[Leroy S. Mort]

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.

[Mr. Silverback]

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

Where are the aliens?

I'll elaborate on that question if you'd like.

[Zon]

Not a compelling argument for a divine creation given that there are quite probably trillions of planets in the universe.
There's approximately 80 billion galaxies with an approximate 400 billion stars each. 32 sextillion stars. How many planets?

[Ichneumon]

[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.

[stands2reason]

I hate it when people reduce God to a scientific theory.

[RipSawyer]

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

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Arguing after the fact that something is against all odds is pointless. As an example I once stepped out of a dressing room in a gym and had to pass back through the weight room to reach the outside door. As soon as I stepped through the door I stopped and did a double take. Just to my left was a little man doing butterflies with two small dumbbells. He had not been in the building when I entered the dressing area a few minutes earlier. He was a shipmate from a Navy ship on which we had been stationed fifteen years earlier, we had even been assigned to the same department and slept in the same berthing area. He grew up five hundred or more miles away from me. He had happened to be passing through this small town and used his guest privileges from another gym. What are the odds against that? Obviously a string of events had to happen at just the right time and in the right sequence or we would never have seen each other. It doesn't matter because it had already happened.