Fine Tuned For Life? Surely not! Off Topic? Definitely!

nagirrac wrote: »

What we know from science is that the universe is very finely tuned, otherwise we could not exist.

I've always been confused as to why this argument ever really gained any serious traction. It is a nearly perfect example of the fallacy begging the question. In order for the universe to be "finely tuned" you have to start with what the universe is supposed to be finely tuned for. If for example I were to suggest that he universe is "finely tuned" for X (any extant thing), you can show that if the universe were different, X could not exist. Can we all argee for example that the universe is clearly finely tuned to allow the existance of Hydrogen? Human, oh, they are just a by-product of a universe that allows hydrogen to exist. After all, hydrogen can, and does, exist quite happily almost everywhere in the whole universe. It is directly involved in most of the major things happening in the universe like the formation and burning of stars. It's fusion is what gives rise to other elements. We are all Hydorgen derivatives! Human's and life as we know it on the otherhand can, as far as we so far can tell, exist on a only a single planet in an unimaginably large cosmos. The universe was fine tuned for them? Sure doesn't look like it. It would be a bit like suggesting that ecology on earth is fine tuned for a species of lizard that can only survive on a single tiny island in the middle of the pacific ocean.

In short, to accept this argument you have to start with the assumption that humans/life is the goal of the universe. This is exactly what the argument is trying to demonstrate. If I created a universe that wasn't turned for anything in particular, it would look exactly, perfectly like it had be tuned for whatever just happens to be in it.

krudler wrote: »

There was a sickening comment on facebook recently when those kids were killed in the school shooting, something along the lines of "those angels were called to heaven early"

Yeah, did anyone see the inter-faith vigil led by Obama after the Sandy Hook shootings? More than one of the speakers thanked god for taking away their children. I also found that horrifying.

However as an atheist I do believe there is an afterlife of sorts. My grandfather, also an atheist, passed away last year. He had almost 20 descendents, who he had personally influenced in a positive way. I believe that his memory, not to mention his genetic lineage which influences how I and my family members will look and act to some extent, will be carried on in our family for generations, highlighted by his numerous letters, photographs, and other personalia.

I also find this notion much more comforting than I could that of an "afterlife prison" where one would be forcibly incarcerated for eterntity with ones co-deceased family members (how would that even work - would they remain the age they died at?) , while compelled to observe the happenings on earth. I think this is how the heaven many people believe in would operate.

nagirrac wrote: »

If ever there was evidence needed regarding the the closed minded worldview of atheists, this thread is it.

The argument for fine tuning is firmly rooted in science, not in philosophy. Yes, there are scientists who argue that fine tuning is evidence for a creator (Bernard Haisch, The God Theory) and scientists who argue against fine tuning to defend their dogmatic atheist position (Victor Stenger, The Fallacy of Fine Tuning), but to jump on either side of that debate is missing the point.

The list of eminent scientists who accept the fine tuning argument is exhaustive: Rees (Just 6 numbers, the book on the subject), Deutsch, Davies, Carter, Smolin, Susskind, Hawking, Guth, Greene, Penrose, Barrow, Hamilton, Sandage, Tegmark, etc. etc. Roughly half these scientists are theists / deists and the other half agnostic athiests. What they all have in common is making no dogmatic claim on what conclusion we should draw from the evidence of fine tuning. The only scientist I am aware of who openly disputes the fine tuning argument is Stenger.

If you don't mind, I'll stay with the open minded fecking stupid crowd.. and of course be accused yet again of using arguments from authority by the same people who predictably wheel out Dawkins at every opportunity.

If you want to maintain an open mind on the subject of fine tuning then start by reading "Just 6 Numbers" by Martin Rees (an atheist) and work from there.

As Tim Minchin once said: "If you open your mind too much your brain will fall out."

As I said in my previous post there are lots and lots of flaws in the fine-tuning argument and making appeals to authority (and no I don't invoke Dawkins at every opportunity) doesn't change this.


1. Time

So far we are 13.75+/-0.11 billion years into our current universe. Our current best guess for the timeframe for the end of this universe (heat death) is approximately 10^100 years. So when we consider the length of time during this period in which life is possible we can see that the universe can only sustain life for one thousand billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billionth of the total lifespan of the universe. That's hardly fine-tuned now is it?

2. Fundamental forces

To get back to my previous post, fine-tuning proponents always talk about adjusting parameters by "a few percent" and life being impossible. So what if we start scrapping parameters entirely.

