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To: 2ndDivisionVet
This is a stupid argument, even for an appeasenik fool like D'Loser.

Arguing afer the fact that it's improbable that the universe would have the correct physical attributes to create life is not only erroneous -- it is downright gibberish. The three obvious fatal fallacies in the argument are:

1. Without other universes to compare to which to compare this one, there is no possible basis for assigning any sort of "probability" to its existence or properties.

1a. Similarly, without fundamental knowledge about the entire range of "life other than as we know it" might arise out of different physical laws, there is no way to determine how wide or narrow a range of possible physical laws might be compatible with its existence in some form or other.

2. If the universe did not give rise to intelligence, there would obviously be nobody to formulate arguments as to whether or not it was likely to do so. Thus, the question can only be raised an applied to a universe in which intelligence does, in fact, exist.

The situation is equivalent to the joke about the Texas sharpshooter who shoots at a fence and paints bulls-eyes around each hole -- the probability of a bulls-eye is not small (as one would assume) but rather a dead certainty (because the existence of a bulls-eye is determined by the presence of a bullet hole, just as the existence of someone to frame the argument is determined by the presence of a universe that does in fact generate intelligence).

58 posted on 11/24/2008 6:47:54 AM PST by steve-b (Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.)
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To: steve-b
Arguing after the fact that it's improbable that the universe would have the correct physical attributes to create life is not only erroneous -- it is downright gibberish. The three obvious fatal fallacies in the argument are:

It actually isn't. If the mass of a hadron was a little different, or if the energy of a lepton was a little different, there would be no carbon and oxygen. If, as I pointed out with the Hoyle quote, the resonance of the carbon nucleus was a little bit different, there would be no carbon and no life, or universe, as we know it.

Your argument extrapolates. If we are a statistical accident of high energy physics, it follows that there were other accidents of high energy physics that did not produce the conditions for life as we know it. Either that or the universe got lucky on the first try. But there is no evidence of these other universes, a fact you use in your own argument comparing our universe to others that might have been. There is no proof that a different universe came before us and no proof that a different universe will come after us. It's beyond our ken.

It is in fact a serious problem with the anthropic theory of the universe - that we are capable of questioning the origin of the universe because it produced an environment that allows the evolution of living things that can question their origin. It's a circular argument. It sounds the same as the fundamentalist argument that only God can create beings who can question his existence, therefore the fact that we question his existence proves there is a God.

The simple fact is that this is the universe. By definition, this is all there is. We're stuck with it and we have to understand it in terms that make sense given what we can see. What came before it? What will come after it?

Yo no se. :)

169 posted on 11/24/2008 9:57:45 PM PST by sig226 (1/21/12 . . . He's not my president . . . Impeach Obama . . .)
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