Steven Carr

Russell Stannard is a leading British proponent of fine-tuning.
I questioned him about these, and I quote part of his reply :-


'God could have chosen the set of constants responsible for triggering the star's nuclear reactions to be such that they ignited at the lower temperature rise produced by the smaller amount of gas collected by the reduced gravity strength. Alternatively, he could have built into the mechanism of the Big Bang some additional kind of 'force' to ensure no collapse into a Big Crunch (which incidentally appears to be the case; it is called 'inflation' - but is too difficult a topic to explain here) There are doubtless several alternative ways of achieving a Universe hospitable to life.'

It appears that even fine-tuning proponents concede that there are many ways that a universe can be hospitable to life.

So much for their bizarre probability calculations. They have no idea what the range of possibilities is.

Silent Dave

Assuming Stannard isn't simply making this up as he goes along, he presumably believes that the number of possible universes capable of bearing some kind of life is much smaller than the number of possible universes that are not so capable, to the extent that one of the former obtaining calls for an explanation. That could be the only way his argument would have any force -- unless, of course, he believes that there's something extra-super-duper-special about our particular kind of life, i.e. carbon-based life. We should invent a new word for FTA proponents: carbon-elitism.


Dave

Shadowy Man

Without knowing the source distribution of possible values for the various "constants of the universe" we have no absolutely no idea what the probability of any given value might be.

All this fine-tuning stuff is just pure speculation.

Steven Carr

As far as I can see, Stannard is making things up as he goes along. He certainly seems to be inventing new laws of physics.

As far as the claim that the number of universes bearing life is less than the possible number of universes, we know already that the number of planets which bear life is far less than the possible number of planets. So it is not a strong point - we would expect that.


FTA proponents paint themselves into a corner. I asked Stannard what God would have done if the value of G which allowed the Universe to expand had turned out to be too weak to allow stars to form. After all, even God cannot create two values of the same physical constant, and there is no reason to expect why one value can do two jobs.

Presumably realising that the alternative was that God was lucky that one value of G could do two (or more) jobs), Stannard removed all the constraints he had set up on what values of constants allowed life, thus destroying claims that our particular universe is unique in some way.

Jobar

Steven, let me direct you to this thread by Thomas Metcalf. An interesting take on fine tuning.

And I read celsus' announcement of your debate at TheologyWeb- if you want any assistance or commentary, feel free to use this thread or celsus'.

Steven Carr

Curiously, the fine-tuning people will also argue the opposite.

For example, in a debate on this web site

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...az/aijaz1.html

Aijaz gives an example of sharpshooters missing somebody as an analogy of fine-tuning. This is a very popular analogy by fine-tuning addicts.

Now, there are many more ways for sharpshooters to miss somebody than to hit somebody (which is why they have to practice to become sharpshooters). Their target occupies only a small part of the possible target space.

So the number of possible places that the bullets can go to miss, is much greater than the number of places they can go to hit, yet fine-tuning proponents say misses are examples of fine-tuning.

Surely, they (like the bullets in their analogy) are way over the place on this one.

Grizzly

IMO, the biggest problem with the fine-tuning argument is one of an unkown sample space. It reminds me of a betting scam that used to work sending letters to people before a game telling them who was going to win. You send half the people letters saying that Team A is going to win and half the people that Team B is going to win. If team B wins, then you just send new letters to the people that received the correct information previously and you make another prediction. Again for half the people you pick Team B and the other half you pick team C. So if team C wins this week, you now have 25% of your original sample who have no received two correct predictions from you.

This can continue until there is a small set of people who believe that you are indeed "special" because you have correctly picked winners for the past couple of weeks - all before the games were played. To them, you are performing well above chance.

The problem is that this small percentage of people don't know about the numerous other times where you got it wrong (ie the sample space) and that they are just the lucky recipients of random chance.

It's the same with fine tuning. We don't know how the universe came to be or how many other "attempts" there were. All we know is that we exist here and now. So to us, it looks like we are special, when in fact, we could simply be the lucky beneficiaries of random chance.

TerryTryon

Isn't this the rub behind all teleological arguments? First: The claim that one can tell intelligent design from random events by their intrinsic nature. Second: The claim that since the universe shows signs of intelligent design (i.e., fine tuning) then it also shows the hallmark of God. Third, The admission that since God created the entire universe in an intelligent way, then every aspect of the universe must show intelligent design. Thus, fourth, since every aspect of the universe must show intellegent design, the first claim can have no weight since chaos is analytically impossible. The distinction between fine tuning and random generation is sacrificed to the glory of god, and the argument fails.

Puppies have as much fun chasing their tails