Unicorny, pretty much everything you say here has already been addressed and refuted. I did so myself in
this post, which you almost completely ignored. You haven't acknowledged the criticisms and arguments given there, far less addressed them. I'm going to show you the courtesy you haven't shown me, and engage with what you say here, one last time.
According to standard cosmology model, the initial state of the space-time, and thus gravity, of the early universe had very low entropy. The ‘mass-energy’ of the initial universe had to be precise to get galaxies, planets, and for us to exist. The most extreme example of fine-tuning has to do with the distribution of mass-energy at that time.
Just how precise?
[snipped this bit for space]
All these numbers are extremely small when compared to the precise fine-tuning of the Penrose number, the most extreme example of fine-tuning that we know of.
In summary, the fine-tuning of many constants of physics must fall into an exceedingly narrow range of values for life to exist. If they had slightly different values, no complex material systems could exist. This is a widely recognized fact. Attributing the fine-tuning evidence to dumb luck or accident is not only irrational, but rather insane.
Dismissing the fine-tuning evidence as nothing remarkable is called denial.
You make three big errors here. All of them have been pointed out to you repeatedly.
The first error is to suppose that the constants in question
could have been different. You've given no evidence at all to back this up. The closest you came was posting a video by a physicist who asserted that the constants could have been different (he didn't explain why) before going on to explain why the multiverse hypothesis was the best explanation, which undermined your argument. So again: why do you make this assumption (that the universal constants could have been different)? Again, merely quoting somebody
asserting that they could have been different isn't enough.
The second error is to suppose that, even if these constants could have been different, it was very unlikely that they would have the values they actually do have. You could only make this supposition if you knew that all the possible constants are
equally probable. But you don't know this. This is the point that was made to you time and again, including in my post linked to above, and every time you ignored it to assert again and again that the
range of possible values is very vast indeed. But that is not the same thing. The range of possible heights I might have had is, I suppose, infinite, or at least very very huge, but that doesn't mean that the probability of being 5'10 is the same as the probability of being 153'2.
The third (and most fundamental) error is to suppose that there's something special about the actual value of the constants. Suppose we accept that there's a gazillion gazillion different possible values that the constants could have taken, and suppose we accept that there's only a one in gazillion gazillion chance that they had the values that they do in fact have. So what? What's so special about these? That they permit life when no other would? Well, first, you can't
know that no other values would permit life; and second (and more importantly), what's so special about life? Why would an alternative universe, that didn't contain life but did contain other stuff that our universe doesn't contain, be inferior to ours? Obviously it would be less preferable from our point of view, but what's so special about that?
As I explained in my previous post that you ignored, the situation is not like a lottery, it's like a raffle. Even if you have 10^gazillion tickets, one of those tickets is going to win. The fact that the winning ticket has only a one in 10^gazillion chance of winning means nothing, because so did every other ticket, and there were 10^gazillion of them. In the case of the values of the various universal constants, sure, maybe it was staggeringly improbable that
any particular given set would win out. But it was
certain that
some set would win out. No matter which set won out, it was (according to you)
equally probable to any other set winning out.
The onus is on
you to explain why the actual set was any less probable than any other. I also challenged you before to tell us what
you would have expected to be the outcome if the universal constants were random. What values do you think would be more probable than the actual ones?
Until you do that, you're like someone saying "The chances of Arthur winning the raffle were seven billion to one, therefore the raffle must be rigged!" That would be reasonable only if you could show that there's something special about Arthur that doesn't apply to any of the other potential winners (e.g. he was predicted in advance to win). Similarly, you need to show why the actual values of the universal constants are much more significant than all of the others that they could have had. The mere fact that they make life possible does not meet this criterion, because it just pushes the problem back one step: what's so significant about life compared to the different phenomena that would have been possible with different values for the universal constants?
Moreover, an uncaused cause is a logical necessity for without an uncaused cause, infinite regression is invoked and therefore nothing could have existed in the first place (I feel as if a lot of skeptics in this section do not understand this point).
