Fallacies in the Fine Tuning argument (challenge)

[leroy]

Do we?

“POPULATION: None. It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”​

Yes that is one of many absurdities/paradoxes of infinity……… this is the main reason I claim that infinity is a metaphysically impossible

​

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe


Seriously, though, the known universe (and we don't know how much unknown universe there is) has a radius of about 47 billion light-years. The only place that is known to inhabit life is the surface of a rock with a radius of about 6350 km. That's basically a rounding error at the 22nd decimal. So, to say that we live in a life permitting universe is a colossal exaggeration.

In the context of the article a life permitting universe is a universe where life is possible (a universe with satrs, planets, atoms, molecules etc.)

 

[Subduction Zone]

The problem is that such "methodology" can be used to believe anything


I don't require "arguments".
I require evidence.

I would not mind a proper logical argument for God but I have never seen one. The FT argument fails because it is essentially an argument from ignorance. It relies upon constants that have rather specific values and tries to use them as "evidence" for God. The problem is that we do not know why those values are those values, at least for the most part. When we do know why those values are those values we can eliminate them. An early example was shown by Keppler's Laws. There were clear mathematical similarities of orbits of planets around the Sun. We did not know why those orbits were all so fine tuned compared to each other until Newton developed his Universal Law of Gravitation. That explain orbits and as a result their relation in their ratios to each other and to how individual orbits worked. They were no longer "finely tuned". One of the FT's that creationists has been removed in the same way. One of the strongest examples was how fast they early expansion was. That was a problem that was solved by astrophysicists and is a result of General Relativity.

So are the rest merely natural artifacts of the universe? To be "Fine Tuned" implies that they could have been different. If we know why they are the value that they are then they are FT, but we do not even know if that is the case.

The short answer is the the FT Argument fails because it is just an argument from ignorance with unjustified assumptions as part of it.

 

[PureX]

At a glance, my objection to this "fine tuning as evidence of God" proposition would be that ALL tuning is evidence of God.

That anything exists at all is an astonishing feat in that it requires an extraordinary interjection of limitation into the limitless nothingness that must otherwise logically reign supreme. And whatever it was/is that interjects these limitations is being rightfully labeled "God".

I only object to "fine" tuning because it infers that "courser" tuning could have happened by some other means. And that is simply not a logical proposition.

 

[Subduction Zone]

At a glance, my objection to this "fine tuning as evidence of God" proposition would be that ALL tuning is evidence of God.

That anything exists at all is an astonishing feat in that it requires an extraordinary interjection of limitation into the limitless nothingness that must otherwise logically reign supreme. And whatever it was/is that interjects these limitations is being rightfully labeled "God".

I only object to "fine" tuning because it infers that "courser" tuning could have happened by some other means. And That s simply not a logical proposition.

How do you know that there is any "tuning" at all?

It seems that believers cannot even properly define their own terminology again.

 

[Heyo]

I only object to "fine" tuning because it infers that "courser" tuning could have happened by some other means. And that is simply not a logical proposition.

I object to "fine" tuning because it seems to be very course. According to Many physicists argue the universe is fine-tuned for life. Our findings question this idea, with different parameters the universe could have produced more life.

 

[leroy]

This is why I generally don't respond to orphan links like yours in the OP which you also posted in the other thread where I glanced at it, by which I mean links left as an argument contained somewhere in the link but not accompanies by an explicit statement of what is on the link leaver's mind. This is what frequently happens. I wrote the following to another poster last Saturday (source):

"orphan links, which means links left with no accompanying argument. I just don't bother looking at articles or videos offered as arguments rather than as support for an argument made by the poster for the reason you gave - it too often becomes tedious trying to guess which parts were of interest to the link leaver and what that person thought that they meant."

Unfortunately for me, I assumed that you were making the usual creationist argument that fine tuning implies an intelligent designer. My bad.

Here's why: The third sentence in your link contained, "The Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) for the existence of God ..." It also contained, "Swinburne argues that the probability that human bodies exist, given that the universe conforms to natural laws, is very low if theism is false, and not very low if theism is true" in the introduction.

I didn't read beyond that because this isn't a topic I consider interesting or important enough to invest that much time and effort in

Now it seems that you had something else on your mind. When will I ever learn - if the poster doesn't make his own condensed summary of the argument, ignore the link.

If you can make your case yourself. Be clear and specific. Explain why this topic is of interest to you and what you think it means, and I can address that.

Here is the post from the other thread you quoted here. For whatever your reason, you chose to not answer it there, but instead, brought it here: Evolution, maybe someone can explain?

And unsurprisingly, you ignored my argument that claiming a god fine-tuned the universe is saying that that god was constrained to discovering the fine-tuning parameters.

And, also unsurprisingly, you ignored the paragraph about supernaturalism - an answer to a question you asked on that thread: "why do you hold naturalism rather than theism?"

