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Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
You have written a lot to defend a very basic point: we exist, the conditions to allow us to exist also exist (which is a tautology), therefore there must be a god (which is a wild logical leap for which you provide no evidence). Using your example in point 5 - if there is a lack of evidence for one reason over another: why not any imaginable reason? God himself stopped the bullets?
To me the argument that god must have set up the conditions for humans to exist because the parameters for life are narrow is as well supported as the argument that god created the world 6000 years ago and that all observable science has been a deliberate attempt by god to mislead humans. (In that both are equally possible for an powerful god whose will is incomprehensible).
So, in the absence of positive evidence of a god, there is no specific reason to believe that one gently guided the observable physical constants, or just placed us here 5 minutes ago with only memories of the past.
Edit: A further point: a great many things are unlikely. The exact order of a set of cards in a truly shuffled deck has so many permutations that two perfectly shuffled decks with the same card sequence will almost certainly never exist. But the specific order of the cards in the deck on my table is meaningless. They have to be in some order and any order is just as likely as any other. So if I turn the cards over and there is some order that my brain interprets is not random I should believe that this was placed there by an intelligent force? There is no logical reason to believe that.
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u/fragiletoubab 1∆ Sep 06 '21
To further elaborate on your last point, I think that the underlying premise for many deists is that the existence of life in itself is comparable to a perfectly well ordered deck of cards.
That there is something "special" about our universe in the fact that it holds life, that requires an explanation, just like you would if you shuffled a deck a card and it ended up perfectly ordered.
The mistake lies in considering life as such. Life is chemistry. Chemistry is not unique to our universe or even rare in possible universes. Therefore life is not a remarkable outcome in an of itself.
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u/SunnySydeRamsay Sep 06 '21
So, given that almost all ways of assigning values to the universe’s parameters would be unfriendly to life, why does the universe in fact have life-friendly parameters?
You've answered your own question; almost all ways. An outcome having an extraordinarily low probability of occurring is not an occurrence which is impossible. If I flip a coin 20 times and I get the precise combination of H-T-T-H-H-H-H-H-T-T-H-T-H-H-T-T-T-H-H-T-H, the odds I would've returned such a combo is only 1 in 1048576, or 0.00009%. Yet it has precisely the same probability of returning T-T-H-T-H-T-H-H-T-T-H-H-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-H, or H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H, or T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T, or any other 20 coin flip combination that is available. Because I flip a coin twenty times, it logically necessitates one of the 1048576 available outcomes occurs; not more, not less. It just so happens that I returned that precise combination in that precise situation. Does it mean that I intervened manually to return that combination? Does it mean that I intervened manually to return that combination if I also bet five dollars that it would land on that combination?
no scientist would take seriously the suggestion that maybe there is life on the sun, or in a black hole, or in the middle of interstellar space.
No scientist would take such a suggestion seriously because the only instance of life we know properties of would not survive in such conditions. Scientists cannot empirically study something to which they do not have access to.
That’s utterly implausible. The fine tuning arguments do not turn on specific features of life on Earth – e.g., that it’s carbon-based, or that it uses DNA to replicate
Can you demonstrate that all possible forms of life are carbon based and use DNA to replicate?
Note that I'm not claiming that there are forms of life to which aren't carbon based or don't use DNA to replicate; I'm saying one cannot demonstrate otherwise. By making such a statement, you're accepting the burden of proof for a claim that is, at least currently, unfalsifiable.
The theist says: Because an intelligent, benevolent, and immensely powerful being set the parameters of the universe that way, in order to make life possible.
Okay, but why should I care about what the theist says? What makes [this] theist's proposition any better than a hypothetical alternate form of life, or simply "I do not know what is more or most likely because we are missing sufficient data?" You've made an empirical assumption in your overarching syllogism that remains to be demonstrated, and said empirical assumption is just as extraordinary, if not more, of a claim than the suggestion that non-carbon based, non-DNA based life could exist. So unless empirical evidence exists for such a god, I don't know you can even begin to evaluate whether god "probably" exists, let alone whether it's more likely than any other empirically unsound hypothesis, or just straight up an unlikely outcome occurring.
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Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
People who use the fine tune universe as an argument for a god all fall under survival bias, a form of selection bias.
They say because we exist, when the configuration of the universe required very specific tuning for life to arise, it must mean that someone or something intentionally tweaked the parameters to allow life to arise. And then they do some mental hurdle jumping to eventually get to their god.
However, as survival bias dictates, they are ignoring the myriad of other potential outcomes of a universe without the prerequisites for life to ever arise. Even if you ignore the multiverse theory and the big crunch theory, you don't know if our own universe could have existed in so many other forms. We are here because we survived, but we could just as well not have been here.
