Liquidrage

The multitude of universes that couldn't support life are represented by the white grains of sand. The black grain of sand represents a life-friendly universe

If this was indeed the case I would think the arguement would hold some weight.
But it is not the case.

One can rightfully say if only the rate of acceleration were different say, slower, then expansion wouldn't occur at all.
However, no one could say how to make the accleration rate slower and what other effects this change might bring. What effect would the tuning needed to change the accleration rate have on the particle types that would eventually form for example.

We live in a universe that is far from optimal for life and is clearly not fine tuned. Poorly tuned is possible, though there is no evidence for even this.

The values that formed our universe formed the universe that we see. There is nothing more to be said about what would or could happen if these were to change.

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

DoubtingT,

[quote]Originally posted by doubtingt:
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If you notice how the analogy is presented you will find that the person who handed you the grain of sand has no relevance whatsoever to the question 'Did this happen randomly?' The person who handed you the sand granual *does not* represent God or any diety an any way...its just part of the story.

It is important to note that the person could just as easily randomly picked a grain of sand as they could have chosen it. This is the crux of the matter. This becomes evident quickly when you ask 'Was this grain of sand selected randomly or non-randomly?'

To make this even more clear feel free to change 'somebody hands you a grain of sand' with 'you recieve a grain of sand'.


Actually no. We don't assume anything a priori. We are simply looking at data and asking whether or not it is likely to have occured randomly.
If your referring to the person who gave us the sand please see the above notes.

Thoughts and comments welcomed,


SOMMS

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Thomas,
This seems to be the 'Arbitrarily ignoring meaningful characteristics' fallacy mentioned above. It is incorrect say we 'want' something to be the distinguishing characteristic.

Color *is* the distinguishing characteristic...regardless of what we do or do not want.

Completely regardless of what particular opinion a person may have of it...it is *the* characteristic that distinguishes this grain of sand from the others. It would be disengenuous to claim color was arbitrarily picked from the other characteristics simply because we 'wanted' it that way.

Notice that the black grain of sand IS unique...no matter what opinions A-clams, B-aliens or C-the ocean may have.


However it is this exact question 'Did this happen at random?' that the origin of the universe presents. To honestly ask this question one cannot presuppose that it happened at random. If one presupposes life/black sand happened at random then it doesn't make any sense to ask the question in the first place.

Thoughts and comments welcomed,


SOMMS

sandlewood

I think all this is saying is that if the process was different, then the result would be different. That’s not surprising. The only thing that makes this emotionally charged is that we put special importance on the way things are now. But perhaps if the rate of expansion was smaller by one part in a hundred thousand million million, a better universe would have been created. It might have been shorter-lived. But it might have spawned much more intelligent creatures with very short life spans. And who’s to say that a universe with life is a “good” universe. It's just our own value applied to it. So the universe that was created—the one we live in—might just be an average one somewhere in the middle of the bell curve.

There are other possibilities if you use some imagination. Perhaps the universe did re-collapse and then re-expand again. Perhaps it did this again and again with a different rate of expansion each time until our current universe appeared.

Another thing that influences one's thinking about that statement is “one part in a hundred thousand million million”. Sounds like a very small number—it takes four words to describe it. He could have just said 10^-17, but that might not sound so impressive. Is 10^-17 a small number when talking about the rate of expansion of the universe? Could it have been 10^-3? I don’t know? Could it have been 10^-96 or 10^-3429? What is the range of possible values? Maybe 10^-17 is not a small number when talking about such things.

[ September 06, 2002: Message edited by: sandlewood ]</p>

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Vork,
This is a interesting statement that warrants a response.

In what way can you say the 'FT claims conclusions even where there is no evidence'?

Perhaps fine tuning IS the evidence.


Your statement seems dangerously circular. Essentially you are saying...

No evidence for God =&gt; life randomly happened
Life randomly happened =&gt; no evidence for God.


Intellectual honesty mandates that we don't assume a priori that God exists and we also don't assume He does not exist.

Thoughts and comments welcomed,

SOMMS

Wyrdsmyth

The problem with your analogy is that we don't have millions of universes that don't support life to hold up to next to our single universe that does, to display what the "odds really are" -- the way we can with your black grain of sand on a light-colored beach.

Typhon

I'm sorry, but this is an extremely poor example, which as far as I can see, doesn't hold up well, if at all, in comparison with the universe. I would say that your whole example is a rather obvious fallacy or at least, heavily flawed example of this argument.

The universe has not been shown to be (1) a lone black grain of sand in a multitude of white, in fact, it very much appears to be a lone black grain of sand, period. And (2) no evidence exists that if in fact other grains do exist (one might take this in mind of current discussions about m-type and pre-big bang conditions of existence), that they are not all black or randomly mixed among white and black.

