The Fine-Tuning Argument: The Worst Argument for Theism

[Sparhafoc]

I don t understand the question, we can test the configuration of the universe scientifically so why not calling it science?

We can test the configuration of this universe, that can be done with science.

The problem is that we can't test the configuration of other universes. We must needs employ the data of our own universe and assume that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (Hume)

I agree that science is fueling this philosophy, I just don't see that it can be considered scientific when there can be no evidence even to establish the proposition that the configuration of other universes can be intuited from our own.

Assuming we run a 'what if...' format, then we can speculate.... but I would say that it tells us more about us and our thinking than it does about the nature of mutliverses.

To me, this would cohabit best with the Weak Anthropic Principle, that the reasoning goes the other way. The universe must have all the characteristics it does for our type of live to have evolved and be able to observe it. But another slight difference to the configuration may have permitted another type of life to evolve, and that may be able to observe it. And it's quite possible there's a range of ways our own universe could be that would still have permitted us to evolve and observe.

How many ways are there in infinity space for observers to evolve under different configurations?

I simply don't know, and I don't think the WAP is intimately connected to a multiverse, not least because I don't think the multiverse can be scientifically established either, whereas WAP can at least be shown as functional within our own.

When it comes to making predictions about the configurations of other universes, I don't think it's anything more than fun, but the kind of fun that teaches us how to think about these things.

 

[Sparhafoc]

I would say that many of your comments go beyond the scope of Penrose's goal

I think that's ok, though. I think Penrose's comments go beyond the scope of science, but I have no problem with him doing so, in fact, I think it's great. More scientists need to push into philosophy.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Incidentally, can someone do me the favour of explaining what a newly birthed universe with high or maximal entropy would look like?

I am struggling to envision it.

Wouldn't it just be 'still born'? Equilibrium, so no interactions? Too disparate? Too homogeneous?

Incidentally, and I am not looking to poke or prod, but honest question. Doesn't the concept of a multiverse complete with innumerable failed universes not fit well with a creator god quantity?

 

[leroy]

Incidentally, can someone do me the favour of explaining what a newly birthed universe with high or maximal entropy would look like?

I am struggling to envision it.

Wouldn't it just be 'still born'? Equilibrium, so no interactions? Too disparate? Too homogeneous?

Incidentally, and I am not looking to poke or prod, but honest question. Doesn't the concept of a multiverse complete with innumerable failed universes not fit well with a creator god quantity?

yes a universe with 100% entropy would be a universe in equilibrium

one can view God as a cosmic artist, and not like a cosmic engineer, like any other artist God can make a whole bunch of useless stuff you because they look beautiful of poetic. even though I don't believe in the existence of a multiverse, I don't see how would that be a problem for theism.

perhaps there are some types of multiverse hypothesis that would put theism in trouble, but the mere existence of other universes (ether failed or successful universes) wouldn't represent a problem

 

[leroy]

I don t understand the question, we can test the configuration of the universe scientifically so why not calling it science?

We can test the configuration of this universe, that can be done with science.

The problem is that we can't test the configuration of other universes. We must needs employ the data of our own universe and assume that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (Hume)

I agree that science is fueling this philosophy, I just don't see that it can be considered scientific when there can be no evidence even to establish the proposition that the configuration of other universes can be intuited from our own.

Assuming we run a 'what if...' format, then we can speculate.... but I would say that it tells us more about us and our thinking than it does about the nature of mutliverses.

To me, this would cohabit best with the Weak Anthropic Principle, that the reasoning goes the other way. The universe must have all the characteristics it does for our type of live to have evolved and be able to observe it. But another slight difference to the configuration may have permitted another type of life to evolve, and that may be able to observe it. And it's quite possible there's a range of ways our own universe could be that would still have permitted us to evolve and observe.

How many ways are there in infinity space for observers to evolve under different configurations?

I simply don't know, and I don't think the WAP is intimately connected to a multiverse, not least because I don't think the multiverse can be scientifically established either, whereas WAP can at least be shown as functional within our own.

