Anyways, the reason I think it's so dubious to separate 'mindful' from 'mindless' universe-creating gods is that we don't even have a satisfactory account of human minds! So the notion of divine minds stretches "vague" to its very limits.

I thought of an analogy. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, that I listen to weekly, always starts with a chick saying "You're listening to the skeptic's guide to the universe." Your OP is like me starting a new SGU podcast and asking "how does this chick always know what I'm doing?!?"

Stu has shown numerous times that he is immune to that line of reasoning.

An impressive immunity to possess, no doubt.

The error that is made is assuming that since we have found natural explainations for other things we will find natural explainations for these as well. The reason this is an erroneous assumption is the things we were looking at previously were not fundamental. Once you begin looking at things which are fundamental it is obvious they are not going to be consequence of some pre-existing laws because if that turns out to be the case then they arn't fundamental.

Now if God did design the universe, what would the simplest design be? One where He hand crafts and designs everything? No, the simplest and most elegant universe God could design would be one in which He just has to design a few things from which will logically follow a desired result.

The following is a video of Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptics magazine, claiming the fine tuned universe is the best theistic argument. He essentially admits it is an argument that he cannot refute(although he accepts a different explaination for the apparent fine tuning).

http://www.closertotruth.com/video-p...l-Shermer-/668

If someone showed me an order of chinese food, I would believe that an intellect ordered it.....I think most people would too.

Now with respect to the CC there is no reason for a designer to choose any specific number(as you are suggesting) unless He is trying to design the universe around a specific CC. However if the designer is trying to design the universe around the existence of life, intellect and consciousness...amoung other parameters, then He will choose a CC that is consistent with life, intellect, and consciousness.

No....we can draw that intelligent design is just as good as an explaination for the apparent finetuning as is string theory.

This is true. I try to avoid such silly and useless reasoning. Of course the girl knows a personing listening to that particular recording of her voice is listenting to that particular recording of her voice. If that particular recording of her voice is also an SGU podcast then she knows the person who is listening to that particular recording of her voice is also listening to an SGU podcast.

I would suggest that when you hear that womans voice you believe that you are listening to the SGU podcast and not some random static that just happens to sound like the chick making the introduction to the SGU podcast.

Why is that?

Now suppose I claim to you that SGU podcasts don't exist. You counter that claim by playing a recording of the SGU podcast. Wouldn't it be silly of me to say, "Thats not evidence of an SGU podcast....thats just random static sounding like what an SGU podcast would sound like if it existed". Or "we don't know why that sounds like an SGU podcast but I am sure there is explaination and eventually we will find it". Or "there are an infinite number of broadcasts of woman making different statements...therefore it is inevitable there would eventually be a woman making this particular statement"

String theory is backed up by mathematics , what is intelligent design backed up with?

Cool story.... but completely irrelevant to the point... and I want to believe even you see that.

Lol... finally. At this point design is totally vacuous and unfalsifiable. Every parameter (and in fact everything about the universe) will be consistent with life, intellect and consciousness whether the universe is designed or not.

No...string theory...like everything else including things which are know to be intelligently designed....are described by math.

huh??

Yeah I thought that the whole ordering of chinese food was a ******ed analogy on your part.

So is the multiverse, string theory, susskinds landscape, and any other explaination to explain the apparent fine tuning of the universe.

String theory is an idea described in math. Perfect circles are ideas described in math but you won't find any in nature. At best you would find structures that in circular in shape but not true circles.

What does this have to do with intelligent design?

You were asserting that since string theory is backed by mathematics it is a better explaination. I was merely pointing out that string theory is an idea described by math but that doesn't say anything about its likelyhood of being a correct discription of the universe. Perfect circles are described by math too but you and I both know they don't exist in nature. Perfect circles only exists as constructions of a mind.

Well yeah, it is designed to be equivalent to your argument...But you finally seem to be on board that the CC is not a good argument for design

No, string theory may or may not be unfalsifiable. It pretty much can't be vacuous because of it's intertwining with quantum field theory. Susskind would probably claim that the multiverse has already passed a falsifiable test, the CC not being exactly 0.

I didn't say it's a "better" explanation. I stated that it is backed up by math, while Intelligent Design is nothing but wishful thinking at this moment , unless you do have something backing up that the universe and life on it has been intelligently designed.

Don't be silly the CC isn't an argument for design. It is an example of something which has appearance of its value being the product of design.

It's not that string theory is described by math, it's that string theory provides the only known framework that allows people to do detailed calculations on things like black hole entropy and get the correct answers. Of course that makes it more likely to be correct but doesn't prove it is correct.

When have we ever measured black hole entropy?

And that argument is terrible. Any nonzero measurement can be trivially made to have the appearance of fine tuning according to you.

We haven't and I never said we did. String theory gives the correct answers from semi-classical calculations (Hawking, Bekstein etc).

The fine tuned universe argument is backed up by about 20 constants that are on a knife edge...that is if they are off by just a little bit in either direction from that edge you could not have a universe with sufficient complexity to support the rise of life, intellect and conscousness. How do we know we could not have a universe with sufficient complexity to support the rise of life, intellect and consciousness? Because our mathmatical models of the universe suggest it; the intelligent design proposition is supported by the math too.