Showing posts with label fine tuned. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fine tuned. Show all posts

Friday, January 11, 2013

Grundy Disagrees #3

I've been disagreeing all over the Internet, so I figure it's time to post a couple more.

I argue against the Fine Tuning Argument to find the debate branched into a subject I've never heard of before--a Boltzmann Brain universe. The blogger claims it is a problem for positing a multiverse as an avenue for the anthropic principle to make sense of our life-friendly fundamental constants. I actually consider the apparent fine tuning of the universe the best evidence for a designed universe, but mostly because all the other arguments are just so bad. The blogger then turned the debate to a version of the cosmological argument, which anyone can tell from my recent posts, I consider intellectually bankrupt at his point. I said...
The cosmological argument is constantly subject to new forms in an effort to adjust for legitimate criticism, but ultimately they all rest on the same assumptions–that the universe needs a cause and that the cause must be God. If you define God as simply the thing that causes the universe, then I freely admit that God could exist, but most define God as an agent possessing will/intellect/personality/and the like, which is an assumption unwarranted by the Leibnizian cosmological argument or any other form. I find the fine tuning argument superior because it implies the cause (God) had an active role in deciding the nature of the effect (the universe.) This choice is enough to show agency, at least for me.
Ironically, while this disagreement continued, I debated with the atheist author of Somewhat Abnormal for the Fine Tuning Argument (kinda.) He tried turning the argument on it's head to make it an argument for atheism, which just didn't hold up. He basically admitted as much. I said to a commenter:
There is a fine tuning argument for life within our universe and a fine tuning argument for life within any possible universe. You seem to be referring to the argument that life on earth is fine tuned. This appears true in that life as we know it could only exist under parameters very similar to earth’s--we aren’t too close or too far away from a star that isn’t too hot or too cold; we have the right atmosphere; we have Jupiter to catch or redirect asteroids and comets away from us; ect. However, there are so many stars and planets in our universe that the odds of other earth-like situations existing somewhere in the universe is high. The original poster is taking into account the anthropic principle which makes the fine tuning argument for life within our universe a very weak one. 
I disagree that the anthropic principal can be applied to the fine tuning argument for life within any possible universe because we don’t have the required information to make this judgement. We know that there are a shitload of stars and planets, we only know that there is one universe. There could be more, but we can’t assume that. The fine tuning argument for naturalism as stated here just doesn’t work. It’s true an omnipotent being could maintain life where life shouldn’t exist, but this is beside the point.
Then the conversation turned to poker and probability, both of which I love.

Bonus quicky: I debated the Kalam over here and then again here where he posted an explanation to a straw man version of my originally stated problems with the Kalam.