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Present a BETTER explanation for our existence than God

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arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
Yfelsung said:
It's like throwing logic at a really dumb brick.

We exist because we do, if things didn't line up we wouldn't, but our existence ISN'T IMPORTANT IN ANY WAY. If we stopped existing right now, the universe would just keep doing its thing. If we'd never been born, the universe would have kept doing its thing, which is just existing.


the quest is if our universe would exist without a creator, in first place. I have not seen so far a compelling and rational explanation , presented by any of the participants of this forum, how the universe could have come into existence without a intelligent creator.

The earth's atmosphere isn't oxygen because that's what we need, we breathe oxygen because that's what we had to work with.

The range of oxygen level in the atmosphere that permits life can be fairly broad, but oxygen is definitely necessary for life. Mars falls far short in that respect, and so does Venus. The amount of 'pure' oxygen in the atmosphere is dependent on many things, like volcanism, thermal activity in the core of the planet, and the amount of metal in the crust. Too much metal would absorb the oxygen in the air in the form of rust and oxidation. Estimated probability
You're entire thinking is upside-down. You start from two unproven premises 1) the universe is fine tuned and 2) humans are special.

So you think, following scientists are all lying ?


Fred Hoyle
(British astrophysicist)
"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

http://www.bethinking.org/science-christianity/fine-tuning-the-multiverse-theory.htm

Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p.125.

The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life"¦ It seems clear that there are relatively few ranges of values for the numbers that would allow the development of any form of intelligent life. Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at their beauty.


George Ellis
(British astrophysicist)
"Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."


Paul Davies
(British astrophysicist)
"There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe. The impression of design is overwhelming."


Alan Sandage
(winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy)
"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."

John O'Keefe
(NASA astronomer)
"We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures. If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."


George Greenstein
(astronomer)
"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency,or, rather, Agency,must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"


Arthur Eddington
(astrophysicist)
"The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."


Arno Penzias
(Nobel prize in physics)
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."


Roger Penrose
(mathematician and author)
"I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."


Tony Rothman
(physicist)
"When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."


Vera Kistiakowsky
(MIT physicist)
"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."


Stephen Hawking
(British astrophysicist)
"What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? "¦

Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why?"


Alexander Polyakov
(Soviet mathematician)
"We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."


Ed Harrison
(cosmologist)
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God,the design argument of Paley,updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one. Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."


Edward Milne
(British cosmologist)
"As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]."


Barry Parker
(cosmologist)
"Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed."


Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel
(cosmologists)
"This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'."


Arthur L. Schawlow
(Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics)
"It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life."


Henry "Fritz" Schaefer
(computational quantum chemist)
"The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan."


Wernher von Braun
(Pioneer rocket engineer)
"I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science."

We know how abiogenesis is possible.

Now you start making completely baseless assertions. No, my friend, we dont know how abiogenesis is possible. we really dont.... understand that.
We know exactly what elements were required and how they may have formed.

false, again. that is wishful thinking.

All our theories are better proven than yours.

They are proven ? then they are facts, not theories anymore.....

I'm now walking away as you are either a) dumb as fucking wood or b) trolling us.

And now, in the end, starting with a personal attack.....

well, that said, i think its time to not waste further time with you.
 
arg-fallbackName="Logic-Nanaki"/>
Japhia888 said:
All our theories are better proven than yours.

They are proven ? then they are facts, not theories anymore.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
read the difference between layman word of theory and scientific theory.
 
arg-fallbackName="RichardMNixon"/>
Japhia888 said:
RichardMNixon said:
Demonstrate to me that gravity could have had a different value..

Well, if you think it cannot have another value, its up to you to demonstrate that to me.

NO! IT ISN'T! I'm not the one claiming it could have been different if your skydaddy hadn't fixed it for us in his infinite love, YOU ARE!
What i don't accept, is macro-evolution.
So microevolution can account for these differences:
Running_Ostrich.jpg

699hummingbird.jpg


but not for the incremental differences here?
HorseSeries3.gif


Macroevolution as used by creationists is purely an argument of incredulity. If I say a common ancestor evolved into both ostrich and hummingbird, would you believe me? If I said the same for chimps and humans? On what grounds is one possible but not the other?

