Let me help you. Argument from ignorance
WP
is a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false or is false only because it has not been proven true.
And you're saying:
The odds of such a being existing cannot be known in the first place, so it remains a plausible hypothesis on which to explain the values of the constants.
In other words, your words are that because the odds can't be known, it's a viable hypothesis. In other words, we should entertain the theory because we can't prove that it's not true.
These are subjective probabilities. For me, God has always been a plausible hypothesis.
And we see why, in this post...
Huh? The hypothesis "Something create the universe" means the only thing being put on the table is some lifeform that evolved? "Something" can apply to anything capable of creating a universe and fine-tuning it, including God.
How come you exclude multiverses and oscillating universes?
You're confusing ontological with epistemological. God either does or doesn't exist.
You sling out the strangest accusations. I've discussed this before.
I'm not confusing being with knowledge.
You're confusing belief with knowledge. Funny you should mention epistemology... epistemology is the study of knowledge and how we come about to know things. As I've stated before, it's easy for us to fool ourselves, and the only sure way to prevent this from happening is to make sure your
knowledge derives
from being, rather than from fancy.
This is a doubt based approach, as opposed to your answers based approach.
The FT argument is a way to show that our belief in God is justified viz-a-viz God being a good explanation for the long odds against life existing.
Remember that part that's highlighted.
I'm not excluding anything. What are you trying to argue, that life in a universe with no stars is plausible?
No. I'm presenting you an alternate model, where 0 parameters vary, and the same universe comes into being.
Your fine-tuning argument requires more than a recognition of parameters of life being in small ranges. You rely on specific models, whereby life is improbable. What you're leaving out are alternate models, where life is certain, and others where it's more certain (and still others where it's less probable... and so on).
Ironically, you're attempting to justify
not adding that into consideration, by accusing my demanding it be considered
with all other hypothesis, as being an argument from ignorance. Only I'm trying to get you to take everything into account.
If your only way to defeat the FT argument is making up faith-based stories, you have no leg to stand on accusing a theist of irrationality.
This is a great example of an ad hominem, straw man, and tu quoque argument combined.
Right. If the FT argument comes down to either something created the universe or there is a vast multiverse, the theist is on more stable ground. It is perfectly reasonable to reject the many-universes hypothesis as there is zero evidence for it.
Ah, so it's this argument:
God explains|Multiverse theory explains
the improbability of life|the improbability of life
therefore|but
it is evidence of God|there is no evidence for it
I'm beginning to see how this not bias thing works.
You're then left with either chance or a universe-creator. The theist has to do a bit more arguing to go from "universe creator" to God, but once you establish the rationality of believing the universe was created by something powerful enough to create universes and fine-tune them, it's a short leap to go from there to some type of God.
Sure. All you're lacking is a brain.
Not bias. The impossibilty of a life-less universe is better explained by a life-symapthetic universe creator, than by chance. Imagine you're looking over a sea of trillions of actual universes. You are then told that every single one is full of life- not a lifeless one out of trillions and trillions. I certainly would be surprised. Now add to that you ALSO found out they all have life because the values of the physical constants are set in just the right life-permitting way- protons just happen to have the right mass, the fine-structure constant just happens to be set at the right value. That kind of evidence would make anything but a universe creator irrational to believe in.
Time for another unbiased table...
Improbability of life|Necessity of life
is evidence for|is evidence for
God|God
The physical constants are random and we have evidence for either an oscillating universe or a vast multiverse. God would not be required to explain anything if that is the way the universe is.
Only problem is, we are pretty sure that there's no oscillating universe, and you're stealing all of the evidence for multiverses for use with that God hypothesis.
According to the physicists I've sourced, the odds are infinistesimally small. I don't know why you won't post rebuttal sources. This is a cosmological argument. You're going to have reference something other than your musings.
...
