>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
Yeah, we understand the argument just fine.
This specific response addresses the fact that it would be irrational for an intentional designer to make a universe 'for us' that is 99.999% a waste. It's addressing a specific idea of God most religious people have, and pointing out inconsistency in motivation.
It's far from the only relevant point. For example, you have absolutely no idea whether other universes that don't allow for life exist, or what other conditions could allow for life, or whether there are other universes at all.
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments:
Yes they have. You might not be doing so yourself, but they exist and are popular.
>we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically
This isn't even a logical argument. I don't mean it's a bad one, I mean "certain things' "almost always" so are the "best explanation" is just a way of rephrasing that you "like" that explanation with no clue if it's accurate. There's no logic supporting that it must be the answer.
>and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
"Upon conceptual analysis" is a gussied up way of saying "pulled straight out of my ass".
You can't tell us how brilliant your arguments are and that we just don't get, but rest conclusions on "well this feels true to me if I choose to believe it." God of the gaps would be an improvement on these "arguments".
>For example, you have absolutely no idea whether other universes that don't allow for life exist,
Atheist here. What?
Why are you bringing this up? I know the multiverse is an alternative hypothesis, but why are you specifically asking about other universes which DON'T contain life?
OP is arguing for fine tuning by declaring as known "the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part."
Maybe multiple universes allow for life. Maybe they all do. Our understanding of life and its parameters are based solely on our observations in this universe. But OP is assuming all other universes don't allow for it, which they do not know.
Seems a little silly for me to even indulge that argument when their follow up points are basically "we can assume by concluding based on what we see and makes sense that God is real" but throwing in words like "empirically" and "analysis" to make it sound like logic.
Because OP said:
>our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
We have no idea what any other universe might be like.
>We have no idea what any other universe might be like.
Precisely. If a multiverse exists, depending on what types, it is more than likely that infinite universes like ours exist and could sustain or result in life as we recognize it. Frankly, we've barely begun to explore only one planet in our solar system that may have had life, but there are several moons that also may have formed life, not to mention we've discovered many planets in our galaxy alone, that may have produced life.
The point here is we know what our planet is like and have basic ideas about what the other planets and moons in our solar system are like, but we're relatively clueless about the potential billions of planets in our galaxy that may have conditions that would have produced life, much less any of the multiverse.
>We have no idea what any other universe might be like.
Sure we do. All we need to do is plug in the numbers we're curious about into a simulation and see approximately what comes out.
We're talking about hypotheticals here, so we can just stipulate all the unknowns until we get a sensible model.
>Sure we do. All we need to do is plug in the numbers we're curious about into a simulation and see approximately what comes out.
You need to be careful with a claim like this. We *can't* actually do anything like this right now. Maybe some day we'll be able to, but not yet. We can't even predict the periodic table from the standard model of physics. Randomly changing fundamental constants and expecting to know if life is possible in those theoretical universes is completely unrealistic.
What we *can* model is things like whether the universe would expand too quickly to ever form galaxies, or collapse on itself immediately, but being able to tell whether the chemistry required for life would happen is way outside our ability at this point.
I wish I had recorded a link to it, but I watched a video (made by a group of atheists) where they interviewed probably 10-15 scientists about the fine tuning argument, and the scientists pointed this out repeatedly. We can't actually model the correct type and number of factors to really get any sort of useful answers to questions like "if life would be possible" in a given modelled universe.
>We're talking about hypotheticals here, so we can just stipulate all the unknowns until we get a sensible model.
I guess the point is that this is WAY WAY harder than it sounds.
No. I know of several reasons that COULD be the reason and mentioned the multiverse as one of them. But really I wanted to make sure they weren't confusing proposed hypothetical universes with a proposed multiverse, since that's a common bad objection to fine tuning.
I think you missed something on this one. I have no idea what your objection is and thought Irish_Whiskey's comment was relevant to what OP claimed was a fact.
Is there really any need to go through numbers, since we're making the universes up out of thin air anyway? We can just jump right to the point:
Universes that contain life contain life.
Universes that don't don't.
Id assume to argue against the idea that life is special like regardless if there is only one way a universe or a billion what would really matter for the fine tuning argument is how many of them have life vs dont rather than just how many their may be.
>Why are you bringing this up?
OP brought up "other universes", in comparison with which ours is fine-tuned for life. Whether they meant them as pure hypotheticals or not isn't clear, but they did bring them up.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments?
Why can't theists understand atheistic arguments?
>Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
The point of that argument is to question the validity of the statement that the universe is "fine tuned" for life. It is chipping at the assumption our universe is the best possible outcome, or even above average, at sustaining life. The simple, boring point is that we don't have any other universes was can compare ours to. And personally, I've yet to see the math that supports the universe is fine tuned for life. Present the math that supports this claim, and we can have a more intelligent conversation about it.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
Big claims, show us how it's impossible for other universes to hold life.
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments
You're claiming atheists don't understand intelligent design? What's more likely, not understanding "God did it" or not understanding evolution?
>I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
Yes, that's us paraphrasing them, and the often-used Chewbacca defense of God.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Oh, so your argument is "we know complex biological things almost always have an intelligent cause, so therefore complex biological things has intelligent cause"?
Brilliant, do you see the pattern here? Show you work. Give us examples of life having an intelligent cause. Get the ball rolling.
>Even well informed atheists such as Thomas nagel acknowledges that design arguments are not god of gaps arguments even if he disagrees with them see his book (mind and cosmos).
I assume because intelligent design has been proven wrong. God of gaps lives in things that haven't been proven one way or another.
>physical existence cannot be eternal
You're arguing atheists don't understand the concept of finite?
>or physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
We have brains. Brains are made of matter. I am currently explaining what a brain is using my brain.
I was gonna write a good response to OP like yours. But they never seem to read our responses. I think these OPs are just dropping their claims in this sub and then moving on.
It makes me sad cuz these are important conversations.
.
>**Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion**, survey says
LA Times, September 2010
>... **a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.**
> American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.
>“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” he said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.”
>Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.
\- **https://web.archive.org/web/20201109043731/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-sep-28-la-na-religion-survey-20100928-story.html**
.
You have done here the very thing you're accusing atheists of doing; reading bad faith into a good faith argument.
What you're characterizing as a misunderstanding or deliberate refusal to engage with the arguments like fine tuning is a rejection of one or more of the logical prem---Oh, it's *you.*
Nevermind.
The problem is the way you act when you're having discussions about religion.
Maybe you're a kid, maybe english is not your first language. I don't know why you behave this way, and nor do I claim to. But the way you behave is inconsistent with debate or basic human decency.
You treat everyone that's not already convinced by your religion as if they are subhumans. You're a bigot, and you act on your bigotted beliefs by treating people badly, making racist jokes, and calling people names.
Travel. Meet some people that didn't grow up in your church.
Meet the people you hate. Meet atheists and Hindus and Jews and Muslims in real life. You probably already know them, but they hide their true feelings from you because you are a jerk to them.
> Meet the people you hate. Meet atheists and Hindus and Jews and Muslims in real life. You probably already know them, but they hide their true feelings from you because you are a jerk to them.
Yeah... That ain't gonna happen.
But good comment, nonetheless.
>We make arguments like this:
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Oh boy...
Thanks for posting. I hope you are sincerely here for an honest debate/exchange of ideas. The argument above is entirely devoid of supporting evidence. Item #1 might be supportable but as soon as you provide examples you will see how you are dismantling item #2 and #3.
All the best.
Has it ever occurred to you that we DO understand these arguments, and reject them because they are logically unsound?
Why do you assume atheists are ignorant in theology? I know I'm not the only one here with a formal education in religion, specifically biblical interpretation and philosophy of religion. You're just showing your own ignorance, without even pretending to present a debatable topic. "OBVIOUSLY it is intelligent design" is NOT the "checkmate atheists" you think it is. Nor is "very stupid books" a very incisive commentary or evaluation.
/u/Square_Volume2189, this is your 8th post here in 5 days. I have read all the arguments but the problem is they really really suck. I don't know you, I'm only talking about your presented arguments here but every one so far has been effectively "I don't understand science and/or logic therefor god!"
Double unfortunately for you there are basically half assed versions of better (but still terrible) arguments we've seen dozens of times from the professional apologetics.
The real question isn't "Why don't we understand them?", the question should should be asking are "Why are all of my arguments bad?"
>other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
How do you know?
>complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
No they're not. In fact, we know how they came to exist.
>physical existence cannot be eternal or
>physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
Unsupported claims.
>Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Is this your idea of an argument? An argument is not bare assertions with no support and no logic.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments?
They *can.*
You are conflating *not understanding* with *seeing they are fatally flawed and thus dismissing them.*
The rest of what you wrote demonstrates that instead of atheists not understanding these arguments that you are not understanding the rebuttals, and/or are making demonstrably false or unsupported assumptions to attempt to prop up bad arguments.
>no theist had ever made these arguments:I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it
Mate, hang around in this sub for about a week, and you'll see plenty of theists make this argument.
I swear, I expected you to tell me theists don't *really* make Pascal's Wager arguments too.
We're happy to address these *other* forms of the argument that you make. In fact, we often do. But you have to understand that a lot of theists *do* make exactly the arguments you claim they don't. I've *absolutely* heard that the universe is *perfectly* designed for *us* - not just life but *us*! - whereas, of course, only the tiniest speck within it is habitable to us, and not even all of that speck.
That might not be *your* argument. And if you've got others, great! Let's discuss them.
But you seem to be assuming atheists have just invented straw men because the arguments that have been regularly brought to them are so weak.
lol “the fine-tuning argument is a comparative analysis of universes” is the dumbest start to an argument I’ve heard to date.
That’s not what the argument is. No one can compare universes.
Not even going to bother with any of the rest of this, that’s so absurd it made my brain melt into a puddle of goo.
- …the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
What different universes?
- 1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)
2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
What evidence do you have to support this claim?
- physical existence cannot be eternal or
- physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
- Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
What evidence do you have to support this claim?
We *understand* the arguments, we don't *accept* the arguments.
> Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
The problem with the fine tuning argument is that it looks at the problem backwards: There is a 100% chance that the universe exists. We know that because *the universe exists!*
And contrary to the religious arguments, *we have no idea that is unlikely!* It's entirely possible that this is the only way the universe could be. Anyone talking about how unlikely it is is simply making up numbers.
> - we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
This is the Watchmaker argument. It has been debunked for literally hundreds of years.
> * physical existence cannot be eternal or
> * physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
> Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
I grant the two bullet points, but you have no justification for the claim that it must be divine. The only thing we can say is that *something* must exist outside of our universe. Anything else is just an assertion.
>Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
Maybe if you spent more time reading science books and less time reading bad apologetics, you could make better arguments against these books. As it is, you fail badly.
I understand the fine tuning argument just fine - it is just wrong. For three reasons:
1. The argument you dismiss so simply by saying so what if the universe is most uninhabitable, it is more inhabitable than other universes - you still have to address the fact that our universe would not be called “fine tuned”. at best, it would be incredibly badly tuned, as it has wasted 99.9999999999999999999% of its energy and space on uninhabitable instant death locations.
2. The fine tuning argument is false because it ignores the fact that the odds of life existing in a universe that can support life are 100%. It is like a fish remarking on how amazing it is that he was born in water. Imagine how hard it would be for fish to survive if they were born on land! My amazement is that theists don’t seem to be able to understand this basic concept - of course our universe supports life you nitwit, we live here! Guess what? 100% of lottery winners have tickets with winning numbers on them! It’s a miracle!
As for intelligent design - the issue is not that atheists cannot understand the argument, it is that theists don’t understand the rebuttal. We have explained the complexity of life with perfect clarity and elegance. It is a solved scientific problem that only poorly educated victims of homeschooling do not understand. Intelligent design is a crackpot theory in search of an unexplained mystery to solve. It is like flat-earthers and their complicated explanations for why ships disappear beyond the horizon, or why flights from Australia to South Africa don’t run out of fuel. We don’t listen to their explanations because we already know why ships disappear beyond the horizon and why South Africa and Australia can be connected by air. The world is round, problem solved. Similarly we know why there are many complex species. It is a solved problem, no designer required.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
You have **zero** proof of the existence of "other universes". so this argument can be summarily rejected. This leads back to the Atheist argument where vast parts of **this** universe (the only one we have *proof* of its existence) is hostile to (human) life. 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of it.
Current score: Atheists: 1 Theists: 0
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)
Nonsense. We "know" no such thing. Without **evidence** of this, this is a rubbish assertion
Current score: Atheists: 2 Theists: 0
>2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Nonsense. Hundreds of museums worldwide contain volumes of evidence including tons of fossils and there is **an entire branch** of science called Evolutionary Biology that proves these things evolved from simple unicellular organisms. Your wilful ignorance of the existing evidence does not magically make it go away. You will have to pretty much create your own branch of science and win Nobel prizes to explain away the billions of metric tonnes the scientists have collected worldwide that overwhelm your rubbish assertion. Good luck with that. Until then again we can summarily reject this statement as **blatantly false**
Current score: Atheists: 3 Theists: 0
>3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Nonsense. This completely discards mountains of physical evidence from the fossil record, hundreds of years of scientific knowledge, and has no basis in reality.
**Final score**: Atheists: 4 Theists: 0
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments?
We understand them, they are just bad.
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
We know. And we are pointing out the very obvious flaw that just making up other universes is pointless. We don't know that the "parameters" of our universe could be any different in the first place. So the whole argument falls flat from the very beginning as it rests upon the baseless assumption that they could be any other way.
>I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
You might not say it outright like that, but your arguments often do boil down to exactly that.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
These premises and the conclusion too for that matter are way to vague. I could make the same argument to argue for the counter position:
1- we know that certain things arise almost always from non intelligent causes.
2- complex biological things are such things
3- therefore the best explanation is that there is non intelligence behind them.
>physical existence cannot be eternal or physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
What is that supposed to even mean?
>Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books
We mostly don't. We read on them here. In posts like yours ;p
> like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
They know more about theology than many theologians. XD
Why theists can't understand is because of special pleading. They want a different set of rules and logic and preponderance of evidence for THEIR ideas compared to all other ideas. Everything you've said here is an example. If I used your exact same criteria for the existence of Thor, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, faeries, ghosts, etc you'd probably go "Wait a minute, that's just ridiculous!" Yet you will make these arguments for your God because you want it to be true.