Also, long lists like that are pretty irritating. Please use spoiler tags or a link.
 
arg-fallbackName="Vizard"/>
Japhia888 said:
http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/darwin-s-theory-of-evolution-f3/has-macro-evolution-been-proved-observed-t80.htm

Macroevolution:

Cannot be extrapolated from microevolution

"[C]annot be understood solely on the basis of extrapolation from processes observed at the level of modern populations and species"

"New concepts and information from molecular, developmental biology, systematics, geology and the fossil record of all groups of organisms, need to be integrated into an expanded evolutionary synthesis. These fields of study show that large-scale evolutionary phenomena cannot be understood solely on the basis of extrapolation from processes observed at the level of modern populations and species. Patterns and rates of evolution are much more varied than had been conceived by Darwin or the evolutionary synthesis, and physical factors of the earth's history have had a significant, but extremely varied, impact on the evolution of life." (Carroll, Robert L. [Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, Redpath Museum, McGill University, Montreal, Canada], "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2000, Vol. 15, pp.27-32, p.27) [top of page]

"The misuse of the terms by creationists is all their own work. It is not due to the ways scientists have used them. Basically when creationists use "macroevolution" they mean "evolution which we object to on theological grounds", and by "microevolution" they mean "evolution we either cannot deny, or which is acceptable on theological grounds".

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html

Quit quote-mining you dishonest hack.

Robert Carroll accepts macroevolution, but was pointing out that "the patterns, rates, and controlling forces of evolution are much more varied than had been conceived by either Darwin or Simpson." This is obvious now, and was obvious 13 years ago when he wrote that. He was discussing things like Punctuated Equilibrium in the fossil record, something that Darwin never accounted for in his initial findings. However, Carroll's overall conclusion was:

"Evolutionary forces that can be studied in modern populations are sufficiently powerful to account for the amount and rate of morphological change throughout the entire course of vertebrate history."

http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052147809X
http://www.science.ca/scientists/scientistprofile.php?pID=335

You see in science, it's acknowledged that theories aren't perfect. We know Darwin wasn't correct about everything regarding evolution. But unlike your precious delusion, science is a self-correcting process. It acknowledges its mistakes and tries to fix them. If all you want is some perceived perfect answer of absolute certainity, then continue clinging to your "better" explanation. You don't care about what is true, you care about convincing yourself that you have the truth. Nothing we say will ever convince you otherwise. Stop wasting our time.
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
RichardMNixon said:
NO! IT ISN'T! I'm not the one claiming it could have been different if your skydaddy hadn't fixed it for us in his infinite love, YOU ARE!

because there is no physicial need, the strength to be exactly the way it is. It could have another value. But it has the right value to permit life ......
Now, if you think i am wrong, its up to you to explain, why .
 
arg-fallbackName="lrkun"/>
Japhia888 said:
RichardMNixon said:
NO! IT ISN'T! I'm not the one claiming it could have been different if your skydaddy hadn't fixed it for us in his infinite love, YOU ARE!

because there is no physicial need, the strength to be exactly the way it is. It could have another value. But it has the right value to permit life ......
Now, if you think i am wrong, its up to you to explain, why
.

What is your basis for this information?
 
arg-fallbackName="RichardMNixon"/>
Japhia888 said:
RichardMNixon said:
NO! IT ISN'T! I'm not the one claiming it could have been different if your skydaddy hadn't fixed it for us in his infinite love, YOU ARE!

because there is no physicial need the strength to be exactly the way it is. It could have another value.
You know this how? You could save a lot of physicists a lot of time.

Now, if you think i am wrong, its up to you to explain, why .
That isn't how discourse works. You don't state an unfalsifiable and unjustifiable claim as fact and then demand I disprove it. See Last Thursdayism as an explanation for our existence.

