TE exegesis and meditations on the "design" passages.

[KBertsche]

No, I'm pretty sure the Anthropic Principle and the other things you mention are also part of ID arguments.

Yes, these arguments are used by ID folks, but also by non-ID folks. One of the proponents of anthropic principle arguments 30 years ago was Owen Gingerich, a TE who is critical of ID. (I highly recommend his excellent recent book, God's Universe.)

[KBertsche]

Well, if evolution is true, if mainstream science's ideas on abiogenesis are true, and if the Big Bang, etc. happened; then what we are left with is a universe that as far as it appears to our senses"created itself".

Whether or not the universe is capable of "creating itself" (or even operating autonomously on its own for a millisecond) is a philosophical/metaphysical question, not a scientific question. Whether or not it "appears to our senses" to have "created itself" depends on how one answers this question. Thus your claim that the universe "as far as it appears to our senses 'created itself'" is not a scientific statement, but a philosophical/metaphysical statement.

Now, it could be true that God was working through nature and behind it, but you could never prove that observationally because all you are seing and all you can see are the results.

Agreed. We can't prove God's existence from nature. But neither can we disprove His existence.

God is like a hidden pupeteer with invisible strings.

Your choice of words carries lots of unnecessary and questionable implications.

So in one sense Dawkins is right, the design is an illusion.

No--nothing above implies that design is an illusion--only that it cannot be proven.

Any account of nature and natural history written by an atheist and one written by a Christian are going to have to be identical, the difference can only come when we look at things in terms of philosophy and not science.

Agreed, in general.

It's only after we believe in God that we can acknowledge that the universe is the way it is for an overarching reason.

I disagree that we must come to an a priori belief that God exists to see that nature points to His existence.

Rather, simply allow the possiblilty that He may exist. Then treat the atheistic/naturalistic worldview and the theistic/biblical worldview as two possible "models". Which model is a better fit to what we see in nature?

[KBertsche]

The "fine-tuning" argument is questionable, as it seems to be a selective cherry-picking of the fact that most of the universe is actually quite hostile to life.

The anthropic principle has never claimed that the entirety of the universe is conducive to life. Rather, it claims that the odds are infinitessimal that any part of the universe could be conducive to advanced life.

For example, the expansion rate of the universe must be extremely fine-tuned to allow any sort of complex life. A more slowly expanding universe would have been too dense, would have remained too hot, and would have collapsed long before complexity could form (galaxies, planets, heavy elements). A more rapidly expanding universe would have spread out too quickly for massive stars and complexity to form. Without heavy elements, it is impossible to make the complex molecules (or anything analogous to them) which are essential for complex life.

[technomage]

The anthropic principle has never claimed that the entirety of the universe is conducive to life.

I'm aware of that--however, like all variants of the ID argument, the "fine-tuned universe" only examines the data in an anecdotal manner, touting the examples that agree while not even considering the data that does not.

I'm also aware that many of the assumptions (specifically including the "expansion" example you give) have been refuted by later work, such as F. C. Adams, or Roni Harnik.

[KBertsche]

I'm aware of that--however, like all variants of the ID argument, the "fine-tuned universe" only examines the data in an anecdotal manner, touting the examples that agree while not even considering the data that does not.

The anthropic principle was developed by non-ID folks. It is much broader than an ID argument.

I'm also aware that many of the assumptions (specifically including the "expansion" example you give) have been refuted by later work, such as F. C. Adams, or Roni Harnik.

Far from being "refuted", the extreme fine-tuning of the cosmological constant (1 part in 10^120) is accepted by cosmologists and is acknowledged to be an unsolved puzzle. Can you please give references to scientific papers (Adams or Harnik or others) which you think have have refuted this?

Note that the following widely-cited papers by Adams and Harnik specifically do NOT refute it:
F.C. Adams, "Stars in other universes: stellar structure with different fundamental constants," Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2008 (08): 010.
R. Harnik, G.D Kribs, and G. Perez, "A universe without weak interactions," Phys. Rev. D 74 (3), 2006, id 035006

(Apparently a number of dishonest or scientifically illiterate atheists have been grossly mischaracterizing these papers on the internet in an attempt to attack the extreme fine-tuning of the cosmological constant.)

Adams specifically says that his study was limited to star formation, and does not address the cosmological constant at all:

Fred Adams, JCAP 2008

This paper has focused on stellar structure properties.
...
In future work, another issue to be considered is coupling the effects of alternate values of the fundamental constants to the cosmic expansion, big bang nucleosynthesis, and structure formation. Each of these issues should be explored in the same level of detail as stellar structure is studied in this work.