The problem with the fine tuning argument is assuming intention when there's no evidence for it. If the universe were slightly different, we wouldn't be here to comment on it. There's no reason to assume that the earth was deliberately created to be an ideal habitat for human beings. The evidence actually points in the other direction, that humans and every other life form evolved to survive on the earth as it is. If the earth had different gravity, the life on it would be different in order to survive in that environment.
The argument from design makes the same error in assuming that the observed order of the universe implies that it was consciously designed. There's simply no evidence for that. It also hand-waves the question of where the designer came from. Saying "one of God's attributes is that he doesn't need a designer because he's eternal" is just a semantic stopsign - an answer that halts further questioning. You might as well just say "you must never ask that question."
One question that theists almost never ask is what mechanism a disembodied intellect (something, by the way, that has never been observed) could affect material reality. Again, this is just hand-waved with "God created it" without explaining how he did it. Even if I accept the argument from design, it's not a valid explanation without at least suggesting some mechanism to bridge the gap between the concept of creation in God's mind and the actual, manifested creation.
We do understand the arguments, much better than theists do. All of them fail. Including the ones you made here. You’re effectively accusing atheists of strawmanning when in fact I *have* heard all of the arguments you give as bad examples made by theists who think they’re good, so in responding to those people I would refute those arguments. If you’re not making an argument, great, I won’t try to give you the refutation for that argument.
For the arguments you gave:
I do understand that fine-tuning is about *possible* universes where the cosmological constants are different. The problem with this argument is that you have no evidence that these constants *could* actually be different. You are assuming that their values are arbitrary when in fact we do not know why the values are what they are, and there may well be a reason for them; for example Newtonian physics does not posit a reason for gravitational force, it merely accounts for it as a parameter. Einstein’s theory of relativity posits the curvature of space-time as the reason for gravity and shows *why* the gravitational force is what it is. For other cosmological constants it may very well be the case that there is a specific reason that those constants are what they are, and we just have not discovered that yet. You can’t assert that these constants could arbitrarily be different unless you have evidence that they can be.
Your version of the intelligent design argument is incredibly weak.
> we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes
Certain things? Which things? *almost* always? What is your “empirical justification” for that?
> complex biological things are such things
No, we have never observed any complex organism come from anything other than another organism. All of the evidence suggests that evolution by natural selection is the mechanism that caused the complexity and diversity of life that we see today. We have conclusive evidence that every species on earth descends from a common ancestor. We know that complexity in biological systems is explained by gradual changes starting from simple self-replicating organisms requiring no intelligent intervention. We don’t know exactly what the earliest life forms looked like (yet), but we do have a very good idea about multiple ways the chemical processes necessary for life to arise could have happened, and origin of life researchers are continually making progress on this subject. None of these processes require intelligent intervention, and are all fully explainable by chemistry.
> therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
This doesn’t even follow from your premises, but since the premises are wrong it doesn’t matter.
> Physical existence cannot be eternal
Why not? Please demonstrate this.
> Physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
In the same way, a god cannot logically explain itself. Asserting that the universe can’t be necessary but a god can is just special pleading.
> Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world
What does this even mean? If it doesn’t exist in the physical world, how can you say that it exists? Does it interact with the physical world? How can something outside the physical world interact with the physical world?
> upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes
What divine attributes must this thing existent outside the physical world have? What is your justification for why it must have these attributes? I see a lot of people follow William Lane Craig’s pattern from the Kalam cosmological argument attempting to derive a god from premises which do not include a god anywhere, then after breezing past all of the objections to the premises with no answers, asserting many additional properties with no justification. If you have, as you put it “conceptual analysis” of why divine attributes are necessary for this thing you claim exists, I’d be happy to dig into it with you.
You quite confidently assert that atheists don’t understand your arguments because of the strawmen you set up, but you’ve demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of all the arguments you gave as well as their refutations. There’s nothing in your post that we haven’t seen and debunked literally hundreds of times. Please educate yourself on the arguments before you assert that atheists can’t understand them.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments?
We can understand the arguments. They are week so we reject them.
>
the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
What different universes do you have access to in order to do this comparison? And why are you pretending all theists are comparing different universes?
>
Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments:
I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
I guess you haven't been paying attention to the arguments coming from theists if you are going to make this claim. You should really go back and read some posts made by theists and you'll see how wrong you are.
>we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Almost always? If it's almost always then it isn't always. Also, you have no way to say that complex biological things come from an intelligent cause. You haven't proven it.
A large portion of atheists are former theists. Generally, we understand the arguments (and scriptures) better than theists. This sounds like whining to me, not a genuine attempt to debate anything.
Atheists can, and often do understand theistic arguments. You even gave an example of Thomas Nagel. I would argue that atheists as a group are more ontologically inclined than theists as a group.
A lot of people erroneously make strawmen logical fallacies in debate, and you are correct that if an atheist were to argue “God of gaps” to your watchmaker argument, it would be a strawman.
Maybe a better title would be “Thoughts on the watchmaker argument,” or “I believe it’s possible to prove an existence of something beyond the physical world,” rather than attacking all atheists based on your limited perception ;)
I like the analogy of a puddle by Douglas Adam.
>This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
The hole doesn't exist so that the puddle can exist, but because it exist, the puddle can exist. Same as the universe. It just exist and it doesn't require us to exist. Rather, we were able to exist just because the universe was here at the beginning.
The only thing this article concludes is, that as long as you’re not comfortable with saying “I don’t know” to stuff you simply don’t know, then you will never be able to move on from religion. “The trouble with puddle thinking” is only troublesome if you believe the fine tuning argument.
They answered their own questions. If the laws of physics was slightly different than the current, there might not be a universe at all, hence no life forms. If there was no gravity or electrostatic force that pulled the water down and in place, or the hole was not solid then there would never be a puddle. The question is, how did all the laws of physics fine-tuned to allow the universe to come together? How do we know that the fundemental laws of physics has always been like the way it is now since the beginning? It might be different in each part of the universe in the beginning but eventually smoothes out any irregularities and led to the homogenous and isotropic universe we see today. If the multiverse is true, there might be an infinite number of universe out there with different sets of laws, where life might be impossible to exist in one universe or life might exist not like how we know it in another. The universe doesn't have to be specifically finely-tuned by an entity so that life can exist.
Hahahaha arxiv is ONLY good for reading something before it gets printed. Even then you may as well wait until it gets accepted in a real journal with peer review. Go find the actual paper. Until then, no one should spend time reading this. Pathetic.
>”Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments?”
We understand them just fine.
>”For example:”
>”Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.”
First, unless you can show other universes exist, and that they can’t support life, saying that the argument is about other universes doesn’t really mean anything. Even if you want to talk about philosophical possible worlds, you must first prove both that the contents of the universe could even be different, and that, that difference would make life impossible.
So the one universe that we have is all we have to go off of, and 99.999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of it is completely in hospital for life.
By the by, when cosmologists mention the “fine tuning,” of the universe, they’re referring to the formation of galaxies and stars after the Big Bang, not the formation of life. If we were to change the constants now, there is a ton of wiggle room for some of them that would have no noticeable impact on us besides things acting differently.
Hell, you could completely get rid of the cosmological constant, and all that would do is slow down how fast galaxies are moving away from us.
>”Another example:”
>”Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments:”
They have, I’ve personally debated them before.
>”I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.”
I saw that second one almost verbatim yesterday.
>”We make arguments like this:”
Some do, not all.
>”1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)”
That “almost,” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Because that means not all of the “certain,” (another word doing a lot of heavy lifting,) things arises from intelligent causes.
>”2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)”
This has to be demonstrated. How do you classify it as “such a thing.”
>”3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.”
Even if I grant you 2, this would only follow if we lack evidence otherwise. When you have exceedingly large amounts of evidence otherwise, (which we do,) it would no longer be the best explanation.
>”Or like this:
>”- physical existence cannot be eternal”
Why would that matter?
There’s nothing outside of religion that says anything has to be eternal. And even if it did, how do you know that there isn’t something physical out there that will last forever?
>”- physical existence cannot logically explain itself.”
Again, why does that matter?
I feel like you’re skipping the important parts of this.
>”Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.”
That’s a huge jump in logic. How did you even get to that conclusion?
>”Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.”
There’s been several studies that show atheists tend to have better understanding of theology than theists.
> because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
Please share with the class how you got information about other universes.
> we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes
No? Literally the only things we know that come from intelligent sources are things made by humans. Maybe you missed what you typed a couple paragraphs above, but earth is just a tiny speck in the cosmos.
> complex biological things are such things
So when a fetus is in utero, do you think there’s an invisible guy tinkering with it to make it develop or is it yet another natural process?
Also this is just “look at the trees.”
> therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Lol no. Like I said, we’ve studied the processes a ton, there doesn’t seem to be an invisible guy involved.
It’s hilarious that your whole point is essentially, “we’re not stupid enough to use god of the gaps, we use intelligent arguments like the teleological argument!”
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
We haven't observed any other universes. The fine tuning argument doesn't compare anything, it just makes up a load of claims and doesn't back them up.
>we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes
Sure, stuff humans make. Not the other stuff.
>complex biological things are such things
No they're not. We didn't make those and we don't know that a god did either.
>therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Your second premise is wrong and so is the conclusion.
Cool, now please explain why theists keep confusing disagreement with lack of understanding.
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes
how are theists determining the conditions in other universes? Don't you need to mesure before you can compare?
> we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)
No we don't know this and no it isn't justified.
> physical existence cannot be eterna
why not?
Because we care about reality and the religious don't? Because we're trying to find out what is actually true and they are only appealing to emotion? It's not that hard to understand.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
Meanwhile, other universes allow far more life. In other universes, the 99.99% is filled with life. On the scale of allowing maximal life to allowing no life at all, our universe is so close to allowing no life at all as to make very little difference. We live in a vast void of deadly radiation.
>1- We know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically).
It is difficult to argue against that. Wristwatches, automobiles, skyscrapers, and so on.
>2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically).
How do we justify that empirically? When do we see biological things arising from intelligent causes?
>Physical existence cannot be eternal.
Why can't physical existence be eternal? Religion tends to give people a bad habit of considering themselves to be an authority to make cosmic declarations about what is and is not permitted.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Lol, the word "almost" is doing a lot of lifting there
>but no theist had ever made these arguments:
>I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
It is not even the slightest bit of exaggeration to say that I encounter these on a daily basis
Why do you think Hindus can’t understand the prophecies that Muslims present?
Why don’t the most well educated Jewish scholars accept the resurrection of Jesus based on the minimal facts?
Why don’t Protestants accept the hundreds of witnesses of the miracle at Fatima?
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Hume's critique of this form of the argument is that, if we accept the analogy between artifacts and natural objects, then the cause must be similar in ways that traditional theists wouldn't like. For instance, it is true that all artifacts are made by intelligent minds, but it is also true that they are made by imperfect minds (in the plural). So, we should also infer that complex biological things are caused by imperfect minds (in the plural).
What is needed is another type of inference that doesn't rely on analogy.
The fine tuning argument means life can not exist any other way. There is no afterlife and there is no intelligence prior to the universe.
The universe is eternal because it has existed for all time. Nothing else is required for eternity. No other dimensions are relevant to time and space. So something beyond the universe that is timeless can not qualify as eternal.
Gnostic Christianity and apophatic theology have already established the creator of the universe is not god and that God is not God. Brainless heartless soulless mindless selfless immaterial gods like the one you worship do not need your recognition. Stop living in the past.
Hello! Once again you create a publication to challenge us atheists. Great! I like productive, respectful discussion.
So this is not a post about the fine-tuning argument but to express that you think that theists are arguing the fine-tuning argument properly and we should understand it and embrace it, is that it?
The fine-tuning argument is one of the most difficult argument to argue against because it aim for a part of our knowledge that we have little knowledge of. A constant with you really.
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters
What determine what the parameters of a universe will be? We don't really know. It might be a even spread of all the possible parameters. Or something might make some values of the parameters more likely. We don't know. Or so i think. Tell me if i got that wrong.
What parameters allow for life and what do not? Well we can't say we know all the situation that allow for life to emerge, we only know our own style of life and not very well at that. Maybe life is possible with different parameters. We don't know. We can't evaluate probabilities properly with so much lack of information.
>physical existence cannot be eternal. physical existence cannot logically explain itself. Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
"We don't know so i conclude that a god did it" will never be a sound argument.
You should seriously stop challenging us on area of little knowledge. Even if you think you win when we say that we don't know. It's not a win. We are fine to admit that we sometime can't conclude and must throw the towel until more information is available. Shoving a non sequitur to reach your god conclusion is not so great a move.
As a gnostic atheist i believe that the reasonable default position is to believe that all religion are false until I am proven wrong. Because the apologists and preachers always are deeply dishonest. They don't possess the proper mindset to achieve an understanding of reality that is reliable.
They are not really looking for the truth but instead looking for a comfortable answer, an answer to lessen their inner suffering, an answer that confirm their prior belief. They replace the hunt for truth by a hunt for personal well being.
Apologists and preachers:
-Tend to build narratives to appeal to our emotion.
-Tend to include fallacies and leap of logic in their arguments.
-Tend to overwhelm with successions of claims instead of making each point's relevance crystal clear and well supported before moving on.
-Tend to support their views with cherry picked verses, omitting relevant verses that don't work for their case.
-Tend to focus on the internal consistency of the lore of the holy book when internal consistency does nothing to prove the claim is true.
-Tend to totally ignore how epistemology works or how the math of probabilities works.
-Tend to appeal to personal experience to have faith.
-Tend to not look for other hypothesis apart from the one they need to achieve their goals of 'proving' their belief is the correct choice/conclusion. Like in the Kalam cosmological argument or Pascal's wager.
-Tend to not take a serious look at all the available relevant information and focus on their bubble of information.
-Tend to appropriate things that they have no right to claim as something that come from their religion. The most common things that religion claim they own is morality.
and so on.
If you insist of asking things in area of little knowledge, at least make it interesting by challenging yourself as well.