Now then, you claim the odds of us having these specific set of physical constants are against us. Prove it.
What are the probability distributions for a universe to have each of the physical constants you gave? I assume you or your sources know this since you were apparently able to calculate the joint probability of this combination.
Or are your numbers just completely made up?
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
lrkun said:
Japhia888 said:
What is your basis for this information?

because of the fact that they can fluctuate :

http://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/constants/

if they can fluctuate, they could theoretically also have completely other values.
 
arg-fallbackName="lrkun"/>
Japhia888 said:
because of the fact that they can fluctuate :

http://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/constants/

if they can fluctuate, they could theoretically also have completely other values.

The precise strength of the earth's gravity varies, it means they flactuate: it is a fact. This depends on the different locations around the earth. The nominal average or the standard gravity is 980.665 cm/s2. That standard is for uniformity.
The value adopted in the International Service of Weights and Measures for the standard acceleration due to gravity is 980.665 cm/s2, value already stated in the laws of some countries. Bureau International des Poids et Mesures

Example of fluctuations
Amsterdam =9.813
Athens =9.800
Auckland =9.799
Bangkok =9.783
Brussels =9.811
Buenos Aires =9.797
Calcutta =9.788
Cape Town =9.796
Chicago =9.803
Copenhagen =9.815
Frankfurt =9.810
Havana =9.788
Helsinki =9.819
Istanbul =9.808
Jakarta =9.781
Kuwait =9.793
Lisbon =9.801
London =9.812
Los Angeles =9.796
Madrid =9.800
Manila =9.784
Mexico City =9.779
Montréal =9.789
New York City =9.802
Nicosia =9.797
Oslo =9.819
Ottawa =9.806
Paris =9.809
Rio de Janeiro =9.788
Rome =9.803
San Francisco =9.800
Singapore =9.781
Stockholm =9.818
Sydney =9.797
Taipei =9.790
Tokyo =9.798
Vancouver =9.809
Washington, D.C. =9.801
Wellington =9.803
Zurich =9.807
 
arg-fallbackName="Vizard"/>
Japhia888 said:
because there is no physicial need, the strength to be exactly the way it is. It could have another value. But it has the right value to permit life ......
Now, if you think i am wrong, its up to you to explain, why .

Why does an omnipotent, omniscient God need to fine tune? If he's omnipotent and omniscient he could have made a universe support life no matter what the laws are.
 
arg-fallbackName="Aught3"/>
Thanks for the reply Japhia888.
1. The universe had a absolute beginning, and God as a sentient personal being as its cause
2. The universe had a absolute beginning, but no cause. Absolutely nothing was the cause of the universe. It came to be from any thing.
3. The universe had no beginning. Its eternal. It had no beginning, and has no end. It exists since eternity in one form or the other.

Do you agree there are only 2 other possibilites, as presented ? If so, i am asking for positive reasons for hypotheses 2 or 3, and why they should be better explanations.
Just beat on no.1 is exactly the vicious thing i am not interested in , in this thread.
No I don't agree that these are the possibilities. I think the dichotomy is between:
1. something always existing
2. something coming into existence from nothing
Presumably a god counts as something (rather than nothing) so would also fit into this dichotomy. Incidentally, I don't know what the answer is - modern physics doesn't seem to rule either option out at the moment.

On the vacuum fluctuations, I actually agree that physicists are a bit misleading when they say 'nothing' and are actually talking about this bubbling quantum foam. But if it is the case that in a vacuum these fluctuations occur, can there actually be a state of no-thing? It was actually my understanding that quantum fluctuations could occur without space-time but I suppose the physicists you cite would know better than I would. In any case it doesn't matter because all you asked for was a better explanation than theism.

