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[They start with evidence about the universe and the origins of life. And they talk, for example, about how finely our solar system and our planet had to be calibrated to support life. At “an extremely conservative estimate,” they say, the probability of our planet being capable of sustaining us is about one in a billion. It had to be at just the right place in the solar system, which had to be at just the right place in the galaxy. Even the expansion of the universe had to happen at just the right rate in order for all of us to be here today.]

Not a compelling argument for a divine creation given that there are quite probably trillions of planets in the universe.

Even worse, if this Universe was supposedly "finely tuned for life", then the alleged designer really sucks at his job.

If the Universe is allegedly "tuned" for life, why is 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999993+% (*) of it entirely hostile to life (due to hard vacuum, temperature, etc.), and only a vanishingly small percentage of it inhabitable? Wouldn't someone "designing" a habitat for life manage a much better livable portion than this? If that's "designed for life", someone did a truly crappy job of designing. That's more like the kind of results you'd expect by accident. If someone was tasked with designing a biohabitat for a space station or a zoo and did the job such that only 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000007% of its volume was actually suitable for anything to live in it, we wouldn't call that any kind of "intelligent design", and we'd immediately fire him.

Surely an allegedly ominipotent designer could come up with a design that minimized pointlessly wasted space. Even the naive notion of ancient man was a vastly more efficient design -- a lone Earth surrounded by nearby crystalline spheres studded with useful objects, like providing warmth from a small nearby Sun, light from a nearby small Moon, and little lights called stars and planets visible at night useful for navigation and telling the seasons. Now *that's* "tuned for life, as everything in it is dedicated to supporting the creatures in the habitat, without mindboggling amounts of wasted space and material.

Finally, anyone makes the "wow this is a really unlikely configuration for a universe, it must have been chosen that way" is revealing a gross logical fallacy -- unless they can determine how many other configurations this universe *could* have had, and over what range of physical constants (and good luck with *that* one), they really don't know whether this universe was likely or unlikely. For all they know, this is the only kind of physical universe that's actually possible in the first place. Furthermore, the "gosh, look how many constants work out well" argument is based on a similar ignorance -- how, exactly, have they determined that the various physical constants are all "free" to vary independently? For all they know, there's only *one* variable which necessarily determines the values of all the rest. Etc. etc. The folks making these goofy arguments are presuming far too much about things they really don't have a clue about yet. Until we actually understand how universes are generated, we have no grounds whatsoever for making any conclusions about how "likely" our variety might be. It's just philosophical masturbation by people who ought to know better, but then folks straining for "evidence" of deities often feel compelled in that direction anyway, no matter how shaky the ground.

Footnote: The volume of the portion of the Earth suitable for life is (very generously) the region up to five miles below the sea level to five miles above it. The Earth is 8000 miles in diameter. This means that the region of the Earth suitable for life is at most 2x10⁹ cubic miles. The known Universe is 1x10³³ light years in volume. There are roughly 7x10²² stars in it. Even under the most generous (and wildly unrealistic) scenario of every star having an Earthlike planet circling it, this means that the inhabitable fraction of the Universe is 2E10 mi^3 * 7E22 / 1E33 ly^3 / 2E38 mi^3/ly^3 = 7x10^-39, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000007%. And if the Earth happens to be the only inhabitable planet after all, add twenty-two more zeros to that figure.

[Thunderous applause, with angels singing in the background.]

You're right. Life is a virtual impossibility.

How can we prove it exists at all? It could all be a delusion.

That was beautiful.

A few more numbers and comments excerpted from Gerald Schroeders website.

1) Professor Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in high energy physics (a field of science that deals with the very early universe), writing in the journal "Scientific American", reflects on how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.

Although Weinberg is a self-described agnostic, he cannot but be astounded by the extent of the fine-tuning. He goes on to describe how a beryllium isotope having the minuscule half life of 0.0000000000000001 seconds must find and absorb a helium nucleus in that split of time before decaying. This occurs only because of a totally unexpected, exquisitely precise, energy match between the two nuclei. If this did not occur there would be none of the heavier elements. No carbon, no nitrogen, no life. Our universe would be composed of hydrogen and helium. But this is not the end of Professor Weinberg's wonder at our well-tuned universe. He continues:

One constant does seem to require an incredible fine-tuning -- The existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places.

