Thomas Metcalf

If I define the elf to like that sequence, the probability is high. Just the way the probability of God wanting to produce life is high, if He is defined as intelligent. Your argument depends on the principle that an intelligent being will probably want to produce life, and I say that the magical elf, if I define it as such, will probably want to produce that numerical sequence.

First, I would say that "supernaturalism" doesn't really tell us anything. Let's use "G" to mean "theism" and "~G" to mean "atheism." Your argument, then, is that

P(L|G) >> P(L|~G), so P(G|L) >> P(~G|L) if ~( P(~G) >> P(G) )

if I understand it correctly. Unfortunately, we are in no position to estimate P(G), and that is, in fact, my original criticism. Prima facie, it seems rather implausible that a being such as God would exist. If certain atheological arguments are true, P(G) is very low, indeed.

That is why it has always been my position that the fine tuning argument only demonstrates that if God exists, it is very likely that God fine tuned the universe.

Vorkosigan

A few people in America are still arguing, but creating and exporting wacky religious ideas seems to be America’s raison d’etat.

Actually, the current round is British in origin, we're just re-exporting back to the Motherland. See J. Nelson Darby re Dispensationalism.

GunnerJ

"Several commentators have argued the many-universes violates Occam's Razor. I beg to differ. The entities that the Law of Parsimony forbids us from multiplying beyond necessity are theoretical hypotheses, not universes. Though atomic theory multiplied the number of bodies we consider in solving a thermodynamics problem by 10^24 or so per gram, it did not violate Occam's Razor. It provided for a simpler, more powerful exposition of the rules that were obeyed by thermodynamic systems.

"Similarly, if many universes cosmology provides an explanation for the origin of our Universe that does not require the highly non-parsimonious introduction of a supernatural element that has heretofore not been required to explain any observations, then that explanation is the more economical."

-Victor J. Stenger, "Cosmythology: Is the Universe fine-tuned to produce us?" (Published in Skeptic, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1996)

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Rimstalker ]</p>

TooBad

A widespread human tendency to supernatural belief is not in itself evidence for an "ingrained need". And "unknown supernatural forces" is not a synonym for "God". Your argument, if it were valid, would lend no more credence to the reality of the Christian deity than it would to the spirits, fairies, phantoms and hobgoblins that crop up in every culture.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: TooBad ]</p>

RogerLeeCooke

And just think what terrible shape we'd be in if we happened to come into existence in one of those universes that collapse very quickly.

Seriously, I don't see any a priori reason to think that the universe's rate of expansion is "more likely" to be far from the critical value than near. What reason is there for assuming some kind of uniform distribution? In fact, you can have a uniform distribution only on a finite interval of possibilities. Presumably all positive real numbers are conceivable for the rate of expansion, and any continuous probability distribution on the positive real numbers has to have at least one local maximum-likelihood value. Maybe physicists will figure out some good non-random reason why there is only one such value, namely the critical one, just as they worked out a least-action principle in classical mechanics.

RogerLeeCooke

The whole idea of chi-square testing is to reject rare events. But be sure you get the event right. If I pick a person at random and ask if he won the lottery last week, and he says "yes," I suspect a lie. That's because the event "this particular person, chosen at random, won last week's lottery" is extremely rare. But I don't accuse a person who did win the lottery of fraud on those grounds, because the event "*somebody* won last week's lottery" is *not* a rare event.

How many universes do you have in your data base, that you so confidently say what is or is not "likely" on a cosmic scale?

One-eyed Jack

"Seriously, I don't see any a priori reason to think that the universe's rate of expansion is 'more likely' to be far from the critical value than near."

Interestingly enough, one of the evidences for an epoch of 'false vacuum' just after the origin of the universe is that the physics of the false vacuum drive omega very powerfully toward one. (If I recall correctly--and I may not--omega is actually a ratio of the expansion rate and the amount of mass in the universe, ie, a measure of whether gravity would theoretically stop and then reverse the expansion sometime in the future.)