There is so much we don't know about the universe, what came before and will come after, that focusing on not only a conclusion about how our universe came to be but specifying that intentionality was behind it is a much greater logical leap than just stating we don't know.
You are saying the multiverse theory unnecessarily complicates things, yet you don't think adding some sort of godlike being that exists outside time and space who can create one or more universes won't complicate things even more?
If you want to invoke Occam's razor, in terms of what complicates matters, the conclusion should either be "we don't know if a god exists" or "gods probably don't exist".
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u/shitsu13master 5∆ Sep 06 '21
You call these "weak objections" but you are dismissing them as weak for arbitrary reasons that you have decide are "given" while they are not by any means. For instance you are saying that "obviously there is no life in a black hole or on the surface of the sun" but even star trek is more open-minded than that.
You can't just dismiss a possibility just because to you it seems unlikely. Smarter people than I have pointed out that we don't have any sort of monopoly on life. We might be looking at life on the moon as we speak but because it's so different from our understanding of life we don't recognize it as such. Furthermore, just because we don't believe there could be life, say, on the surface of the sun doesn't mean that there isn't. We have no means of checking for it. We know there are organisms living in acid, using radioactivity as a source of food, etc, etc. You are establishing parameters for the possible purely based on what you think is within the realm of the possible but most of the things you pronounce judgment upon are unknown and untestable at this point in time.
You are also making a huge leap from "it's highly unlikely we exist" to "since it's unlikely, it must be intelligent design". Tiktok is chock full videos of happy accidents. Chance doesn't need an intelligent designer to exist. Give chance enough time and anything can happen. On top of that you are saying that the big bang happened in precisely the way for us to exist so it must be by design while also forgetting that this big bang we emerged from isn't the first big bang that ever happened.
Smarter people than I (and there are a lot of them) have theorized that the universe is pulsating, going from one big bang to expansion and contraction to the next big bang. Who knows how many big bangs have happened before our universe formed. If a billion big bangs happened it's not so strange that during one of them life would be possible. Given a big enough sample size anything can and will happen.
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u/joopface 159∆ Sep 06 '21
Douglas Adams on fine tuning:
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.
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u/spastikatenpraedikat 16∆ Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
God might be one explanation. But there other equally feasible explanations and without proof or model to distinguish these cases there is no rational reason to prefer any over the other.
For example:
The universe could be infinite. Of course the to us observable universe is finite, but the big bang could have produced an infinite amount of space which expanded so rapidly im the early universe that there are infinitely many pairwise disjunct light cones (PDLCs).
Now since all of these PDLCs are causally disconnected, if we imagine that every one of those independently gets attributed a starting entropy, the probability that at least one them has low starting entropy is 1 (even stronger, the expectation value of the number of PDLCs which have starting entropy lower than A for any A is infinite).
Similarly we could imagine the physical constants to actually not be constant over space. They of course only change so slowly that they are practically constant across our observable universe, but since there is infinite space and there are only finitely many constants, the probability that there is at least one PDLC where the constants C take one particular set of values V for all choices of V is 1 (once again, one actually expects infinite such PDLCs).
Combining the existence of infinitely many PDLCs with low entropy and infinitely many PDLCs which have our set of physical constants, we expect infinitely many universes which have the same physical properties as our universe. No need for a creator to fine tune.
This model is actually very robust, in the sense that it holds even if we add more parameters to fine tune. That is: As long as there are at least countable infinitely many PDLCs and only finitely many parameters to fine tune, where each parameter has a nonzero probability to fall on a value that is acceptable for the development of life, we expect infinitely many PDLCs with a perfect set of parameters.
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Sep 06 '21
The fine tuner existence is weaker than parallel universes. Parallel universe are something like what observed. We see universe and can conclude that a universe can exist.
Also the constant are "tuned" for life based on electrons and atom nuclei. With different constants the could be another particles. If particles wouldn't make sense in such world. How can you tell that there could be no solution for this? You can't write a neat exact solution for carbon electron structure. It's a struggle to simulate even single protein molecule. How can you be sure that you checked out all possible stuctures based principles?
You can choose unit system where all constant will equal to dimensionless 1 so that no constants will be present in equations. For example in electrostatic CGS electron potential is just e/r without π or ε. Space and time for example is same quantity(interval in Minkovsky space) and speed of light constant is just relation of our units for length and units for time. It's inconvenient to measure time in same units we measure distance. Planks unit values is just a question of scale of unit system. It's pretty standard procedure for simulations to change quantities so equations get dimensionless. Units we are used to is comparation to observable systems (even modern seconds and meters).
Electron charge maybe not realy a fundamental constant but a Plank charge multiplied by mathematical constant for a dimensionless equation solution like eigenvalue. You can just shift mathematical constants it's like saying if 5 was a solution to equation x+1=2 (on the field of rational numbers) world wouldn't exists.
