Jamie_L

You'll have to give more explanation than that. It's my understanding that the universe we have is the result of the initial conditions of the universe. We have virtually no information about how "likely" any set of initial conditions is. Your arguement seems to be: "we have no knowledge, so its acceptable to assume they all had the same probability." That basically equates to saying "I have no support for any assumption, so I will assume something." Why is that acceptable? Why is it more acceptable than saying: "we have no knowledge, so it's ok to assume set A is more likely than any other set?" They're all unfounded assumptions.

Jamie

Asha'man

Yet again, someone supporting the “fine-tuning” argument shows how little he understands about Astronomy.

The Moon almost never “perfectly” eclipses the Sun. The angular size of these two objects is close, to within perhaps 5%, but are almost never exactly the same, and the angular size varies as both the Earth and the Moon have elliptical orbits. Many eclipses are “annular,” where the angular size of the Moon is too small to block the entire disk of the Sun, leaving a visible annulus. Alternately, for other eclipses, the path of totality is several hundred miles wide, indicating that the angular size of the Moon is larger than the angular size of the Sun.

However, the fact that we can have total solar eclipses is merely an interesting astronomical coincidence. It really suggests nothing in terms of the probability of life.

Serious astronomers think that conditions on several of the planets and moons in this solar system could support life, or could have in the past. Recent articles have even discussed possible evidence of life in the clouds of Venus. And I’m sure you have heard of discussions of the evidence for life on Mars when the planet was younger. If life is possible on either planet, then clearly the orbital distance of the Earth (and the relationship we have with our Moon) is not nearly as important as the “fine-tuning” argument purports. And then we can begin discussing conditions under the ice on some of the large outer moons, not on a planet at all!

The only “fine-tuning” argument that even approaches validity is one that only looks at fundamental constants. However, with a statistical sample size of one universe, that argument also fails miserably. Surely, Douglas, a mathematician like yourself understands how impossible it is to make statistical predictions with only one single data point to work from?

TerryTryon

Douglas:
You really didn't give much to go on here. You repeated your Argument from Authority, which I had already rejected. You might as well have written, "The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles the matter." Remember Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize winner, who spent his dotage pushing mega dosages of Vitamin C only to die of the very disease he claimed Vitamin C would prevent.
The main point is that the word "probability" entails possibility, and hence the fine tuning argument is a nonstarter. All of the hedge words in the English language cannot challenge the fact that if you begin talking about probability, you have already assumed possibility, and your argument fails before it is born.
Even if for argument sake, I grant for you could derive impossibility from probability, you still have to show that certain constants are actually variables that vary from universe to universe, and by how much they are allowed to vary. You cannot analyze data from a sample of one: no data means no probability calculations. So, unless you can directly step outside of reality to measure precisely how things might have been, you and all your PhD authorities are blowing smoke.

wdog

the moon is receding as well, so the eclipse phemonema is NOT a constant.

Rusting Car Bumper

Its even worse than that. It could be the case that many of these constants are related. It could the case that if someone knows constants X, Y and Z that then constant A could be determined.

In other words the fine tuning argument may be like saying, "How amazing it is that A is 6, B is 2 and C is 3!! What are the odds!" Then after research we might find necessarily that "A/B = C" and thus once A and B are known the odds of C being what it is is 100%.

DC

wdog

quit arguing from authority and state the exact logic then.

as for the earth-sun distance, that range is really not so narrow. all that really is required is for liquid water to be there (I am not even sure that is necessary). give mars a little more mass so that it keeps an atmosphere and then conditions for life would be available. That whole argument seems fallacious, sure if you varied climate then many specious would dissappear, but then simply others would evolove who had adapted. It is simply that what we see here today has adapted and evolved from the exact conditions of the earth, so what?

why did you even bring up eclipses douglas? what bearing does that have on life? or anything really?

in reality and reason,

wdog

Douglas J. Bender

Jamie,

It's a line of reasoning. We can say, "IF such and such, THEN this and that". Of course, in the case of the OOL, if one assumes that not all states were essentially equally likely, one is left with attempting to explain WHY they were not. And at that point, since we really "have no knowledge" of the matter, one just says, "I don't know" and stands in awe at a natural inscrutability. Or, one can assume reasonable things about it, and draw reasonable conclusions. And, from what I understand of what "science" knows about physics and the supposed "Big Bang", assuming the initial states are all essentially "equally likely" is a reasonable assumption. In any case, we are speaking, apparently, about the very beginning of time and space itself - I don't know exactly what scientists propose existed prior to the "Big Bang", if it was at the "Big Bang" that all things in this physical universe came into existence. But I don't claim to be an expert in the matter.

In Christ,

Douglas

Douglas J. Bender

Not true. Another is the relative distances between the Sun, Earth, and Moon. There is a relatively narrow range of distances within which life as we know it could have arisen on Earth.

Surely. But I also know that it is valid to make reasonable assumptions about a situation, and then determine the probabilities which would arise if those assumptions were correct. For example, do we really know that each roll of a die has an equal probability? We don't - we merely assume that this would be the case, and then we say that there is a 1 in 6 chance for any particular number between 1 and 6, inclusive, to show up on a roll of a standard die. Then we can make probabilistic analyses of further situations, again basing all the analyses on an assumption that we cannot know is correct. That's how these things work.

In Christ,

Douglas

Douglas J. Bender

wdog,

I never said that it was. But if the Earth is only about 6000 years old, and if the current Earth and Moon will last only maybe another 1000 years, then it is effectively a "constant", to all intents and purposes.


In Christ,

Douglas

Douglas J. Bender

Possibly. But not according to anything physicists currently are aware of. Again, the "fine-tuning argument" is based on assuming that in the hypothesized "Big Bang" explosion, the universal physical constants could have assumed essentially any value (I believe I am correctly presenting the idea). The way I understand it, the "universe" prior to the "Big Bang" was some kind of quantum mechanical "soup" of something that is not really physical (doesn't have an existence in space and time, since space and time did not exist). And the way I understand "quantum mechanics" is that "events" happen "randomly", or at least in no physically deterministic way. Am I wrong in this understanding of quantum mechanics, and in its implications for the "Big Bang" and the origin of the universe?

In Christ,

Douglas