It's also interesting to me that the 'false vacuum' was mathematically described as a theoretically possible state before anyone thought to apply the concept to cosmology. Then when Alan Guth and Andrei Linde realized that this was a possible state for the early universe, the mathematics showed them that such a state would expand at an exponentially increasing rate, that it would most likely not persist but collapse into a 'hot big-bang' mess of particles and quanta, that it would drive omega toward one, and that oddities predicted by the non-inflationary big-bang theory (like magnetic monopoles) would be so diluted by the inflationary epoch that they would be undetectable. Inflation also explains how the early universe could have reached thermal equilibrium, and some other stuff.

And, to tie it all together, Linde and others have shown that it's quite plausible that the 'false vacuum' state would collapse in discrete domains, like bubbles forming in boiling water, while the 'false vacuum' itself would go on expanding indefinitely around the 'bubble-universes.' This is one physically plausible way for a multitude of universes to come into existence.

Therefore, SOMMS, since it is quite likely that a nearly infinite number of universes with uniquely determined physical constants were (and are being) created, the only question remaining is why we find ourselves in this one. And that, as several of us have point out, is a tautology: we are here because we could not exist in any of the many universes which cannot give rise to creatures like us.

It really is very, very simple: humans exist in a universe hospitable to them simply because they could not exist elsewhere.

Philosophically, this is a concrete example of the idea that once an event is fixed in history then the probability of that event is one: once the physical constants of our universe became set (probably at the moment the false vacuum decayed into our particular 'bubble-universe') then it was no longer possible that our universe would have any set of physical laws but the ones we observe. And because those laws define a universe hospitable to our sort of lifeform, here we are.

Before the laws of physics were set, they could be described by probabilities. After they were set, they became a certainty. We came into existence only after the laws were set. Theists are asserting that humans are the determining cause of that event, through the agency of God; but we are a consequence of the event and not a cause. We came after the event, when the probabilities had collapsed into certainty: the one unique set of physical laws of our universe.

In my view the whole "fine-tuning" argument is a rather clumsy red herring, the kind of herring that's easily caught and disposed of.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: One-eyed Jack ]</p>

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

One-eye,
I'm actually suprised this didn't come up sooner. Quite often when fine tuning is discussed opponents almost immediately incant some horribly maligned version of the Anthropic Principle. I am quite pleased to have come so far in this discussion without this completely mundane fact being so grotesquely misused. However, it now has occured and alas...I must address this.


In short, the Anthropic Principle has absolutely nothing to do with the fine tuning argument. The AP is only a statement of the obvious: Given we exist...we should not be suprised that when we look at the universe and find it supports life. This is completely true, completely obvious...and completely orthogonal to(has nothing to do with) any statistical inference one can make on the universe.

Some don't realize that that the AP applies to ANY event that has already happened. Notice: Here is event...a man wins a lottery. The AP says: 'Given that the man won the lottery...we should not be suprised at all if we look at his life and find evidence (like new houses, cars, jet-set trips to the Riviera) that he won the lottery.' Here's another one...a farmer milks a cow. The AP says: 'Given the farmer milked the cow...we should not be suprised if we look about and find evidence that cow has been milked (animal is female, cows utters are empty, farmers bucket full of milk etc).

It is important to realize that the AP is just that...a principle. However, it in no way has *anything* to do with the statistics of a life-supporting universe coming into existence at random. It only is a slight insight into what we should expect to see GIVEN that such a universe did come into existence.

One-eye...I hope this helps explain why the AP has nothing to do with the FTA.


SOMMS

Secular Pinoy

Certainly Isaac Newton, though he said nothing about faith during his life...

Are you sure? I was under the impression that Newton wrote more about mysticism and Religion than all of his scientific works. Wait, I'll look for references later. It's barely 7 o'clock in the morning!

Vorkosigan

An Arian and heretic, Newton blew one and a half million words on religion. A colossal waste of his magnificent talent.