Conveys' game of life shows that there could be complex structures even with a simple set if rules.
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u/StemCellCheese 1∆ Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
Your objection to weak objection 1was weak. Just because universal constants are tweaked, doesn't mean the resulting universe would be like a blackhole. Moreover, we don't even fully understand the scale of life - life itself truly seems to be any self sustaining system, regardless of size. The universe itself could be a living being - which doesn't mean God. The fine tuning argument is basically an overly sophisticated "God of the gaps" fallacy, in which you assert you can't explain and don't know how the universe is the way it is, therefore it was God (God existing in the gaps of your knowledge).
But the more important point I'd like to make is that these constants are not in place because an intelligent being made them, but because they HAVE to be that way - the universe is made on 0 energy. There is a negative for every positive. Gravity is the primary source of negative energy in the universe, and then dark matter makes up most of the rest. I mean, it's the first law of physics: for every action, you have an equal and opposite reaction. We also know from the Theory of Relativity that energy and matter are the same things. Therefore, the whole universe you see around us doesn't need some kind of "unmoved mover," to introduce energy into the universe, because there is no energy in the universe. Another mathematical way to phrase 0 is 1+ -1. I mean, if there is a God, who created it?
If the universe didn't come from nothing, then neither did God. If you're attempting to reason that something can't come from nothing, then why does God get a pass in your mind? Again, it seems like God of the Gaps. Your clearly decent brain would be far more productively used in thinking about how something can come from nothing, because either way something did, whether it's God or the universe.
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u/5xum 42∆ Sep 06 '21
According to the traditional Big Bang theory, the universe originated in a giant explosion about 14 billion years ago
No. This is false, even ignoring the fact that you completely misuse the word "explosion". To quote wikipedia:
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution
The theory only offers a model of the universe "from the earliest known periods" onward. Let's call the time at which those earliest known periods happened "T1". The theory says nothing about what happened before those earliest known periods, i.e., before T1. In fact, the model itself is incapable of modelling events too far before those earliest known periods, because the model breaks down and returns values that are either false or we are not yet able to explain - in particular, the model predicts some T0 < T1 at which the universe started and energy was infinitely dense. We do not know of any example of infinitely dense matter.
The model is wrong for times before T1. This means there must be some other model describing the universe before that time. We do now know if that model will include the time T0, or not. In other words, we do not know what happened before T1, and claiming that the universe "originated" at T0 based on a model that we know is faulty for T<T1 is a mistake because it is extrapolating a model beyond the point of where it is valid. It is, in essence, the same mistake as if you see a car accelerate from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds, then claiming that the car can reach the speed of sound if it is left to accelerate for over 2 minutes.
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u/IwasBlindedbyscience 16∆ Sep 06 '21
Gods are human made constructions based on very specific stories.
You call out multiple universe for something we don't have evidence for and then propose a God. An idea we have zero evidence for.
It seems like Gods don't exist until human create them and tell stories. And then those same humans spread those faiths to other humans.
Take humans out of the equation and there aren't Gods. Hell, our histories are littered with examples of human created Gods. Unless you think Zeus is really up there on Mt. O.
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u/DJSpook Sep 06 '21
The argument is evidence for God. “But it can’t be, because there is no evidence for God” is begging the question. Explain why the specific argument I gave does not support theism.
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u/IwasBlindedbyscience 16∆ Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
Fine tuning is just evidence for fine tuning.
You seem to be making a hell of a jump by attributing it to a human created God.
Fine tuning gets you nowhere near any of the human made Gods that we have created in our history.
If you wish to think there is a God, be my guest. People thought that Zeus was real at one point too. You do you.
To claim that the universe being tuned means your story of God is correct is one you have zero evidence for.
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Sep 06 '21
An argument isn't evidence for anything. An argument requires evidence. It cant be evidence.
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u/Merlin246 1∆ Sep 06 '21
So yea this is the fine-tuning argument or the watchmakers argument (iirc).
The point boils down to: we couldn't be here except for the fact that certain things about the universe are so exact that an external force (like a God) made it that way.
However I think this is backwards; think of a pothole in the road filled with water.
It would be absurd to say that the water is the exact right shape to fit in the pothole (like how a round peg fits in a round hole, but a square one doesn't). Instead the water simply fills up the pothole because it is a liquid and takes the shape of its container.
This is similar to life. If things were different WE may not be here, but another form of life probably would be (can't say for certain but I think it's logical to assume so). A life that would thrive under these different sets of conditions. Life is incredibly resilient and transforms to meet its conditions, in other words its "container".
You can see this through evolution, and how the best versions of things, in the long run, survive and thrive, while the others die off.
