Thread: An Argument to Design

Originally Posted by Maximatic

What I am saying is that the constants and quantities are not what they are by the necessity of their own nature or because of any natural law. They could have been different.

But they are not.

Originally Posted by Maximatic

The fine tuning is already established.

Not true.

The only thing established is that these are the natural laws we have.

But no "tuning" is implied, fine or coarse.

Originally Posted by Maximatic

If you drop a glass, and the fragments fell in such a way as to spell out the words "MAYTAG dropped this glass and now these words are here", then I suppose you could believe that chance can, in fact, combine with an independently given pattern to form meaningful results. But if you show the results to other rational people, they would suspect that you arranged them.

So what? The probability that the shards fall in a pattern that spells out those words is identical to the probability of any other specific pattern. No particular pattern is statistically favored over any other.

Originally Posted by Maximatic

The fact of the fine tuning of the Universe:

...

The question is: Why are the constants and quantities what they are?

I don't find the question of why to be terribly relevant. The fact is, if the universe weren't capable of supporting life, we wouldn't be here to discuss it. Perhaps the rules we've discerned were actually even unavoidable in the universe.. And yet, the universe is actually quite hostile to life as we know it overall - it takes an Earth-like world to support life at all, and Earth-like worlds are certainly relatively rare. Plus, if cosmologists/astrophysicists are right, the universe won't always be able to support Earth-like worlds, and therefore life, in the distant future anyway, same as it wasn't capable of this early on in its existence. We exist only during a sort of cosmic window of time when physics do support our being. Thus, we formed only when we could exist, and of course we are pretty well adapted to the environment on our world, though even this planet has many extremes, and the majority of its surface area is also hostile to human life.

What we have in the universe and life as we know it today is an end result that may be misinterpreted as "design." In reality, though, these things come about through natural forces, just as we ourselves function entirely on natural laws, not through any "supernatural" force. We are a special little piece of the cosmos, perhaps comparable to other pieces elsewhere but too distant for us to detect today.

I do look forward to the day when an exoplanet with clear signs of life is discovered. I hope that they do succeed in lengthening lifespans soon as well, so that we who are alive today might even live to see what's on such a planet. All it would take would be a very fast probe..

Originally Posted by WongKimArk

Not true.

The only thing established is that these are the natural laws we have.

But no "tuning" is implied, fine or coarse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Originally Posted by WongKimArk

But they are not.

Therefore what?

Originally Posted by Durandal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

What follows from the Anthropic Principal? It follows that we should not be surprised to witness conditions that are compatible with our existence. Right? Does it follow, though, that we should not be surprised to find that those conditions are unlikely? It does not. When we see a number like one over ten to the tenth to the one hundred and twenty third, we should be very surprised. Given that we exist, that number shouldn't be that high. We would be irrational to not ask why the conditions compatible with our existence are so unlikely.

Originally Posted by Maximatic

What follows from the Anthropic Principal? It follows that we should not be surprised to witness conditions that are compatible with our existence. Right? Does it follow, though, that we should not be surprised to find that those conditions are unlikely? It does not. When we see a number like one over ten to the tenth to the one hundred and twenty third, we should be very surprised. Given that we exist, that number shouldn't be that high. We would be irrational to not ask why the conditions compatible with our existence are so unlikely.

What's irrational is believing you already have an answer to that question.

Originally Posted by WongKimArk

Actually... no. That's not the question. In fact as questions go it is completely tautologous.

A universe must have constants and quantities by definition. These are the ones we have.

If we had others, then we would not be having this conversation.

It's not tautologous. If it were, other questions would also be. Such as, "why does the Earth orbit the Sun?"


"If we had others, then we would not be having this conversation." So what?

Originally Posted by MAYTAG

Originally Posted by Maximatic

What follows from the Anthropic Principal? It follows that we should not be surprised to witness conditions that are compatible with our existence. Right? Does it follow, though, that we should not be surprised to find that those conditions are unlikely? It does not. When we see a number like one over ten to the tenth to the one hundred and twenty third, we should be very surprised. Given that we exist, that number shouldn't be that high. We would be irrational to not ask why the conditions compatible with our existence are so unlikely.

What's irrational is believing you already have an answer to that question.

The answer I gave is perfectly rational. It's not even questionable. You don't seem to have understood what you read. Or, did you read it?