Debunking the fine tuning argument

[skydivephil]

Hi I have made a video debunking the fine tuning argument for god. The link is here, hope you like:
[youtube]rt-UIfkcgPY[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt-UIfkcgPY

 

[DeistPrimate]

Excellent, well done!

Hope you don't mind I sent the YouTube link to our own Guillermo Gonzalez here at Iowa State, a Fellow of the Discovery Institute and advocate for invisible magic man tweeking of the universe.

 

[Luminous]

God fine-tunned that video.

 

[Meow Mix]

Excellent video! I recommend it for anyone who's passing by and reads the comments before they decide to watch it or not.

 

[Skeptisch]

Excellent video! I recommend it for anyone who's passing by and reads the comments before they decide to watch it or not.

I was just passing by and took your advice. This video makes so much sense but unfortunately only when it is watched by your own choir.

Carl Sagan said it best, again:
"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe".

 

[Revoltingest]

I was just passing by and took your advice. This video makes so much sense but unfortunately only when it is watched by your own choir.

Carl Sagan said it best, again:
"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe".

Some believers are amenable to challenging cogent arguments.
I know many who have been swayed by such arguments.
A suggestion to the video's author though....I think fundies prefer narration
by cute cartoon talking vegetables. The fetching young gal might scare some.

 

[Skeptisch]

Some believers are amenable to challenging cogent arguments. I know many who have been swayed by such arguments.

For a true believer blind faith in mostly fairytales is a virtue. Maybe the ones that are capable of being swayed by cogent arguments are not true believers?

 

[Revoltingest]

For a true believer blind faith in mostly fairytales is a virtue. Maybe the ones that are capable of being swayed by cogent arguments are not true believers?

I don't know. But the ones I know were once believers, & then they weren't.
This seems really popular among Catholics. Maybe it's a local phenomenon.

 

[Luminous]

Yes but the Catholic Church doesn't teach that it is YOUR fault that you believe, it teaches that it is THEIR fault.
So Catholic ideas become much less your ideas and much more an argument by authority, of which the lowly anti-agnostic Catholic Church truley has none, intellectually.

 

[Meow Mix]

Hi I have made a video debunking the fine tuning argument for god. The link is here, hope you like:
[youtube]rt-UIfkcgPY[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt-UIfkcgPY

I found the calculation about the longevity of black holes compared to baryonic matter interesting for a different reason, too. Lee Smolin postulates a theory of fecund universes (clearly, yet to be tested) in which universes are formed during the formation of black holes -- a consequence of some of the mathematics of loop quantum gravity (Smolin's specialty).

If so, it means universes which produce stable black holes are the most common since they are the ones that "reproduce." In order to have stable black holes you must be able to have stable degenerate matter and essentially this means working carbon chemistry in a roundabout way.

In essence, Smolin's idea of fecund universe predicts that black holes should be extremely stable, and that this has a side effect of allowing life to form.

However, it should be noted that there are some possibly possible universes (we aren't sure just how much the constants can differ at all -- for all we know they could only have specific values) wherein there would be more stable black holes without carbon chemistry. C'est la vie. Neat bedtime story, but unfortunately until it becomes more scientific via testability it will just remain on the sidelines.

On the plus side, LIGO is expected to be able to check some predictions of fecund universes, so maybe we'll get definitive falsification (or not) when LIGO is upgraded in the coming years. (It's going to have twice the sensitivity, I'm excited! It will reduce search times from years to days!)

 

[Frank Merton]

I read Smolin's book a long time ago, so my memory is fuzzy: he thinks the natural selection of universes is to maximize the number of black holes (and hence the number of child universes). To him the fact that life is possible in universes with lots of black holes is just a fortunate side-effect. To me the biggest problem with this is the idea that black holes produce new universes that are similar to, but not exactly like, the universe in which the black hole exists -- there is no basis that I know of for this presumption.

Why not hypothesize a set-up where the optimum is the actual production of life, on the assumption that life will sooner or later itself learn the physics needed to produce new universes. (It begins to look like this is not really all that difficult -- one need only "create" a virtual particle in a new space-time). Rather than hypothesize random factors (as in Smolin's arrangement) or some designing deity, all we need then is a few kids in a garage setting up the apparatus and then setting the characteristics for the new universes they start up. They would naturally gravitate toward those that make life.

 

[outhouse]

dude thats way to much imagination for real science sorry

 

[Frank Merton]

dude thats way to much imagination for real science sorry

There is no way to test such ideas, so they don't fall under the rubric of strict science. They are still useful when discussing religious ideas such as First Cause Deism -- by showing that there are alternative possibilities that are just as possible.