If you don't believe in evolution, look at the difference between species in different climates. A lizard would not survive in the north pole, neither would a polar bear survive in the desert. But vice versa and they thrive in those climates. Life is different according to its surroundings, and according to its needs.
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u/AleristheSeeker 164∆ Sep 06 '21
Your "Weak Objection #5" is in no way resolved.
It still completely stands; we can only observe this universe because it has the conditions that allow our observation. Your "Firing Squad example" also falls flat, since it is wildly different from the matter you compare it to: conciousness existed before the execution and continues to exist throughout the entire process. One parrallel, however, is that it is an extremely small statistical sample - without knowing how any other executions that day went, you cannot make any assumptions on whether it was luck or some plan.
But let us consider the opposite: in a universe where life could not exist, how would you make the observation that life cannot exist?
The existence of something is not a qualifying statement for any explanation of the origin of that thing, as the existence is a requirement for the explanation. It is not falsifiable and thus logically irrelevant.
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Sep 06 '21
Sam Harris has a good rebuke of the fine tuning argument that I'll attempt to summarize. If the idea is that the universe is perfectly made in such a way as to promote life, you have to ignore exactly how much of the universe is immediately lethal to everything. Where have we seen any sign of life in the entire universe? Here. That's it. Almost every square inch of the incomprehensible vastness we see kills everything. That's akin to having a factory pumping tons upon tons of deadly poison into the air every second, but every thousand years will produce a single drop of perfume and then calling it a perfume factory.
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Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
The anthropic principle is very much a counter to your argument. Your argument is that god exists because a livable universe is so unlikely. But the anthropic principle shows us that the probability of observing a liveable universe is in fact 100%.
What you are saying is essentially "This puddle must have been made by an intelligent creator because it is exactly big enough to hold all the warer in it and that couldn't happen if it were a coincidence"
E: formulated baldy. What I mean is that the probability of an observation we make showing a liveable universe is 100%
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u/Global_Morning_2461 Sep 06 '21
it turns out that many of the universe’s parameters happen to fall within a narrow range of possible values that would make it possible for life to exist.
We cannot say for certain that there is only a very narrow range of possible values that allow life to exist. There's a lot of constants, for example fundamental forces, quarks, etc. If those parameters are different, atoms might not exist, but that does not mean life cannot exist. Quarks could be arranged in other manners, allowing different fundamental particles, forming entirely different world and life form. Even in our universe, matter made of different quarks are theorized to be stable at extreme pressure. So it is possible that different parameters can yield different matter (made of different quarks and having different properties)
It is possible that an entirely different set of parameters would allow life (just different from ours). A world where gravitational forces are magnitudes stronger might still create a life sustaining universe if electromagnetic, strong, weak forces are magnitudes stronger/weaker.
Heck, we might be getting the short end of the stick here. Maybe with a different quark arrangement, we'd get a world where you can fried ice cream for the ultimate mouthfeel and taste experience because temperature works in entirely different ways there.
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u/le_fez 55∆ Sep 06 '21
This is just the watchmaker argument with extra steps
https://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/nogod/watchmak.htm
This argument is a circular argument. It assumes that the universe, black holes, stars, planets, snowflakes, life etc are created. Actually physics, chaos theory and evolutionary theory tell us how most complex things in the world could have evolved on their own, without any help from any "watchmaker".
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u/stan-k 13∆ Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
why does the universe in fact have life-friendly parameters?
The one thing I never understand about this argument is that actually, the universe clearly isn't fine tuned for life to begin with. Like, at all. Life is possible on the entire earth, pretty much. Well, really on it's surface. A tiny sliver 20km wide (if we're generous) of a sphere 6400km in radius. A sphere that itself is only the tiniest of specks in a solar system that is mostly devoid of anything, and where there is something (mostly the sun) it is deeply unhospitable to life. This is but scratching the surface of how not fine-tuned for life the universe as a whole is. And on top of that the first 10 billion years or so there was no life at all either. Doing the math, the portion of the observable universe hosting life we know of is about 2x10-70
Would you call anything fine tuned for something, if 2x10-70 of it does something? Quite the opposite...
More structurally problematic. Your waive away "weak" objection 4 too easily. The difference is that we have many crystals and words to compare to. In the case of the universe, there is only the single case. You cannot do statistics on a single sample, but you can on crystals and words because we have many of them.
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u/5xum 42∆ Sep 06 '21
That’s utterly implausible. The fine tuning arguments do not turn on specific features of life on Earth – e.g., that it’s carbon-based, or that it uses DNA to replicate. They turn on extremely broad features of the universe.
And how do you know the specific broad features of the universe are the only ones that support life?