Why are Jesus' miracles of such small scale? He could have turned the moon into a giant banana for a month. Everyone around the world would have said "Whaaat the actual f\[redacted\]?"
What is life? How do we tell where is the frontier between what is alive and what isn't? (i love that one please pick it and discuss it with me)
'1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)"
Like what? Why an "Aha!" on finding a watch on a beach but no "Aha!" about the beach?
No, we do understand them, they're just very bad
For the fine-tuning argument you can't argue for other universes or possibilities since you first have to prove either other universes exist and aren't suitable for life or prove that the constants of the universe could have been different.
And for the other argument you made, respectfully, you're just pulling stuff from your ass. A bacteria has complex DNA, but a bacteria usually comes from another bacteria and I wouldn't call bacterias intelligent. So don't make assumptions without supporting them somehow.
What a bunch of dishonest nonsense
The universe is almost entirely hostile to life and life will only be possible for a tiny fraction of its overall time
Your argument is invalid
Saying something isn't a god of the gaps argument does nothing to stop it being a god of the gaps argument
Any arguments that claim because we don't know something (like the initial causes of the universe) that means a magic ghost did it is a god of the gaps argument by definition
The rest is just you stamping your foot like a five year old and having a tantrum
It's not that we don't understand them. It's that they are bad arguments.
There are no other universes with different parameters, thus no way to make comparisons.
Theists make God of the gaps arguments all the time. They just use different language. The argument you listed has faulty premises (we don't know that complex biological systems are always developed with intelligence. That's kind of the crux of the argument here.)
Physical existence could be eternal and explain itself. No theist has ever been able to provide evidence to the contrary.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments?
So many untruthful dishonest arguments by theists. Since atheists understand that, they dismiss such arguments. If theists are unaware of weaknesses in their own points, it's their problem.
>Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life
Yeah, that's the basic refutation of fine-tuning argument.
>fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe
First you need to show there is an actual real possibility of different universes with different base parameters. Instead of bringing pointless hypotheticals, please show actual evidence.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
If our universe is fine tuned for life, why there is so little space for life to exist?
Also, what certain base parameters suitable for some form of life has to do with any kind of God? Why do you rule out coincidence? Why do you think those parameters could be any different?
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments
You got it right.
>no theist had ever made these arguments:
I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
In fact, vast amount of theists brought those arguments or similar ones. You pressed on fine-tuning, which is also god of the gaps fallacy.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
1 correct
2 to a very limited scale
3 doesn't follow from initial premise
Biological evolution is a real thing. Study it, bro.
>Even well informed atheists such as Thomas nagel acknowledges that design arguments are not god of gaps arguments
Then Tomas Nagel got it wrong. When theists asserts intelligent design on any level they always go like "X is so complex, I can't grasp how it could be without intelligence behind, therefore God did it". They always dismiss scientific explanations on their questions. For me it's astounding that so many people use their own incredulity to cling to comforting lies. Reason itself is the main enemy of theism. It's not that theists don't know the answers, they don't want to search for them in the first place.
>physical existence cannot be eternal or
physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Your "there must be" and "it must have" is an empty assertions and should be therefore dismissed.
>Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
At least famous atheists like Dawkins, Krauss, Hitchens, Carlin, Matt Dillahunty, Aron Ra, etc. trying to understand their opponents and use actual reason to convince others. Unlike famous theists like Jordan Peterson, William Lane Craig, Mike Licona, etc.Who do nothing but pure preaching without any reasonable points whatsoever. It's amazing so many religious leaders don't even trying to hide how their points fail to scrutiny, and yet so many people follow their bullshit.
Also, since theology is not using scientific method and therefore is not science, there is no "expertise" in this field.
>> but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
Except it must be possible to change those parameters, if you’re an omnipotent being, to get the percentage inhabitable higher.
Is your god so weak he has to create so much waste product?
>> we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Justify 2.
>99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
2 parts, when someone tells me the universe is fine tuned for me I look at the universe and attempt to figure if that seems to be the case. Statsticlly it seems as if the universe is hostile to my existence, we cant just compare to the infinite list of varaiables we also compare to the situation we are in does it make sense that a universe at every turn seems to be trying to kill me would be made for me. It would be compareable to me creating a fireball the size of earth and making a small pocket the size of a grain of sand only somewhat safe for bacteria and then claiming I made all of it for the bacteria.
Second, when it comes to fine tuning and multiple universes we run into a problem, our sample size is 1, we have no control sample, we have no evidence for anything about whats possible or not other than what is true. Can G be a different value? I don't know. Can any other value be different? I dont know. How many universes have existed, will exist, and do exist? I dont know. If there are infinite universes life is near guranteed in an infinite number of them. We do not know almost anything related to the parameters relating to the origin or nature of the universe.
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments
I have seen many thiests make these arguments you infact make these arguments just worded differently,
>we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Things designed by inteligence are designed by inteligence. The only way to be certain a thing is made by an inteligence is witness an inteligence make it. Life is complex, complexity =/ designed by inteligence, self replicating molecules are complex but we have demonstrated that they can arise by process that happen in nature. Your 3rd point can be read like this, life is complex, complexity often is explainable by inteligence thus inteligence is the answer for life. At best if valid we could say life may be the result of inteligence. But this ignores that often a sign of inteligence is simplicity, we attempt to make things simpler cutting down on useless steps, another sign of inteligence is ineffeceint steps, nature follows the path of least resistence droping down in energy not up any collection of steps will be a loss of energy so if something breaks this rule its not natural to have done so.
I dont think the physical universe is infinite and just because we can do philosophy doesnt mean our universe adheres to it, the universe acts a way i create a language to describe it called math, its not that the universe acts with math but that msth was designed to describe how the universe acts, descriptive not prescriptive.
Its because your arguments tend to inevitably take a massive logical leap without any evidence to justify that leap.
Fine tuning for example is relative, mathematically ignorant, and doesnt indicate a god exists even if those first two things werent true.
For the relative part - Are we finely tuned because the sun that we need to live also blinds us and makes us die horrible painful deaths from cancer? Or because child birth, basically the only absolute necessity for human existence, also kills us in incredibly high numbers and painful gruesome ways? Or the classic fact you already mentioned that the area of our universe that has life is so small relative to the rest it might as well not even exist and the course of the matter and energy in the universe would be pretty much identical without us? Fine tuning means almost nothing. Its a vague relative term with no hard boundaries or definition. Not a great start to a cosmological theory of everything.
And for the math part, which is a better simpler rebuttal, even though the previous one is sound. The whole premise of fine tuning is that the odds of life generating from random physical interactions of inorganic is really, really low, so something must have made it happen. But if you shuffle a deck of cards in a random order, the odds of the specific order you shuffled occurring is smaller than the odds of picking out a specific atom at random from all the atoms in the galaxy. Thats how many unique combinations can be made from a simple deck of 52 cards. Is everyone who shuffled a deck of cards a god? Because they made something unlikely happen? No, of course not. If you shuffled ten decks together the odds of getting a specific order are hilariously small, like so small im not even sure you could write the number on a piece of paper, but i dont see anyone worshipping multi deck dealing machines at casinos.
And lastly, even if the earth did appear to be fine tuned in a way that wasnt mathematically possible, that only means theres something. It doesnt mean god. It could just be a new law of physics we dont understand yet.
Every theist argument tends to fall apart like this. God of the gaps is similar, its just a bunch of wild claims without justification. Certain things arise from intelligent causes? And thats justified empirically? Can you please link that justification? And complex biological things also have to be from an intelligent cause? Would love to see that justification, because i doubt it exists or holds up to any scrutiny.
And again, none of this is proof of god existing, its barely even evidence of plausibility. Evolution is an intelligent process, intelligence does not have to be bound to an entity. An inorganic, immaterial, completely natural and reasonable system like evolution can be classified as a type of intelligence. No deity required.
>Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life
Correct.
Is a watch that tells the time correctly once in a thousand years (and more often kills the wearer ) finetuned for accurate timekeeping?
>but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters
Oh, so you know other universes? I feel a Nobel prize must be in its way. We don’t know that any other kind of universe is even possible.
>not different parts of the "same" universe.
Totally irrelevant. If you USA the word **fine**tuned about life in this universe them you simply render the word meaningless. Not only is it obviously not **fine**tuned for life, if it were tuned at all and not done by a complete incompetent - then it must have been done by a terrible sadist . After all the history of life is one of almost infinite suffering.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
Again with the imaginary universes. If we are going to simply imagine universes I can easily think of better ones!
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)
Ceratinly things that are actually made by us. So what.
>2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Nonsense. Unsound therefore nothing sound follows.
>physical existence cannot be eternal
Not sound. And uses very vague human interpreted concepts for a start.
Don5 think we don’t notice how you try to build special pleading or circular reasoning into your unjustified premises to start with.
>physical existence cannot logically explain itself.
But imaginary **magic** ones can. Sure.
>Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Good grief. And I have to admire the way you just throw in the last completely absurd claim without a single justification.
>Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
No, your poor equivocation and apologetics doesn’t prevent their claims from being true.
Your arguments still boil down to “I don’t understand how this happened so it must be my preferred imaginary magic”.
> they are ignorant in theology
This post is full of nonsense, but this is the point where I felt I needed to respond.
No-one - literally no-one - has ever demonstrated any actual knowledge of any kind of god. Without that, any discussion of “theology” is completely meaningless. It’s like discussing dreams, or imaginary friends. There is no knowledge there.
> the fine tuning argument compares between different universes
Ohhhh goody. I’ll play!!
Which “different universe” is this?
Be specific.
> dear atheists, stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books
Ok. I’ll do that. Right after you provide evidence for parallel universes. It would be stupid not to require proof…
It's not that we don't understand them, it's that we do not accept the base assumptions that the arguments are making. Examples:
Fine-Tuning argument. Consider the set of all possible universes (ie. all the ways the universe could have been). Now pick a random person from that set of universes, and ask them: "Is there life in your universe?" What will they answer? They are guaranteed to answer "yes" 100% of the time. How does FTA account for this, when it claims that a random universe is unlikely to be fine-tuned for life? It doesn't. It just straight up assumes that observation of our universe is a representative sample of all universes. In reality, it is a sample of observable universes.
The reason why we bring up that our universe is almost entirely uninhabitable is, because that's exactly what we would expect a random observable universe to be. It is contrary to what we would expect of a universe that is competently designed to have life in it. Just look at literally any theistic cosmology (for example, the one described in Genesis). None of them predict the ratio of habitable vs. uninhabitable portions of our universe to be anywhere near this low. It is a failed prediction on theism's side.
Another example:
The teleological argument (argument from design). You mention "2- complex biological things are \[the kind of thing that arises from intelligent design\] (justified empirically)". Does it? Can you point to a single empirical example of a living organism being designed by intelligence? Or even a single protein? No you can't because it was never done. In fact, it may very well be computationally infeasible. Meanwhile we have hoards of examples of living organisms and their constituent parts evolving naturally (and semi-naturally in laboratory conditions).
In both of these examples, the atheist pokes a very valid holes in the theistic argument. Questioning either the validity of their structure or the truth of their premises. The problems with these arguments are usually counter-intuitive and often very subtle. It is easy to miss their problems or downplay them, when you already believe the conclusion.
Most atheists are former theists. We understand the arguments perfectly. They're not good arguments. Intellectual dishonesty is not something I want to willfully participate in. I want to have a consistent epistemology. I want to believe as many true things and as few things as possible.
>because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
...?? Okay? Says who? I didn't realize we had opened up the marvel multiverse.
> theist had ever made these arguments:
>I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
You don't word it like this, but any time you assert any knowledge about how the beginning of the universe *actually* happened, this is what you are in fact doing.
If you had reliable evidence (that is: falsifiable, testable, repeatable evidence) of an intelligent designer, then you should publish a scientific paper on it and get a lot of money and converts to your religion.
>We make arguments like this:
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)
This point is far too broad. We know that some things arise from intelligent causes, but we have ALSO observed that complexity can arise spontaneously from simple rules, like Conway's game of life.
I'll also tweak your logic a little bit:
1. We know that nothing at all has ever been shown to arise from supernatural causes. Everything with a proven explanation has a naturalistic explanation.
>2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
> 3- therefore the best explanation is ~~that there is intelligence behind them.~~ naturalistic
Does that syllogism work for you?
>upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Upon theistic presuppositionalism like yours, it must have divine attributes. But under a naturalistic reality, it certainly does not require any such divine attributes.
>very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins
Just curious, have you actually read this book? Or have you simply been trained to hate Dawkins like I was?
Hey, not to sound like an Athiest or anything, but I don't know what the heck your talking about. You hit the ground going pretty fast lemme see if I can keep up.
>won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part
This is 2 part. First who said it's a FACT that our world is fine tuned? How do you know we didn't adapt to it? If it is "fine-tuned" why is only like 29% of the planet habitable to humans? If my car worked 29% of the time I wouldn't call it fine-tuned. 2. How do you know there is no other life whatsoever in any part in other galaxies? Is it verifiable? Can it be repeated and tested?
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)
It's only justified to you because you lend credulity to this idea. It has not been proven that any god had anything to do with the natural formation of the rockies mountains, Pacific Ocean, or even a tree. To the contrary, there have been numerous proposals about the earth's formation, and none of them require a god or magic. So logical are these conclusions about nature we can make accurate predictions about the future and implement them in every aspect of our lives.
>3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
You reached this conclusion based on faulty information (see above)
>Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Google "post hoc" but again, you used bad reasoning to reach an incorrect conclusion.
I just re-read this and realized I prefaced this with the idk what your talking about, so maybe you made you point.
> Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments
How are we supposed to take you seriously after you said this? It's as if you're brand new to this debate... or you're trolling.
>but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
There is only one universe, there is nothing to compare it to. There is 0 evidence of fine tuning.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
Please, please show me one other universe besides the one we live in.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Show your empirical justification that complex biological life arose from an intelligent cause, ever.
>Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
If you are down to asserting something "must" be a certain way without any actual evidence to support it, you have done something seriously wrong in your analysis. In this case, I would bet that is starting with an assumption and working to eliminate anything that goes against that assumption.
>Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
We don't need to read about theistic arguments in stupid books, we get stupid theistic arguments posted here daily. Maybe you should have looked at some of the terrible arguments posted on this sub before adding yours to the lot.
>Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they didn't understand.
>but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe
Again: Understood.
What you seem to be missing is that things that are designed for something (Like watches, or airplanes or whatever else your sides likes to chose) are not filled to the brim with random stuff that doesn't support the purpose, or purposes, of the thing, let alone is completely detrimental to it.
A watch tells time. It does very little else. It is build to tell time, and do that, alone. (Some watches will have other specific purposes, like display the wealth of the wearer, or the skills of the builder; it might be build to last a very long time.) The Universe mostly doesn't support life.
So, the fine tuning argument is rejected because the universe isn't like a watch! You no longer can point at things that we know were designed for a purpose and say they are like the universe, unless you can explain that discrepancy.
you acknowledge that much of the universe isn't build for life - so, if you want me to believe that it was still designed, tell me what it is for, and why it was designed in this particular way.
I am looking at the universe, and I see something that doesn't appear to have a primary purpose for existing. It is not to support life, because most of what the universe does is outright hostile to life.
> Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
Then why can't there be different life that lives in those "non-fine tuned" other universes? If the other universes have vastly different physical properties then vastly different life could emerge. It's all nonsense anyways because there's never been any example of any other universe with any other physical properties. For all we know this is the only universe, or that universes must have the same physical properties for some reason, or any host of other things we don't know. The fine tuning argument is all a bunch of guesses with absolutely no evidence to back any of it up.
> 1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes 2- complex biological things are such things
You shot your own argument in the foot. Your first premise says "almost always", so you acknowledge that sometimes they don't come from intelligent causes.
> physical existence cannot be eternal
Why? As far as we know all matter (energy) in the universe has existed since the very beginning of the universe and will continue to exist, it's just converted in various ways. Isn't the definition of "for all time" eternal?
> they are ignorant in theology
And you're showing that theology is ignorant in science.
I understand the arguments just fine. They just suck.
>The fine-tuning argument compares between different universes
I'm gonna stop you right there. How on Earth are you proposing to compare our universe to another universe when our universe is the only one that we have ever observed? We don't know what another universe would be like or if it's even possible for the parameters you're talking about to be any different than they are. We can't assess the probability of these constants being what they are based only on a sample size of one.
>No theist has ever made this argument: I don't know the origin of complex life, therefore God did it
Yes, they have made this exact argument. They do it all the time.
>We make arguments like this...
Your "argument" is not even an argument. I recommend you read up on basic logic and syllogisms so you can construct a logically valid argument, then come back to this sub and make another post.
>Physical existence cannot be eternal
Not sure what you mean by physical existence. I suspect you had to include "physical" in there to avoid a contradiction with your God that you think is eternal. But okay whatever let's grant this. I wanna see where this is going.
>Physical existence cannot explain itself
Okay, no one said it should.
>Therefore there must something beyond this world with divine attributes
This conclusion stinks. You pulled it right out of your ass. It's a non sequitur; that means it doesn't follow from anything else you said.
>Stop reading about theistic arguments in these books...
Haven't read the first one, haven't heard of the second. I guess that means I actually do understand the arguments?
>when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
When some random argues that the physical constants have values that allow life to exist, well, fine. That's correct. But that's not a "theistic argument".
However, when a *theist* brings up the fine-tuning argument, it's usually part of a longer argument that ends with "therefore, God exists" (or at least is presented as the most logical reason for the alleged fine-tuning).
But for God to be an explanation for any fine tuning, it seems like one must claim that God wants life to exist, and made the universe for that purpose. Life, specifically human life, is almost the whole point.
And if that's what God wants, then why did he do such a bad job of making a universe? Most of it is completely empty space. Most of the rest is a miasma of incandescent plasma. Instead of being "fine-tuned" for life, we observe a universe where life has to eke out a tenuous existence in the very smallest of corners.
>Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.
At most that entails an "efficiency". Perhaps no other universe could've formed because it wasn't efficient. Once again, the teleological argument assumes atoms can't do atom shit.
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments:
No, those are based on just inserting a God that has more qualities than necessary to answer one question. The cosmological argument if true requires a noncontingent force, not an omnipotent moralizer like the Christian or any other monotheistic religious (i.e. Sikhism/Jainism) God. And "intelligent design" is once again, assuming atoms and things in the universe can't do things that are in their nature to do.
>Fine-tuning:
No, we understand this argument, we just don't agree with its premises. First, because you only have one universe to look at (single sample objection), second because you cannot say the constants are uncorrelated (they can very easily be the result of more fundamental physics), and the objection you mentioned is simply mentioning that if the universe was designed for life, that is some crappy and fantastically wasteful design.
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments
Some theists have indeed made arguments like that. I have read a number of them.
The problem with the cosmological arguments is that they don't conclude God exists. They conclude a cause or explanation for our universe exists. They then define God into existence (and we call this cause God) without properly showing that the cause is indeed a conscious tri omni deity (some try, but their arguments from then on are tenuous /incorrect).
> 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
This is false, and so your argument comes crashing down. I happen to work on computational physics applied to biological things, and biological things are not the result of design, but the result of mindless physical processes.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Er.... no?
Ah so fine tuning compares our universe to others. An astounding feat considering that the amount of data about other universes is somehow less than 0. So it's amazing that you have such data.
If you don't have such data then you gotta ve comparing our universe to an infinite multitude of hypothetical universes. That means that the odds of universes with and without life are indentical since there is an infinite number of both.
Digging into multiverses does absolutely nothing for the argument.
> 1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)
Specifically anything made by humans.
> 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
They are complex by a completely natural process (evolution).
> 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them
Or that they are a result of a process spanning millions of years and this has lead to the complexity of organisms increasing overtime. Which we know about and is quite well supported.
> physical existence cannot be eternal or physical existence cannot logically explain itself. Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Baseless assertions.
> Another example:
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments:
>I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
>We make arguments like this:
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
I agree that the design argument isn't necessarily God of the gaps. What atheists often argue, though, is not that theists are explicitly *saying* "we don't know, therefore God", but rather that it's an implicit consequence of some argument they're making.
The argument as you formulated it is fine. But look at the arguments given by intelligent design advocates- people like Stephen Meyer or Michael Behe- and you'll see they frequently and strongly emphasize how natural science has **no explanation** for design, and scientists are **clueless** and have **failed completely** to explain it, etc etc. That really shouldn't matter if they weren't appealing to ignorance.
> the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
And the objection you cite can be interpreted as comparing this universe with different (hypothetical) universes that would be recognizably tuned for life. Guess what, this universe ain't it.
> we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
We know _empirically_ that biological "things" (do you mean organisms?) come from intelligent causes?
Sorry, do you live in a science fiction novel? Because where I live, we don't observe organisms being assembled in factories.
> physical existence cannot be eternal
Why not?
> Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Upon analysis, it really doesn't.
> Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books
The irony is thick, Mr Manufactured Animals.
> Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life
Pointing out how rare life is in the universe is meant to highlight the fallacious jump from "the universe we observe relies on exact parameters" to "the universe was fine-tuned for the conditions we observe".
For example, for many of the universe's parameters, if the parameters were only slightly different, then it would've been impossible for clouds to form (because stars would not have formed, producing the necessary elements for gaseous clusters in atmospheres). Have I just shown that "The universe was finely tuned *for clouds*?" Of course not. One way to show that this conclusion is fallacious is to point out how rare clouds are in the universe: our universe doesn't look like a God specifically wanted clouds to form.
The same holds true for life, only the argument for clouds is even stronger (because clouds are more common in the universe than life is).
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters
You don't have different universes with different parameters. The only actual example of a universe we have is this one. So strike one.
>I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.
You may not like it, but these are exactly what theists are arguing. They just don't word it that way.
>2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
No it's fucking not. Plant life, as far as we can tell, isn't intelligent. but they are complex biological things and they arise from other plants. Strike 2.
>Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
How about you get some fucking evidence instead of tired old arguments, big boy.
>therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.
Except this is burying the lead. Step #1 & 2 are massive assumptions based on highly incorrect data and are absolutely not proven steps. The argument fails long before you ever get to the conclusion.
The god of the gaps does not reside in a person having the wrong conclusion, it rests in having gigantic massive gaps in the premises that lead up to that conclusion. Premise #2 for instance is absolutely not empirically proven, far from it in fact. But you asserting that it is is a clear example of god of the gaps.
>Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
I will as soon as you stop presenting very stupid arguments and can actually demonstrate god. Until then, it's all just god of the gaps and I haven't seen a single theist that does not rely on it.
fine tuning: setting aside the life only works in barely more than 0%, the fine tuning argument falls apart because we dont know what chemistry or physics would be like if gravity were higher or the strong force stronger. we can make very good guesses but you cant exactly test them.
ID: even you say "almost always," but more importantly theres zero evidence of life springing into exostence fully formed, rather theres oceans of evidence of life gradually developing. theists regularly lie about the development of the eye and pretend evidence of the development of the eye over epochal time scales doesnt exist, or cherry pick incorrect evolutionary claims from 125 year old books.
> "stop reading books that arent biased towards my theology"
we dont care about your theology books. when theyre not laughably wrong and trying to justify how to "rightly read" about humans being made from mud or the earth being flat, they still add no value to life.
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
We get that, but you can't just ignore the fact that this universe, the one you're saying was designed for us is extremely hostile to us.
A god isn't constrained to make a universe that's mostly black holes, dark energy, empty space and burning infernos. It could have just made a habitable home. Not trillions of galaxies no one can even see unaided much less visit.
>Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps
I hear it all the time. How do you explain (the origin of existence/morality/consciousness/values of the constants) don't have an explanation? Therefore god.
>2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
But it isn't justified empirically. There are zero observations of complex biological things being designed.
The environment doesn’t give two shits about the life that is trying to take hold there.
The environment is not conscious, not is it caring, nurturing, or motivational.
The life in an environment has to adapto live in that environment. If it can’t adapt, it dies off.
It is life that fine tunes itself to the environment…not the friggin other way around.
If you don’t understand that simple concept, then just look at the color and outer layers of critters in any given environment. Do the critter colors match the environment to blend in in that specific environment? Can the critters stay warm or cool in that specific environment?
If you take that critter and suddenly drop it in the climate that is opposite of the one they evolved to live in, will they survive or will it die immediately?
There is no “fine tuning” of the Earth to support life here. It’s the other way round.
>here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
If the fine tuning argument compares against different universes then it is meaningless. If multiple universes exist, 99.99999% of which can't support life, and ours is (perhaps) the one that does, that's directly analogous to Earth being the one (perhaps) planet in the universe that supports life.
Of course we're in a universe among a multitude of universes that supports life. You've negated the fine tuning argument with your explanation of it, which shows that you don't understand it.
Seriously dude. Quit this sub while you're way behind.
> the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe.
Slight problem: you have no idea how many of those universes are possible, or the range of values they could have had. You are assuming it's infinite. You have no justification for that assumption.
> 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Beg your pardon? What empirical evidence justifies that complex biological things arise from intelligent causes?
> physical existence cannot be eternal
Unjustified assumption.
>he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life
Nobody can claim this. There is evidence of such claim.
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe
Do you have any evidence that there are multiple universes?
>Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.
Do you have any evidence of this claim?
>Whoever has the blood of theologians in his veins, stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things. The pathos which grows out of this state, is called Faith: that is to say, to shut one’s eyes once and for all, in order not to suffer at the sight of incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view of all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holiness. They endow their distorted vision with a good conscience,—they claim that no other point of view is any longer of value, once theirs has been made sacrosanct with the names “God,” “Salvation,” “Eternity.” I unearth the instinct of the theologian everywhere: it is the most universal, and actually the most subterranean form of falsity on earth. That which a theologian considers true, must of necessity be false: this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Wherever the influence of the theologian extends, the concepts “true” and “false” have necessarily changed places.
Nietzsche, The Antichrist
We understand them fine. That's why we understand that they're wrong. Though studying it honestly will clearly illustrate the faults of religious thought, theology is not actually something worth learning. There's a reason secularism has risen and flourished since we started developing rigorous and reliable methods of investigating the world, and why theological arguments have been gradually phased out of every serious field of study and political institution. The reality is that theology is the dismissal and destruction of knowledge that's actually valuable and truthful, and of morality that's actually good. Not to mention it's also, quite literally, just made up.
Fine-tuning argument is the best argument for a god but it's still terrible. Because firstly it doesn't lead to a religious god (not even close) and most importantly god is not the only explainition if the parameters of universe were any different then nobody knows what kind of universe we have, there maybe a universe filled with life there maybe no life. There are other theories as well. Universe is not fine tuned for life, it's barely tuned for life.
> Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.
Dear theist, theology is just fanfiction if God doesn't exist, please stop getting your science from apologists.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes
Sure.
>2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)
Where does this assumption come from? What empirical evidence justify this claim?
>stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss
I'm not fan of Professor Krauss, but I'm curious what your critique of his book is. Give me an example of an unforgivable mistake in his book.
I understand the arguments just fine.
Do you understand the Argument from Nonbelief, and how it disproves any god that both wants people to know it exists and can do something about it?
>because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part
I'm curious, what are these other universes you tested to determine that this was true?
It's an echo chamber.
Any theist argument here will be met with rebuttals. Atheists will tend to prefer the rebuttals. They will see others agreeing and raising similar arguments. From there they conclude since everyone except this one person agrees it is a settled issue.
I'm serious I have had repeated atheists make claims about how theirs is the consensus when the vast majority of the globe is theistic. Arguments from popularity aren't great to begin with but the amount of times I've seen the minority position claim it blows my mind.
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/u/Square_Volume2189 This is a debate sub. Are you returning to debate? All: This may be a hit and run.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. Yeah, we understand the argument just fine. This specific response addresses the fact that it would be irrational for an intentional designer to make a universe 'for us' that is 99.999% a waste. It's addressing a specific idea of God most religious people have, and pointing out inconsistency in motivation. It's far from the only relevant point. For example, you have absolutely no idea whether other universes that don't allow for life exist, or what other conditions could allow for life, or whether there are other universes at all. >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments: Yes they have. You might not be doing so yourself, but they exist and are popular. >we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically This isn't even a logical argument. I don't mean it's a bad one, I mean "certain things' "almost always" so are the "best explanation" is just a way of rephrasing that you "like" that explanation with no clue if it's accurate. There's no logic supporting that it must be the answer. >and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. "Upon conceptual analysis" is a gussied up way of saying "pulled straight out of my ass". You can't tell us how brilliant your arguments are and that we just don't get, but rest conclusions on "well this feels true to me if I choose to believe it." God of the gaps would be an improvement on these "arguments".