I understand the point, but I reject it, because it's invalid. I stated earlier that Aquinas's Second Way, which is what this is, is invalid and rests on an equivocation. Aquinas says that if you were to "remove" the First Cause, all of the subsequent causes would disappear. Therefore, there must be a First Cause. But he equivocates on "remove". On the assumption that
there really is a First Cause, yes, removing it would destroy everything else. But on the assumption that
there is no First Cause, the only sense in which one "removes" it is to deny its existence. And that wouldn't entail the loss of all the subsequent causes. In other words, this argument assumes its conclusion, and is therefore invalid.
Wrong. Scientists and philosophers recognize that, logically, there must be an initial, uncaused Cause of the Universe. [Those who attempt to argue the eternality of the Universe are in direct contradiction to the Law of Causality (since the Universe is a physical effect that demands a cause), as well as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which indicates that nothing physical lasts forever (see Miller, 2007).]
I don't know who your "Miller, 2007" is, but if he really attributes such views to all "scientists and philosophers", he's dead wrong. Philosophers certainly
do not accept that there must be an uncaused Cause. Indeed the vast majority of philosophers - like the majority of scientists - are atheists. Don't try to co-opt them onto your side.
The claim that "the universe is a physical effect that demands a cause" is pure assertion. How do you know this?
Aristotle, in Physics, discusses the logical line of reasoning that leads to the conclusion that the initial cause of motion must be something that is not, itself, in motion—an unmoved mover (1984, 1:428). Thomas Aquinas built on Aristotle’s reasoning and said:
Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.... For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.... It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it should move itself. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover.... Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God (1952, 19:12,13, emp. added).
God, not being a physical, finite being, but an eternal, spiritual being (by definition), would not be subject to the condition of requiring a beginning. Therefore, the law does not apply to Him.
You badly misunderstand St Thomas, even though I explained his meaning in
this post. When he talks about an Unmoved Mover he is
not talking about a
temporally first cause. He is talking about a
simultaneous mover, like an engine in a car. Aquinas thinks, on the basis of Aristotelian physics, that objects must be
kept in motion, or everything would grind to a halt. There must therefore be an Unmoved Mover that keeps things going like a spring in a watch. That's what he's talking about here. And of course he's wrong. We've known since Newton (in fact, since Descartes) that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. No universal engine is required to explain the continued phenomenon of motion.
St Thomas
expressly denied that the universe
must have had a beginning in time. He rejected the arguments of those who thought that it must have done, and insisted that in fact it
could have been eternal (although in fact revelation teaches us that it was not). You badly misrepresent him by attributing to him the view that God differs from the universe in not requiring a temporal beginning: Aquinas thinks that
neither God nor the universe requires one.
Now if you think Aquinas is such a great authority, read that text and see what you make of his arguments! Personally I think he's right on this score: neither science nor philosophy can show that the universe had a beginning. Science may show that the
observable universe had a beginning, but whether there was anything prior to that is beyond the reach of science.
Concerning the Law of Causality, renowned German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, said that “everything which is contingent has a cause, which, if itself contingent, must also have a cause; and so on, till the series of subordinated causes must end with an absolutely necessary cause, without which it would not possess completeness” (Kant, 2008, p. 284, emp. added). An uncaused Cause is necessary. Only God sufficiently fills that void.
This is an even worse misrepresentation. Only someone who doesn't understand anything of Kant's philosophy could have written this. The passage you quote from Kant is from somewhere in Bk II, ch. 3 of the "Transcendental Dialectic" division of the
Critique of Pure Reason (it would have been easier to locate the precise passage if you'd given any more indication than just "Kant 2008", which is useless). Kant is here
reporting what he calls the "cosmological argument". He reports it for the purposes of
refuting it.
In fact, this is what he goes on to say in section V of the aforementioned chapter (and because I cite my references, I'll tell you that this is on pp. 414-19 of the 1993 Everyman edition):
Immanuel Kant said:
In this cosmological argument are assembled so many sophistical propositions, that speculative reason seems to have exerted in it all her dialectical skill to produce a transcendental illusion of the most extreme character...
The following fallacies, for example, are discoverable in this mode of proof:
(1) The transcendental principle: Everything that is contingent must have a cause – a principle without significance, except in the world that we sense... But in the present case it is employed to help us beyond the limits of its sphere.