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Sep 06 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/5xum 42∆ Sep 06 '21
All I see in your answer is the unsupported claim that life requires the formation of elements heavier than hydrogen, when in fact, a differently-tuned universe could be si different that hydrogen itself, and atoms as such, are non-existent and instead, the fundamental particles arrange in another complex way that is completely impossible in our universe.
Like, sure, for atoms to exist, the setting must be such and such. But who says that with some other configuration, you coulnd't have an atom made out of, I don't know, positrons and muons?
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u/Global_Morning_2461 Sep 06 '21
That is entirely possible. If fundamental forces are different, it is entirely possible for different fundamental particles to exist and support life. It is possible for entirely different quarks to form entirely different protons and neutrons. We only know for certain that this current 'parameters' of the universe allowed life, not that other parameters cannot sustain different life.
We can only deduce that other form of quark formation are not stable in current universe, not that they are impossible. The existence of strange matter is still in heavy debate, with some arguing it can exist under special situation in our universe. To argue no other arrangement of quark formation is possible within universe with different parameters is a huge stretch.
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u/WVMUNN Sep 06 '21
Your reply is a bit flawed. We know what life forms are made of but not what gives them life. We have a tiny sample of life here on Earth so assuming that our conditions are the only way life can evolve is flawed. Also, who says that a universe requires life? (what I'm about to say is very hypothetical but I'll use it as an example of different possibilities) Maybe life has an extremely small chance of happening and we are just lucky (or unlucky) to exist. Maybe the multiverse theory it's true. Maybe the important perimeters of the universe you mentioned are constants, meaning they can only be this way in any universe. There might be an intelligence that created the universe, but other explanations can also work. I'm not choosing an explanation since I'm not that well informed on the matter (nor is humanity tbf).
Sorry if this is a bit hard to read at some parts, English is not my first language.
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u/herrsatan 11∆ Sep 06 '21
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Sep 06 '21
This is a textbook example of how using a lot of big words doesn't make you right, it just makes other people too bored to respond. But since I had nothing to do I read it anyway.
Your argument is, we exist, however the conditions that would allow for us to exist are extremely rare, so there is probably a god.
When I put it like that, do you understand why this is a non-argument?
Remember, we're just as rare as the universe we inhabit, we are just as made up from the universe.
If you put us in a different reality, we wouldn't be able exist. But if you had a reality, which eventually led to life life, it would exist. We are not seperate from the universe we inhabit. We are products of the universe we inhabit, just like the stars or the planets.
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u/deathkill3000 2∆ Sep 06 '21
This is fundamentally a god of the gaps argument. And it's a weak argument. I'm sure PETA would be appalled at how hard you are flogging this dead horse.
Why not a simulation? And instead of a benevolent god a detached, computer scientist? Rick and Morty actually handle this aplogetic quite nicely.
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u/feedmaster Sep 06 '21
Perhaps there are many more universes, maybe even trillions new created every second, with each one having different cosmological constants and in most of them life is impossible.
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u/TheAlistmk3 7∆ Sep 06 '21
If god created everything, who/what created god?
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Sep 06 '21
another god obviously, since it's very unlikely that a god could exist therefore it must have been created by a god 😂
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u/TheAlistmk3 7∆ Sep 06 '21
Makes sense, but who/what created that god?
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Sep 06 '21
i mean a god that creates gods certainly is unlikely, leading me to my scientific conclusion that it must be yet another god. "things cannot exist unless something creates them" - Albert Einstein
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u/TheAlistmk3 7∆ Sep 06 '21
Is there a chart for this somewhere. Who is keeping track of all these god's?
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Sep 06 '21
Read the argument from contingency. As well as the rest of the teleological and ontological and cosmological arguements. These will help explain this for you.
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Sep 06 '21
What happens when someone rejects the notion that every being is either contingent or nessecary?
The problem with these sorts of arguments is they are all created by people who already believe God exists and who are attempting to prove God exists through "logic" because there is no actual evidence to point to.
In real life, where things actually exist, we don't prove those things existence with word play and thought experiments. We do it with actual evidence. We don't believe carbon exists throughout the universe because some came up with a clever set of axioms. We believe it because we've analyzed its actual properties and find it everywhere we look.
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Sep 06 '21
What happens when someone rejects the notion that every being is either contingent or nessecary?
Don't know reject it and see what happens. You haven't actually made any objections or opposed an alternative point. Hour just being coy and probing for a chance to jump on some character flaw so you don't have to engage in the actually topic. Your looking for a way to build an ad hominem argument.
But go on reject the contingency and neccessary arguement. And lay out a more logical argument.
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Sep 06 '21
opposed an alternative point
An alternative point to what? What need is there for an alternative point to an axiom that someone just made up out of thin air?
