Dr S

(SOMMS ) Uh...this was an actual court case in the 1950's. They DID determine it was not random. They DID determine this after the fact.

(S) What kind of baloney are you trying to pull. You said in your blurd that these people were picked at random. And you named a single instance-so statisticly speaking this is the random number that came out 100% of the time.
Now you say it isn't random but with the information you provide the court that decided this would have had to guess. Courts try not to do that. So my guess is that you are being less than honest. You are cooking the facts to try to make this "fine tuning" silliness pass inspection.
Remember what Richard Feyman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool."

Tercel

Hi Thomas Metcalf,

The difference between your analogy and find tuning is the difference in the probability of the outcome occuring given the truth of an intelligent influence.

The probability of the magical elf liking that number as opposed to any other number between 1 and 100000000000 is approx 1 in 10^11, same as random chance.

The probability of the hypothesis that a magic elf caused the outcome is given by:
= the probability that a magic elf influenced the generator * the probability that the elf would influence the generator to that particular number were the elf influencing it.

While the probability of the "chance" hypothesis is given by:
= the probability that random chance influenced the generator * the probability that chance you give that number.


If we estimate the chances of a magical elf interferring at 1 in a million then the "magic elf" hypothesis has probability 1 in 10^17.
If we estimate the probability of random chance influencing the outcome at 99.9999% then the "random chance" hypothesis has probabilty 1 in ~10^11.
Making the "random chance" explanation 999,999 times more likely than a "magical elf".

In the fine tuning argument it is argued that the probability of an intelligent being wanting to create a life sustaining universe is significantly higher than the odds.

Statistically:
There exist only a small number of life sustaining universes (L) in the total universe space (U).
ie L/U << 1.
=> P(L| 1 universe (O) & naturalism (N)) << 1
Whereas an intelligent being is going to make a design decision about whether the universe it creates is going to sustain life or not and find a universe in U that meets it's requirements. Hence P(L| 1 universe (O)& supernaturalism (~N)) will not be significantly affected by L/U << 1, and will sit at being ~~= 1/2 reflecting the two possible choices of the designer.

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Tercel

Continuing previous post:

Hence, assuming one universe:
P[L|N] &lt;&lt; P[L|~N]
From which it follows -by formal proof- that:
P[~N|L] &gt;&gt; P[~N]
ie. The observation that L is true affords great evidence for supernaturalism.

Or alternatively if you are willing to assume a priori that it is not the case that
P[N] &gt;&gt; P[~N]
then it follows that
P[~N|L] &gt;&gt; P[N|L]


Sorry for the two posts and square brackets in this one, but the board threw a wobbly at me when I tried to post the whole thing.

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Tercel

Do you think if you repeat yourself enough you'll make that statement true?

Why do you say the "odds" about universes are completely unknown? Are you one of those people who argues that we can't know odds except by repetitive obvservation and given one universe we hence can't know odds?
'Cos put that way I'd know nothing about the odds of a firing squad missing or of the possibility of a rescue attempt. Neither event has ever come within my experience, nor have I heard the stories of anyone who has, and certainly not repetitively...

Vorkosigan

Why do you say the "odds" about universes are completely unknown? Are you one of those people who argues that we can't know odds except by repetitive obvservation and given one universe we hence can't know odds?

Can you explain how we can know the probability of life arising in the universe? As far as I know, it is "1." So any calculations based on "odds" are simply exercises in ignorance.

'Cos put that way I'd know nothing about the odds of a firing squad missing or of the possibility of a rescue attempt. Neither event has ever come within my experience, nor have I heard the stories of anyone who has, and certainly not repetitively...

Sure you have...you never read about Dostoyevsky?

In any case, the actual figures for firing squad escape are not relevant. You have some idea, however indistinct, that firing squads do not ordinarily all miss. You have no idea what created the universe or why.

And if it is odds you want, why don't you choose something of really low probability, like ball lightning or snowflakes? They exist in a much narrower band of parameters than life. And why did you choose life as the reason the universe was created, anyway? Why not space, since that is what the universe is mostly composed of?

Vorkosigan

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

acronos

The human tendency to force order out of complete chaos is very annoying. We know almost nothing about what happened before the big bang. However, people come up with dozens of theories of how the universe is impossible because some event we have little evidence for is supposedly very improbable. Misconceptions about infinities, free will, and every other crazy theory they come up with are designed to prove something they already believe. Such arguments only succeed because of ignorance. One who is predisposed to his conclusions is unlikely to come up with accurate ones; especially if the conclusions are not testable. The tuned universe is just another example of this.