(2) From the impossibility of an infinite ascending series of causes in the world of sense a first cause is inferred; a conclusion which the principles of the employment of reason do not justify even in the sphere of experience, and still less when an attempt is made to pass the limits of this sphere.
(3) Reason allows itself to be satisfied upon insufficient grounds, with regard to the completion of this series. It removes all conditions (without which, however, no concept of necessity can take place); and, as after this it is beyond our power to form any other concept, it accepts this as a completion of the concept it wishes to form of the series.
And so on...
The concept of a Supreme Being satisfies all questions a priori regarding the internal determinations of a thing, and is for this reason an ideal without equal or parallel, the general concept of it indicating it as at the same time an individual being among all possible things. But the concept does not satisfy the question regarding its existence – which was the purpose of all our inquiries; and, although the existence of a necessary being were admitted, we should find it impossible to answer the question: What of all things in the world must be regarded as such?...
It is something very remarkable that, on the supposition that something exists, I cannot avoid the inference, that something exists necessarily. Upon this perfectly natural – but not on that account reliable – inference does the cosmological argument rest. But, let me form any concept whatever of a thing, I find that I cannot think the existence of the thing as absolutely necessary, and that nothing prevents me – be the thing or being what it may – from thinking its non-existence. I may thus be obliged to admit that all existing things have a necessary basis, while I cannot think any single or individual thing as necessary...
If I must think of something as existing necessarily as the basis of existing things, and yet am not permitted to think any individual thing as in itself necessary, the inevitable inference is, that necessity and contingency are not properties of things themselves – otherwise a contradiction would result; that consequently neither of these principles is objective, but that they are merely subjective principles of reason...
What you have there is an absolutely devastating series of criticisms of this argument. Note in particular his final point that the whole notion of "necessity" and "contingency" are purely mental constructs in the first place, meaning that attempting to impose them on outside objects is an exercise in futility. If you think Kant is such a great authority, find the complete text and read it yourself! I will repeat again the central objection Kant makes:
"Everything that is contingent must have a cause" – a principle without significance, except in the world that we sense... But in the present case it is employed to help us beyond the limits of its sphere.
Kant is exactly right. This is
exactly the point that we have been making throughout this thread, though in reference to the teleological argument rather than the cosmological. These arguments
make assumptions about general principles that we cannot know. We cannot know that everything that's contingent must have a cause. How could we possibly know such a thing? All we can say - as Kant indicates - is that everything we
experience seems to have a cause. But that's just within the phenomenal sphere. How can you possibly assume that such a principle applies to the
noumenal sphere, i.e. extra-mental reality?
I'm just astonished that anyone would try to cite "renowned German philosopher" Immanual Kant as an authority to
support the cosmological argument, since he's the one who most famously demolished it. And I'm disappointed that anyone would quote Kant's formulation of the argument that he explicitly presents
only to undermine, as if he's supporting it. That's as misleading as it gets.
Consider: if there ever were a time in history, when absolutely nothing existed—not even God—then nothing would exist today, since nothing comes from nothing (in keeping with common sense and the Law of Thermodynamics, Miller, 2007). However, something exists (e.g., the Universe)—which means something had to exist eternally. That something could not be physical or material, since such things do not last forever (cf. Second Law of Thermodynamics, Miller, 2007). It follows that the eternal something must be non-physical or non-material. It must be mind rather than matter. Logically, there must be a Mind that has existed forever. That Mind, according to the Bible (which has characteristics proving it to be of supernatural origin, cf. Butt, 2007), is God. He, being spirit, is not subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
I don't know who this "Miller" of yours is, but he's just rehashing bad arguments from William Lane Craig. If time had a beginning, then there never was "a time in history when absolutely nothing existed", any more than there's a page of a book before the front cover. There's just the start of time and, presumably, the end of time at the other end. You don't need to posit something outside the universe starting it off, because there's no "before" for it to start
from. So the first premise in this argument is wrong. It is based on a misunderstanding of temporalism.