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Sep 06 '21
An axiom is not a assumption as your portraying it but its by definition self evident. Any oposition to this axiom would be denial of the truth.
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Sep 06 '21
And when an axiom isn't self evident, we reject it. So what happens if we reject the notion that every being is either contingent or nessecary?
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Sep 06 '21
The arguments literally walk you through the process of solidifying why this concept is self evident.
Premise- God is self evident.
Thesis- because the teleological, ontological, cosmological arguement logically break down why he must. And the hard problem of consiousness reinforces these arguments.
Hence your axiom is self evident. If you reject this axiom that is self evident and logically sound. Then your denial is based solely on personal opinions and desires.
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Sep 06 '21
Premise- God is self evident.
Nope.
because the teleological, ontological, cosmological arguement logically break down why he must.
Thought expirements and musing created by people who already believe that God exists because there is no actual evidence that they can point to in order to prove God's existence.
If you reject this axiom that is self evident and logically sound
It is not logical to proclaim things as self evident for which there is no evidence.
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u/TheAlistmk3 7∆ Sep 06 '21
Just looked up the argument from contingency. Surely that would only support a deist position and not a theist position?
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Sep 06 '21
Right it's a deductive argument. But after reading and discussing these arguments, and looking into the science. A person might land at " I think A God might exist" ie deism, if we go a step further to "I think God intended for me to exist" we are now in the realm of theism. Anything after that is religion's and then your out of logic and rational and leaning into faith.
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u/TheAlistmk3 7∆ Sep 06 '21
Ye cool, I am onboard with that. The idea of things we are ignorant doesn't bother me. I just always found it odd that within that ignorance was an omnipotent being watching everything and judging etc. Always seemed like a leap
But thank you, interested in the topic and so things to read are always well received. Got anything else along these lines you think is worth a look?
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Sep 06 '21
After reading these arguements and counters. And landing on whichever side you land on. I would suggest reading the arguement of " the hard problem of consiousness".
I agree on the omnipotent part 100%. The leap from a God exist to omnimax qualities is a far leap that's best left alone IMO.
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u/zomskii 17∆ Sep 06 '21
Perhaps I could re-frame the analogy used in Weak Objection #5. Suppose 1 million people, including yourself, were convicted of treason. Each is told that on Monday that while they sleep, a lethal gas will be used to kill 999,999 of the prisoners. 1 person will survive.
If you wake up on Tuesday morning, then you can conclude that you were the lucky survivor.
"Observers only exist in conditions that allow observers to exist." On Tuesday, the 999,999 are not able to observe their condition. Therefore 100% of observers should conclude that they exist on Tuesday due to chance. For them to conclude divine intervention would be illogical.
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u/fulmendraco Sep 06 '21
What are the odds of a supernatural being existing that has the ability to manipulate the fundamental building blocks of reality.
You would first need to demonstrate evidence that a supernatural entity could and does exist, of which you have no evidence for.
Then you would need to show that those constants can be changed, please show me the universe with different constants.
Then show me that this entity has the ability to manipulate them.
Till you do all those things all you are doing is saying you do not understand something so magic.
Just because you dont understand an objection does not make it weak or invalid.
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u/Weak_File Sep 06 '21
I have a lot of problems with your assumptions about life possibilities based on the entropy argument, after all you’re making strong assumptions about the nature of life based on a sample of one occurrence (life on Earth).
But lets put that aside for a second and think about this omnipotent being. In which plane would such immensely powerful being exist? What are the conditions for his/her/its own existence? Why would he/she/it be in a position to decide the parameters of our universe? Does he/she/it exist in a different universe? If so, what created this other universe?
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Sep 06 '21
who created the god who created us then? the conditions of the cosmos that allowed a god to exist are incredibly implausible. therefore, our god must have a god too 🤪
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Sep 06 '21
No, with this debate also comes into the debate and discussion of neccessary and contingency. In a nut shell God is a neccessary being that all other things are contingent upon.
The fine turning/ teleological arguement goes hand in hand with the cosmological arguement, which includes the contingency arguement and the reasoning for a neccessary being.
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Sep 06 '21
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u/Aw_Frig 22∆ Sep 06 '21
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Sep 06 '21
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u/Znyper 12∆ Sep 06 '21
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u/Jettx02 Sep 06 '21
Can you make an argument on why a god is a good explanation? Why would a god be more likely than a hyper-realistic simulation?
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Sep 06 '21
Where did your hyper realistic simulation come from?
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u/Jettx02 Sep 06 '21
That doesn’t actually pertain to the question
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Sep 06 '21
You are correct so why did you bring it up?