© source where applicable

Harnik et al limited their study only to electroweak interactions. Regarding the cosmological constant they say:

Harnik et al, PhysRevD 2006

Considering a similar analysis for the cosmological constant, however, we argue that no adjustments of other parameters are able to allow the cosmological constant to raise up even remotely close to the Planck scale while obtaining macroscopic structure. The fine-tuning problems associated with the electroweak breaking scale and the cosmological constant therefore appear to be qualitatively different from the perspective of obtaining a habitable universe.

© source where applicable

In their paper they speculate that the 10^120 level of fine tuning might be reduced by about three orders of magnitude, to 10^117. This is still an extremely fine-tuned parameter! In other words, rather than refuting it, their work supports the fine-tuning argument for the cosmological constant.

[Kelp]

How so? Dennett makes this claim, but it's patently absurd. For the universe to create itself (whatever that means), it must have existed before it existed. For the universe to exist, there must be a transcendent cause of the universe. Furthermore, we have no good reason to believe that something can come from nothing, uncaused. That's essentially the kalam cosmological argument in a nutshell.

Then we look at the fine tuning of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. This is getting into territory I'm not well-versed in, but this include the rate of entropy, the rate of expansion, and so on. If any of these conditions were altered without a margin of error so thin that it might as well not even exist, the universe would have either imploded back onto itself or dissipate.

The point I'm getting at is that (at least as far as I'm convinced) by looking at the universe, we can surmise that God exists, is incredibly powerful, and incredibly smart. God needn't speak to us a word of this, we can deduce from the existence and design of the universe.

Yeah, I agree that there would have to be some sort of "eternality of matter" in that the singularity that became the Big Bang (or perhaps what became the multiverse, I believe the term is "quantum foam") could never have begun to exist without a First Cause. Of course, with eternailty of matter comes traversing the infinite so I tend to side with the Cosmological Argument for that reason.

I guess I should not have said "created itself" but rather "became what we see today by itself".

Then again, KB might be right. I'm still considering his post.

[shunyadragon]

The anthropic principle was developed by non-ID folks. It is much broader than an ID argument.


Far from being "refuted", the extreme fine-tuning of the cosmological constant (1 part in 10^120) is accepted by cosmologists and is acknowledged to be an unsolved puzzle. Can you please give references to scientific papers (Adams or Harnik or others) which you think have have refuted this?

Note that the following widely-cited papers by Adams and Harnik specifically do NOT refute it:
F.C. Adams, "Stars in other universes: stellar structure with different fundamental constants," Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2008 (08): 010.
R. Harnik, G.D Kribs, and G. Perez, "A universe without weak interactions," Phys. Rev. D 74 (3), 2006, id 035006

(Apparently a number of dishonest or scientifically illiterate atheists have been grossly mischaracterizing these papers on the internet in an attempt to attack the extreme fine-tuning of the cosmological constant.)

Adams specifically says that his study was limited to star formation, and does not address the cosmological constant at all:

Fred Adams, JCAP 2008

This paper has focused on stellar structure properties.
...
In future work, another issue to be considered is coupling the effects of alternate values of the fundamental constants to the cosmic expansion, big bang nucleosynthesis, and structure formation. Each of these issues should be explored in the same level of detail as stellar structure is studied in this work.

© source where applicable

Harnik et al limited their study only to electroweak interactions. Regarding the cosmological constant they say:

Harnik et al, PhysRevD 2006

Considering a similar analysis for the cosmological constant, however, we argue that no adjustments of other parameters are able to allow the cosmological constant to raise up even remotely close to the Planck scale while obtaining macroscopic structure. The fine-tuning problems associated with the electroweak breaking scale and the cosmological constant therefore appear to be qualitatively different from the perspective of obtaining a habitable universe.

© source where applicable

In their paper they speculate that the 10^120 level of fine tuning might be reduced by about three orders of magnitude, to 10^117. This is still an extremely fine-tuned parameter! In other words, rather than refuting it, their work supports the fine-tuning argument for the cosmological constant.

Being an unsolved puzzle, essentially makes it a draw for any argument. Statistical probability of a hypothetical anthropic principle is simply a guess from the human perspective, unless we could determine the actual probably range in reality of the cosmological constant. As Einstein paraphrased would say: 'God does not play dice.' which from einstein's perspective would be true if God(s) exist or not.

[MrManNo1]

I'm aware of that--however, like all variants of the ID argument, the "fine-tuned universe" only examines the data in an anecdotal manner, touting the examples that agree while not even considering the data that does not.

Are you saying that there is data that suggests that it's impossible for the universe to be conducive to life? If so, I'd be pretty interested in that argument.