Sorry, Leroy, but this is unintelligible. Is "good" a misspelling of God two times? That seems unlikely given that what immediately followed these words was, "it is naïve to try to read Gods mind and predict what is he more likely to do." You didn't write "good's mind," so who knows what you mean here.

Do I dare assume that you meant God rather than good and answer only for you to tell me that that's not what you meant? All I will say about that is that if one does make those substitution, the resulting sentence is incorrect. Creationists claim that the universe needed multiple physical parameters to be within very narrow tolerance intervals for our universe to generate and support life and mind, and that this cannot be a coincidence or unintended, therefore an intelligent designer was the fine tuner.

If you're planning to go down another rabbit hole over this topic, you'll have to go without me. Here's what I'm willing to discuss with you:

The fine tuning argument is an argument for an intelligent designer. My answer is that fine tuning doesn't necessarily require an intelligent designer, but it does imply that if an intelligent designer was involved, it was constrained by natural laws that it needed to discover and conform to in order to create such a universe.

If that's not interesting to you - if you have some other tangent you'd like to go out on - then I think we're done.

Orphan links and ignoring arguments are among the things that make discussions with you much less than they could or should be as is this kind of careless writing not to mention nonresponsive comments and you not remembering seeing things posted to you multiple times. So much of your collocutor's time is wasted because of these habits.

Another problem I have with your posting is that it's difficult to tell what your greater point is, that is, why are you arguing this or that? Toward what end? I assume that it is to promote Abrahamic creationism, but you've denied that in the past without stating what else you claim it is. Why did you start a thread on fine tuning if not to imply an intelligent designer for the universe?

So how about it? Can you make your own arguments, write carefully, and respond to all salient points when you see them?

If the past predicts the future, I'm guessing that you'll ignore most of this post's claims, arguments, and questions.

-----

The fine tuning argument is an argument for an intelligent designer. My answer is that fine tuning doesn't necessarily require an intelligent designer, but it does imply that if an intelligent designer was involved, it was constrained by natural laws that it needed to discover and conform to in order to create such a universe.

If that's not interesting to you - if you have some other tangent you'd like to go out on - then I think we're done.

Well that part of what find confusing...................you said that you are interested in that one topic, (in red) but you make a long comment full of questions and sentences where you seem to expect an answer.

Should I answer to all the comments or should I focus on the one topic that you find interesting?


In any case my answer to your comment in red is:

1 Granted, FT doesn’t require a designer *necessarily* the argument is that design is the best explanation not that it is *necessarily* the correct explanation.

2 From the fact that God created a FT universe it doesn’t follow that God is constrained by the laws of nature………………Nobody is claiming that God *had* to FT anything … to use your example God decided to use gravity as a tool for keeping the planets in orbit, but he didn’t *had* to use gravity nor any other tool

If you want a robust reply to your objection you can read the article

Start reading here

“4.4. Objection D: God Wouldn’t Fine-Tune

This objection comes in a few flavours, but essentially argues that the picture of God fine-tuning the universe is inconsistent with the idea of God”

A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument

so do you see why your objection is based on a straw man? Do you see how your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premises?

If the past predicts the future, I'm guessing that you'll ignore most of this post's claims, arguments, and questions.

Aren’t you asking me to ignore everything except for the thing that interests you?........... this is not the first time we have issues caused by the ambiguity of your questions and requests

 

[leroy]

Imagine a puddle waking up and thinking, "This hole fits me rather neatly, must have been made to have me in it!"

That analogy is known to be false //

 

[Pogo]

That analogy is known to be false //

 

[sayak83]

@TagliatelliMonster made the following claim:


So I decided to challenge him and anyone who agrees with him to support the assertion.

The challenge is

1 read this article that describes a version of the FT argument

A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument

2 quote (copy paste) one logical fallacy or mistake or flaw in the argument

3 explain why you think that is a logical fallacy mistake or flaw






Well above you have an argument against naturalism, care to explain what it wrong with it? Please refute the actual argument presented in the article, not your straw man version of it


The article concludes, that naturalism predicts a non-life permitting universe………………so where did the author failed? If you think that he made 100 mistakes , then pick one (the biggest mistake) and explain why is it a mistake

Yes, it's absolutely wrong. The fallacy is that, with God, Anything can be life permitting. God can even make stones or stars or space-time itself, a living being with a soul and awareness. Hence you cannot even calculate the probabilities of a life permitting universe given God. Hence no comparison can be made.

 

[PureX]

How do you know that there is any "tuning" at all?

Because what exists is spectacularly organized and complex.

 

[RestlessSoul]

“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and electron. We cannot, at the moment at least, predict the values of these numbers from theory - we have to find them by observation…The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life…Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at their beauty.”

- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

 

[Heyo]

“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and electron. We cannot, at the moment at least, predict the values of these numbers from theory - we have to find them by observation…The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life…Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at their beauty.”

- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

[off-topic] The bolded part is known among physicists as the Fine-tuning Problem. The resulting Fine-tuning Argument is therefore a "God-of-the-Gaps" argument, because it relies on the momentary ignorance of the scientists. [/off-topic]

 

[RestlessSoul]

[off-topic] The bolded part is known among physicists as the Fine-tuning Problem. The resulting Fine-tuning Argument is therefore a "God-of-the-Gaps" argument, because it relies on the momentary ignorance of the scientists. [/off-topic]

Yeah, I see the distinction. I don't consider the fine tuning argument in itself to be a conclusive case for the existence of God, because I believe God cannot be apprehended with the intellect, but only with the spirit.

The fine tuning problem though, is imo. a convincing argument for our existence being so stsaggeringly improbable that it can reasonably be describes as miraculous. Dissenters may quibble with the precise meaning of words, of course; but if we use the principal that any event with a probability less than 1 in 10^70 can reasonably be dismissed as impossible, then our existence is at the very least, a statistical miracle.

Roger Penrose has calculated the probability of the initial low-entropy conditions of our universe occuring spontaneously, at 10^10^123 btw.

Teleological Argument and Entropy

 

[Heyo]

@TagliatelliMonster made the following claim:


So I decided to challenge him and anyone who agrees with him to support the assertion.

The challenge is

1 read this article that describes a version of the FT argument

A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument

2 quote (copy paste) one logical fallacy or mistake or flaw in the argument

3 explain why you think that is a logical fallacy mistake or flaw






Well above you have an argument against naturalism, care to explain what it wrong with it? Please refute the actual argument presented in the article, not your straw man version of it


The article concludes, that naturalism predicts a non-life permitting universe………………so where did the author failed? If you think that he made 100 mistakes , then pick one (the biggest mistake) and explain why is it a mistake

The article - and your challenge - make two distinct arguments.

1. Under naturalism (whatever that is, he doesn't give a definition *), the probability of a life-permitting universe to form is small.
2. The good ol' FTA (with #1 as a premise).

(* "In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe." - Naturalism (philosophy) - Wikipedia He can't mean this one, as this kind of naturalism only cares about the existing universe and says nothing about how it came to be.)

To keep things well separated, I'll grant the author - and you, in your challenge - that #1 is basically correct.

I don't think that, even if I give you #1, the arguments against the FTA change significantly.


As for the challenge to find specific sentences, I did so in my first response. Finding more in the text is hard, as it is all interwoven, and he doesn't make many more directly quotable logical fallacies. (Because he doesn't make many more quotable arguments.) I'd have to quote entire paragraphs, extract the assertion, and show how that is fallacious.

So I return the challenge.
#1 Read the article.
#2 Copy (or summarize) an argument you want to make.

I especially want to encourage you to read the objections again. I haven't read them all, but it seems that he doesn't really have an answer to the Multiverse objection. I'd stress that one especially, if you want to make an FTA.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

As described in the article, the argument is intended to be an argument against naturalism, not in favor of theism

Dude.......................

Literally the first sentence in the article:

Abstract​

A new formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) for the existence of God is offered

The claim in the article form the OP is that Naturalism predicts a life prohibiting universe over a life permitting universe……………………given that we live in a life permitting the universe, naturalism failed in its prediction and thus FT can be counted as evidence against naturalism.

From the face of it, that doesn't sound correct.
How does the article claim that "naturalism" supposedly "predicts" a "life prohibiting" universe?

Don't make me hunt for it.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That is a good point, if naturalism is true we shouldn’t have mental abilities that have no short-term survival/reproductive value …………. We shouldn’t have the ability to date fossils as you said or even wonder about the big philosophical questions

That makes zero sense and I already addressed in this thread how that doesn't make sense.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

All the author is saying is that under naturalism life prohibiting universes are much more likely to occur than life permitting universes ,

And what evidence supports this claim?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The author concludes that under naturalism it is overwhelmingly more likely to have a life forbidding universe under naturalism

How does it "conclude" that? What is the evidence in support of this claim?

it is important to mention the fact that the author is not making an argument for God, but rather an argument against naturalismµ

As I pointed out earlier, this is not what the opening sentence of the abstract states.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

In order to create a microscope humans had to evolve very complex brain, this excess of complexity has no immediate selective value therefore it is unexpected to evolve (given naturalism)
In other words given naturalism (and evolution by natural selection) organisms aren’t expected to evolve abilities that serve no immediate selective advantage

Human brains didn't evolve to build microscopes.
The ability to built microscopes is a side effect.

Increased intelligence and tool-building in general, was very much a selective advantage of our social ancestors.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Because what exists is spectacularly organized and complex.

Argument from awe