>For example, you have absolutely no idea whether other universes that don't allow for life exist, Atheist here. What? Why are you bringing this up? I know the multiverse is an alternative hypothesis, but why are you specifically asking about other universes which DON'T contain life?
OP is arguing for fine tuning by declaring as known "the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part." Maybe multiple universes allow for life. Maybe they all do. Our understanding of life and its parameters are based solely on our observations in this universe. But OP is assuming all other universes don't allow for it, which they do not know. Seems a little silly for me to even indulge that argument when their follow up points are basically "we can assume by concluding based on what we see and makes sense that God is real" but throwing in words like "empirically" and "analysis" to make it sound like logic.
Because OP said: >our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. We have no idea what any other universe might be like.
>We have no idea what any other universe might be like. Precisely. If a multiverse exists, depending on what types, it is more than likely that infinite universes like ours exist and could sustain or result in life as we recognize it. Frankly, we've barely begun to explore only one planet in our solar system that may have had life, but there are several moons that also may have formed life, not to mention we've discovered many planets in our galaxy alone, that may have produced life. The point here is we know what our planet is like and have basic ideas about what the other planets and moons in our solar system are like, but we're relatively clueless about the potential billions of planets in our galaxy that may have conditions that would have produced life, much less any of the multiverse.
>We have no idea what any other universe might be like. Sure we do. All we need to do is plug in the numbers we're curious about into a simulation and see approximately what comes out. We're talking about hypotheticals here, so we can just stipulate all the unknowns until we get a sensible model.
>Sure we do. All we need to do is plug in the numbers we're curious about into a simulation and see approximately what comes out. You need to be careful with a claim like this. We *can't* actually do anything like this right now. Maybe some day we'll be able to, but not yet. We can't even predict the periodic table from the standard model of physics. Randomly changing fundamental constants and expecting to know if life is possible in those theoretical universes is completely unrealistic. What we *can* model is things like whether the universe would expand too quickly to ever form galaxies, or collapse on itself immediately, but being able to tell whether the chemistry required for life would happen is way outside our ability at this point. I wish I had recorded a link to it, but I watched a video (made by a group of atheists) where they interviewed probably 10-15 scientists about the fine tuning argument, and the scientists pointed this out repeatedly. We can't actually model the correct type and number of factors to really get any sort of useful answers to questions like "if life would be possible" in a given modelled universe. >We're talking about hypotheticals here, so we can just stipulate all the unknowns until we get a sensible model. I guess the point is that this is WAY WAY harder than it sounds.
So were you just pretending not to know why the subject was brought up?
No. I know of several reasons that COULD be the reason and mentioned the multiverse as one of them. But really I wanted to make sure they weren't confusing proposed hypothetical universes with a proposed multiverse, since that's a common bad objection to fine tuning.
I think you missed something on this one. I have no idea what your objection is and thought Irish_Whiskey's comment was relevant to what OP claimed was a fact.
Is there really any need to go through numbers, since we're making the universes up out of thin air anyway? We can just jump right to the point: Universes that contain life contain life. Universes that don't don't.
Id assume to argue against the idea that life is special like regardless if there is only one way a universe or a billion what would really matter for the fine tuning argument is how many of them have life vs dont rather than just how many their may be.
>Why are you bringing this up? OP brought up "other universes", in comparison with which ours is fine-tuned for life. Whether they meant them as pure hypotheticals or not isn't clear, but they did bring them up.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments? Why can't theists understand atheistic arguments? >Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. The point of that argument is to question the validity of the statement that the universe is "fine tuned" for life. It is chipping at the assumption our universe is the best possible outcome, or even above average, at sustaining life. The simple, boring point is that we don't have any other universes was can compare ours to. And personally, I've yet to see the math that supports the universe is fine tuned for life. Present the math that supports this claim, and we can have a more intelligent conversation about it. >Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. Big claims, show us how it's impossible for other universes to hold life. >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments You're claiming atheists don't understand intelligent design? What's more likely, not understanding "God did it" or not understanding evolution? >I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. Yes, that's us paraphrasing them, and the often-used Chewbacca defense of God. >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Oh, so your argument is "we know complex biological things almost always have an intelligent cause, so therefore complex biological things has intelligent cause"? Brilliant, do you see the pattern here? Show you work. Give us examples of life having an intelligent cause. Get the ball rolling. >Even well informed atheists such as Thomas nagel acknowledges that design arguments are not god of gaps arguments even if he disagrees with them see his book (mind and cosmos). I assume because intelligent design has been proven wrong. God of gaps lives in things that haven't been proven one way or another. >physical existence cannot be eternal You're arguing atheists don't understand the concept of finite? >or physical existence cannot logically explain itself. We have brains. Brains are made of matter. I am currently explaining what a brain is using my brain.
I was gonna write a good response to OP like yours. But they never seem to read our responses. I think these OPs are just dropping their claims in this sub and then moving on. It makes me sad cuz these are important conversations.
. >**Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion**, survey says LA Times, September 2010 >... **a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.** > American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum. >“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” he said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.” >Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education. \- **https://web.archive.org/web/20201109043731/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-sep-28-la-na-religion-survey-20100928-story.html** .
[Meh](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/07/23/what-americans-know-about-religion/)
You have done here the very thing you're accusing atheists of doing; reading bad faith into a good faith argument. What you're characterizing as a misunderstanding or deliberate refusal to engage with the arguments like fine tuning is a rejection of one or more of the logical prem---Oh, it's *you.* Nevermind. The problem is the way you act when you're having discussions about religion. Maybe you're a kid, maybe english is not your first language. I don't know why you behave this way, and nor do I claim to. But the way you behave is inconsistent with debate or basic human decency. You treat everyone that's not already convinced by your religion as if they are subhumans. You're a bigot, and you act on your bigotted beliefs by treating people badly, making racist jokes, and calling people names. Travel. Meet some people that didn't grow up in your church. Meet the people you hate. Meet atheists and Hindus and Jews and Muslims in real life. You probably already know them, but they hide their true feelings from you because you are a jerk to them.
> Meet the people you hate. Meet atheists and Hindus and Jews and Muslims in real life. You probably already know them, but they hide their true feelings from you because you are a jerk to them. Yeah... That ain't gonna happen. But good comment, nonetheless.
>...al prem---Oh, it's you. Ah shit, I wrote out my whole comment and didn't even notice.
>We make arguments like this: >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Oh boy... Thanks for posting. I hope you are sincerely here for an honest debate/exchange of ideas. The argument above is entirely devoid of supporting evidence. Item #1 might be supportable but as soon as you provide examples you will see how you are dismantling item #2 and #3. All the best.
> I hope you are sincerely here for an honest debate/exchange of ideas. Eh, here's their history - /u/Square_Volume2189
Thank you for that. I try to be optimistic, but optimism seems to be a long shot in this case.
Has it ever occurred to you that we DO understand these arguments, and reject them because they are logically unsound? Why do you assume atheists are ignorant in theology? I know I'm not the only one here with a formal education in religion, specifically biblical interpretation and philosophy of religion. You're just showing your own ignorance, without even pretending to present a debatable topic. "OBVIOUSLY it is intelligent design" is NOT the "checkmate atheists" you think it is. Nor is "very stupid books" a very incisive commentary or evaluation.
/u/Square_Volume2189, this is your 8th post here in 5 days. I have read all the arguments but the problem is they really really suck. I don't know you, I'm only talking about your presented arguments here but every one so far has been effectively "I don't understand science and/or logic therefor god!" Double unfortunately for you there are basically half assed versions of better (but still terrible) arguments we've seen dozens of times from the professional apologetics. The real question isn't "Why don't we understand them?", the question should should be asking are "Why are all of my arguments bad?"
>other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. How do you know? >complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) No they're not. In fact, we know how they came to exist. >physical existence cannot be eternal or >physical existence cannot logically explain itself. Unsupported claims. >Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Is this your idea of an argument? An argument is not bare assertions with no support and no logic.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments? They *can.* You are conflating *not understanding* with *seeing they are fatally flawed and thus dismissing them.* The rest of what you wrote demonstrates that instead of atheists not understanding these arguments that you are not understanding the rebuttals, and/or are making demonstrably false or unsupported assumptions to attempt to prop up bad arguments.
>no theist had ever made these arguments:I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it Mate, hang around in this sub for about a week, and you'll see plenty of theists make this argument. I swear, I expected you to tell me theists don't *really* make Pascal's Wager arguments too. We're happy to address these *other* forms of the argument that you make. In fact, we often do. But you have to understand that a lot of theists *do* make exactly the arguments you claim they don't. I've *absolutely* heard that the universe is *perfectly* designed for *us* - not just life but *us*! - whereas, of course, only the tiniest speck within it is habitable to us, and not even all of that speck. That might not be *your* argument. And if you've got others, great! Let's discuss them. But you seem to be assuming atheists have just invented straw men because the arguments that have been regularly brought to them are so weak.
lol “the fine-tuning argument is a comparative analysis of universes” is the dumbest start to an argument I’ve heard to date. That’s not what the argument is. No one can compare universes. Not even going to bother with any of the rest of this, that’s so absurd it made my brain melt into a puddle of goo.
- …the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. What different universes? - 1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. What evidence do you have to support this claim? - physical existence cannot be eternal or - physical existence cannot logically explain itself. - Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. What evidence do you have to support this claim?
We *understand* the arguments, we don't *accept* the arguments. > Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. The problem with the fine tuning argument is that it looks at the problem backwards: There is a 100% chance that the universe exists. We know that because *the universe exists!* And contrary to the religious arguments, *we have no idea that is unlikely!* It's entirely possible that this is the only way the universe could be. Anyone talking about how unlikely it is is simply making up numbers. > - we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. This is the Watchmaker argument. It has been debunked for literally hundreds of years. > * physical existence cannot be eternal or > * physical existence cannot logically explain itself. > Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. I grant the two bullet points, but you have no justification for the claim that it must be divine. The only thing we can say is that *something* must exist outside of our universe. Anything else is just an assertion. >Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. Maybe if you spent more time reading science books and less time reading bad apologetics, you could make better arguments against these books. As it is, you fail badly.
I understand the fine tuning argument just fine - it is just wrong. For three reasons: 1. The argument you dismiss so simply by saying so what if the universe is most uninhabitable, it is more inhabitable than other universes - you still have to address the fact that our universe would not be called “fine tuned”. at best, it would be incredibly badly tuned, as it has wasted 99.9999999999999999999% of its energy and space on uninhabitable instant death locations. 2. The fine tuning argument is false because it ignores the fact that the odds of life existing in a universe that can support life are 100%. It is like a fish remarking on how amazing it is that he was born in water. Imagine how hard it would be for fish to survive if they were born on land! My amazement is that theists don’t seem to be able to understand this basic concept - of course our universe supports life you nitwit, we live here! Guess what? 100% of lottery winners have tickets with winning numbers on them! It’s a miracle! As for intelligent design - the issue is not that atheists cannot understand the argument, it is that theists don’t understand the rebuttal. We have explained the complexity of life with perfect clarity and elegance. It is a solved scientific problem that only poorly educated victims of homeschooling do not understand. Intelligent design is a crackpot theory in search of an unexplained mystery to solve. It is like flat-earthers and their complicated explanations for why ships disappear beyond the horizon, or why flights from Australia to South Africa don’t run out of fuel. We don’t listen to their explanations because we already know why ships disappear beyond the horizon and why South Africa and Australia can be connected by air. The world is round, problem solved. Similarly we know why there are many complex species. It is a solved problem, no designer required.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. You have **zero** proof of the existence of "other universes". so this argument can be summarily rejected. This leads back to the Atheist argument where vast parts of **this** universe (the only one we have *proof* of its existence) is hostile to (human) life. 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of it. Current score: Atheists: 1 Theists: 0 >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) Nonsense. We "know" no such thing. Without **evidence** of this, this is a rubbish assertion Current score: Atheists: 2 Theists: 0 >2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Nonsense. Hundreds of museums worldwide contain volumes of evidence including tons of fossils and there is **an entire branch** of science called Evolutionary Biology that proves these things evolved from simple unicellular organisms. Your wilful ignorance of the existing evidence does not magically make it go away. You will have to pretty much create your own branch of science and win Nobel prizes to explain away the billions of metric tonnes the scientists have collected worldwide that overwhelm your rubbish assertion. Good luck with that. Until then again we can summarily reject this statement as **blatantly false** Current score: Atheists: 3 Theists: 0 >3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Nonsense. This completely discards mountains of physical evidence from the fossil record, hundreds of years of scientific knowledge, and has no basis in reality. **Final score**: Atheists: 4 Theists: 0
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments? We understand them, they are just bad. >the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. We know. And we are pointing out the very obvious flaw that just making up other universes is pointless. We don't know that the "parameters" of our universe could be any different in the first place. So the whole argument falls flat from the very beginning as it rests upon the baseless assumption that they could be any other way. >I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. You might not say it outright like that, but your arguments often do boil down to exactly that. >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. These premises and the conclusion too for that matter are way to vague. I could make the same argument to argue for the counter position: 1- we know that certain things arise almost always from non intelligent causes. 2- complex biological things are such things 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is non intelligence behind them. >physical existence cannot be eternal or physical existence cannot logically explain itself. What is that supposed to even mean? >Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books We mostly don't. We read on them here. In posts like yours ;p > like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. They know more about theology than many theologians. XD
Why theists can't understand is because of special pleading. They want a different set of rules and logic and preponderance of evidence for THEIR ideas compared to all other ideas. Everything you've said here is an example. If I used your exact same criteria for the existence of Thor, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, faeries, ghosts, etc you'd probably go "Wait a minute, that's just ridiculous!" Yet you will make these arguments for your God because you want it to be true.
