Now this has to be explained.
— Antony Latham

SophisitiCat you answered: "Why? Can you explain your reasoning? This is one of the things I would like to clear up in this discussion. Is this fine-tuning surprising? Is it unexpected? If so, what are your expectations and what are they based on?"

It is obvious why this needs explanation. We are talking about an amalgamation of absolutely essential physical conditions needed for galaxies, planets and life (of any sort) to exist. Someone like Martin Rees, who knows the maths, can calculate the odds against such conditions occurring by chance. It turns out that chance, to get this right, would require far more opportunities to come up with these conditions than there are particles in the universe.

William Dembski calls this specified complexity. A pile of scrabble pieces lying randomly on the floor is complex and that arrangement is very unlikely but not specified. A bunch of scrabble pieces which are on the floor spelling out something like "Don't be late home. Dinner is at 7pm and remember we have invited Mrs Bloggs" is specified and needs a design origin. The fine tuning specifies planets and life.

Now if you have an a priori belief that there is nothing beyond the physical (naturalism), then you will baulk at this and have to come up with something like a multiverse theory to deal with the odds. But you will need to admit, while doing this that it is for non-scientific reasons - a particular world view or belief system you have which out-rules any non-physical agent.


Occam's razor leads me more to the more parsimonious solution - design.
— Antony Latham

SophisitCat you answered: "How do you figure?"

The idea that there is some limitless number of universes and we just happen to have struck lucky, is adding a completely new and totally unverified dimension to reality - beyond what we already know. What we already know is that the situation looks very much like design. That is the simplest and most parsimonious solution. That this goes against the prevailing naturalism/physicalism of our times is neither here nor there.

My internet crashed as I was answering in last post!

Now this has to be explained.
— Antony Latham

SophisitiCat you answered: "Why? Can you explain your reasoning? This is one of the things I would like to clear up in this discussion. Is this fine-tuning surprising? Is it unexpected? If so, what are your expectations and what are they based on?"

It is obvious why this needs explanation. We are talking about an amalgamation of absolutely essential physical conditions needed for galaxies, planets and life (of any sort) to exist. Someone like Martin Rees, who knows the maths, can calculate the odds against such conditions occurring by chance. It turns out that chance, to get this right, would require far more opportunities to come up with these conditions than there are particles in the universe.

William Dembski calls this specified complexity. A pile of scrabble pieces lying randomly on the floor is complex and that arrangement is very unlikely but not specified. A bunch of scrabble pieces which are on the floor spelling out something like "Don't be late home. Dinner is at 7pm and remember we have invited Mrs Bloggs" is specified and needs a design origin. The fine tuning specifies planets and life.

Now if you have an a priori belief that there is nothing beyond the physical (naturalism), then you will baulk at this and have to come up with something like a multiverse theory to deal with the odds. But you will need to admit, while doing this that it is for non-scientific reasons - a particular world view or belief system you have which out-rules any non-physical agent.


Occam's razor leads me more to the more parsimonious solution - design.
— Antony Latham

SophisitCat you answered: "How do you figure?"

The idea that there is some limitless number of universes and we just happen to have struck lucky, is adding a completely new and totally unverified dimension to reality - beyond what we already know. What we already know is that the situation looks very much like design. That is the simplest and most parsimonious solution. That this goes against the prevailing naturalism/physicalism of our times is neither here nor there.

Now this has to be explained.
— Antony Latham

SophisitiCat you answered: Why? Can you explain your reasoning? This is one of the things I would like to clear up in this discussion. Is this fine-tuning surprising? Is it unexpected? If so, what are your expectations and what are they based on?

It is very obvious why this needs explanation. We are talking about an accumulation of absolutely essential conditions needed for galaxies, planets and life (of any sort), conditions which



Occam's razor leads me more to the more parsimonious solution - design.
— Antony Latham

How do you figure?

Some real examples of fine tuning may help in this discussion. There are very many but here are a couple to start with:
1/ In the very beginning of the universe there was very slight unevenness or presence of non-uniformities in the expanding energy. If the energy had been evenly distributed then there would be no coalescence of matter into galaxies. The amplitude of the non-uniformities is described by the number Q, the energy difference between the peaks and troughs in the density, expressed as a fraction of the total energy of the initial universe. Computer models show that Q had to be very close to 0.00001 in order for any galaxies to form. If it was minutely higher then no structures would form, if minutely lower then all matter would have collapsed into huge black holes.
2/ It was crucial for the expansion of the universe at the first second after the big bang that the expansion energy, or impetus, was finely balanced with the gravitational force, which was pulling it all back together. It has been mathematically calculated that, back at one second, the universe's expansion energy and the opposing gravitational energy must have differed by less than one part in 10 to the power 15 (one part in a million billion). If it was different at all (in either direction) then there would be no galaxies, no stars, and so no planets.


Now this has to be explained. There is no point in suggesting other forms of life if conditions were slightly different - there would be no life unless such exquisite precision was in place. Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal (from whose writings the above figures are derived), realises this and so plumps for a multi-universe theory: we have simply struck lucky from the lottery of trillions upon trillions of possible universes. Occam's razor leads me more to the more parsimonious solution - design.