NFM, I think your P1 is erroneous. Yes, the likelihood of conditions to allow human life are very small, but it does not follow they were purposely designed that way by God. I forget the technical name of the argument and the rebuttal (fallacy of...??), but only in places where intelligent arose can we use it. There might be many planets with identical conditions to earth where life didn't arise. There might be many planets with conditions well outside what we consider parameters for life, but that may have intelligent life. We have a sample size of 1, and can only compare earth to 8 planets (including Pluto! ) with rather extreme environments, not near earth-like environments.

If we just look at the probability of life occurring on Earth, then yes that is an extremely small probability. But we are looking at the probability that life occurs in the universe. There are millions to billions of stars in a galaxy, and there are most likely millions of galaxies (every time we push the scopes and technology beyond their current limits, we find thousands of hitherto undetected galaxies). The odds of life occurring somewhere in the universe with all those stars to choose from are quite a bit higher, some would even say life was inevitable.

And even if you show that the probability of life occurring in the universe is quite small, then you still cannot infer the existence of God because we have nothing to compare our universe to. We cannot point to a million universes and note that they are lifeless and thus affirm that the appearance of life in our universe was so unlikely that a supernatural force had to intervene. Again, sample size of 1.

Note I'm not saying God doesn't exist, I'm just saying that I believe your argument for God's existence to be an erroneous one (with due respect).

Here are two big news items from Joel Rosenberg's weblog for today, (November 10th):

"BIN LADEN VOWS MAJOR NEW ATTACKS: Olmert vows to divide Jerusalem."


Chess Fan

Hi Ken

I think you may thinking of a different argument than what I intended. The argument I intended to give a skeleton of has been referred to as the argument from “fine tuning” of the universe.
Here is a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe

But that doesn’t really matter. I am not necessarily trying to push this argument (although I think it is in fact some evidence of G_d) but rather trying to make a point about what evidence or proofs are.

What you say I think is important to illustrate my point. Most everyone will agree that P2 is true. Then the question becomes is P2 evidence of God? Well that will depend on your other beliefs. Specifically it will depend on what you believe about P1. If you believe P1 then P2 is evidence. If you don't believe P1 then P2 is not evidence. Hence it is a subjective thing to say that P2 is evidence or not.

The same can occur in science. A group of scientists may all agree that the average temperature rose X degrees in time period Y. Some scientists will interpret this fact as being strong evidence for theory A. Other scientists will think its weak evidence for theory A, or not even evidence for theory A at all.

Now by this I don't mean the truth of the premises is subjective. I don't think that at all. The premises are either true or false and our beliefs about them do not change that one way or another. However whether the argument will actually be a “proof” to someone *is* subjective. In the same way, whether P2 will be deemed evidence will also vary from person to person depending on their other beliefs.

Believe me I wish it were different. I wish I only needed to state a sound argument and everyone would agree I "proved" the matter. But unfortunately it is not so simple.

I don't think that's quite correct. It's certainly a piece of evidence. It just as certainly not a conclusive proof. Whether it's enough to convince you personally is where your personal beliefs come in.




And that point was:



How could I possibly evaluate that claim other than by gut feeling? I've never seen any other universes. Voltaire would probably say you were putting the cart before the horse. Didn't Pangloss, in Candide believe that the face was designed for spectacles, rather than the other way around? Surely an evolutionist would just say that life that was able to live under the existing physical laws evolved, and that if the laws had been different, then the life would also have been different. We have human life, but it might just as easily have been a different kind of life.

Sort of like the lottery. The odds of John Jones winning it are incredibly small, but the odds of somebody winning it are pretty good. Such a person would just tell you that Humanity is the John Jones of this example. If a set of physical laws was drawn at random and humanity is the winning ticket (i.e. the kind of life that's able to survive under those laws, then nothing too remarkable may have happened.

Of course there may be something fatally wrong with that argument, but having only seen one universe, how could we really know one way or the other?




That's a little different. At least we have a fighting chance of doing something observable and repeatable there, which puts it into the realm of science. The creation of the universe is neither observable nor repeatable, which makes it a good deal less scientific than something like climate change.

All right! I wonder if the One of Our Planets is Missing thread survived after Mig burned the Library of Alexandria the other day?




For all we know, it could be 0%. Nobody's ever seen life form from non-life, or really has any idea what kind of process it would involve (The bit about taking a body to an old castle and raising it to the roof during a lightning storm doesn't work. Take it from one who knows.)

So it's possible that life could never form from non-life any other way than by divine intervention. On the other hand, that's a possibility, not a proof. If one wanted to dispute that, they'd simply say "There is a way, we simply haven't found it yet." And they're right. In fact, even if there is a way, it's possible we might never find it.




Yes, it seems clear that if there is any chance greater than 0, of life forming from non-life by natural means, that the universe is big enough that it must have happened somewhere. (The idea that once life does exist, it might be able to adapt itself into some other form is trivial by comparison, so the arguments about evolution really miss the mark).

But are the odds greater than 0, or aren't they? Nobody really knows, though a lot of people think they do.




Yeah, and I don't see that these psychological style arguments mean much. In the 1920's the idea was in vogue that earth was quite probably the only place in the universe with life, which meant to some that there must be no God (Mankind all alone in this enormous empty universe? The implication is obvious). Then by the 40's the idea was popular that the universe was full of life. Which meant exactly the same thing to people so inclined: With the universe so full of life, how could anybody think there was anything special about humanity that might interest a divine being?

Really, neither argument proved anything, and neither does the fact that earth is so delicately balanced. Working backwards from all of these facts we can reach a theory that ends with that result. But that's not a proof.

