Glen Davidson
Posts: 1100 Joined: May 2006
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Quote | Some of you are ignoring a point that I have made ad nasueum and which, in these circles, is mostly ignored. However, since one of your own (Stephen Elliott) made it, I thought it might be taken more seriously. |
And who has ignored the fine-tuning problem? I realize that some have, but the history on PT is generally people agreeing that why the universe "appears to be fine-tuned" remains a problem, while disagreeing with Heddle's pet "reason" for it.
Quote | That is: virtually the entire professional physics community agrees that there is a substantive fine tuning problem. You can call that an appeal to authority if you like (it’s actually not), but when there is nearly universal acknowledgement from experts one ought to at least take notice. For example, cosmologist (and non IDer) Leonard Susskind has explicitly stated that, because of fine tuning, it's either multiple universes or it's ID. |
And this is exactly what is wrong with these discussions. The moment "fine-tuning" is acknowledged, Heddle's off talking about the severely limited choices that he considers, never mind the endless metaphysical possibilities that could be conjured up.
Quote | So you can dismiss it with the puddle analogy, but I really don't know how a thinking person can. |
I know I'm late to this discussion, but it was this that made me decide to jump in now. Heddle doesn't seem to recognize what the puddle analogy is getting at.
It isn't that there is no specific set of reasons that the puddle is shaped as it is. It's that the water in the depression is amazed at its fit within the depression, and supposes that the depression is shaped to fit it. The water is sure that the shape is purposefully shaped for its own shape, not realizing it simply fits what is there.
So go ahead and ask why the puddle is shaped as it is. We do that in cosmology and in biology. However there is no reason in the first place to suppose that the current forms of matter, including life, are the reason the universe is as it is, anymore than that lifeless universes (should these exist) are specifically designed not to produce life.
Maybe more to the point, was this universe configured so that so much of the universe would be unsupportive of life? Or might we ask, does the universe support life as much as it does simply in order to wipe it out with various disasters? That is to say, do the gods create us so that they may kill us for their sport?
There are a lot of things that fit in our universe, including life-destroying asteroids and supervolcanoes, diseases, tyrants and genocidists. The supposition that life is the purpose of our universe, and not the death-dealing supernovae and assorted geological catastrophes, seems to be a peculiarly anthropocentric point of view.
So again, ask away why the universe is as it is. Just don't go privileging life's existence as an especial fit to the universe when one of the most obvious aspects of this universe is its utter indifference to our existence and our extinction.
Quote | A thinking person should at least ask himself: if all the experts take it seriously, maybe it really is something that can't be dismissed so trivially. Maybe I should look into it a bit. |
Here is the problem once again. Heddle will tell us that he's doing apologetics and/or coming up with an explanation outside of science. But never mind that many of us know about the "fine-tuning problem" and thus should be known to have looked into it at least to some extent and found that there are no satisfactory answers, he suggests that we ought to look into it a bit.
Why? Is it because we might find a good answer? Or just because it is a gap in knowledge that many want desperately to fill with God, despite having no evidence of a connection ("causal" or otherwise) between fine-tuning and God?
The experts do take fine-tuning seriously, and they try to find evidence-based answers to it. There isn't any especial reason for most people to "look into it" any more than they ought to be looking into the problems existing between quantum gravity and relativistic gravity. People raise the former issue primarily in order to suggest that "god did it" without any sort of evidence of how and why an unevidenced God might have made this particular puddle.
So far as we know, puddles are shaped as they are through physical interactions. Any serious answer as to why the puddle we call our universe is as it is will almost certainly also have a physical explanation.
Presumably it is because Heddle doesn't propose a serious physical explanation for a serious physical question that his invitation to speak at a physics conference was withdrawn.
Glen D
-------------- http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy
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