What you claim to do is dismiss claims which lack evidence. But what you do in reality is only dismiss claims which lack evidence if they are contrary to your world veiw.

There really are just 4 explainations of why the universe is the way it is.

1. God dunnit
2. Multiverse dunnit
3. Shear luck dunnit
4. Some unknown explaination dunnit.

If you are going to reject one of those explainations because it lacks extra ordinary evidence....then to be consistent you should reject them all because extra ordinary evidence does not exist for any of them. But if you reject them all you can't really have a coherent world veiw because you know it has to be one of those explainations.

What am I saying? Well went it comes to the fundamental nature of the universe the principle "extra ordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence" only mucks up your ability to forumulate a coherent world veiw. It is useless to adopt it as principle in formulating a belief about God.

Sure...but so is yours.

Except that 4 is not an explination, it is saying "I dunno"

Again I would ask you why you feel you have to accept any of these neccesarily. If you don't feel any of them is compelling why don't you just wait for something that is? Its not as if there is some sort of scientific consensus.

mine what? You're the one with beliefs , I'm the one who rejects those unsupported supernatural claims.

Stu Pidasso -

In normal adult conversation, when someone says something hysterically false and is corrected, he acknowledges his mistake. This signals that he is, despite temporary appearance, in fact rational and able to read with at least minimal comprehension.

Are you aware of this convention?

Well yeah, nothing can put an end to fine tuning arguments of your type

If by likely you mean nobody has any idea then yes.

Dawkins probably has a good understanding of all the reasons why fine tuning might not be real that you don't.

Obv the best answer is we don't know. I also would think multiverse has a ton more evidence than a designer because of the Weinberg paper. Never read any designer based model that ever made a non trivial prediction or even explanation.

lol.. next claim would be something like this..

Multiverse is a creation of Christian God anyway, he is just taking a nap...

These links will take you to this list of cosmologist, physicist, and philosphers discussing the apparent fine tuned universe. I know Maxraker recognizes some of those names(since he cited the work of at least three of them Stenger, Wienberg, Vilekin) and maybe even read some of thier papers. These are not slouches by any standard. If you read the wiki link Max supplied as a rebuttal to that post(the one you call hysterically false), you will see that even it acknowledges this is a controversy that cries out for an explaination. Max can't credibly claim that the scientific community does not acknowledge an apparent finetunning of the universe. These guys(most of whom are atheists) are dealing with it instead of burying thier heads in the sand pretending it doesn't exist.

http://www.closertotruth.com/topic/I...e-and-Mind-/37


Is Life and Mind Inevitable in the Universe? (George Smoot)
Is Life and Mind Inevitable in the Universe? (Fred Alan Wolf)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind? (Lee Smolin)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Consciousness? (Michio Kaku)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind? (Martin Rees)
Must the Universe Contain Consciousness? (Alan Guth)
Must the Universe Contain Consciousness? (Part 2 of 2) (Paul Davies)
Must the Universe Contain Consciousness? (Part 1 of 2) (Paul Davies)
Is Life and Mind Inevitable in the Universe? (Andrei Linde)
Is Life and Mind Inevitable in the Universe? (Bruce Murray)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Consciousness? (Lawrence Krauss)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind? (Roger Penrose)
Must the Universe Contain Consciousness? (Saul Perlmutter)
Is Life and Mind Inevitable in the Universe? (Robert Laughlin)
Must the Universe Contain Consciousness? (Leonard Susskind)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind? (Leonard Susskind)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind? (Alexander Vilenkin)
Must the Universe Contain Consciousness? (J. Richard Gott)
Is Life and Mind Inevitable in the Universe? (Raymond Kurzweil)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Consciousness? (Nancey Murphy)
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind? (Russell Stannard)

