Fine tuning?

A tiny probability is not an impossibility - not a lot of luck needed - and I think the author is underestimating the sheer scale of the universe.  Secondly, life could have evolved in relation to the circumstances rather than specific circumstances having to be necessary for life.

Funny how to date and for the foreseeable future, Origin-Of-Life research has abjectly failed to find any undirected, just following the laws of physics and chemistry and probability statistics, mechanisms by which complex self-replicating organisms could have originated just by chance from non-living chemicals. So much for the assumption that life originally "evolved" from non-living chemicals and just "evolved" to fit whatever circumstances obtained. "Islands" of great fitness are very rare in genetic configuration space, and Darwinian RM + NS processes can evolve very little of consequence, as conclusively shown by Dr. Michael Behe.

The 'chance' argument is the materialist's variant on the God of the Gaps.  More aptly, Maths of the Gaps in this case.

Its a faith position, nothing more.

The chance argument makes perfect sense when given the sheer size of the universe.  I am seeing in this thread the usual lack of interest in considering any view other than the one you already have.  PQ is an echo chamber and there is no point in skeptics posting anything here because it will just get trodden underfoot without consideration.  As a christian, I believe the universe was created but even I can see that there is no physical proof of that.  I have lost all respect for this forum and might never come back!

The chance argument makes perfect sense when given the sheer size of the universe.  I am seeing in this thread the usual lack of interest in considering any view other than the one you already have.  PQ is an echo chamber and there is no point in skeptics posting anything here because it will just get trodden underfoot without consideration.  As a christian, I believe the universe was created but even I can see that there is no physical proof of that.  I have lost all respect for this forum and might never come back!

I really don't see how even an infinite size by necessity allows exceeding low probability events to arise to a higher chance, especially when we're talking about the very constants of the universe that are thought by many/most physicists to remain the same across said universe's expanse?

As for skeptics, most of their posts that I recall seemed to born more of materialist evangelism than any serious consideration. It almost never was interesting, compared to - for example - the recent debate about which metaphysics best accommodates Survival.

While I am still not a Dualist, I have over time gained more respect for that position in part due to the arguments posted by members here. Whereas the arguments for Materialism and Consciousness being an Illusion [were] just mind numbing...

The above was quoted from another thread.

In an unfathomably huge universe with countless trillions of stars, many with their own solar systems, it is almost inevitable that these conditions will appear somewhere, even by chance alone.

All you've got is your experience, all any of us have is our experience.

Edwin Land was able to demonstrate that colour is not a property that exists outside of our experience.

The anomalous phenomena we discuss on here suggests that we can come into possession of experiences which we do not recall experiencing, or could not have experienced, according to popularised theories which attempt to understand nature, for example veridical OBE's, apparitions, children's past lives etc. This suggests our experience is connected to others.

It seems we're unable to get behind our experience. Our inside experience, and our outside experience are one and the same, and our experience appears to be formed from our connections.

The experience of colour, really can't be any different from any other experience. The fact that nature appears fine tuned to match us, seems to me to be just a reflection that the fine tuning arises within our experience, just like colour. It just doesn't seem possible to separate our experience from us.

If we isolate the tiniest part of our experience, some part of our experience that we all appear to share, something we agree on, but which we can't give operational meaning to, a place that we can't experience, even in principle - this tiny part of our experience being particle scattering from particle collisions. When we attempt to understand only what we can observe, and not what we cannot observe, we find within particle scattering, a rich mathematical structure, that lies behind our experience. When that mathematical structure is applied to the everyday world of our experience, a kinematical structure is found of infinite cylinders with positive and negative windings, which looks extremely similar to the highly conserved microtubule biological structure found in all eukaryotes. This suggests to me that even when we go looking, all we find is ourselves again.

There seems no way of getting behind our connected experience.

and yet, like other people, I've experienced something enormous, that gave me incredible comfort and knowledge. I'm so incredibly confident that there is a way through... just not through the popular theories which are presently used to understand nature - those theories which separate us from each other, and nature.

The chance argument makes perfect sense when given the sheer size of the universe.  I am seeing in this thread the usual lack of interest in considering any view other than the one you already have.  PQ is an echo chamber and there is no point in skeptics posting anything here because it will just get trodden underfoot without consideration.  As a christian, I believe the universe was created but even I can see that there is no physical proof of that.  I have lost all respect for this forum and might never come back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H0yoBiBM5s

InspiringPhilosophy has a Christian perspective on the idea of theistic evolution, you might find this interesting. It strengthens the fine tuning argument but also includes evolution

basically it's saying that life is written into the laws of our universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H0yoBiBM5s

InspiringPhilosophy has a Christian perspective on the idea of theistic evolution, you might find this interesting. It strengthens the fine tuning argument but also includes evolution

basically it's saying that life is written into the laws of our universe.