The problem has already been pointed out. Just because the number sequence “'352 99 122 2 98” generates life as we know it on earth, how can you know that 28 39 287 273 2 38” doesn’t generate something completely different and equally interesting? Also, how can you know that it didn’t take billions of tries to get it right? They are drawing hard conclusions from blind guesses.

There is a very strong selective pressure for live existing on earth vs. life existing on the surface of the sun. What are the odds of humans evolving on the surface of the sun. Seeing that we don’t survive there I would say they are pretty slim. The fact that we evolved on earth is not miraculous, it is just the only planet in our solar system that coincidence allowed the right circumstances for life. If we have a universe of 100,000,000,000 planets and a chance of evolving life at 100,000,000 then we should have about 1000 planets that have life. When said evolved life form looks back they say there was only a chance in a million of me being born. It is a miracle!!! NOT.

Who knows what the actual probabilities of life are? Christians who try to calculate it as if they know what they are doing are idiots. We don’t know what happened before the big bang. People who say we do are liars or are speculating to the point of delusion. Recent evidence suggests the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Does this sound like a perfect balance?

Christians are doing what they always do. They are taking advantage of peoples ignorance. When lightning was not understood, it was the wrath of God. When scientists figured out what lightning was, it took Christians years to admit their idiocy. They refused to put lighting rods on their church towers which were very attractive to lightning because that would be interfering in the will of God. Christians always target areas where science does not have all the answers yet. However science is constantly evolving, and Christianity is constantly retreating. I wonder how long it will take them to admit this current batch of idiocy?

Design is not the only possible scenario for the evidence Christians are pointing at. What if there are almost an infinite number of randomly generated universes constantly boiling out of universe material soup. Imagine our universe is one of quadrillions. Now what are the odds of us ending up in a universe in a place where life is possible to ask the question “where did I come from?” This is a trick question so think carefully before answering. Correct answer, a probability of 100% that life would be in a place where it could survive. The fact that there are 100 billion places where it could not survive does not prove design. Of course life only ended up in a place where it could survive. That place was not selected by design, it was selected by the constraints of the problem.

I think my scenario of what happened before the big bang is just as feasible as postulating an all powerful deity. More feasible in fact. This is only one scenario among many. The questions they are asking do not point at the conclusions they postulate. It just happens to be one of the areas where science doesn’t have strong conclusions yet so there is room to wiggle. Before the theory of evolution there was no scientific explanation for the complexity of life. This gave Christians free reign to spread their spew saying “look around you, there must be a God. We have no other explanation.” This is and always has been a false argument. Undetectable invisible blue elves make the rain. We know they exist because we see the results of their actions. It rains. What is wrong with this analogy? The same thing that is wrong with the Christian argument is wrong with blue elves. Christians still haven’t stopped squirming from the impact of evolution. They still live in constant denial for their choice argument for the existence of God. It is sad and frustrating to keep seeing the same mistakes over and over again.

Tercel

Yeah, those silly atheists will do anything to justify their disbelief!

We don't. But the chances are there is no possible-world space [P2] which contains a group of life-supporting possible-worlds that is significantly larger than the space [P1] our own world appears in, since if there was then P[Our world being in P1] &lt;&lt; P[Our world being in P2]. Given that our world is in P1 it makes the existence of P2 unlikely.
Of course we don’t know. The fine tuning argument is merely an attempt to establish design as a plausible hypothesis and “Naturalism and There only exists one universe” as an implausible hypothesis. From which further speculation among this range of possibilities left can continue.

Yeah your average person naturally attributes things they don’t understand to unknown supernatural forces. This ingrained need for God in the human race should perhaps give some hints – all our other needs have true existing things that can satisfy them, which inductively suggests that our need for an eternal meaning in life and for God can also be met by existing things.
Oh and by the way, I believe it was the Christian Apologist Arnobius of Sicca (c300AD) in his work “Against the Pagans” who took the pagans to task for turning to gods to explain things like lightening rather than believing them to have a naturalistic explanation.

Um, most of the first scientists were Christians, so I don’t see how you can turn this into a Science vs Christianity farce.

Always look to an atheist to hypothesize the existence of quadrillions of unevidenced entities to avoid belief in one supposedly unevidence entity.
I am always amazed at the imagination some of you atheists have!