Note: to reject the idea that the universe is the first uncaused cause even further: extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity. How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated—certainly no closer than the end of the Planck epoch. This singularity can be considered the "birth" of our universe. Based on measurements of the expansion using Type Ia supernovae, measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, and measurements of the correlation function of galaxies, the Universe has an estimated age of 13.8 billion years. An uncaused cause is eternal by definition, otherwise, it needs to have a beginning which would require a cause according to physical laws.
Here again you make two mistakes. The first is to suppose that all this science shows that the universe had a beginning. It doesn't - it only shows that the
observable universe had a beginning. There could, for all we know, have been something quite different before that - perhaps a previous universe which left the seed of this one, as Hume speculated.
The second mistake is to assume that things that have a temporal beginning must necessarily have causes. I don't know of any reason to suppose that that's true.
I feel as if the focal premise & argument of this thread has been lost amidst all the intellectual dishonesty, snide remarks, and general denial - and that's putting it really politely.
I don't wish to descend into the mud here, but I'd point out that
you are the one who, in this thread, has badly misrepresented the views of Leonard Susskind, Thomas Aquinas, and (most of all) Immanuel Kant. I won't call that "intellectual dishonesty" but I will say that I don't think you're in much of a position to accuse others of it. I'll add that you've also ignored an awful lot of the objections made to your argument, particularly (to my mind, anyway!) in my posts that I linked to above, so accusing others of "denial" seems a tad harsh too.
Cosmologists can calculate what they believe happened from the very earliest moments of the big bang, and can estimate the values of a range of cosmic constants and physical properties. There are scores of these numbers, but not all are independent. Physicist Paul Davies lists 13 constants and 12 derived quantities; cosmologist Martin Rees discusses six numbers, but as most of these are ratios of other numbers, his total comes to about a dozen.
It turns out that many of these numbers must lie within very narrow ranges, both now, and right back at the early stages of the big bang, for the universe to exist and form galaxies, stars and planets, and to provide the opportunity for complex life to appear.
A list of some of the most notable of these examples of "fine-tuning" (e.g. relating to the strength of the four fundamental forces, the mass of fundamental particles, etc) is at it looks like it was designed, so I will only describe two of the most amazing examples here.
The cosmological constant, or vacuum energy, is a major determining factor of whether the universe collapsed in on itself shortly after the big bang, or flew apart so fast that no matter coalesced into stars and planets, or is in a narrow range that allows a viable universe to form. Its value is obtained by subtracting two large cosmic forces, and theory suggested that it too would be large. But for the universe, stars & planets to exist, it must be very small. It turns out that the large forces cancel out accurately to 119 decimal places, yielding the required value. String theory "guru", Leonard Susskind says: "To make the first 119 decimal places of the vacuum energy zero is most certainly no accident."
Cosmologist and mathematician Roger Penrose once attempted to calculate the probability that chance allowed the initial state of the universe and its entropy to be exactly 'right' to allow it to still exist now. His answer was 1 chance in 10^10^123, a probability so small as to effectively be zero. To put this number in perspective, balancing a billion pencils all simultaneously positioned upright on their sharpened points on a smooth glass surface with no vertical supports does not even come close to describing an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123. Dumb luck or intentional design? Don't fool your intellect.
Which leads us to seek an explanation.
You say
nothing new here (even once again citing Rees and Susskind as authorities on this matter, even though both utterly reject the conclusions you draw from their observations). If you can explain what Penrose's calculations
actually are that supposedly show the minuscule probability of getting the constants that we have, we might be making progress. But simply repeating over and over and over again that some Big Brain or other has
asserted this gets us nowhere. What's the evidence? What's the argument?
And when you're done with that, why does this outcome (as opposed to any other possible one) require a particular explanation? I made this point above.
There are some who argue that it just happened that way, and who maintain that mathematical probabilities are inapplicable to such an event as the big bang. But most cosmologists have rejected this option - the probabilities have been estimated by many and they are simply too large for most scientists to ignore them. (It is true that Victor Stenger has produced an enormously simplified computer model suggesting that the universe isn't all that improbable, but he doesn't seem to have persuaded many of his colleagues.)
