Odds and fine tunning

[Jaguar]

Greetings:

First of all, since I don't a lot in the forum, I want to excuse myself in advance in the case that what I am going to ask had been answered before.

It's about this idea of fine tunning in the universe, for example, the unlikely odds DNA came into existance by chance and the sort.

I know the argument fails for a number of reasons:
1.- Natural procesess are governed by natural laws, not by chance;
2.- The "poker hand" argument which says that if you deal a game, and later on you calculate the odds of dealing the reffered game, it seems mathematically impossible, yet the game was dealed.
3.- And this is what I am not so sure.

We all have come accross creationist arguments when they want to sound smart and present the odds for the occurance of life, or the forming of the dna. Now, we know that by sheer probability the DNA in its current known arrangement could be described as a set of molecules put in a certain order, and that the "too low odds" argument fails because the odds are the same for that set as for any other to have appeared.

My question to scientists in the matter is if my idea of the main failure of fine tunning is accurate. I think fine tunning fails because they are looking at the universe from the wrong perspective:

It's not that the universe and its conditions fit the parameters for the existance of life, but actually the life that exists is the type of life that could arise given the parameters.

To put it in an example: I am a fan of the Oakland Raiders and it is no secret we have sucked big time for a while now. Fine tuners would argue that the condition of talent in the league and the rules of the game are fine tuned to make the Raiders suck, when the reality is that given the parameters of the league, the Raiders happen to suck.

So, my point is that the DNA as the molecule of life is no evidence of fine tunning. The conditions of the planet were not fine tuned for the emergence of DNA based life forms, but life forms with the DNA in its known arrangement is the type of life molecule that emerged given the conditions.

Is it possible (not necessarily in this planet) that there be (by simple biochemistry) life based on something that is not the DNA? Can there be a metabolism based on nitrogen rather than oxygen? Can there be a blood chemistry based in chrome or copper instead of iron?

- The Jaguar

 

[Aught3]

First of all,

Can there be a blood chemistry based in chrome or copper instead of iron?

Good guess, there are blood systems that are based on copper rather than iron (though not chrome as far as I'm aware).

I think your main argument is okay and would account for some of the factors that fine-tunists like to bring up. The problem is that it wouldn't account for the main factors that they like to use. The numbers that they normally talk about involve the length of star life, the types of chemistry that can occur, and the time from the beginning of the universe to the end. Life being adaptable doesn't really help when the universe only exists for a few seconds before collapsing.

I'll give you my favourite argument against fine-tuning (for others to critique as well). This argument is especially good because it shows that there isn't a fine-tuning problem or, at least, I've never seen a formulation of the fine-tuning problem that wouldn't be answered by it.

As I mentioned earlier, fine-tunists like to talk about numbers. For example, they will say if the strong nuclear force was 2% greater it will alter the chemistry of hydrogen and not allow helium to form drastically altering chemistry. The examples can be spewed out ad nauseum (see, for example, William Lane Craig) multiplying improbability upon improbability. Let's say that the value of the strong nuclear force is 10 (ten whats? who cares, any number will do) now according to actual physicists this number can only vary by 2% before helium gets the boot so this gives the fine-tunist a range of 8 - 12 units which admittedly is quite a small range especially considering that the number which represents the force could take any value on the number line.

Anyway, we do our little probability calculation our small range of permissible values is the numerator and the infinite set of other possible numbers becomes the denominator... uh oh! Divide by infinity? That's kind of problematic and makes an actual calculation impossible. But the fine-tunist can still save himself by appealing to our intuition. Surely such a small range divided by infinity will still be an extremely small number? Well that's true, but it's also true of any other possible range. Even if we assert coarse tuning, say that the strong nuclear force could take any value from 1 - 1,000,000 we would still be dividing by infinity and ending up with either an incalculable probability or an intuitively small possibility. A possible range of one million doesn't seem quite so impressive yet according to the fine-tunists own calculations it is just as impressive as their small 2% variation or even a change of one part in several billion.

Until the fine-tunist can formulate their argument in a way that does not also apply to coarse tuning, there is no fine-tuning 'problem'.

 

[Deleted member 619]

On the subject of 'odds', I invite the reader to peruse the following post dealing with odds and large sample sets:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/creationism/frequently-occuring-fallacies-t1121.html#p15289

In a nutshell, it demonstrates that even an event with ridiculously low probability of occuring, given a large enough sample set, becomes inevitable.