I'm supposing their opinon on a highly technical matter counts for more than what you are I could say. They are actually paid to write and think about this stuff. When the doctor shows you an X-ray, do you physically take apart the X-Ray machine to verify it gave the correct result?
...
Again, feel free to source other cosmologists/physicists who disagree about the precise values needed for life and we'll go from there. Till then, I have my quotes from experts and you haven't shown anything to refute them.
Why would I have their "model"? I assume it would be meaningless to someone without an advanced degree in physics or math. Do you really think Hawking is full of [ooooh the children!!!] Again, who's the radical skepticist around here anyway?
Uhm, no, I think you have no clue what you're talking about. Hoyle (who I see you brought up again... must have a short term memory) aside, who was sort of wacky when he delved outside his field (and you're welcome to plug in that biochemist any time)... Penrose was the only one you mentioned that actually gave you a probability.
I have asked you, over and over, to tell me their model, and I see you finally have a response. Who cares about his model? He's a big smart physicist, and how dare I question him! But you don't quite seem to get it. You care, and I care, what his model is. Only you really don't. As I said, you're after his precious number.
Well, I got tired of playing this charade, so I did something. I chased down the Penrose reference for you. And I read it. I don't have an advanced physics or mathematics degree (though if you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly alergic to math), but... I... understood what he was doing. Would you like to hear about it?
Sure you would! Okay, so let's go.
The reference turned out to be Penrose's 1990 book, "The Emperor's New Mind". The citation referenced near the end of a chapter where Penrose was discussing... of all things... the arrow of time, and entropy. Penrose uses a phase model, which being a great software engineer, is pretty familiar to me (we call similar things "state machines"), to describe universes of the same order as ours. My analogy, not his, but imagine that you have a deck of cards--and shuffle them into all possible arrangements... this is the sort of thing that Penrose has done to his phase model. Each point in his phase model represents a possible arrangement of all of the particles in the universe (but only that <5% that we recently discovered, and Penrose is merely estimating to make another point).
Those are your possible universes--
every possible arrangement of matter within our universe.
Now, then, out of
that set, Penrose was describing how physics is actually time symmetric--that the laws work the same forward as it does backward. And he took, in my opinion, an extremely long time, to explain that you can move from one point to the other, in a similar fashion that represents the evolution of particles through time int he universe according to physical laws... but because the laws are symmetric, you can move either way. But in the vast majority of these phase space points, moving both ways wind up increasing the total entropy.
But in our universe, entropy only increases, and the big bang itself was a state of extraordinarily low entropy. The odds that Penrose is producing... 1 in 10 to the 10
123, represents the proportion of
all arrangements of particles in the universe from which an entropy state as low as the big bang appears.
And
that is what he is talking about. Near the end of the chapter, he writes:
Penrose:
We seem to have been forced into an impasse. We need to understand why space-time singularities have the structures that they appear to have; but space-time singularities are regions where our understanding of physics has reached its limits.
...
What have we learnt from all this? We have learnt that our theories are not yet adequate to provide answers, ...
Okay... so, what were your options?
1. non-plantary life is possible
2. we got lucky
3. something set the contants at a certain value
...and mine?
4. Penrose wasn't working with a known, scientific model of universe formation, that accounts for why parameters get the values they get (you know, the one we need to get relevant probabilities).
...and which one did Penrose pick, 19 years ago?
"We have learnt that our theories are not yet adequate to provide answers, ..."
I don't know what Hawking thinks of the FT argument. Feel free to look it up. I referenced these guys to support my formulation of the evidence, which was being attacked by several people.
You can
read his opinion if you're interested.
An appeal to ignorance to get around a theistic argument supported by physics and biology.
Sorry. You're not going to get out of having to prove your case by making false accusations.
See Penrose, above. Cite someone who knows how the universe gets its parameters. And it would help if you yourself tried to understand your sources, or at least you didn't just outright start with the assumption that it's above my head (I'll be happy to tell you if I don't understand something myself, thank you).