When it comes to making predictions about the configurations of other universes, I don't think it's anything more than fun, but the kind of fun that teaches us how to think about these things.

the "'what if...' format" is a completely valid format and it is a useful tool that scientists (and many others use)
A

counterfactual conditional (abbreviated CF), is a conditional containing an if-clause which is contrary to fact. The term counterfactual was coined by Nelson Goodman in 1947,[1] extending Roderick Chisholm's (1946) notion of a "contrary-to-fact conditional".[2] The study of counterfactual speculation has increasingly engaged the interest of scholars in a wide range of domains such as philosophy,[3] human geography, psychology,[4] cognitive psychology,[5] history,[6] political science,[7] economics,[8] social psychology,[9] law,[10] organizational theory,[11] marketing,[12] and epidemiology.[13]

one can ask things like, what if the sun would have been 50% hotter and use science to answer that question,


I don't know maybe I am answering something completely different from your intent

 

[Sparhafoc]

yes a universe with 100% entropy would be a universe in equilibrium

Well, that reflects rather badly on the extrapolations then. A universe in equilibrium is one in which no interactions can take place, thus the bucket of water analogy.

one can view God as a cosmic artist, and not like a cosmic engineer, like any other artist God can make a whole bunch of useless stuff you because they look beautiful of poetic. even though I don't believe in the existence of a multiverse, I don't see how would that be a problem for theism.

Nothing's a problem for theism because theists can just make up stuff, like you did above, to explain away any perceived problem.

Never has god been posed as a cosmic artist - it's an ever changing ontology that updates according to the sophistication of the contemporary culture. In the past engineer worked better because engineering via railways and steam was changing the world, and that's a nice kind of metaphor for the prime shaker. Before that, clockworks were all the rage due to their deterministic behavior, and the projection of this idea onto the cosmos. Keep going back and you'll see that even your god, your specific chap from the Bible, has changed so dramatically as to no longer even be the same species, let alone same being.

perhaps there are some types of multiverse hypothesis that would put theism in trouble, but the mere existence of other universes (ether failed or successful universes) wouldn't represent a problem

There are no potential anythings that can put certain expressions of theism in trouble because they make themselves immune to criticism by engaging in retrofitting apologetics. For me, any worthy idea has to be potentially falsifiable, or it's most likely not an idea worth holding, or at least holding onto too tightly.

 

[Sparhafoc]

the "'what if...' format" is a completely valid format and it is a useful tool that scientists (and many others use)

Oh I agree completely, and I wrote exactly that.

But I also added the necessary corollary, that the output of speculation is not fact. Rather, it's practicing thinking, thinking for fun, thinking to see how our thinking deals with these questions.

Any serious scientist knows that all claims must be grounded in physical evidence.

And that is never optional.

 

[leroy]

well all the stuff that Roger Penrose wrote and the BBP, are critiques to the anthropic principle, I would say that the BBP completely devastates the anthropic principle, what are your thought on that? do you think is reasonable to appeal to the anthropic principle?

There are no potential anythings that can put certain expressions of theism in trouble because they make themselves immune to criticism by engaging in retrofitting apologetics. For me, any worthy idea has to be potentially falsifiable, or it's most likely not an idea worth holding, or at least holding onto too tightly.

while it is true that theism can never been proven nor falsified with 100% certainty, (no matter what ) there are many things (real and hypothetical) that make theism ether less or more certainly true.

sure if there where parallel universes where I (literally me) am an atheist and an other where I am Muslim etc, that would represent a problem for theism (my view) I wouldn't know how to reconcile that scenario with my current believe system and the concept of God would be hard to reconcile.

 

[Sparhafoc]

well all the stuff that Roger Penrose wrote and the BBP, are critiques to the anthropic principle, I would say that the BBP completely devastates the anthropic principle, what are your thought on that? do you think is reasonable to appeal to the anthropic principle?

I disagree in entirety with your assessment, and think that the WAP still pops the teleological bubble, which is why you need to reject it. I can't imagine from my experience with you that you would be open in any way, shape or form to anything that didn't conform to what you already believed.

There are no potential anythings that can put certain expressions of theism in trouble because they make themselves immune to criticism by engaging in retrofitting apologetics. For me, any worthy idea has to be potentially falsifiable, or it's most likely not an idea worth holding, or at least holding onto too tightly.

while it is true that theism can never been proven nor falsified with 100% certainty, (no matter what ) there are many things (real and hypothetical) that make theism ether less or more certainly true.

All the real things make theism less true. All of them.

That's pretty much the history of Western thought of the last 400 years, and the consequent technological progress. Look around you. See all that stuff? It's not from praying or divine revelation. It's the output of scientific method; methodological naturalism. Interrogate nature, don't posit the supernatural or anything that can't be evidenced - it works.