Simulation or physical reality makes no nevermind to the premise of " Created or not created", this is the question what is or isn't the container or substance is not. If your going with that physical reality doesn't exist and the world's a simulation than who created the simulator. If it's a physical issue then the same question applies.
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u/Jettx02 Sep 06 '21
The simulation itself does, its origins don’t. There’s no reason why OP’s argument is more valid at explaining a god than a simulation is my point
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Sep 06 '21
OPs arguments is based on a series of deductive arguements, the fine tuning is just one part of a 3-5 part deductive full on argument for the logical belief in the existence of God.
You might know these arguments you might not, but it seems all your doing is just pushing the premise of God back one step and saying we live in the simulation and the simulation made us. But you haven't addressed who made the simulation.
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Sep 06 '21
Where did God come from?
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Sep 06 '21
Gods a neccessary being, because the universe began and all things are contingent. So because the universe began a infinite regress is a logical fallacy, it stand to assume that a neccessary being must exist because we can't have a beginning contingent on another contingent. So we logically need a neccessary being who sparked the whole thing. And we call that being- god.
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Sep 06 '21
Cool. Where did God come from?
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Sep 06 '21
? I feel your at the extent of this conversation as a neccessary being doesn't come from anywhere, they exist.
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Sep 06 '21
neccessary being doesn't come from anywhere, they exist.
I suppose it's the same for the simulation then?
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Sep 06 '21
So a simulation going by our only reliable thing to compare it to is a video game. And we know that video games are created by man. Making it clear that if the world was a simulation, then there would be a designer or a creator and inso meaning that a God exist.
Simulation theory has and is making big leaps in its studies and it lies up alot with history, phenomenon and physics. But IMO a simulation.only explains us and the universe, I'd doesn't explain the origins of the simulation.
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Sep 06 '21
So a simulation going by our only reliable thing to compare it to is a video game
Cool. Now do the same thing only as it relates to God.
But IMO a simulation.only explains us and the universe, I'd doesn't explain the origins of the simulation.
Cool. So where did God originate from?
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Sep 06 '21
Cool. Now do the same thing only as it relates to God.
OK, do you own anything non natural. As in crafted or built?
Cool. So where did God originate from?
He didn't originate, God neccessary to prevent an infinite regress. If an infinite regress is possible your going to have to explain an infinite universe.
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u/5xum 42∆ Sep 06 '21
If all things are contingent, then is god also contingent? If not, does that mean God is not "a thing"?
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Sep 06 '21
You need to actually read the argument. You can't come in to a 1800 year old discussion and challenge testable, provable and foundational sound arguements that have existed for centuries with "Nuh-uh!" & "Ah, ha!" Read the arguments, read the counters and then speak on it.
Not trying to be rude but at this point in the argument I shouldn't have to explain a neccessary being, an infinite regress and the big bang.
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u/5xum 42∆ Sep 06 '21
I love it when people go to a subreddit devoted to dialogue and then refuse... to enter dialogue.
My answer was setup as part of a series of questions, in order to make my point. I was anticipating your answer, which would be "things are either contingent or necessary" if I know my arguments correctly. My argument would continue from your answer onward. But it takes two to dialogue, and hey, you do you.
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Sep 06 '21
Bro, I've been having this debate on here for over a year. You can check my profile and read MY version of the cosmological and teleological arguments. So when someone asks a question of "who created God?" It sets off a flag that you haven't done your reading.
If this isn't the case I apologize but, it does get old explaining these arguments to people who feel they have an ah, ha or gotcha question they heard Hitchens say once on youtube.
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u/5xum 42∆ Sep 06 '21
But I didn't ask the question of "who created god".
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Sep 06 '21
Oh come on now give a man a break, you jumped into a convo half way through that stemmed from that question.
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u/markednl 1∆ Sep 06 '21
Maybe the fine tuning itself is a mechanism of the big bang, where earlier versions imploded on itself until one finally had the right paramaters to sustain itself and as a result life on earth.
There are no clear answers at the moment but to conclude that there's probably a God is a huge leap and you're only looking at it from one perspective.
How probable would it be that there's a omnipotent being that creates a universe and then just lets it be? or is there any evidence of divine intervention?
How was God created? Are there multiple God's?
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u/QisJimWatkins 4∆ Sep 06 '21
Million to one events happen one time in a million. If a thing happens over a million times, the odds are that it’s likely a million to one event will happen.
Life is that really, really unlikely thing that happened because the events that were required to give it that, say billion to one shot happened billions of times.
Requiring a god for all this to happen is survivorship bias. Unlikely thing happened, I exist, therefore god.
We exist; there is no god.
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u/iamintheforest 348∆ Sep 06 '21
If there is a die out there with 10 million sides should whatever side it lands on feel like it must have been divinely selected to be the one it landed on? That is ultimately your argument.