Even if I have to assert the existence of vacuum fluctuations (which I'm not convinced I have to but let's say I accept your previous arguments) it's still a better explanation than asserting a god. First, there is evidence that vacuum fluctuation exist. Second, Krauss' explanation is very parsimonious in that it could have been proven false at many points, indeed he mentioned several experiments and calculation where it appeared to be falsified until further information was gathered, no experiment will ever be able to falsify the god hypothesis. Third, it shows high concordance with all known information on physics, unlike the supernatural agents of theism. Fourth, it is able to explain the origin of the universe which shows it's explanatory scope. Compared to asserting theism, asserting the existence of vacuum fluctuations is a better explanation hands down.

On the idea that DNA needs proteins and proteins need DNA, again I agree that is why the RNA world is proposed. RNA can form their own riboozymes so proteins would not be needed in the early stages of life and some ribozymes can make partial copies of themselves removing the need for polymerases. It is true that ribozymes have not been shown to fully copy themselves so there is still more work to do in this area. I think the only reason the Miller-Urey experiments are so widely used is that they are so famous. There is much better, more modern research which either confirms or shows other ways to get the organic molecules they produced. Early proto-cells would not have been as complex as modern bacterial cells and probably originated from even simpler chemistry. To pretend otherwise is just to strawman what scientists are saying about abiogenesis. And as I said last time, fine-tuning does not present itself as a problem to me. Stars fuse lighter elements and form heavier elements, one of which is carbon. When the star explodes these heavier elements are sprayed out into space. The process is fairly easy to grasp.

On evolution, the only distinction between micro and macro evolution is that macro occurs over long time spans. So if you accept micro-evolution, you accept evolution - congratulations.

I'm going to restate my comment on fine-tuning with a change: On fine tuning: it doesn't surprise me the environment in which life arose can support life. I don't see a fine tuning problem. If you are asking where the physical constants came from I would say most of them had to have their particular value and, of those that could vary, they have their values by pure chance.

Common ancestry has been proven by DNA evidence. You take a conserved region of DNA from many different organisms and build a parsimonious tree. The results look like this
tree_of_life.jpeg
 
arg-fallbackName="RichardMNixon"/>
Japhia888 said:
http://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/constants/

if they can fluctuate, they could theoretically also have completely other values.

Their measurements are varying, yes. Can you really not appreciate the distinction between the measurement of a value and the actual value? Measurements have errors. They are generally gaussian distributed. Well color me surprised, lrkun's list of obtained values fits a gaussian distribution remarkably well.
Now then, what is the distribution of G within different universes? Not measured values of G within our universe.

To logically extrapolate from your absurd last claim, if I jump three times and the height of my jump fluctuates each time, I could theoretically jump to the moon.
 
arg-fallbackName="Nelson"/>
Well, I thought I would try to catch back up a bit on this discussion. Unfortunately this:
Japhia888 said:
because of the fact that they can fluctuate :

http://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/constants/

if they can fluctuate, they could theoretically also have completely other values.

made me facepalm to intensely I actually knocked myself unconscious. I've just now come to, and composed a response.

The way you are confused about this sort of variability is exactly the same way that you are confused about the term fine-tuning. In both cases we are dealing with our inability to exactly measure or model reality. However, in both cases you assume our models or measurements are infinitely precise and it must therefore be the universe itself which is fine-tuned, or the constants themselves which are varying. Wrong wrong wrong.

Prior to Newton's explanations of gravity theists could have claimed that the motion of the planet was fine tuned. If god doesn't keep it moving at just the right distance from the sun, we would burn up or freeze. Now, thanks to Newton and later Einstein, we understand why objects move in elliptical orbits. But now you insist that the gravitational constant in this equation is fine-tuned. Later we may come up with a mechanism for why big-G can only be the value that it is, but you could just as easily claim that this mechanism which constrains big-G is itself fine-tuned. It is a never ending god of the gaps argument. Do you truly not see this?

On top of this I would really like someone to explain to me how you perform an experiment to determine that a dimensionful constant is varying....

This would be news to many physicists.
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
RichardMNixon said:
Japhia888 said:
http://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/constants/

if they can fluctuate, they could theoretically also have completely other values.

