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Post by michaelw on Mar 2, 2017 6:24:27 GMT -5
This should fall under philosophy, I suppose.
This idea of a fine tuned universe is something I've been thinking about recently. I wanted to try to flesh out a thought I had, and maybe get some feedback.
So, as I'm sure we already know, the basic idea is that the physical constants of the universe are set up in such a way that if they were even slightly different, life in the universe could not exist. Therefore, only a fine-tuner (god) would be able to make sure all the physical constants line up properly. But this strikes me as kind of a curious argument, when coming from a theist. It seems to me that once you bring god into the equation, you don't even really need fine-tuning in the first place. The need for physical constants being set up a certain way would itself be something god could either have or not have, depending on whatever he felt like doing.
I can think of similar examples of the same basic idea, but going beyond physical constants like gravitation or electromagnetism. Just take the distance of the earth from the sun, as a simple example. The earth is 93 million miles from the sun, and if it were much closer or much farther, we'd all be dead instead of reading this. A theist might say: good thing god put the earth 93 million miles from the sun, and not 5,000 miles. But I don't see why a god would really need to do such a thing. He could've just as easily made humans (and other life forms) more resistant to heat. So from a theistic point of view, the need to be at 93 million miles distance should just be arbitrary and not really a "need" at all.
The other thing that interests me here is a more theological angle. If you ask, what is the universe fine tuned for, a proponent of the fine-tuning argument would normally see human life, specifically, as the primary intended beneficiary. It's essentially a solipsistic view of things where people are the apotheosis of a divine plan. It's so improbable that we could just come into existence naturally without a creator, therefore the universe is designed with us in mind. But there are so many species that require much narrower parameters to live than what humans require. For example, there are viruses that need us in order to live, even though we could do perfectly well without them. So that virus would need a universe just as specialized and unlikely to occur as the universe we need, but with the added need of a universe that could evolve homo sapiens and thereby provide a sustainer. So one could just as easily say the universe is specially designed for the virus, not for humans.
Just something I've been thinking about.
Any thoughts?
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Post by robeiae on Mar 2, 2017 7:44:29 GMT -5
Well, if a Supreme Being is actually all-knowing, it might be the case that the construction of the universe is specifically designed to hide the hand of the creator.
My biggest issue with Supreme Being-based thought (religion) is the supposition that such an entity would need recognition/worshiping.
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Post by Rolling Thunder on Mar 2, 2017 7:52:01 GMT -5
I'm always amused by people thanking Jesus for saving them from <insert natural disaster here>
How do they know Jesus didn't throw it at them in the first place?
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Post by michaelw on Mar 2, 2017 8:07:43 GMT -5
Well, if a Supreme Being is actually all-knowing, it might be the case that the construction of the universe is specifically designed to hide the hand of the creator. Sure, that's possible. But for a religion where belief in god is sine qua non, that doesn't seem like a very nice thing to do. That also reminds me of a comment I once heard from Jerry Coyne, regarding Christians who accept evolution. If evolution and Christianity are both true, why didn't we just get the story of evolution in Genesis, instead of things like Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark? Or at the very least get both? One would have to believe the stories were crafted so that a more scientifically minded person would be far less likely to believe, and thus condemn himself to hell. Well, certainly the old testament god is pretty insecure, much of the time. So I guess it fits his character.
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Post by Don on Mar 2, 2017 8:12:26 GMT -5
"the physical constants of the universe are set up" makes a theological assumption, doesn't it?
This is why attempts to reconcile logic and theology generally make my head explode. Belief doesn't require logic. If one chooses to believe in a supreme being capable of anything, then the finer details are immaterial, and the rationale behind them, unknowable, at least until said supreme being gets a Twitter account. Attempts to posit a rationale for the existence of such a supreme being fall into the same category.
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Post by michaelw on Mar 2, 2017 8:22:35 GMT -5
"the physical constants of the universe are set up" makes a theological assumption, doesn't it? This is why attempts to reconcile logic and theology generally make my head explode. Belief doesn't require logic. If one chooses to believe in a supreme being capable of anything, then the finer details are immaterial, and the rationale behind them, unknowable, at least until said supreme being gets a Twitter account. Attempts to posit a rationale for the existence of such a supreme being fall into the same category. Yeah, but I guess I could've phrased it differently to get rid of the assumption. One could just say, instead: "the basic idea is that the physical constants of the universe are such that if they were even slightly different, life in the universe could not exist." Then, you have to wait till the second step to get to the theological assumption.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 2, 2017 8:55:22 GMT -5
I'm always amused by people thanking Jesus for saving them from <insert natural disaster here> How do they know Jesus didn't throw it at them in the first place? Jesus is just screwing with them... There's an old Roger Zelazny short story called The Game of Blood and Dust. It concerns two aliens who have god-like powers and the "game" they play with Earth. Each gets three moves. One takes "blood" (or life), while the other takes "dust" (death). Basically, they go back into the past and alter the course of history three times apiece, then proceed back to the present and see what their changes have wrought. If the Earth is full of life and activity, Blood wins. If it's a lifeless rock, Dust wins. If a being has sufficient power, it's not always a given that their influence can be recognized. Ever.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 2, 2017 9:42:37 GMT -5
Well, certainly the old testament god is pretty insecure, much of the time. So I guess it fits his character. Here's the thing for me: I don't think a literal belief in the Bible--or any religious "book"--is required to believe in the Bible, in the god of the Bible. I think the whole "evidence in the Bible" angle is being seriously over-emphasized, from both directions: people who believe the Bible is chock-full of evidence and people who believe that it isn't (and that this therefore "disproves" religion).