No, sorry, there is absolutely no good evidence for this claim. Nor is there good evidence that a different configuration would not have given rise to its own type of universe. Of course this would not be the type that we experience, one would not expect it to be so, should the underlying substrate differ. We have every reason to believe that our universe is exactly the way it is, because that is the way it is configured. We have no proof that a differing configuration and hence a different universe would be either inherently better or worse, merely different. "Life" is defined by the configuration we experience, it might well be something else should that configuration be radically different and hence, our definition of it under those circumstances.

I hate to break it to you, but the universe is hardly "life-friendly." Nor is there any evidence for a "multitude of universes" that are either more or less, abstractly "life-friendly" than ours.

Your so called fallacy is immaterial here. There is no good evidence that we represent a lone grain of black sand on a white sand beach. Until you pass this hurdle, this complaint doesn't even deserve any consideration.

Again, in a universe of one grain of sand, there is no need for a lottery in the first place. There are other problems with your example, but as above, they are rather immaterial due to this larger problem with your original example.
On the contrary, it is a wise application of logic IMO to state that if conditions were not such as they are, we would not exist in the configuration that we do. Aside from the core problem of your black grain/white beach fallacy, I can't agree with you on this lesser issue either. I fear you lack understanding of the issue, if you think this is merely a "side-stepping" of the question.

In the end, I'm afraid that the fine-tuning argument is mostly a dead end. I'm surprised that it is still clung to by some would be creationists and theists. However, perhaps if you fixed the major flaw in your premise, we might find something more to talk about here, I can't say.

Best of luck,

.T.

[ September 07, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

eh

But again, you're missing the point. You're assuming the expansion rate of the universe COULD have been different then what we got. Without a a final theory on gravity, we don't know if this is the case. We can easily see see what would happen if things were a little different, but if those little factors being different was never possible in the first place, then the argument was for nothing.

What we do know about the universe is what happened after the initial conditions, no more. Without an understanding of gravity (which is basically what our universe is) we can't say why those initial conditions were that way, or if other configurations are possible.

I'll take a guess and assume you're talking about the cosmological constant here. But now we're talking about the energy of the vaccuum, which could be any rate based on our incomplete knowledge. But energy comes from the gravitational field, and once again we are left without a good understanding of exactly this gravity is. It just doesn't make sense to talk about infinite possibilities.

Is it better to fill the gap with magic, the supernatural, or deities? This seems to be what thiests are doing in this case. There is absolutely no justification in claiming there are an infinite potential ways the universe could have evolved, at least not until we get the gravity issue tackled.

If we do come to such an understanding, and it still turns out there are an infinite number of possible worlds, then unless a multiverse exists, the AP will at least be on a good foundation. Until then, it's too early to make these claims.

[ September 07, 2002: Message edited by: eh ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas:

"This seems to be the 'Arbitrarily ignoring meaningful characteristics' fallacy mentioned above. It is incorrect say we 'want' something to be the distinguishing characteristic.
Color *is* the distinguishing characteristic...regardless of what we do or do not want."

This is argument by assertion. If I were a clam, I might choose shape. If I were a person who values sand itself, I would choose mass. If I were decorating my house with sand, I would choose color. There are several distinguishing characteristics, and which we value is indeed arbitrary.

"However it is this exact question 'Did this happen at random?' that the origin of the universe presents. To honestly ask this question one cannot presuppose that it happened at random. If one presupposes life/black sand happened at random then it doesn't make any sense to ask the question in the first place."

I agree that we can ask that question. But in the case of the universe, we do not know there is anyone in a position to change the constants of the universe (nor even what it would mean to say this happens), and we do not know someone with that motivation is in such a position. We do know these in the case of being handed a grain of sand.

Jack the Bodiless

So what is the probability of it being 123,354,349 mph, or 65,909 mph, or .9c mph, or 5 mph, or 65 mph?

You don't know. Therefore you cannot say that the speed we observe is improbable.

An analogy: isn't it fortunate that the Earth is sperical, rather than some other shape? Consider the five regular Platonic solids: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron. With the icosahedron, the most nearly spherical of these shapes, all the world's water would be split into twenty small seas separated by gigantic ridges, far higher than any mountain range on this Earth. There would be no ocean currents, very little air circulation, and probably no life. At the other end of the scale, tetrahedron-Earth has four small but deep oceans (at the center of each face, the lowest point) surrounded by parched land masses separated from each other by four humongous mountains connected by six enormous ridges projecting far above the atmosphere.

What are the odds that Earth would be spherical, rather than some other regular shape? Well, we happen to know WHY the Earth is spherical, and we can see that these other shapes are not possible. Similarly, science may yet reveal WHY the expansion speed is what it is, and that other speeds are not possible.