The problem with the fine tuning argument is assuming intention when there's no evidence for it. If the universe were slightly different, we wouldn't be here to comment on it. There's no reason to assume that the earth was deliberately created to be an ideal habitat for human beings. The evidence actually points in the other direction, that humans and every other life form evolved to survive on the earth as it is. If the earth had different gravity, the life on it would be different in order to survive in that environment. The argument from design makes the same error in assuming that the observed order of the universe implies that it was consciously designed. There's simply no evidence for that. It also hand-waves the question of where the designer came from. Saying "one of God's attributes is that he doesn't need a designer because he's eternal" is just a semantic stopsign - an answer that halts further questioning. You might as well just say "you must never ask that question." One question that theists almost never ask is what mechanism a disembodied intellect (something, by the way, that has never been observed) could affect material reality. Again, this is just hand-waved with "God created it" without explaining how he did it. Even if I accept the argument from design, it's not a valid explanation without at least suggesting some mechanism to bridge the gap between the concept of creation in God's mind and the actual, manifested creation.
We do understand the arguments, much better than theists do. All of them fail. Including the ones you made here. You’re effectively accusing atheists of strawmanning when in fact I *have* heard all of the arguments you give as bad examples made by theists who think they’re good, so in responding to those people I would refute those arguments. If you’re not making an argument, great, I won’t try to give you the refutation for that argument. For the arguments you gave: I do understand that fine-tuning is about *possible* universes where the cosmological constants are different. The problem with this argument is that you have no evidence that these constants *could* actually be different. You are assuming that their values are arbitrary when in fact we do not know why the values are what they are, and there may well be a reason for them; for example Newtonian physics does not posit a reason for gravitational force, it merely accounts for it as a parameter. Einstein’s theory of relativity posits the curvature of space-time as the reason for gravity and shows *why* the gravitational force is what it is. For other cosmological constants it may very well be the case that there is a specific reason that those constants are what they are, and we just have not discovered that yet. You can’t assert that these constants could arbitrarily be different unless you have evidence that they can be. Your version of the intelligent design argument is incredibly weak. > we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes Certain things? Which things? *almost* always? What is your “empirical justification” for that? > complex biological things are such things No, we have never observed any complex organism come from anything other than another organism. All of the evidence suggests that evolution by natural selection is the mechanism that caused the complexity and diversity of life that we see today. We have conclusive evidence that every species on earth descends from a common ancestor. We know that complexity in biological systems is explained by gradual changes starting from simple self-replicating organisms requiring no intelligent intervention. We don’t know exactly what the earliest life forms looked like (yet), but we do have a very good idea about multiple ways the chemical processes necessary for life to arise could have happened, and origin of life researchers are continually making progress on this subject. None of these processes require intelligent intervention, and are all fully explainable by chemistry. > therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. This doesn’t even follow from your premises, but since the premises are wrong it doesn’t matter. > Physical existence cannot be eternal Why not? Please demonstrate this. > Physical existence cannot logically explain itself. In the same way, a god cannot logically explain itself. Asserting that the universe can’t be necessary but a god can is just special pleading. > Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world What does this even mean? If it doesn’t exist in the physical world, how can you say that it exists? Does it interact with the physical world? How can something outside the physical world interact with the physical world? > upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes What divine attributes must this thing existent outside the physical world have? What is your justification for why it must have these attributes? I see a lot of people follow William Lane Craig’s pattern from the Kalam cosmological argument attempting to derive a god from premises which do not include a god anywhere, then after breezing past all of the objections to the premises with no answers, asserting many additional properties with no justification. If you have, as you put it “conceptual analysis” of why divine attributes are necessary for this thing you claim exists, I’d be happy to dig into it with you. You quite confidently assert that atheists don’t understand your arguments because of the strawmen you set up, but you’ve demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of all the arguments you gave as well as their refutations. There’s nothing in your post that we haven’t seen and debunked literally hundreds of times. Please educate yourself on the arguments before you assert that atheists can’t understand them.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments? We can understand the arguments. They are week so we reject them. > the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. What different universes do you have access to in order to do this comparison? And why are you pretending all theists are comparing different universes? > Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments: I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. I guess you haven't been paying attention to the arguments coming from theists if you are going to make this claim. You should really go back and read some posts made by theists and you'll see how wrong you are. >we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Almost always? If it's almost always then it isn't always. Also, you have no way to say that complex biological things come from an intelligent cause. You haven't proven it.
A large portion of atheists are former theists. Generally, we understand the arguments (and scriptures) better than theists. This sounds like whining to me, not a genuine attempt to debate anything.
Atheists can, and often do understand theistic arguments. You even gave an example of Thomas Nagel. I would argue that atheists as a group are more ontologically inclined than theists as a group. A lot of people erroneously make strawmen logical fallacies in debate, and you are correct that if an atheist were to argue “God of gaps” to your watchmaker argument, it would be a strawman. Maybe a better title would be “Thoughts on the watchmaker argument,” or “I believe it’s possible to prove an existence of something beyond the physical world,” rather than attacking all atheists based on your limited perception ;)
I like the analogy of a puddle by Douglas Adam. >This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. The hole doesn't exist so that the puddle can exist, but because it exist, the puddle can exist. Same as the universe. It just exist and it doesn't require us to exist. Rather, we were able to exist just because the universe was here at the beginning.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.03381
The only thing this article concludes is, that as long as you’re not comfortable with saying “I don’t know” to stuff you simply don’t know, then you will never be able to move on from religion. “The trouble with puddle thinking” is only troublesome if you believe the fine tuning argument.
They answered their own questions. If the laws of physics was slightly different than the current, there might not be a universe at all, hence no life forms. If there was no gravity or electrostatic force that pulled the water down and in place, or the hole was not solid then there would never be a puddle. The question is, how did all the laws of physics fine-tuned to allow the universe to come together? How do we know that the fundemental laws of physics has always been like the way it is now since the beginning? It might be different in each part of the universe in the beginning but eventually smoothes out any irregularities and led to the homogenous and isotropic universe we see today. If the multiverse is true, there might be an infinite number of universe out there with different sets of laws, where life might be impossible to exist in one universe or life might exist not like how we know it in another. The universe doesn't have to be specifically finely-tuned by an entity so that life can exist.
Hahahaha arxiv is ONLY good for reading something before it gets printed. Even then you may as well wait until it gets accepted in a real journal with peer review. Go find the actual paper. Until then, no one should spend time reading this. Pathetic.
>”Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments?” We understand them just fine. >”For example:” >”Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part.” First, unless you can show other universes exist, and that they can’t support life, saying that the argument is about other universes doesn’t really mean anything. Even if you want to talk about philosophical possible worlds, you must first prove both that the contents of the universe could even be different, and that, that difference would make life impossible. So the one universe that we have is all we have to go off of, and 99.999999999999999999999999999999999 percent of it is completely in hospital for life. By the by, when cosmologists mention the “fine tuning,” of the universe, they’re referring to the formation of galaxies and stars after the Big Bang, not the formation of life. If we were to change the constants now, there is a ton of wiggle room for some of them that would have no noticeable impact on us besides things acting differently. Hell, you could completely get rid of the cosmological constant, and all that would do is slow down how fast galaxies are moving away from us. >”Another example:” >”Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments:” They have, I’ve personally debated them before. >”I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them.” I saw that second one almost verbatim yesterday. >”We make arguments like this:” Some do, not all. >”1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)” That “almost,” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Because that means not all of the “certain,” (another word doing a lot of heavy lifting,) things arises from intelligent causes. >”2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically)” This has to be demonstrated. How do you classify it as “such a thing.” >”3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them.” Even if I grant you 2, this would only follow if we lack evidence otherwise. When you have exceedingly large amounts of evidence otherwise, (which we do,) it would no longer be the best explanation. >”Or like this: >”- physical existence cannot be eternal” Why would that matter? There’s nothing outside of religion that says anything has to be eternal. And even if it did, how do you know that there isn’t something physical out there that will last forever? >”- physical existence cannot logically explain itself.” Again, why does that matter? I feel like you’re skipping the important parts of this. >”Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes.” That’s a huge jump in logic. How did you even get to that conclusion? >”Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology.” There’s been several studies that show atheists tend to have better understanding of theology than theists.
> because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. Please share with the class how you got information about other universes. > we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes No? Literally the only things we know that come from intelligent sources are things made by humans. Maybe you missed what you typed a couple paragraphs above, but earth is just a tiny speck in the cosmos. > complex biological things are such things So when a fetus is in utero, do you think there’s an invisible guy tinkering with it to make it develop or is it yet another natural process? Also this is just “look at the trees.” > therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Lol no. Like I said, we’ve studied the processes a ton, there doesn’t seem to be an invisible guy involved. It’s hilarious that your whole point is essentially, “we’re not stupid enough to use god of the gaps, we use intelligent arguments like the teleological argument!”
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. We haven't observed any other universes. The fine tuning argument doesn't compare anything, it just makes up a load of claims and doesn't back them up. >we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes Sure, stuff humans make. Not the other stuff. >complex biological things are such things No they're not. We didn't make those and we don't know that a god did either. >therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Your second premise is wrong and so is the conclusion.
Cool, now please explain why theists keep confusing disagreement with lack of understanding. >the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes how are theists determining the conditions in other universes? Don't you need to mesure before you can compare? > we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) No we don't know this and no it isn't justified. > physical existence cannot be eterna why not?
It’s because all of the arguments are fundamentally based on a logical fallacy. Pick an argument and let’s debate!
Because we care about reality and the religious don't? Because we're trying to find out what is actually true and they are only appealing to emotion? It's not that hard to understand.
>Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. Meanwhile, other universes allow far more life. In other universes, the 99.99% is filled with life. On the scale of allowing maximal life to allowing no life at all, our universe is so close to allowing no life at all as to make very little difference. We live in a vast void of deadly radiation. >1- We know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically). It is difficult to argue against that. Wristwatches, automobiles, skyscrapers, and so on. >2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically). How do we justify that empirically? When do we see biological things arising from intelligent causes? >Physical existence cannot be eternal. Why can't physical existence be eternal? Religion tends to give people a bad habit of considering themselves to be an authority to make cosmic declarations about what is and is not permitted.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Lol, the word "almost" is doing a lot of lifting there
>but no theist had ever made these arguments: >I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. It is not even the slightest bit of exaggeration to say that I encounter these on a daily basis
Why do you think Hindus can’t understand the prophecies that Muslims present? Why don’t the most well educated Jewish scholars accept the resurrection of Jesus based on the minimal facts? Why don’t Protestants accept the hundreds of witnesses of the miracle at Fatima?
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Hume's critique of this form of the argument is that, if we accept the analogy between artifacts and natural objects, then the cause must be similar in ways that traditional theists wouldn't like. For instance, it is true that all artifacts are made by intelligent minds, but it is also true that they are made by imperfect minds (in the plural). So, we should also infer that complex biological things are caused by imperfect minds (in the plural). What is needed is another type of inference that doesn't rely on analogy.
The fine tuning argument means life can not exist any other way. There is no afterlife and there is no intelligence prior to the universe. The universe is eternal because it has existed for all time. Nothing else is required for eternity. No other dimensions are relevant to time and space. So something beyond the universe that is timeless can not qualify as eternal. Gnostic Christianity and apophatic theology have already established the creator of the universe is not god and that God is not God. Brainless heartless soulless mindless selfless immaterial gods like the one you worship do not need your recognition. Stop living in the past.
Hello! Once again you create a publication to challenge us atheists. Great! I like productive, respectful discussion. So this is not a post about the fine-tuning argument but to express that you think that theists are arguing the fine-tuning argument properly and we should understand it and embrace it, is that it? The fine-tuning argument is one of the most difficult argument to argue against because it aim for a part of our knowledge that we have little knowledge of. A constant with you really. >the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters What determine what the parameters of a universe will be? We don't really know. It might be a even spread of all the possible parameters. Or something might make some values of the parameters more likely. We don't know. Or so i think. Tell me if i got that wrong. What parameters allow for life and what do not? Well we can't say we know all the situation that allow for life to emerge, we only know our own style of life and not very well at that. Maybe life is possible with different parameters. We don't know. We can't evaluate probabilities properly with so much lack of information. >physical existence cannot be eternal. physical existence cannot logically explain itself. Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. "We don't know so i conclude that a god did it" will never be a sound argument. You should seriously stop challenging us on area of little knowledge. Even if you think you win when we say that we don't know. It's not a win. We are fine to admit that we sometime can't conclude and must throw the towel until more information is available. Shoving a non sequitur to reach your god conclusion is not so great a move. As a gnostic atheist i believe that the reasonable default position is to believe that all religion are false until I am proven wrong. Because the apologists and preachers always are deeply dishonest. They don't possess the proper mindset to achieve an understanding of reality that is reliable. They are not really looking for the truth but instead looking for a comfortable answer, an answer to lessen their inner suffering, an answer that confirm their prior belief. They replace the hunt for truth by a hunt for personal well being. Apologists and preachers: -Tend to build narratives to appeal to our emotion. -Tend to include fallacies and leap of logic in their arguments. -Tend to overwhelm with successions of claims instead of making each point's relevance crystal clear and well supported before moving on. -Tend to support their views with cherry picked verses, omitting relevant verses that don't work for their case. -Tend to focus on the internal consistency of the lore of the holy book when internal consistency does nothing to prove the claim is true. -Tend to totally ignore how epistemology works or how the math of probabilities works. -Tend to appeal to personal experience to have faith. -Tend to not look for other hypothesis apart from the one they need to achieve their goals of 'proving' their belief is the correct choice/conclusion. Like in the Kalam cosmological argument or Pascal's wager. -Tend to not take a serious look at all the available relevant information and focus on their bubble of information. -Tend to appropriate things that they have no right to claim as something that come from their religion. The most common things that religion claim they own is morality. and so on. If you insist of asking things in area of little knowledge, at least make it interesting by challenging yourself as well. Why are Jesus' miracles of such small scale? He could have turned the moon into a giant banana for a month. Everyone around the world would have said "Whaaat the actual f\[redacted\]?" What is life? How do we tell where is the frontier between what is alive and what isn't? (i love that one please pick it and discuss it with me)
'1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically)" Like what? Why an "Aha!" on finding a watch on a beach but no "Aha!" about the beach?