Their measurements are varying, yes. Can you really not appreciate the distinction between the measurement of a value and the actual value? Measurements have errors. They are generally gaussian distributed. Well color me surprised, lrkun's list of obtained values fits a gaussian distribution remarkably well.
Now then, what is the distribution of G within different universes? Not measured values of G within our universe.

To logically extrapolate from your absurd last claim, if I jump three times and the height of my jump fluctuates each time, I could theoretically jump to the moon.

No, its not about the variations of the measurements, but about the constants themself. They can vary :

Speed of light may have changed recently

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092-speed-of-light-may-have-changed-recently.html

The speed of light, one of the most sacrosanct of the universal physical constants, may have been lower as recently as two billion years ago - and not in some far corner of the universe, but right here on Earth.
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
Nelson said:
made me facepalm to intensely I actually knocked myself unconscious. I've just now come to, and composed a response.

fine !! i don't want to be responsible for some hurt of yourself...... ;)
The way you are confused about this sort of variability is exactly the same way that you are confused about the term fine-tuning.

I don't feel actually, i am confused in some way.....
In both cases we are dealing with our inability to exactly measure or model reality. However, in both cases you assume our models or measurements are infinitely precise and it must therefore be the universe itself which is fine-tuned, or the constants themselves which are varying. Wrong wrong wrong.

If science would be that bad in collecting data, it would not be reliable for anything, and we could not make and predictions, and try to understand our reality at all.

Prior to Newton's explanations of gravity theists could have claimed that the motion of the planet was fine tuned. If god doesn't keep it moving at just the right distance from the sun, we would burn up or freeze. Now, thanks to Newton and later Einstein, we understand why objects move in elliptical orbits. But now you insist that the gravitational constant in this equation is fine-tuned.

Thats actually not ME asserting this. The information i have, does not rely on my own research.

Gravity mysteries: Why is gravity fine-tuned?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227123.000-gravity-mysteries-why-is-gravity-finetuned.html

The feebleness of gravity is something we should be grateful for. If it were a tiny bit stronger, none of us would be here to scoff at its puny nature.

The moment of the universe's birth created both matter and an expanding space-time in which this matter could exist. While gravity pulled the matter together, the expansion of space drew particles of matter apart - and the further apart they drifted, the weaker their mutual attraction became.

It turns out that the struggle between these two was balanced on a knife-edge. If the expansion of space had overwhelmed the pull of gravity in the newborn universe, stars, galaxies and humans would never have been able to form. If, on the other hand, gravity had been much stronger, stars and galaxies might have formed, but they would have quickly collapsed in ...
Later we may come up with a mechanism for why big-G can only be the value that it is, but you could just as easily claim that this mechanism which constrains big-G is itself fine-tuned. It is a never ending god of the gaps argument. Do you truly not see this?

No, i don't.
 
arg-fallbackName="australopithecus"/>
I feel compelled to ask, do you know what fine tuning means? Because AW covered this in another thread quite well.

http://forums.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=74722#p74722
 
arg-fallbackName="lrkun"/>
Japhia888 said:
No, its not about the variations of the measurements, but about the constants themself. They can vary :

Speed of light may have changed recently

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092-speed-of-light-may-have-changed-recently.html

The speed of light, one of the most sacrosanct of the universal physical constants, may have been lower as recently as two billion years ago - and not in some far corner of the universe, but right here on Earth.

So how does this defend your position that god's explanation for existence is better?
If science would be that bad in collecting data, it would not be reliable for anything, and we could not make and predictions, and try to understand our reality at all.

Top 50 inventions of the past 50 years.