Creationists often bring up famous scientists who were Christians, and that's kind of the point. Regardless of your religious beliefs, if you employ methodological naturalism strictly, you get results. It's when you posit gods that inquiry goes nowhere. None of those scientists were famous for being religious, or for receiving special dispensations from the known god.

God does not exist in the real, only in the inner.

sure if there where parallel universes where I (literally me) am an atheist and an other where I am Muslim etc, that would represent a problem for theism (my view) I wouldn't know how to reconcile that scenario with my current believe system and the concept of God would be hard to reconcile.

While there's a mathematical implication that there are such universes, I don't personally lend them any credence. There are simply far too many ways for initially minute variation in configuration that would result in wildly alien scenarios far beyond anyone's comprehension.

 

[leroy]

well all the stuff that Roger Penrose wrote and the BBP, are critiques to the anthropic principle, I would say that the BBP completely devastates the anthropic principle, what are your thought on that? do you think is reasonable to appeal to the anthropic principle?

I disagree in entirety with your assessment, and think that the WAP still pops the teleological bubble,

.

well, why do you disagree? the Boltzmann Brain Paradox completely falsifies the anthropic principle, as an explanation for the low entropy of the universe.

given this and given that no one has falsified the existence of God, then "God did it", becomes a better explanation than the anthropic principle. a falsified hypothesis is always worst than a hypothesis that has not been falsified.

one could argue like this

p1 a falsified hypothesis is worst than a hypothesis that has not been falsified

p2 the BBP falsifies the anthropic principle (both the strong and the weak one)

p3 no one has falsified the "God did it hypothesis"

therefore the "God did it" hypothesis is better than the anthropic principle.


sure, this doesn't necessarily means that God did it is the best or even a good hypothesis, additional evidence would be required,

 

[Sparhafoc]

well, why do you disagree? the Boltzmann Brain Paradox completely falsifies the anthropic principle, as an explanation for the low entropy of the universe.

For the reasons I've given in detail above.

I think you've completely misunderstood the point of the BBP, and you've taken what you want from it.

Where does the data come from? From taking all the possible states of a given volume then extrapolating it.

Thus 10 states is 'more likely' than 20 states axiomatically, and it shows nothing whatsoever about any other scenario except the same one.

It's facile. It's also false because, as I've explained in detail, the only alternative is that all the information available of the past states of all those current states must have been intended to deceive, as the chance of all past states having just instantaneously formed together with the rest of the world in such a way as to co-corroborate every other piece of information that the past states occurred, and that' s only fun for undergraduates and ceases to hold any interest once one gets past one's own nose.

What it really says (because it's axiomatic) and what you really want it to say is that 0 is greater chance than 1, which is where you'd put your god as the Prime Mover from 0 to 1.

For me, it's a pointless line of reasoning if truth is to be garnered from it.

Let me show you by example.

Let's imagine a room 5 metres, by 5, by 5. Let's then take a thousand marbles and toss them in the air. Once they've all settled lets look at their distribution. Now let's calculate all the possible ways in which those marbles could have settled. Then calculate the 'chance' of the marbles having settled as they did given the all the other possible configurations.

The resulting number is meaningless because a) the marbles didn't land like any of those other possibilities, and b) we don't know given just one single iteration whether the marbles could have fallen any differently, and c) because we can't extrapolate the distribution of those marbles in their configuration out onto a room of a different volume with different fundamental forces.

Of course, I can play with numbers too. The chance of those 1000 marbles falling in that position is higher than if I chucked a million marbles. But that's where the fallacy is committed, because you're not comparing like for like, and you're ignoring that possibility space does not equate to real space. If the marbles fell in a particular configuration all the time, it would tell us a lot about the universe, but would tell us nothing about other universes.

Ergo, the same point I've made all along.

Thanks for taking this journey with me, but I feel there's no more interesting ground to explore with you.

 

[Sparhafoc]

p3 no one has falsified the "God did it hypothesis"

Every instance of it ever claimed has always been falsified.

But rather than accept the falsification, religionists keep erecting new hypotheses they think are comfortably outside the remit of current knowledge.

I have no more reason to believe that the god hypothesis is valid today than when it was posited as the explanation for volcanic eruptions, the success or failure of harvest, or as the benevolent machination that led to a successful hunt.

It's been falsified more than any other claim in human history, but religion is a place where bad ideas go to survive.