of constants effectively at random out of the available possible sets.
And intelligent designer on the other hand will search the available possible sets to find a set of constants which fits the design decisions.

With regard to fine tuning, it is asserted that the number of life-permitting possible constant sets (L) is very small compared to the total number of possible constant sets (N). The chances of a random or pseudo-random processing selecting a life permitting constant set:
= L / N.
Whereas the intelligent choice an intelligent designer makes is to first choose between L and ~L:
= 0.5 in the case of an unknown purposes designer.

0.5 is a gigantic probability compared to L / N and hence strong confirmation of design in a one-world scenario.

The design argument hinges on the idea that the designer follows the analysis/design/implementation paradigm. If the designer did not in fact do this, he is indistinguishable from "random chance".

Fiach

None of this makes any sense without a specific definition of God. Then we must debate the 4 kinds of God in turn. God has 4 definitions:

1. The Giant Human (Anthropomorphic God) of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This god is conscious, cognitive, knows each person and watches them, makes arbitrary moral rules, created Hell. He has human personality traits (vindictiveness, hatred, love, jealousy, narcissism, insecurity, cruelty, fits of rage).

2. A God may be conscious, even cognitive but without human personality traits. Examples: Deistic God, Uniitarian-Universalist god, Spinosa's God.

3. A god of Nature, Pantheistic God.

4. An unconscious, non-cognitive god acting in purely natural rules to cause the Big Bang, but being a non-conscious entity, it does not interfere with human or non-human animal acts. It would not deliberately cause suffering or make a Hell. It goes away or becomes the universe itself after the Big Bang. We control our own destiny and rise only through our own efforts.

Chances of existence in my opinion:

God no. 1, so implausible and improbable chances near zero or a Googleplex : 1 betting ratio.

God no. 2, Plausible but no way to measure and odds 5 googles : 1. Consciousness and cognition are unnecessary to create universes. These are animal traits, tuned by evolution, for survival by enabling an animal to seek food, seek reproductive mate, and avoid predators. That is the only proven function of consciousness and cognition however complex it seems in a techno-society. It is an animal property. A universe creator need not have animal properties.

God no. 3. Nature God, or Pantheistic god is close to god no. 4. However if the Pantheistic God of the Universe possesses consciousness or cognition the odds would be a trillion to one only if the god is proposed to be conscious or cognitive.

God no. 4. God is really a natural process of universe generation by natural processes or quantum mechanisms. This is only a god in the creator sense but not a being or personality. Odds are in my opinion favourable: 99.999999999999999999999999999%

Fiach