Here for example is what happens if we scrap the weak nuclear force:

A universe without weak interactions

and here's what happens if we discount gravity:

Molecular dynamics simulation of melittin in a dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine bilayer membrane

So there's half the fundamental forces of nature scrapped without any effect on the possibility of life developing.


3. Adaptation

This is probably the biggest facet of the fine-tuning argument which you have failed to understand. Life adapted to the conditions of the universe not the other way around. As other posters have pointed out you've got the cart before the horse. The problem with the phrasing of the fine-tuning argument is the "as we know it" part. Just because life as we currently understand it may not have developed had the initial conditions of the universe, there's no reason to suggest that the train runs off the track. Life may just evolve in a different manner. Let me give you an example.

At the moment, our eyes are capable of perceiving light in a narrow band of the EM spectrum, roughly 380-740nm wavelengths. So using the premise of the fine-tuning argument you could argue that the sun was fine-tuned to support our vision but that is to entirely miss the point. The reason we see light in the "visible" portion of the spectrum is because the sun emits its radiation most prominently in this band as you can see below:



Now, how this happened is something like this:

1. A light sensitive patch of skin develops conferring an evolutionary advantage on the creature by allowing it to distinguish light from dark.
2. Through the process of selection, the light sensitive patch becomes a shallow depression in the skin, allowing for some basic directionality, allowing the creature to sense movement and possibly evade predators.
3. Next, the increased advantage gained by directionality is exploited and the depression becomes deeper and deeper until it becomes like a pinhole camera allowing for maximum information to be gained.
4. Next, the mucus produced by the cells accumulates due to the narrowed opening.
5. Then, the mucus hardens and forms a primitive lens which acts to concentrate the incoming light.
6. After this, the cells forming the interior surface of the eye become free to move relative to the surrounding tissue, allowing for an even greater field of vision.
7. Finally, the increasing use of movement of the eye leads to the development of muscle tissue around both the eye exterior and lens, putting both under control of the creature. We now have an eye similar to our own.

OK, back to the point. Now humans as we are now are sensitive to X-rays. In a high enough dose they can kill us. However, if life had arisen around an object like, say, Scorpius X-1, there's no reason to suggest that life wouldn't have adapted to the radiation it emits so that there might be "people" living on a planet in its orbit who can see x-rays.



4. Volume



Like time in the first example, the sheer scale of the universe poses a problem for fine-tuning. At the moment life on this planet exists on no more than say 4% of the shell of this planet. And our planet is one of 9 in our solar system. Assuming that our planetary configuration is unremarkable then there are about 4 trillion planets in our galaxy alone and 125 billion galaxies. Life seems to be awfully rare in a universe which was fine-tuned for it. Why is biogenesis so rare if the universe is fine-tuned?



5. Incompleteness


One of the key and often overlooked problems of the fine-tuning argument is how amazingly shallow it is as an analytical argument. The problem is that scientists and philosophers have examined different cosmological parameters and found that if some of them are altered then life could not have developed. Indeed Paul Davies who you reference in your post highlights this when he said: "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life". The first stumbling block is that we don't even know how many independent physical constants there are. So as much as we might say, oh here are ten fine-tuned constants there may be a hundred more which aren't. The second obstacle is that we already know of cosmological parameters which can be altered which do not impact the development of life. So the fine-tuning argument at its core is nothing but a fallacy of composition.



6. Testability


Another key problem for the fine-tuning argument is testability. The universe is just that little bit inflexible that it won't let us actually mess with the cosmological parameters to see what the effects would be. So as much as you go on about a closed minded atheist argument and unfalsifiability you should take a good long look at the tree branch you're sitting on because you're sawing right through it.

You see here's the thing. The astrophysicists and cosmologists who have bought into the fine-tuning argument are no doubt excellent physicists and leaders in their field but the one thing they really suck at is being biologists. Just look at Michio Kaku talking about evolution, its cringeworthy. The problem is that all of these physicists have gotten themselves hung up on the idea of life as we know it. So all of their simulations and calculations are predicated on an a priori position that life as it exists now is either a) desirable or b) inevitable. But that's not the case and that's why fine-tuning fails.




7. Probability


This is one that sbsquarepants touched on in one of his posts. This idea of using probability to determine the chances of an event that has actually occurred of occurring in the first place is ludicrous. The main reason is that you have to know the range of values available to select from. In the case of fine-tuning that presents a problem. Take one of Martin Rees' 6 numbers, for example, D (no. of spatial dimensions in spacetime). Physicists are still arguing over what this number should be so the idea that a change in this number would have an effect on life is laughable.


Anyway, I've got to cut it short there for the moment. If I get time I'll finish this list tonight but it might be tomorrow.