I don’t. I think believing everything to have come from a beginning of one single infinite awareness is hugely more parsimonious that hypothesizing a semi-infinite number of miscellaneous random causes that are ad hoc explanations and ultimately do not serve to explain anything.

Yeah there was the invisible pink unicorns as well weren’t there. And those black holes that mysteriously (it’s amzing just how happy atheists are to use “mystery” in their own explanations, but they get so upset when Christians do the same) somehow turn the matter of one star into enough for a new universe. And then there was that oscillating universe which manages to expand and collapse ad infinitum in defiance of much of what we know about physics. And of course who could forget the mysterious, universe spawning device or “quantum soup” (giving it a name makes it sound more palatable) which floats out there somewhere and has nothing better to do than create new universes. Of course it came from no where and its invisible, untouchable, untestable, but of course we just know it must be there – what else could have created the universe after all? (Can you say “ad hoc explanation”?)
What great faith and great imagination it must take to be an atheist. Man, you guys have my utmost respect, I wish I had half as much faith as you.

Huh? I’m not sure I follow. Christians around the world have largely accepted evolution as a true scientific theory. A few people in America are still arguing, but creating and exporting wacky religious ideas seems to be America’s raison d’etat.

I quite agree. That’s why I’ve almost given up posting here anymore.

One-eyed Jack

Tercel: you're missing the boat in a couple of spots.

You write: "Um, most of the first scientists were Christians, so I don’t see how you can turn this into a Science vs Christianity farce."

I have read that when Benjamin Franklin showed the electrical nature of lightning some clerics were indeed annoyed that he had removed thunderbolts from the hand of God...and I would hesitate to call Franklin a rote Christian. Certainly Isaac Newton, though he said nothing about faith during his life, denied the Anglican faith on his deathbed. Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler--these guys were not exactly beloved of the Church, nor did they let Christian dogma of the day interfere with their scientific curiousity.

But that's a trivial point. More tellingly, you write: "Always look to an atheist to hypothesize the existence of quadrillions of unevidenced entities to avoid belief in one supposedly unevidence entity. I am always amazed at the imagination some of you atheists have!"

Here you are ridiculing the idea that there may be a near-infinite number of universes with varying physical laws. But your statement shows that your knowledge of physics is about 20 years out of date: Physicist Andrei Linde shown that the inflationary scenario (which seems supported by evidence) may well lead to an exponentially expanding universe of 'false vacuum' with continually appearing domains of workaday spacetime, potentially infinitely many, with the physics of each domain determined by the precise manner the 'false vacuum' decays in each instance. (Picture a pot of boiling water expanding exponentially, and each growing bubble of steam as a 'domain-universe' in overall universe. Linde showed that no matter how fast the 'domain-universes' expand under the rules of their physics they cannot completely fill the exponentially expanding overall universe.)

Other theorists have noted that the undefined curvature of spacetime at a black hole singularity may well pinch off from our universe and form the 'seed' of a new big bang universe, again with its own set of physical laws. Some of the 'baby' universes would be so constituted as to make their own black holes, thus seeding even more universes--a process without vestige of a beginning or prospect of an end.

I think I'm missing some of the other hypotheses that have been show to be mathematically plausible. I'll have to look them up and post some links.

You prattle a bit about pink unicorns, and then write: "What great faith and great imagination it must take to be an atheist. Man, you guys have my utmost respect, I wish I had half as much faith as you."

Actually, it's called math and physics. Just because you appear to be scientifically illiterate you shouldn't assume everyone is. By resorting to ridicule in this case you are exposing your own ignorance...hindering your argument rather than furthering it.

Acronos writes: "It is sad and frustrating to keep seeing the same mistakes over and over again."

You respond: "I quite agree. That’s why I’ve almost given up posting here anymore."

Personally, I suspect the reason you seldom post here is because you are not a rationalist, and therefore you tend to get soundly drubbed when entering a rationalists' arena. In my opinion you should either learn enough science to talk intelligently about it or else cut the attempts at belittling sarcasm. The bells on your fool's cap are jingling.

One-eyed Jack

Here is some information and a few links. One of the main hypotheses I forgot was the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum physics:

"One reason why many cosmologists now take the anthropic principle seriously is that the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to be the only sensible context in which to discuss 'quantum cosmology' - the branch of physics that tries to describe what happened near the big bang. As emphasized by Jim Hartle, quantum theory allows many mutually incompatible histories. However, it only makes sense to consider the initial conditions that led to the classical behaviour that we observe today. (With complete ignorance of the initial conditions, the quantum fluctuations could be arbitrarily large and the emergence of a classical world would not be possible.) Within this restriction, quantum cosmology allows many different worlds or 'branches', all with different values of the constants, and this validates the strong anthropic principle."