This means that if the energies of the Big Bang were, in arbitrary units, not:

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000,

but instead:
100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 000000000000000001,

there would be no life of any sort in the entire universe because as Weinberg states:

the universe either would go through a complete cycle of expansion and contraction before life could arise, or would expand so rapidly that no galaxies or stars could form.

2) Michael Turner, the widely quoted astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab, describes the fine-tuning of the universe with a simile:

The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bulls eye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.

3) Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, discovers that the likelihood of the universe having usable energy (low entropy) at the creation is even more astounding,

namely, an accuracy of one part out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123. This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full, in our ordinary denary (power of ten) notation: it would be one followed by ten to the power of 123 successive zeros! (That is a million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros.)

Penrose continues,

Even if we were to write a zero on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe -- and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure -- we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed. The precision needed to set the universe on its course is to be in no way inferior to all that extraordinary precision that we have already become accustomed to in the superb dynamical equations (Newton's, Maxwell's, Einstein's) which govern the behavior of things from moment to moment.

Cosmologists debate whether the space-time continuum is finite or infinite, bounded or unbounded. In all scenarios, the fine-tuning remains the same.

It is appropriate to complete this section on "fine tuning" with the eloquent words of Professor John Wheeler:

To my mind, there must be at the bottom of it all, not an utterly simple equation, but an utterly simple IDEA. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, and so inevitable, so beautiful, we will all say to each other, "How could it have ever been otherwise?"

Re 104: The folks making these goofy arguments are presuming far too much about things they really don't have a clue about yet.

And yet you expect them to understand exponents!?

I have yet to see on these threads any creationist or Trinitarian who can get as far as 3 without trouble. Hmm, three is one, yet one is three. And, there is not a single reference in the Bible to any "3" to support religious dogma.

It is odd to see references to "Judeo-Christian" values based on 10 Commandments. Judeo values emphasize 1 (one). And Judeo ancient texts say there are 613 commandments. 6.13 x 10^2 commandments. Hellbender and the like are very selective as to which commandments they choose to accept.

Even under the most generous (and wildly unrealistic) scenario of every star having an Earthlike planet circling it, this means that the inhabitable fraction of the Universe is 2E10 mi^3 * 7E22 / 1E33 ly^3 / 2E38 mi^3/ly^3 = 7x10-39, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000007%. And if the Earth happens to be the only inhabitable planet after all, add twenty-two more zeros to that figure.

And yet the probability of life appearing on Earth in very short order after the initial "global warming" is 1. Very curious.

You seem to be doing just what atheists assume theists do: assuming that God is anthropomorphic, that he cares about things like "wasting space." We worry about space because we have little of it which is capable of supporting life here on earth. Why should God care how much of the billions of cubic light-years of space he allocates to life? Maybe, as theists have always said, "His ways are not our ways." Maybe He didn't want habitable planets close enough that their civilizations could reach and annihilate each other (not saying that's why, but it's conceivable, and the kind of thing a sci-fi author might think up). Maybe the habitable planets have to be far enough from stars that they are not destroyed by supernova explosions, deadly radiation, black holes, etc. etc. There are many conceivable reasons why more space might not be allocated to life, and no reason for believing that mere quantity of life had to be important. As you might say, you are making assumptions about things we don't know enough about yet.

"The folks making these goofy arguments are presuming far too much about things they really don't have a clue about yet"...."folks straining for "evidence" of deities often feel compelled in that direction anyway, no matter how shaky the ground."

It's not creationists, I.Ders, or people who started out trying to support "deities" who came up with the arguments about the fundamental physical constants being very critical for life. It's physicists, astrophysicists, cosmologists, etc. Maybe you think all theoretical physics is "philosophical masturbation?" Thank goodness for the oh-so-superior intellects of the atheists, who can save us from these "goofy" cosmologists and their anthropic principle! I bet those guys are all really a bunch of crypto-creationists, anyway, right?

Scientists usually don't like to spend much time considering hypotheses which can't be tested. Minor changes in physical constants would make for a universe which couldn't have intelligent life, like scientists; so such universes could not be witnessed, described, or comprehended by anyone. In effect, they are unknowable to us.

There is absolutely no evidence, in our rather extensive modern knowledge of physics, that variables like the charge on the electron, the mass of the electron, Planck's constant, the gravitational constant, etc. are dependent on each other, or that 'there's only *one* variable which necessarily determines the values of all the rest."
So I think it might be you who is the one "straining for evidence" of your particular worldview.