The 10 Greatest (Accidental) inventions

To quote David Hume on Answerbag
Of course science is reliable. If you don't believe me, you would never get on a plane, buy something over the internet, drive a car or even wear clothes. Science never has or claims to have the final word, it is always provisional, and yet it has brought us to where we are today. If you don't agree, you certainly shouldn't be reading a website, you should be out in the woods living in a shelter without electricity or modern medicine, and getting wet when it rains.
 
arg-fallbackName="Japhia888"/>
australopithecus said:
I feel compelled to ask, do you know what fine tuning means? Because AW covered this in another thread quite well.

http://forums.leagueofreason.org.uk/viewtopic.php?p=74722#p74722

The apologist's perspective is that the models must already be 100% accurate, meaning out-standing fine tuning problems indicate a fine tuning of reality. No scientist puts so much faith into the current state of physics!

Really ? Why then so many physicists have aknowledged the finetuning of these constants without hesitation, or doubt ?

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/astronomy-cosmology-and-god-f15/the-extreme-fine-tuning-of-the-universe-t31.htm

In any case, there is one constant whose value does seem remarkably well adjusted in our favor. It is the energy density of empty space, also known at the cosmological constant."

S. Weinberg, Skeptical Inquirer, Sept./Oct. 2001, pg 67.

At the Nature of Nature conference at Baylor Unviersity, April 2000, Weinberg stated that the cosmological constant appears to be fine-tuned to 1 part in 10120.


In response to a question as to whether inflation eliminates the need for fine-tuning, Alan Guth commented:


"As far as finely tuning things, there are still two important fine tuning problem that are not solved. One is the problem that's called the cosmological constant problem. It's basically the problem of why the energy density of the vacuum is either zero or very close to being zero. Current models of physics require fine tuning in order to make the energy of the vacuum turn out to be either zero or very, very small."

Alan Guth, quoted by F. Heeren in "Show Me God", pg 387.


A straightforward estimation suggests that empty space should weigh several orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude (no misprint here!) more than it does. It "should" be much denser than a neutron star, for example. ... To me, the discrepancy concerning the density of empty space is the most mysterious fact of all of physical science, the fact with the greatest potential to rock the foundations. We're obviously missing some major insight here.

Frank Wilczek, Physics Today, Oct. 2003 pg 10-11.


At present it is clearly too early to choose one cosmological model over the other. It is getting increasingly difficult to find accord with a flat universe without a cosmolgocial constant. The question then becomes: Which fundamental fine-tuning problem is one more willing to worry about, the flatness problem or the cosmological constant problem? The latter involves a fine-tuning of over 120 orders of magnitude, if the cosmological constant is nonzero and comparable to the density of clustered matter today, while the former involves a fine-tuning of perhaps only 60 orders of magnitude, if one arbitrarily fixes the energy density of the universe at the Planck time to be slightly less than the closure density.

L. M. Krauss, The Astrophysical Journal, 1998, 501: p 465.


Although Einstein dismissed the cosmological constant as a personal blunder, quantum mechanics makes it obligatory. Unfortunately, even the best quantum "mechanics" have failed to produce a sensible prediction for L. The sum of zero-point energies diverges due to short-wavelength modes. Truncating at an energy scale beyond which we can appeal to physics ignorance illustrates the enormity of the problem: for a 100-GeV cutoff, WL - 1055. This disparity is the greatest embarrassment in all of theoretical physics.

Michael S. Turner, Physics Today, April, 2003.


"This is an incredibly highly ordered event, extremely highly ordered, its just the opposite of a chaotic event."

Eric Carlson, Senior astronomer at the Adler Planetarium, in an interview with Fred Hereen shown in the video "Scientific Evidence For God"

2) ripples in the cosmic microwave background


The pattern demonstrates that the event was not a haphazard event. The fluctuations had to be just as they were for galaxies to form and life to be possible.

"If your religious, it's like looking at God"

George Smoot, quoted by Milton Rothman in Free Inquiry, vol 13, no 1, 1992.1993 pg 12.