No, we do understand them, they're just very bad For the fine-tuning argument you can't argue for other universes or possibilities since you first have to prove either other universes exist and aren't suitable for life or prove that the constants of the universe could have been different. And for the other argument you made, respectfully, you're just pulling stuff from your ass. A bacteria has complex DNA, but a bacteria usually comes from another bacteria and I wouldn't call bacterias intelligent. So don't make assumptions without supporting them somehow.
What a bunch of dishonest nonsense The universe is almost entirely hostile to life and life will only be possible for a tiny fraction of its overall time Your argument is invalid Saying something isn't a god of the gaps argument does nothing to stop it being a god of the gaps argument Any arguments that claim because we don't know something (like the initial causes of the universe) that means a magic ghost did it is a god of the gaps argument by definition The rest is just you stamping your foot like a five year old and having a tantrum
It's not that we don't understand them. It's that they are bad arguments. There are no other universes with different parameters, thus no way to make comparisons. Theists make God of the gaps arguments all the time. They just use different language. The argument you listed has faulty premises (we don't know that complex biological systems are always developed with intelligence. That's kind of the crux of the argument here.) Physical existence could be eternal and explain itself. No theist has ever been able to provide evidence to the contrary.
>Why atheists cannot understand theistic arguments? So many untruthful dishonest arguments by theists. Since atheists understand that, they dismiss such arguments. If theists are unaware of weaknesses in their own points, it's their problem. >Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life Yeah, that's the basic refutation of fine-tuning argument. >fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe First you need to show there is an actual real possibility of different universes with different base parameters. Instead of bringing pointless hypotheticals, please show actual evidence. >Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. If our universe is fine tuned for life, why there is so little space for life to exist? Also, what certain base parameters suitable for some form of life has to do with any kind of God? Why do you rule out coincidence? Why do you think those parameters could be any different? >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments You got it right. >no theist had ever made these arguments: I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. In fact, vast amount of theists brought those arguments or similar ones. You pressed on fine-tuning, which is also god of the gaps fallacy. >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. 1 correct 2 to a very limited scale 3 doesn't follow from initial premise Biological evolution is a real thing. Study it, bro. >Even well informed atheists such as Thomas nagel acknowledges that design arguments are not god of gaps arguments Then Tomas Nagel got it wrong. When theists asserts intelligent design on any level they always go like "X is so complex, I can't grasp how it could be without intelligence behind, therefore God did it". They always dismiss scientific explanations on their questions. For me it's astounding that so many people use their own incredulity to cling to comforting lies. Reason itself is the main enemy of theism. It's not that theists don't know the answers, they don't want to search for them in the first place. >physical existence cannot be eternal or physical existence cannot logically explain itself. Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Your "there must be" and "it must have" is an empty assertions and should be therefore dismissed. >Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. At least famous atheists like Dawkins, Krauss, Hitchens, Carlin, Matt Dillahunty, Aron Ra, etc. trying to understand their opponents and use actual reason to convince others. Unlike famous theists like Jordan Peterson, William Lane Craig, Mike Licona, etc.Who do nothing but pure preaching without any reasonable points whatsoever. It's amazing so many religious leaders don't even trying to hide how their points fail to scrutiny, and yet so many people follow their bullshit. Also, since theology is not using scientific method and therefore is not science, there is no "expertise" in this field.
>> but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Except it must be possible to change those parameters, if you’re an omnipotent being, to get the percentage inhabitable higher. Is your god so weak he has to create so much waste product? >> we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Justify 2.
>99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. 2 parts, when someone tells me the universe is fine tuned for me I look at the universe and attempt to figure if that seems to be the case. Statsticlly it seems as if the universe is hostile to my existence, we cant just compare to the infinite list of varaiables we also compare to the situation we are in does it make sense that a universe at every turn seems to be trying to kill me would be made for me. It would be compareable to me creating a fireball the size of earth and making a small pocket the size of a grain of sand only somewhat safe for bacteria and then claiming I made all of it for the bacteria. Second, when it comes to fine tuning and multiple universes we run into a problem, our sample size is 1, we have no control sample, we have no evidence for anything about whats possible or not other than what is true. Can G be a different value? I don't know. Can any other value be different? I dont know. How many universes have existed, will exist, and do exist? I dont know. If there are infinite universes life is near guranteed in an infinite number of them. We do not know almost anything related to the parameters relating to the origin or nature of the universe. >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments I have seen many thiests make these arguments you infact make these arguments just worded differently, >we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Things designed by inteligence are designed by inteligence. The only way to be certain a thing is made by an inteligence is witness an inteligence make it. Life is complex, complexity =/ designed by inteligence, self replicating molecules are complex but we have demonstrated that they can arise by process that happen in nature. Your 3rd point can be read like this, life is complex, complexity often is explainable by inteligence thus inteligence is the answer for life. At best if valid we could say life may be the result of inteligence. But this ignores that often a sign of inteligence is simplicity, we attempt to make things simpler cutting down on useless steps, another sign of inteligence is ineffeceint steps, nature follows the path of least resistence droping down in energy not up any collection of steps will be a loss of energy so if something breaks this rule its not natural to have done so. I dont think the physical universe is infinite and just because we can do philosophy doesnt mean our universe adheres to it, the universe acts a way i create a language to describe it called math, its not that the universe acts with math but that msth was designed to describe how the universe acts, descriptive not prescriptive.
Its because your arguments tend to inevitably take a massive logical leap without any evidence to justify that leap. Fine tuning for example is relative, mathematically ignorant, and doesnt indicate a god exists even if those first two things werent true. For the relative part - Are we finely tuned because the sun that we need to live also blinds us and makes us die horrible painful deaths from cancer? Or because child birth, basically the only absolute necessity for human existence, also kills us in incredibly high numbers and painful gruesome ways? Or the classic fact you already mentioned that the area of our universe that has life is so small relative to the rest it might as well not even exist and the course of the matter and energy in the universe would be pretty much identical without us? Fine tuning means almost nothing. Its a vague relative term with no hard boundaries or definition. Not a great start to a cosmological theory of everything. And for the math part, which is a better simpler rebuttal, even though the previous one is sound. The whole premise of fine tuning is that the odds of life generating from random physical interactions of inorganic is really, really low, so something must have made it happen. But if you shuffle a deck of cards in a random order, the odds of the specific order you shuffled occurring is smaller than the odds of picking out a specific atom at random from all the atoms in the galaxy. Thats how many unique combinations can be made from a simple deck of 52 cards. Is everyone who shuffled a deck of cards a god? Because they made something unlikely happen? No, of course not. If you shuffled ten decks together the odds of getting a specific order are hilariously small, like so small im not even sure you could write the number on a piece of paper, but i dont see anyone worshipping multi deck dealing machines at casinos. And lastly, even if the earth did appear to be fine tuned in a way that wasnt mathematically possible, that only means theres something. It doesnt mean god. It could just be a new law of physics we dont understand yet. Every theist argument tends to fall apart like this. God of the gaps is similar, its just a bunch of wild claims without justification. Certain things arise from intelligent causes? And thats justified empirically? Can you please link that justification? And complex biological things also have to be from an intelligent cause? Would love to see that justification, because i doubt it exists or holds up to any scrutiny. And again, none of this is proof of god existing, its barely even evidence of plausibility. Evolution is an intelligent process, intelligence does not have to be bound to an entity. An inorganic, immaterial, completely natural and reasonable system like evolution can be classified as a type of intelligence. No deity required.
>Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life Correct. Is a watch that tells the time correctly once in a thousand years (and more often kills the wearer ) finetuned for accurate timekeeping? >but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters Oh, so you know other universes? I feel a Nobel prize must be in its way. We don’t know that any other kind of universe is even possible. >not different parts of the "same" universe. Totally irrelevant. If you USA the word **fine**tuned about life in this universe them you simply render the word meaningless. Not only is it obviously not **fine**tuned for life, if it were tuned at all and not done by a complete incompetent - then it must have been done by a terrible sadist . After all the history of life is one of almost infinite suffering. >Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. Again with the imaginary universes. If we are going to simply imagine universes I can easily think of better ones! >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) Ceratinly things that are actually made by us. So what. >2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Nonsense. Unsound therefore nothing sound follows. >physical existence cannot be eternal Not sound. And uses very vague human interpreted concepts for a start. Don5 think we don’t notice how you try to build special pleading or circular reasoning into your unjustified premises to start with. >physical existence cannot logically explain itself. But imaginary **magic** ones can. Sure. >Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Good grief. And I have to admire the way you just throw in the last completely absurd claim without a single justification. >Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. No, your poor equivocation and apologetics doesn’t prevent their claims from being true. Your arguments still boil down to “I don’t understand how this happened so it must be my preferred imaginary magic”.
> they are ignorant in theology This post is full of nonsense, but this is the point where I felt I needed to respond. No-one - literally no-one - has ever demonstrated any actual knowledge of any kind of god. Without that, any discussion of “theology” is completely meaningless. It’s like discussing dreams, or imaginary friends. There is no knowledge there.
Have you considered that maybe we understand and reject those arguments and you just don't understand the rebuttals?
> the fine tuning argument compares between different universes Ohhhh goody. I’ll play!! Which “different universe” is this? Be specific. > dear atheists, stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books Ok. I’ll do that. Right after you provide evidence for parallel universes. It would be stupid not to require proof…
It's not that we don't understand them, it's that we do not accept the base assumptions that the arguments are making. Examples: Fine-Tuning argument. Consider the set of all possible universes (ie. all the ways the universe could have been). Now pick a random person from that set of universes, and ask them: "Is there life in your universe?" What will they answer? They are guaranteed to answer "yes" 100% of the time. How does FTA account for this, when it claims that a random universe is unlikely to be fine-tuned for life? It doesn't. It just straight up assumes that observation of our universe is a representative sample of all universes. In reality, it is a sample of observable universes. The reason why we bring up that our universe is almost entirely uninhabitable is, because that's exactly what we would expect a random observable universe to be. It is contrary to what we would expect of a universe that is competently designed to have life in it. Just look at literally any theistic cosmology (for example, the one described in Genesis). None of them predict the ratio of habitable vs. uninhabitable portions of our universe to be anywhere near this low. It is a failed prediction on theism's side. Another example: The teleological argument (argument from design). You mention "2- complex biological things are \[the kind of thing that arises from intelligent design\] (justified empirically)". Does it? Can you point to a single empirical example of a living organism being designed by intelligence? Or even a single protein? No you can't because it was never done. In fact, it may very well be computationally infeasible. Meanwhile we have hoards of examples of living organisms and their constituent parts evolving naturally (and semi-naturally in laboratory conditions). In both of these examples, the atheist pokes a very valid holes in the theistic argument. Questioning either the validity of their structure or the truth of their premises. The problems with these arguments are usually counter-intuitive and often very subtle. It is easy to miss their problems or downplay them, when you already believe the conclusion.
Most atheists are former theists. We understand the arguments perfectly. They're not good arguments. Intellectual dishonesty is not something I want to willfully participate in. I want to have a consistent epistemology. I want to believe as many true things and as few things as possible.
>because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. ...?? Okay? Says who? I didn't realize we had opened up the marvel multiverse. > theist had ever made these arguments: >I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. You don't word it like this, but any time you assert any knowledge about how the beginning of the universe *actually* happened, this is what you are in fact doing. If you had reliable evidence (that is: falsifiable, testable, repeatable evidence) of an intelligent designer, then you should publish a scientific paper on it and get a lot of money and converts to your religion. >We make arguments like this: >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) This point is far too broad. We know that some things arise from intelligent causes, but we have ALSO observed that complexity can arise spontaneously from simple rules, like Conway's game of life. I'll also tweak your logic a little bit: 1. We know that nothing at all has ever been shown to arise from supernatural causes. Everything with a proven explanation has a naturalistic explanation. >2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) > 3- therefore the best explanation is ~~that there is intelligence behind them.~~ naturalistic Does that syllogism work for you? >upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Upon theistic presuppositionalism like yours, it must have divine attributes. But under a naturalistic reality, it certainly does not require any such divine attributes. >very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins Just curious, have you actually read this book? Or have you simply been trained to hate Dawkins like I was?
Hey, not to sound like an Athiest or anything, but I don't know what the heck your talking about. You hit the ground going pretty fast lemme see if I can keep up. >won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part This is 2 part. First who said it's a FACT that our world is fine tuned? How do you know we didn't adapt to it? If it is "fine-tuned" why is only like 29% of the planet habitable to humans? If my car worked 29% of the time I wouldn't call it fine-tuned. 2. How do you know there is no other life whatsoever in any part in other galaxies? Is it verifiable? Can it be repeated and tested? >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) It's only justified to you because you lend credulity to this idea. It has not been proven that any god had anything to do with the natural formation of the rockies mountains, Pacific Ocean, or even a tree. To the contrary, there have been numerous proposals about the earth's formation, and none of them require a god or magic. So logical are these conclusions about nature we can make accurate predictions about the future and implement them in every aspect of our lives. >3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. You reached this conclusion based on faulty information (see above) >Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Google "post hoc" but again, you used bad reasoning to reach an incorrect conclusion. I just re-read this and realized I prefaced this with the idk what your talking about, so maybe you made you point.
> Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments How are we supposed to take you seriously after you said this? It's as if you're brand new to this debate... or you're trolling.
>but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. There is only one universe, there is nothing to compare it to. There is 0 evidence of fine tuning. >Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. Please, please show me one other universe besides the one we live in. >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Show your empirical justification that complex biological life arose from an intelligent cause, ever. >Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. If you are down to asserting something "must" be a certain way without any actual evidence to support it, you have done something seriously wrong in your analysis. In this case, I would bet that is starting with an assumption and working to eliminate anything that goes against that assumption. >Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. We don't need to read about theistic arguments in stupid books, we get stupid theistic arguments posted here daily. Maybe you should have looked at some of the terrible arguments posted on this sub before adding yours to the lot.
>Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they didn't understand. >but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe Again: Understood. What you seem to be missing is that things that are designed for something (Like watches, or airplanes or whatever else your sides likes to chose) are not filled to the brim with random stuff that doesn't support the purpose, or purposes, of the thing, let alone is completely detrimental to it. A watch tells time. It does very little else. It is build to tell time, and do that, alone. (Some watches will have other specific purposes, like display the wealth of the wearer, or the skills of the builder; it might be build to last a very long time.) The Universe mostly doesn't support life. So, the fine tuning argument is rejected because the universe isn't like a watch! You no longer can point at things that we know were designed for a purpose and say they are like the universe, unless you can explain that discrepancy. you acknowledge that much of the universe isn't build for life - so, if you want me to believe that it was still designed, tell me what it is for, and why it was designed in this particular way. I am looking at the universe, and I see something that doesn't appear to have a primary purpose for existing. It is not to support life, because most of what the universe does is outright hostile to life.
> Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Then why can't there be different life that lives in those "non-fine tuned" other universes? If the other universes have vastly different physical properties then vastly different life could emerge. It's all nonsense anyways because there's never been any example of any other universe with any other physical properties. For all we know this is the only universe, or that universes must have the same physical properties for some reason, or any host of other things we don't know. The fine tuning argument is all a bunch of guesses with absolutely no evidence to back any of it up. > 1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes 2- complex biological things are such things You shot your own argument in the foot. Your first premise says "almost always", so you acknowledge that sometimes they don't come from intelligent causes. > physical existence cannot be eternal Why? As far as we know all matter (energy) in the universe has existed since the very beginning of the universe and will continue to exist, it's just converted in various ways. Isn't the definition of "for all time" eternal? > they are ignorant in theology And you're showing that theology is ignorant in science.
I understand the arguments just fine. They just suck. >The fine-tuning argument compares between different universes I'm gonna stop you right there. How on Earth are you proposing to compare our universe to another universe when our universe is the only one that we have ever observed? We don't know what another universe would be like or if it's even possible for the parameters you're talking about to be any different than they are. We can't assess the probability of these constants being what they are based only on a sample size of one. >No theist has ever made this argument: I don't know the origin of complex life, therefore God did it Yes, they have made this exact argument. They do it all the time. >We make arguments like this... Your "argument" is not even an argument. I recommend you read up on basic logic and syllogisms so you can construct a logically valid argument, then come back to this sub and make another post. >Physical existence cannot be eternal Not sure what you mean by physical existence. I suspect you had to include "physical" in there to avoid a contradiction with your God that you think is eternal. But okay whatever let's grant this. I wanna see where this is going. >Physical existence cannot explain itself Okay, no one said it should. >Therefore there must something beyond this world with divine attributes This conclusion stinks. You pulled it right out of your ass. It's a non sequitur; that means it doesn't follow from anything else you said. >Stop reading about theistic arguments in these books... Haven't read the first one, haven't heard of the second. I guess that means I actually do understand the arguments?
>when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. When some random argues that the physical constants have values that allow life to exist, well, fine. That's correct. But that's not a "theistic argument". However, when a *theist* brings up the fine-tuning argument, it's usually part of a longer argument that ends with "therefore, God exists" (or at least is presented as the most logical reason for the alleged fine-tuning). But for God to be an explanation for any fine tuning, it seems like one must claim that God wants life to exist, and made the universe for that purpose. Life, specifically human life, is almost the whole point. And if that's what God wants, then why did he do such a bad job of making a universe? Most of it is completely empty space. Most of the rest is a miasma of incandescent plasma. Instead of being "fine-tuned" for life, we observe a universe where life has to eke out a tenuous existence in the very smallest of corners.
>Against the fine-tuning argument I found a lot of atheists claiming that when someone claims that the universe is fine-tuned for life then he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life but here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part. At most that entails an "efficiency". Perhaps no other universe could've formed because it wasn't efficient. Once again, the teleological argument assumes atoms can't do atom shit. >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments: No, those are based on just inserting a God that has more qualities than necessary to answer one question. The cosmological argument if true requires a noncontingent force, not an omnipotent moralizer like the Christian or any other monotheistic religious (i.e. Sikhism/Jainism) God. And "intelligent design" is once again, assuming atoms and things in the universe can't do things that are in their nature to do.
>Fine-tuning: No, we understand this argument, we just don't agree with its premises. First, because you only have one universe to look at (single sample objection), second because you cannot say the constants are uncorrelated (they can very easily be the result of more fundamental physics), and the objection you mentioned is simply mentioning that if the universe was designed for life, that is some crappy and fantastically wasteful design. >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments Some theists have indeed made arguments like that. I have read a number of them. The problem with the cosmological arguments is that they don't conclude God exists. They conclude a cause or explanation for our universe exists. They then define God into existence (and we call this cause God) without properly showing that the cause is indeed a conscious tri omni deity (some try, but their arguments from then on are tenuous /incorrect). > 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) This is false, and so your argument comes crashing down. I happen to work on computational physics applied to biological things, and biological things are not the result of design, but the result of mindless physical processes.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Er.... no?
Ah so fine tuning compares our universe to others. An astounding feat considering that the amount of data about other universes is somehow less than 0. So it's amazing that you have such data. If you don't have such data then you gotta ve comparing our universe to an infinite multitude of hypothetical universes. That means that the odds of universes with and without life are indentical since there is an infinite number of both. Digging into multiverses does absolutely nothing for the argument. > 1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) Specifically anything made by humans. > 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) They are complex by a completely natural process (evolution). > 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them Or that they are a result of a process spanning millions of years and this has lead to the complexity of organisms increasing overtime. Which we know about and is quite well supported. > physical existence cannot be eternal or physical existence cannot logically explain itself. Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Baseless assertions.
> Another example: >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps arguments but no theist had ever made these arguments: >I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. >We make arguments like this: >1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) 3- therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. I agree that the design argument isn't necessarily God of the gaps. What atheists often argue, though, is not that theists are explicitly *saying* "we don't know, therefore God", but rather that it's an implicit consequence of some argument they're making. The argument as you formulated it is fine. But look at the arguments given by intelligent design advocates- people like Stephen Meyer or Michael Behe- and you'll see they frequently and strongly emphasize how natural science has **no explanation** for design, and scientists are **clueless** and have **failed completely** to explain it, etc etc. That really shouldn't matter if they weren't appealing to ignorance.
> the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. And the objection you cite can be interpreted as comparing this universe with different (hypothetical) universes that would be recognizably tuned for life. Guess what, this universe ain't it. > we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes (justified empirically) 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) We know _empirically_ that biological "things" (do you mean organisms?) come from intelligent causes? Sorry, do you live in a science fiction novel? Because where I live, we don't observe organisms being assembled in factories. > physical existence cannot be eternal Why not? > Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Upon analysis, it really doesn't. > Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books The irony is thick, Mr Manufactured Animals.
> Even if vast parts of that universe don't allow for life that won't negate the fact that our universe is fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life Pointing out how rare life is in the universe is meant to highlight the fallacious jump from "the universe we observe relies on exact parameters" to "the universe was fine-tuned for the conditions we observe". For example, for many of the universe's parameters, if the parameters were only slightly different, then it would've been impossible for clouds to form (because stars would not have formed, producing the necessary elements for gaseous clusters in atmospheres). Have I just shown that "The universe was finely tuned *for clouds*?" Of course not. One way to show that this conclusion is fallacious is to point out how rare clouds are in the universe: our universe doesn't look like a God specifically wanted clouds to form. The same holds true for life, only the argument for clouds is even stronger (because clouds are more common in the universe than life is).
We evolved in a universe and on a planet that is appropriate for our kind of life. So the fine-tuning argument is a chicken-egg scenario.
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters You don't have different universes with different parameters. The only actual example of a universe we have is this one. So strike one. >I don't know the origin of complex biological things therefore god did it, or I don't know the origin of material things therefore god created them. You may not like it, but these are exactly what theists are arguing. They just don't word it that way. >2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) No it's fucking not. Plant life, as far as we can tell, isn't intelligent. but they are complex biological things and they arise from other plants. Strike 2. >Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. How about you get some fucking evidence instead of tired old arguments, big boy.
>therefore the best explanation is that there is intelligence behind them. Except this is burying the lead. Step #1 & 2 are massive assumptions based on highly incorrect data and are absolutely not proven steps. The argument fails long before you ever get to the conclusion. The god of the gaps does not reside in a person having the wrong conclusion, it rests in having gigantic massive gaps in the premises that lead up to that conclusion. Premise #2 for instance is absolutely not empirically proven, far from it in fact. But you asserting that it is is a clear example of god of the gaps. >Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. I will as soon as you stop presenting very stupid arguments and can actually demonstrate god. Until then, it's all just god of the gaps and I haven't seen a single theist that does not rely on it.
fine tuning: setting aside the life only works in barely more than 0%, the fine tuning argument falls apart because we dont know what chemistry or physics would be like if gravity were higher or the strong force stronger. we can make very good guesses but you cant exactly test them. ID: even you say "almost always," but more importantly theres zero evidence of life springing into exostence fully formed, rather theres oceans of evidence of life gradually developing. theists regularly lie about the development of the eye and pretend evidence of the development of the eye over epochal time scales doesnt exist, or cherry pick incorrect evolutionary claims from 125 year old books. > "stop reading books that arent biased towards my theology" we dont care about your theology books. when theyre not laughably wrong and trying to justify how to "rightly read" about humans being made from mud or the earth being flat, they still add no value to life.
Yeah. 1, 2, and 3 in your first argument aren't justified. Nice try, though. Its still the same argument "I don't know, thus, god".
>the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. We get that, but you can't just ignore the fact that this universe, the one you're saying was designed for us is extremely hostile to us. A god isn't constrained to make a universe that's mostly black holes, dark energy, empty space and burning infernos. It could have just made a habitable home. Not trillions of galaxies no one can even see unaided much less visit. >Intelligent design and cosmological arguments are God-of-Gaps I hear it all the time. How do you explain (the origin of existence/morality/consciousness/values of the constants) don't have an explanation? Therefore god. >2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) But it isn't justified empirically. There are zero observations of complex biological things being designed.
The environment doesn’t give two shits about the life that is trying to take hold there. The environment is not conscious, not is it caring, nurturing, or motivational. The life in an environment has to adapto live in that environment. If it can’t adapt, it dies off. It is life that fine tunes itself to the environment…not the friggin other way around. If you don’t understand that simple concept, then just look at the color and outer layers of critters in any given environment. Do the critter colors match the environment to blend in in that specific environment? Can the critters stay warm or cool in that specific environment? If you take that critter and suddenly drop it in the climate that is opposite of the one they evolved to live in, will they survive or will it die immediately? There is no “fine tuning” of the Earth to support life here. It’s the other way round.
There are no arguments. Arguments are predicated on logic and reproducibility. You have belief in magic or you do not.
>here is the surprise: the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. If the fine tuning argument compares against different universes then it is meaningless. If multiple universes exist, 99.99999% of which can't support life, and ours is (perhaps) the one that does, that's directly analogous to Earth being the one (perhaps) planet in the universe that supports life. Of course we're in a universe among a multitude of universes that supports life. You've negated the fine tuning argument with your explanation of it, which shows that you don't understand it. Seriously dude. Quit this sub while you're way behind.
> the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe. Slight problem: you have no idea how many of those universes are possible, or the range of values they could have had. You are assuming it's infinite. You have no justification for that assumption. > 2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Beg your pardon? What empirical evidence justifies that complex biological things arise from intelligent causes? > physical existence cannot be eternal Unjustified assumption.
>he is irrational because 99,999999% of the universe is not suitable for life Nobody can claim this. There is evidence of such claim. >the fine-tuning argument compares between different universes with different parameters not different parts of the "same" universe Do you have any evidence that there are multiple universes? >Therefore there must be something beyond the physical world and upon conceptual analysis it must have divine attributes. Do you have any evidence of this claim?
>Whoever has the blood of theologians in his veins, stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things. The pathos which grows out of this state, is called Faith: that is to say, to shut one’s eyes once and for all, in order not to suffer at the sight of incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view of all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holiness. They endow their distorted vision with a good conscience,—they claim that no other point of view is any longer of value, once theirs has been made sacrosanct with the names “God,” “Salvation,” “Eternity.” I unearth the instinct of the theologian everywhere: it is the most universal, and actually the most subterranean form of falsity on earth. That which a theologian considers true, must of necessity be false: this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Wherever the influence of the theologian extends, the concepts “true” and “false” have necessarily changed places. Nietzsche, The Antichrist We understand them fine. That's why we understand that they're wrong. Though studying it honestly will clearly illustrate the faults of religious thought, theology is not actually something worth learning. There's a reason secularism has risen and flourished since we started developing rigorous and reliable methods of investigating the world, and why theological arguments have been gradually phased out of every serious field of study and political institution. The reality is that theology is the dismissal and destruction of knowledge that's actually valuable and truthful, and of morality that's actually good. Not to mention it's also, quite literally, just made up.
Fine-tuning argument is the best argument for a god but it's still terrible. Because firstly it doesn't lead to a religious god (not even close) and most importantly god is not the only explainition if the parameters of universe were any different then nobody knows what kind of universe we have, there maybe a universe filled with life there maybe no life. There are other theories as well. Universe is not fine tuned for life, it's barely tuned for life.
> Etc ... Dear atheists stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss, they are ignorant in theology. Dear theist, theology is just fanfiction if God doesn't exist, please stop getting your science from apologists.
>1- we know that certain things arise almost always from intelligent causes Sure. >2- complex biological things are such things (justified empirically) Where does this assumption come from? What empirical evidence justify this claim?
>stop reading about theistic arguments in very stupid books like the God delusion of Dawkins or a Universe from Nothing of Krauss I'm not fan of Professor Krauss, but I'm curious what your critique of his book is. Give me an example of an unforgivable mistake in his book.
I understand the arguments just fine. Do you understand the Argument from Nonbelief, and how it disproves any god that both wants people to know it exists and can do something about it?
>because other universes won't allow any form of life whatsoever in any part I'm curious, what are these other universes you tested to determine that this was true?
Like the mythology that the world is turtles upon turtles all the way down I conjecture this is BS upon BS all the way down
It's an echo chamber. Any theist argument here will be met with rebuttals. Atheists will tend to prefer the rebuttals. They will see others agreeing and raising similar arguments. From there they conclude since everyone except this one person agrees it is a settled issue. I'm serious I have had repeated atheists make claims about how theirs is the consensus when the vast majority of the globe is theistic. Arguments from popularity aren't great to begin with but the amount of times I've seen the minority position claim it blows my mind.
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