In addition to the Penrose estimate, Lee Smolin says: ".... just how probable is it that a universe created by randomly choosing the parameters will contain stars. Given what we have already said, it is simple to estimate this probability. ..... The answer, in round numbers, comes to about one chance in 10^229." This is much much less than the probability of picking a given baryon out of the universe at random.
This doesn't even begin to address the point about the raffle. Is the universe we see staggeringly unlikely? Sure, let's grant that. But so what? Would any alternative possible universe be any
more likely? I'll say this point again, since you've missed it every other time it's been made:
If there's going to be a universe at all, the physical constants had to have some value or another. The values they actually have are no less likely (for all we know) than any given alternative.
In a raffle, some ticket has to win, even if any given ticket is staggeringly unlikely.
So you haven't ruled out chance
at all.
This has probably become the most favoured option over the past decade. It overcomes the objection that the fine-tuning is too unlikely to have occurred by chance, by postulating that there is an extremely large number of universes or "domains " of the one universe, perhaps even an infinite number, all with different values of constants, and perhaps even different constants as well. Ours is one rare case where the universe allows life to appear. The mathematics has been done, and the multiverse is claimed to be consistent with cosmological theory. Leonard Susskind says multiple universes are "inevitable consequences" of known science.
The theory has been controversial. Martin Rees says: "These universes would never be directly observable, even in principle." Susskind: "The existence of other pocket universes remains a conjecture". For this reason, many scientists say the multiverse is pseudo science, "more like metaphysics than physics". But proponents believe if the theory behind the multiverse can be tested in other areas, it would give confidence that it may be correct where it cannot be tested.
But, as Davies has pointed out, if there are indeed multiple universes, then one still has to explain how a multi-universe "generator" came into existence, so finely tuned as to produce an array of universe with different characteristics. I find the multiverse hypothesis amazing. It requires us to believe that not just one universe came into existence for no reason, but that a universe generator capable of producing an enormous number of universes or domains appeared for no reason. It magnifies the problem of finding an explanation, not reduce it. Amazingly ridiculous that is.
Are we debating with you or with Paul Davies? In any case, here again we've pointed out the flaws in this argument.
First, even if there is a multiverse, it doesn't follow that there must be a "multiverse generator". Maybe the multiverse just is. Maybe every possibility just is an actuality in its own universe. Maybe there is no explanation for that, and none is needed, because every possibility has an intrinsic tendency towards actuality (as Leibniz argued).
Second, even if there is a "multiverse generator", you're not entitled to describe it as "fine-tuned". I made precisely this point before, but you ignored it. The whole point of the fine-tuning argument is that the laws and constants in
this universe are supposedly tweaked just right for life. But if we're talking about a "multiverse generator" that generates vast numbers of universes, all with different laws and constants, we're no longer describing a system that seems tweaked just right for life. The only remarkable fact now is that there are laws that govern the "multiverse generator" at all, not the fact that these laws are notably biocentric. And this seems far less remarkable. So your conclusion is wrong. If the multiverse theory is correct - and even if it entails the existence of a "multiverse generator" - what needs explaining is far
less remarkable than what needed explaining before. The fact that there's more of it is really neither here nor there.
Rejecting the multiverse nonsense leads us to two options: 1) God 2) Dumb luck. How did it come to be the way it is?
Those aren't the only two options. At the end of
my previous post, which as I may have mentioned you have ignored, I gave a perfectly plausible alternative explanation for why the universe is the way it is, even assuming that there's something specially interesting about it, based on Leibnizian principles about the nature of possibility. I still think that's a better explanation than God, and it's certainly a more scientific one because it's simpler.
Be whatever type of universe we live in, it seems that it has to be extraordinarily special...
This is the fundamental error in your whole argument. You haven't given any reason to think that this universe is
special compared to all the other possible ones. You've given reason after reason after reason to think that it's
different, in that it can support life and the others can't. But being
different is not the same thing as being
special. When you start using terms like that, you've abandoned science, because they are evaluative terms, not factual ones.
) And what does ditech.com have to do with anything
So what? Does that disprove your point anymore than you meeting whoever you met disproves mine?