"The big bang, the most cataclysmic event we can imagine, on closer inspection appears finely orchestrated"

G. Smoot and Davidson, "Wrinkles in Time", 1993, 135.


"the most important discovery of the century, if not of all time"

S. Hawking quoted by G. Smoot and Davidson, "Wrinkles in Time" 1993, pg 283.


"The first loose end has to do with the presence of galaxies and large-scale structure. ... these huge structures could not exist today unless the seeds for their formation had been present in the early universe. However, the standard Big Bang theory says nothing at all about how such seeds might have come to exist. The only explanation the theory allows is that they were "already there" at the instant of creation and were not destroyed by the subsequent heat. ...
Finally, our first loose end, concerning the origin of the seeds around which galaxies and larger structures grew, is tied up quite easily. ... Thus inflation says that the seeds for galaxies arose naturally from the amplification of tiny quantum ripples.

J. Bennett, On the Cosmic Horizon, pg 124, 130.


Inflation is a wonderfully attractive, logically compelling idea, but very basic challenges remain. Can we be specific about the cause of inflation, and ground it in explicit, well-founded physics? To be concrete, can we calculate the correct amplitude of fluctuations convincingly? Existing implementations actually have a problem on that score; getting the amplitude sufficiently small takes some nice adjustment.

Frank Wilczek, Physics Today, Oct. 2003 pg 10.


Davies, Ellis, and others argue that such inflation would itself have needed very accurate tuning to occur at all and to leave roughness of just the right amount to lead to galaxies. Two components of an inflation-driving "cosmological constant" might have had to balance each other with an accuracy of better than one part in 1050.

John Leslie, "The Anthropic Principle today", in Modern Cosmology & Philosphy, pg 291.

In response to a question as to whether inflation eliminates the need for fine-tuning, Alan Guth commented:
"As far as finely tuning things, there are still two important fine tuning problems that are not solved. ... The second problem is more directly related to inflation. The cosmic background radiation is uniform in temperature to about one part in a hundred thousand. In order to get these nonuniformities to be as small as what we observe, we have to arrange that certain numbers that describe the underlying particle physics be very, very small, for reasons which we do not, at the present time, understand."

Alan Guth, quoted by F. Hereen in "Show Me God", pg 387.

3). the existence of elements necessary for life

"How is it that common elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen happened to have just the right kind of atomic structure that they needed to combine to make the molecules upon which life depends? It is almost as though the universe had been consciously designed."

Richard Morris, The Fate of the Universe, 1982, 155.


"A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections", Annual Reviews of Astonomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982), 16.


"Without such accidents water could not exist as a liquid, chains of carbon atoms could not form complex organic molecules, and hydrogen atoms could not form breakable bridges between molecules"

Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe,1979, 393.


4). ratio of mass of proton to mass of electron (1,836)

If this ratio were slightly different there would be no chemistry, and no life. S. Hawking cites this example as one of the many fundamental numbers in nature, and he says
"The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life".

S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time,1988, pg 125.

5). the magnitude of each of the four fundamental forces


"The bulk of the carbon in our universe is produced in the triple-alpha process in helium-burning red giant stars. We calculated the change of the triple-alpha reaction rate in a microscopic12-nucleon model of the 12C nucleus and looked for the effects of minimal variations of the strengths of the underlying interactions. ... We conclude that a change of more than 0.5% in the strength of the strong interaction or more than 4% change in the strength of the Coulomb force would destroy either nearly all C or all O in every star.

H. Oberhummer, A. Csoto, H. Schlattl, SCIENCE 289, July 7, 2000, pg 88.

"Every one of these forces must have just the right strength if there is to be any possibility of life. For example, if electrical forces were stronger than they are, then no element heavier than hydrogen could form. ... But electrical repulsion cannot be too weak. If it were, protons would combine too easily, and the sun. ... (assuming that it had somehow managed to exist up until now) would explode like a thermonuclear bomb."

Richard Morris, The Fate of the Universe, 1982, pg 153.


"If the strong nuclear force were even 0.3 % stronger or 2% weaker the universe would never be able to support life."

Barrow and Tipler, Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 318-327, 354-359.
 
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