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Post by michaelw on Mar 2, 2017 9:59:27 GMT -5
I think the whole "evidence in the Bible" angle is being seriously over-empathized To be fair, my empathy is pretty lacking, overall.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 2, 2017 10:02:53 GMT -5
I'm going to blame Google's spell-check.
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Post by michaelw on Mar 2, 2017 10:07:58 GMT -5
But on a more serious note, I agree, by and large.
That said, I find the idea of taking the bible metaphorically, instead of literally, to be a bit of a cop out. In order to be a Christian, there are some things you pretty much have to take literally (like the divinity of Jesus, for example). And it seems to me that many people pick and choose what to take literally, so as to bend over backwards to try to reconcile religion with science. I doubt there were many Christians saying Adam and Eve were just metaphors before evolution was developed, for example. So when a previously held truth came under scrutiny, it often became downgraded to "metaphor".
That's not really a very honest approach to exploring what's credible, IMO.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 2, 2017 11:15:06 GMT -5
Well, there is the issue of what constitutes a "Christian." You note Jesus' divinity as a prerequisite, but Unitarianism doesn't require that, at all. Going back in time, it is not the case that all Christians accepted the divinity of Jesus, at all. Especially in the early years of the movement.
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Post by Optimus on Mar 2, 2017 13:51:07 GMT -5
This should fall under philosophy, I suppose. This idea of a fine tuned universe is something I've been thinking about recently. I wanted to try to flesh out a thought I had, and maybe get some feedback. Yay! A nice distraction from the bullshit about Trump. You may know this already, but this is an argument set up on the " anthropic principle" which, when used in apologetics, is often a fallacy. It's basically saying that, as you said, there are certain physical constants in the universe that seem required for life and the universe, as we know it, to exist. But, it becomes a fallacy when a person falsely believes that the universe that we perceive is necessarily the only one that could possibly exist. If the universe had formed in a different way, then there could have been different constants which would have evolved life in different ways. The argument is a mistake borne from a biased perspective. We see that we are alive, then we try to understand the way the universe operates. We then conclude that that the universe operates in such a way that allowed the circumstances for our own existence. This does not imply that it *must* be this way or that life couldn't have developed if the speed of light or the weak force were different. We have know what of knowing that. We are biased in our interpretations of existence simply due to the fact that we exist. If the universe had formed in a different way with different universal constants, then who's to say that a different type of life would not have evolved? And, if that life had evolved in a universe that just so happened to support the development of that life, I would imagine that those beings might also believe that "if any of our universal constants were different, we would not exist!" Yes, if the constants were different, *we* might not exist, but it is illogical to conclude that *something else* wouldn't exist in that universe. The problem with that example (which I heard numerous times growing up in church), is that it's totally false. I've only ever heard that claim from my Christian friends, and it implies that they don't check the veracity of the bullshit sandwiches they're eating/serving, or they just "can't science." Granted, these are the same people who used to tell me that "a guy" took a brand new fishing pole to "some scientists" at "a university" and told them to "carbon date it" and, when they did, the test said that this brand new fishing pole was "millions of years old" and it totally baffled the scientists because it "totally disproved evolution." Yeah. They really believe that. It gets really fun when I ask them what radiometric dating has to do with evolution and then I explain to them that it's impossible to carbon date something older than around 50,000 years (due to decay rates of C14 and its proportion/prevalence in nature), and that any "scientist" worth his/her salt would know that before they tried to carbon date a fishing pole made of inorganic matter. Anyway... The Earth is an average of 93 million miles from the sun. However, planetary orbits are elliptical, so the actual distance ranges from just over 91 million miles to just over 95 million over the course of the year. If the Earth's distance from the sun never changed, then our seasons would be even more screwed up than they currently are. So, the entire premise of the "if the earth were closer/farther from the sun, we'd all be dead," as it is usually presented, is false. The fine-tuning argument, in general, is incredibly weak and has been thoroughly, and rightly, thrashed by counter apologists. It's basically an "argument from design" mixed with a heavy dose of Paley's "Watchmaker Analogy," and they're all built on a slew of illogical assumptions. Rather than me prattling on about it, here's a link that sums up the major points and counterpoints to it: wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Fine-tuning_argument
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Post by Optimus on Mar 2, 2017 14:03:34 GMT -5
Matt Dillahunty made two pretty good (though the backgrounds are cheesy) vids on the argument from design, if anyone is interested in watching:
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Post by michaelw on Mar 2, 2017 17:34:05 GMT -5
Well, there is the issue of what constitutes a "Christian." You note Jesus' divinity as a prerequisite, but Unitarianism doesn't require that, at all. Going back in time, it is not the case that all Christians accepted the divinity of Jesus, at all. Especially in the early years of the movement. That's fair. But I think what I'm saying is largely accurate, for the vast majority. Heck, it's not just the divinity of Jesus, but many other things often taken literally as well (the resurrection, the virgin birth, etc.)
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