Yet another link:

http://www.closertotruth.com/topic/I...d-Universe-/38

Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God? (William Dembski)
Is God the Cause of a Fine-Tuned Universe? (Frank Wilczek)
Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God? (Freeman Dyson)
Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God? (Victor Stenger)
Is God the Cause of a Fine-Tuned Universe? (Ernan McMullin) (Part 2 of 2)
Is God the Cause of a Fine-Tuned Universe? (Ernan McMullin) (Part 1 of 2)
Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God? (Peter van Inwagen)
Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God? (Paul Davies)
Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God? (Robert Russell)
Is God the Cause of a Fine-Tuned Universe? (Robin Collins)

Yet another link

http://www.closertotruth.com/topic/W...verse-Mean-/36

Why a Fine-Tuned Universe? (John Polkinghorne)
What does a Fine-Tuned Universe Mean? (Nick Bostrom)
What does a Fine-Tuned Universe Mean? (Steven J. Dick)
What does a Fine-Tuned Universe Mean? (Quentin Smith) (Part 1 of 2)
What does a Fine-Tuned Universe Mean? (Quentin Smith) (Part 2 of 2)
Why a Fine-Tuned Universe? (Paul Davies)
What does a Fine-Tuned Universe Mean? (Part 2 of 2) (Robin Collins)
What does a Fine-Tuned Universe Mean? (Part 1 of 2) (Robin Collins)
Why a Fine-Tuned Universe? (John Leslie)
Why a Fine-Tuned Universe? (Michael Shermer)
Why a Fine-Tuned Universe? (Steven Weinberg)
Why a Fine-Tuned Universe? (David Gross)

What are you talking about. Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Neil Turok, Roger Penrose and many others all have ideas about universe generating mechanisms.

I'd provide links but why bother since getting you to examine them in order to discuss them intelligently is like pulling teeth.

Read the second part of what you wrote

The difference between me and max is that I at least click his links.

no not on this post, on the one that precceded it. You said:

For there to be a multiverse there has to be a universe generator which is also likely to have its own fine tunings.

I suspect max was responding to this part, since he used the word "likely" as well

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

-Francis Bacon

I said likely because generally speaking there are many more ways something can be a failure than it can be success. For instance there are many more ways that Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine, and Thymine can be combined into DNA that don't forumulate a successful code of life and relatively few combinations which result in an actual working code of life. If we have a multiverse then we have a universe generating mechanism. The question flows why is that mechanism a success and not a failure when a failure is generally much more likely under the usual and ordinary course of nature?

Did the generator itself have multiple bites at the apple until such time as success was achieved....Did the generator just get lucky and come into existence as a success? Is that universe generator a success simply because it was designed to work from the start?

The multiverse explaination never really replaces the fine tune universe explaination, it simply pushes it further down the road and obscures it some.

Lol... well this is obv airtight. There is obv no known physics that explains something as out there are universe generation in a multiverse. Just because some physicists have spent/wasted time writing about it does not mean that anything is actually known at a scientific level about it.

I have to agree with you there, string theory with its different choices of Calabi-Yau manifolds leading to an estimated 10^500 false vacua, m theory....with its colliding branes....those aren't actually science but rather just science fiction.

Calabi Yau manifolds are actually purely mathematical objects that are interesting whether string theory is true or not.

You should bring back the Calabi Yau avatar....so much more interesting...mathematically speaking...then the M you're currently sporting.

You two get a room already.

Now now, there is something quite humorous about an armchair physicist talking with as much arrogance as stupid. Especially while conversing with an actual physicist. No need to deprive the rest of the world of this wonderful show.

They are not trying to disprove a god, they are simply saying no one has ever proven that there is one.

And quite frankly, the universe seems quite random to me.

What you are saying here is that "evidence is evidence" which is completely uninteresting.

Appearance of a murder is indeed evidence of a murderer....but if the observation is made by my aunt Edna who loves books about crime and is generally convinced that the elderly in her nursing home is being offed by nurse Jones...then it might not be a reasonable conclusion that someone has been murdered.

By purposefully removing any notions of "quality of evidence" from your statement you are willfully ignoring that evidence is not always good evidence ...which is bad...very bad.

The evidence is of sufficient quality to strongly indicate the existence of either a multiverse or an intelligent designer.