All in all, though, it does seem that the universe needn't be conducive to conglomerated matter, let alone life. The fact that quarks, atoms, molecules, etc. can even come together in an orderly fashion is based on specific constants not being so strong that all matter clumps together indiscriminately or so weak that nothing ever sticks.

[technomage]

Are you saying that there is data that suggests that it's impossible for the universe to be conducive to life?

No--I'm saying that, based on the models, it is possible for universes that don't follow the physical laws of our universe to be conducive to life.

The fact that quarks, atoms, molecules, etc. can even come together in an orderly fashion is based on specific constants not being so strong that all matter clumps together indiscriminately or so weak that nothing ever sticks.

This is actually quite false, but often repeated. Consider Stenger's computer simulation "MonkeyGod." While it sounds a bit silly, it does demonstrate that there is nothing in physics that prevents the existence of matter over a wide range of differing physical laws. Not all sets of physical parameters will form matter (or, more importantly for life, form stars capable of nucleosynthesis of heavier elements), but about half of them do.

[MrManNo1]

This is actually quite false, but often repeated. Consider Stenger's computer simulation "MonkeyGod." While it sounds a bit silly, it does demonstrate that there is nothing in physics that prevents the existence of matter over a wide range of differing physical laws. Not all sets of physical parameters will form matter (or, more importantly for life, form stars capable of nucleosynthesis of heavier elements), but about half of them do.

Quite frankly, I don't see how Stenger's simulation proves that. It's a basic caricature of the universe in which he changes a handful of parameters. The real universe is vastly more complex then it appears his program is. Of course, I don't have access to the program (if you can find it, I'd be more than happy to play around with it), but judging from this paper, he didn't really say much of anything. The fact remains that his program only adjusts a few minor constants, and only looks at a small amount of responses to those changes (where's the section that asks whether or not a star can even form, let alone how long it'll last?).

Now, I don't usually argue fine-tuning, because I have no evidence that an infinite amount of universes don't exist (I personally don't think that is the case, unless they were all created, but I can't prove that), but to say that it ignores data that disagrees with it is simply not right, since there isn't really any definitive evidence either way.

[technomage]

Quite frankly, I don't see how Stenger's simulation proves that. It's a basic caricature of the universe in which he changes a handful of parameters. The real universe is vastly more complex then it appears his program is.

Actually, the complexity of the universe devolves to a very small number of physical constants--the complexity does not come from a large number of fundamental factors, it comes from a complex interaction of a fairly small number of factors.

[MrManNo1]

Actually, the complexity of the universe devolves to a very small number of physical constants--the complexity does not come from a large number of fundamental factors, it comes from a complex interaction of a fairly small number of factors.

You're talking to a physics major here. You don't need to tell me about physical constants. The truth is, though, what we know now is a lot more than the few constants he gave. It's a caricature, plain and simple.

Here is a list of constants we currently know. Granted, a lot of them are reducible or not particularly relevant (as far as we know), but to limit it to the few that it appears Stenger did is short-sighted, and seems to ignore that which doesn't agree with him.

[technomage]

The truth is, though, what we know now is a lot more than the few constants he gave.

We certainly do--but how many of them deal with the formation of matter, as opposed to being dependent upon matter already being formed?

[KBertsche]

No--I'm saying that, based on the models, it is possible for universes that don't follow the physical laws of our universe to be conducive to life.

This is true for some physical laws and constants, yes.

This is actually quite false, but often repeated. Consider Stenger's computer simulation "MonkeyGod." While it sounds a bit silly, it does demonstrate that there is nothing in physics that prevents the existence of matter over a wide range of differing physical laws. Not all sets of physical parameters will form matter (or, more importantly for life, form stars capable of nucleosynthesis of heavier elements), but about half of them do.

If one selects a limited set of parameters to vary, and restricts their range, it's not hard to find a combination where half of the sets will form matter (with the hidden assumption that the universe last long enough for it to do so).

But your comments do NOT apply to the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant. This must be tuned to a part in 10^120 to allow the universe to live long enough to become complex enough to support complex life.

[technomage]

If one selects a limited set of parameters to vary, and restricts their range, it's not hard to find a combination where half of the sets will form matter (with the hidden assumption that the universe last long enough for it to do so).

But your comments do NOT apply to the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant. This must be tuned to a part in 10^120 to allow the universe to live long enough to become complex enough to support complex life.

First and foremost, the small magnitude of the "cosmological constant" is not understood--we do not know why the constant is so small (especially when the zero-point energy of a vacuum should indicate a larger constant). Claiming that the constant is "fine-tuned" is a claim made in ignorance.

But if you wish to test your assertion, feel free. The code for MonkeyGod is available to be modified. Please be sure to give us the results.