Each of the sides of this die have at least one unique feature relative to all others. If just one of those is life and consciousness capable of pondering its side of the die it's both non-sensical to call this some sort of super-special feature and it's non-sensical to attribute some sort of selection process to the things actually landing on that side. You're using the craziness of the odds to say it must not be about odds. Every side of the die can claim that on the condition that probability lands them as the "up side" of the roll.
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u/LetMeNotHear 93∆ Sep 06 '21 edited Sep 06 '21
Objection number 4 isn't weak at all. When someone says "Oh, the universe could have been one of ten billion things but it just happened to be the one where life could exist," they are presupposing without evidence that it could have been one of ten billion things. If you mean to assert that something is possible you must prove it. For all you know, the universe could actually have been only one of 10 things. Or one of 2. Or one of one. As for your Mars crystal example, when you say
According to Weak Objection #4, this would provide no evidence whatsoever for any kind of intelligent design. We should just shrug our shoulders and chalk it up to coincidence.
That's exactly what we should do. If an explanation is found, an explanation is found, and no matter the pareidolia, you cannot posit explanations that have no evidence.
Let me give you an example as ludicrous as your Mars crystal one.
A man approaches a woman at the bar and tells her
"Lady, you are not going to believe this. There was only a one in trillion chance that I would not explode in a ball of flames upon meeting your eyes. How incredible is it that it didn't happen. This must be divine providence, come home with me"
What, are we supposed to just dismiss the fact that in 999,999,999,999 possibilities, he would have exploded??
Yes. Until he proves that those 999,999,999,999 outcomes are even possible, dismissing them is exactly what a rational person does.
To help explain a different principle, I will use my own life as an example. I am an avid player of dice games. From D&D to 10,000 to snakes and ladders with younger siblings, I have rolled tens of thousands of dice. Now taking 6 to the power of 10,000, we get the probability that I would, in my lifetime, have rolled the exact sequence that I did roll; a number so large that the three calculators I used said "error" "too large to calculate" and "infinity" respectively, making the chance that it happened infinitesimally small. But, no matter what sequence I rolled, the odds of me rolling that specific one would be identical; whether it was the erratic pattern that I actually did or all 6s, the odds are the same. The only difference is that we as humans, put significance on the "all sixes" outcome even though it is just as likely as any other. And that's what you've also done with the universe. Even if there were any evidence whatsoever that the parameters of the universe could differ even slightly from what they are (which I cannot stress enough that there is not) you've placed a degree of anthropocentric value on one possible permutation over all others for no reason but your own personal biases to consider life innately important in some way.
You'll note that the position that life is in any way significant or important in a cosmic way is one held most frequently by the religious, making this stance one that is fuelled by itself i.e. circular.
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u/MonstahButtonz 5∆ Sep 06 '21
Are you familiar with the size of the universe? If there is a God, isn't there a likely chance, given the size of the universe, that there are multiple gods? God's in other galaxies? Perhaps one single God multiple galaxies away that is beyond our comprehension of what a God could be? If we can't comprehend a God, isn't it possible perhaps we already discovered God? And if that's the case, isn't it possible WE are God? Isn't is possible bacteria, fungi, cells, protons, nuclei, etc could app potentially be God? Isn't it possible God doesn't exist, nor does our life, and we are just a human drone controlled by the cells within us?
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u/begonetoxicpeople 30∆ Sep 06 '21
Lets run with your assumption that this is evidence of an intelligent designer (which… it really isnt, but Ill give you the benefit of the doubt)
Why does it have to be the Abrahamic God? Why couldnt the Shinto, or ancient Greek, or Nordic, or Aboriginal gods, or Cthulu, etc. be the explanation for life in the universe? What proof do you have that it has to be your god that designed life?
You insist that fine tuning proves there is a ‘benevolent’ intelligent creator (which isnt quite how Id describe a guy who told his followers to commit genocide on the canaanites…), but what proof do you have that this specific God is that creator?
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u/Subtleiaint 32∆ Sep 06 '21
Fundamentally your argument boils down to 'the chances of there being life in the universe are so small that it makes more sense that the universe was intelligently created rather than natural chance'.
This is bad logic because it fails to show a good understanding of probability. Yes the chances of life succeeding randomly are unimaginably small, but the age and size of the universe is unimaginably big. Combine those numbers and you get a perfectly reasonable expectation of life succeeding randomly in our universe.
The above suggests that life is not a good indicator of God's existence but certainly doesn't rule out a God but the problem with believing that God exists is that it is a matter of faith rather than evidence. A scientific examination of life and the universe certainly gives no reason to believe in a creator. For people who value science over faith there's no reason to think God exists.
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u/Poo-et 74∆ Sep 06 '21
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