Note that the Anthropic Principle is really what we're talking about in most of these posts. Here's an explanation of Linde's cosmological hypothesis:

"Nevertheless, the cosmologists present had widely different views on how the different worlds might arise. Andrei Linde and Alex Vilenkin invoked 'eternal' inflation, in which the universe is eternally self-reproducing. This version of inflation predicts that there may be an infinite number of exponentially large domains - all with different laws of low-energy physics and different coupling constants. Indeed, Linde regarded inflation as the only plausible basis for anthropic arguments. Vilenkin argued that there is a well motivated prescription within the eternal-inflation scenario for calculating probability distributions for the various constants, showing that the distributions should be weighted by the volume of the universe in which each set of values pertains."

Here's a thumbnail on Lee Smolin's black-hole universe genesis:

"Smolin's own approach invoked a form of natural selection. He argued that the formation of black holes might generate new universes in which the constants are slightly mutated. In this way, after many generations, the parameter distribution will peak around those values for which black-hole formation is maximized. This proposal involves very speculative physics, since we have no understanding of how the baby universes are born. However, it has the virtue of being testable since one can calculate how many black holes would form if the parameters were different."

Reference <a href="http://physicsweb.org/article/world/14/10/3" target="_blank">Physics Web</a>. The author of the article is Bernard Carr of the Astronomy Unit, School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, UK.

Some, like Victor Stenger, think that the oddity would be if our universe is the only one--far more likely, they say, is that it is only one of many.

"But is the multiverse so far-fetched? The Big Bang seems to have occurred under conditions of extremely high density; similar conditions occur throughout our universe--in black holes. Similarly, Stanford cosmologist Andrei Linde argues that the fast inflation of the early cosmos--which requires merely a small region of curved space, or 'false vacuum,' to get started--implies a 'self-reproducing' universe. The assumption that there are not multiple universes seems unwarranted by current evidence. Says Stenger: 'There's no law of any kind that we know that says this could only have happened once. In fact, you'd have to invent a law of nature to explain why there was only one universe.'" (emphasis added)

Is this all scientific pie in the sky? The article continues:

"Moreover, while we may 'never be able to detect' other universes, there are indirect ways to assess whether they exist. If Smolin's theory of cosmological natural selection is correct, then our universe should be 'optimized' for black-hole production. This can be tested; for instance, a particle known as the kaon, which can be created in particle accelerators, should have a mass in the 'correct' range to ensure that neutron stars eventually become black holes. So far, the theory has held up under such testing, but the evidence is inconclusive."

Reference for this article is <a href="http://reason.com/9907/fe.ks.is.shtml" target="_blank">Reason Online</a>. The article gives quite a bit of space to theist assertions about cosmology, and so it's a good read for an overview of the subject. The author, Kenneth Silber, has written about science and technology for The New York Post, The Washington Times, Insight, Commentary, and other publications.
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Theists in general, and Christians in particular, seem to like to sling mud at what they cannot understand. Unless I miss my guess, Tercel will respond irritably that all the material I posted and linked is just nonsensical gibberish...or he would have responded that way if I had not predicted it.

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: One-eyed Jack ]

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: One-eyed Jack ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

I understand the point you're trying to make, and we know in fact that the numerical sequence is also distinguishable -- after all, it's the only one that contains precisely that sequence. You tell me after the fact that a god exists Who likes life, and I tell you after the fact that an elf exists who likes that sequence. I'm sure I could find something implicitly distinguishing about that numerical sequence if I tried -- something each of them has in common, or some pattern. For example, if you took each of the numbers and looked at a corresponding first letter (if it exists) from a telephone dial, it would spell "DJA WW AA A WT." Perhaps this is the elf's name. We can generate all sorts of arbitrary information from that string.

In fact, every set of constants has the same amount of distinguishable information. For ours is "permits life," but if constant C were different, it would be "permits life except C is different by x." And "permits life except C is different by x" is just as unlikely.

One more problem with the argument. The only way we can tell from improbability what our distinguishing characteristic is seems to be how unlikely it is. Therefore, the more unlikely something is, the more likely it was fine tuned. So any putative random event must have been fine tuned to result that way if it is less likely than life permission. This is rather a hard proposition for anyone to swallow.