FRDB Archives

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.


Go Back   FRDB Archives > Archives > IIDB ARCHIVE: 200X-2003, PD 2007 > IIDB Philosophical Forums (PRIOR TO JUN-2003)
Welcome, Peter Kirby.
You last visited: Today at 05:55 AM

 
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 09-03-2002, 07:36 PM   #91
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 553
Post

Hm....just a thought.

If indeed that FTA claims that certain manipulations of constants makes the universe more life-friendly, where does the theist come with the evidence that the universe is indeed life-friendly?

The earth is one of the millions of planets that are in this galaxy alone; other galaxies would surely have millions more. Using Drake's Equation:

<a href="http://www.seds.org/~rme/drakeeqn.htm" target="_blank">http://www.seds.org/~rme/drakeeqn.htm</a>

We can "calculate" the probability and thus the # of expected civilizations that we can reach - yet so far, we have found none. (I'd also point out that the equation cannot be used as an argument for the same fallacy as in the FTA, that is we have insufficient data to provide accurate probabilistic measurements).

So how is this different from the argument forwarded by early civilizations on earth that we are unique on earth and that everything revolves around us? With science, we have seen how in the expense of the universe, having life only on earth thus far is entirely probabilistic; yet ancients, without this knowledge, thought that life on earth was special enough that it was indeed designed. They were suffering from the same delusion - that we can accurately "guess" how likely/unlikely certain constraints may be without having any good reason to. Understandably homocentric, but fallacious nevertheless.
Datheron is offline  
 

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 10:21 PM.

Top

This custom BB emulates vBulletin® Version 3.8.2
Copyright ©2000 - 2015, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.