It seems to me that Theistic Evolution is a near-total sellout to materialism and Darwinistic RM + NS, devised in order to somehow maintain some remnant of spiritual relevance for Christian teaching in a world where Christianity seems to be being marginalized by scientism and Darwinism, where the materialistic intellectual elite in academia reject Christianity out of hand as superstition from the past.

Unfortunately, in this concocted system, at the level of our physical existence (as opposed to the level of the Deity), evolution is still a completely undirected semi-random walk fueled by statistically random genetic changes, with no meaning or purpose in our physical reality. The underlying laws of physics and chemistry and probability statistics are still the enabling substrate of our physical reality. Beyond establishing this foundation, God or spiritual forces have left their hands off the controls. So as a consequence, Man and the living world are as Darwinism claims, also still meaningless and purposeless. Theistic Evolution doesn't seem to succeed in anything worthwhile in the battle between scientism and spirituality.

It seems to me that Theistic Evolution is a near-total sellout to materialism and Darwinistic RM + NS, devised in order to somehow maintain some remnant of spiritual relevance for Christian teaching in a world where Christianity seems to be being marginalized by scientism and Darwinism, where the materialistic intellectual elite in academia reject Christianity out of hand as superstition from the past.

Unfortunately, in this concocted system, at the level of our physical existence (as opposed to the level of the Deity), evolution is still a completely undirected semi-random walk fueled by statistically random genetic changes, with no meaning or purpose in our physical reality. The underlying laws of physics and chemistry and probability statistics are still the enabling substrate of our physical reality. Beyond establishing this foundation, God or spiritual forces have left their hands off the controls. So as a consequence, Man and the living world are as Darwinism claims, also still meaningless and purposeless. Theistic Evolution doesn't seem to succeed in anything worthwhile in the battle between scientism and spirituality.

Honest question -  If we say the Desinger(s) are intervening now...what exactly are they up to?

It is hard for me to see our observed reality as one where the designers have their hands on the controls. I am fine with benevolent entities, or at least entities we can negotiate with toward benevolence. But I remain somewhat doubtful that beings with the power to make a universe are still involved, in any significant way, with our daily lives...

Honest question -  If we say the Desinger(s) are intervening now...what exactly are they up to?

It is hard for me to see our observed reality as one where the designers have their hands on the controls. I am fine with benevolent entities, or at least entities we can negotiate with toward benevolence. But I remain somewhat doubtful that beings with the power to make a universe are still involved, in any significant way, with our daily lives...

My personal favorite concept is that a number of different extremely intelligent and powerful (though still ultimately limited) spiritual entities are the creative agencies behind evolution, with their interventions being the most important genetic changes, ones leading to major functional adaptations. These are usually the sudden introduction of innovative new and intricate irreducibly complex biological systems or subsystems, which are the distinguishing characteristics of the many abrupt and sharp discontinuities in the fossil record unexplainable by Darwinistic processes. 

Of course, undirected Darwinian processes are also operating at the same time, but being exclusively due to the chance breaking of various existing functional genes, they achieve only minor adaptations and continually degrade the genome in the process. This latter process of automatic genetic deterioration is not normally under the control of these beings, and results in much of the regular phenomenon of the turnover of species every few million years.
  
So, in this scheme, no one spiritual being controls the process of evolution, and evolution is still (in small part) undirected Darwinistic RM+NS processes. Certainly, "beings with the power to make a universe" are not presently involved.

My personal favorite concept is that a number of different extremely intelligent and powerful (though still ultimately limited) spiritual entities are the creative agencies behind evolution ...

And there is some support for this when you read a lot of channelled material. I have yet to read anything in those publications that suggest a single designer - that's a fundamentalist view from Abrahamic religions. I think that some of the ID people favour the religious creator too but that's where my sympathy with their views diverges.

If we look at reality as multi-dimensional instead of a "here" and "there", then intervention is not at all a strange concept. If we accept that all is born out of consciousness, then interaction is surely inevitable. Sure, there are laws governing this physical dimension which makes it somewhat difficult for us to meander through any adjoining dimension but I think there may be good evidence that the barriers may be a little more permeable that we think. Indeed, the whole of parapsychology points to that.

Finally, to answer Brian - this forum is not an echo chamber. While most of us share a basic worldview that differs from that of a physicalist and (especially) from that of a skeptic, I do believe that we consider differing views. Idealists, dualist and materialists all make basic assumptions and pursue their arguments based upon those assumptions. A physicalist assumption is that the physical is all there is and therefore mind arises out of physical matter. An idealist believes that mind is fundamental so the physical is merely a manifestation of creative mind at work. I am an idealist but I tend to believe that this physical reality operates in a dualist framework so I have some sympathy for the dualist view. I have yet to see a slam-dunk argument for materialism though and the more I read the arguments from that side, the more I'm convinced that their fundamentalism is every bit as strong as any religion.