The argument is valid (or if I missed something it can be made so with a minor change) so the conclusion does necessarily follow from the premises. Some would say P2 is no evidence at all or weak evidence. But P2 is true. Whether it is considered evidence will depend on your other beliefs. That is true.

I don't know what you mean by "personal beliefs" etc. Is P1 a personal belief? Other people may believe it beside me. What distinction are you drawing there.


You go on to ask how we can evaluate the truth of Premise 1. Keep in mind that in order to have a sound argument/proof of something I don't need to prove the premises. They just need to be true and have the conclusion logically follow, for the argument to be sound. They also need to be believed by the person I am talking with for it to be a “proof.” If the premise is not believed, then if I want the argument to work, I may need to delve further and try to argue for the premises. But its important to keep in mind that any and all sorts of knowledge can be challenged in this way.

Lets say I give reasons for P1. That is I give an additional sound argument with P1 as the conclusion. I give Pa and Pb and then show that P1 logically follows from Pa and Pb. Well you can of course ask how do I know Pa or Pb? This can go on and on infinitely. And these busy days who has time for that? So yes you can say I don’t believe P1 and I may or may not be able to convince you of P1. If I can’t then the argument won’t work as a proof *for you*. But if the premises are true it is still a sound argument.

I doubt we have a fighting chance to recreate the conditions of earth that existed over any given set of time and lead to the temperature increase. But I think that is sort of beside the point. Again I am just saying that whether some fact or data is considered evidence of something else, will depend on the persons other beliefs. This is true in science history philosophy or what have you. (Math may be an exception I haven't properly considered it.)

As far as your points addressing the argument itself and suggesting it doesn't work I don't really want to delve into it too much. Its really not an argument I have examined as thoroughly as others. However, I would point out that it’s really not a question of evolutionists. Its often along the lines that if this or that constant weren't in this or that range then the universe might simply collapse.

I think the argument is along these lines. Lets say you find what looks like an inscribed plate in the ground during an archeology dig. You look at the plate and say what are the chances that this thing would have come to be from purely natural causes without any person/designer involved. Could rock layers simply have formed and left this plate with what appears to be these inscriptions? Well lets say you conclude that would simply be too unlikely and therefore conclude there must have been humans there. Now if someone came up to you and said well how do you know that other than a gut feeling? I mean the creation of that plate was a one time event. How can we know it couldn't have been created by the conditions that existed in the natural world? How can you rule that out? Well you may or may not have ideas in mind that you can articulate. But even if you don’t that doesn’t mean that you can’t rationally believe that plate is conclusive proof of people being there at the time.

Now how much that plate looks like the work of a human versus just being a rock of some sort, I will leave vague. I mean how you evaluate the likelihood of those scientific constants being just what they are, is going to depend on how well versed you are with them and other beliefs that you bring to the table.

I'd say virtually zero. But I thought the question was about the odds of the universe having different physical laws than it currently does. I do have some experience digging in the ground, and finding things both natural and unnatural, so I feel like I've got something to go on there.

As for judging the odds that the universe would operate in a different way, I've got almost nothing, but if you want a gut feeling, I'd say zero either way. If there is no God, and the universe is self-existent, then my gut feeling is that it's impossible for it to operate differently. Conversely, if the physical universe was created a certain way by God, then I'm going to take the same answer and say that the odds are zero that he would have done it differently. (Cause the only way I could be proven wrong on that would be if people showed me different universes also created by God, and demonstrated that he usually does it differently, but this one universe came out a bit odd. I'm not too worried about that possibility.)

You have some experience finding things natural and unnatural/designed. How important is it that what you find is "in the dirt" or not. Sure the plate was found in the dirt. But the fact that it was found in the dirt as opposed to somewhere else isn't really why you think it was made by design instead of by nature. Moreover even if you never had any prior experience digging in the dirt and finding things natural or designed you could still conclude that the plate you found was designed. I think the same is true with the universe.

But ok the argument is what it is and I'm no expert on it. What about my underlying point? Do you agree that whether some thing or piece of data is going to be considered "evidence" of some other claim is going to be subjective? That is, it will depend on the other beliefs that the person holds.

The idea that a plate or a building or even a living being show evidence of design seems much greater to me than than the idea that the physical laws themselves show evidence of design. I can imagine a universe without life much easier than I can imagine one with no physical laws of any kind.




But ok the argument is what it is and I'm no expert on it. What about my underlying point? Do you agree that whether some thing or piece of data is going to be considered "evidence" of some other claim is going to be subjective? That is, it will depend on the other beliefs that the person holds. [/quote]

Petrosianic
The idea is not that there would be no physical laws of any kind but that they had to be just so. Consider the gravitational constant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant

Well why is the gravitational constant what it is? The Argument goes if it was a bit smaller or a bit greater the universe wouldn't work. Maybe it would collapse maybe it would just blow up too fast. etc. I really don't know how close this constant would have to be but the point is we have these constants Gravitational constants coupling constants etc. and its only because they are exactly what they are that we can exist.

In one book I listened to it is described as like finding a green house full of live plants in space. In the greenhouse there are 20 different knobs turned to exactly the correct temperature humidity air mixture etc. If any of those knobs were changed a hair all the life in the greenhouse would be dead. Are we to think there was no design of that green house?

I do agree with you though that to my mind I would have an easier time saying a plate must have been made by humans than that the constants were made by G_d. Nevertheless I still do view this as some evidence. Moreover I have not investigated all the ins and outs of the argument so I do not have anything conclusive to say on it. It may be a stronger or weaker argument than I currently view it. When I first heard it I was not impressed, but then as I thought about it, it did grow on me.