This is a no weight argument. ALl you are basically saying in the CC argument is... yea they're are some really unlikely things (lotto, being struck by lightning etc) but this is super duper unlikely, therefore design. Probability does not work this way.

If you watched the video I linked in this thread Susskind claims that nobody(in the world of cosmology) thinks we got this incredibly lucky. It is really quite silly to think that....the odds of you being correct are simply infinitesimal.

Susskind is an atheist who flat out rejects intelligent design and subscribes to a landscape veiw of the universe. If I understand his position correctly he believes the universe is unbelieveably big(much much much bigger than we can observe) and there laws of physics are different in different areas of the universe. If all possible landscapes exist then some which are conducive to life will necessarily exist. Thus the existence of life is inevitable.

there is statistically significant evidence against ID...the lack of evidence FOR ID, despite millions of people searching for it for thousands of years is statistically significant.

This is correct, but I don't see your point. In a sense, susskind does believe we got "lucky" because we just happen to be in a corner of the universe that supports life. How does this support your argument that this is god?

Its not luck if its inevitable. Susskinds landscape or the other multiverse models make it inevitible that life producing properties will appear somewhere.

Are you postulating that the universe was intelligently designed, but that some of it is better designed than other parts?

yes, some life will appear somewhere, but it didnt have to be humans with human properties... but still, how does quoting an atheist cosmologist who is ardently against the idea(as are other cosmologists) that this has any religious connotations whatsoever an argument for god?

That argument works. The objections others are putting up are off the mark. The only reason your argument falls apart is that there is extra information available to us. Without this extra information you could in fact say that the universe is probably designed.

The extra information is that we know the unintelligent processes that make undesigned things like bubble shapes, snowflakes or mountains look designed. Furthermore we know of nothing designed by intelligence that hasn't been designed by humans or animals. With this extra info we can say that if we see something that looks designed but obviously hasn't been designed by humans or animals, it probably was undesigned and came about through the laws of logic and physics only.

Every poster in this thread that has objected has raised this objection IIRC

This is extremely misleading.

From the Wikipedia entry:
So it is barely measured to one significant figure ( and there is ton of interpretation on the whole measurement ).

Then again from the Wiki
So somethings could be wrong with QFT at the planck scale. Everything is quite speculative on this issue.

There is a discrepancy with the measurement and theory but its not the same thing as 120 sig.fig. measurement.

There are strongly compelling arguments for a multiverse explanation, hints from string theory, inflation theory, ( get the Greene book, etc )

A Creation theory is weak for a big reason ( among others), that is has no reach and can simply be resorted to at any point without adding any explanatory values, predictions etc. It is simply too adaptable to be of any use.

Dave

Stu, when you get a could you please reply to post #42 in this thread?

No. You continually make this mistake in this forum. The phrase "is consistent with" is not synonymous with "is evidence of." That the universe is consistent with one that was fine tuned is not evidence that it was in fact fine tuned, nor of a fine tuner.

No. We have no reason to think that these "universal constants" could be anything other than what they are. It makes no sense to assume that they could be any different than what they currently are.

Yes. We do this by contrasting the object in question with what we know of how things naturally form and identify that there are differences. There are no such differences of which we are aware that we can use to contrast universes.

You have seen me write that I do not accept the multiverse model a number of times.

We have hashed this one out plenty of times, and every time you wind up reducing your own statement to 'the universe is consistent with one that is designed' which as I have pointed out several times is an entirely useless statement. You are equivocating here; the universe does not have the appearance of design in the sense that you wish it to mean. As I pointed out above, the 'things which have the appearance of design' appear to do so because we can contrast them with the rest of the things in nature. But no such comparison can be made between universes.

That's because you are contrasting the hole you saw with holes you typically see.

Again, nobody knows how the universal constants were derived, so any talk about "the odds" is just ridiculous. There isn't even any reason to assume that 'getting lucky' is a part of it at all.

In the question concerning the existence of God this extra information may be unreliable. Suppose on your super computer you create a virtual reality called Sklansky World which is inhabited by intelligent/sentiant beings called Davidians. In this world the Davidians would see soap bubbles and snow flakes and think that although they appear to be designed, closer scrutiny reveals the matter is behaving in a manner directed by the laws of physics. The snow flake or soap bubble is just a logical consequence of those laws.

Now if an intelligence designs a system such that it will generate emergent complex artifacts.....like snow flakes or flocks of birds, are not those artifacts ultimately the product of design?

Interestingly enough, this is mentioned (I believe more than once) in the video he himself linked.

The video says just the opposite. What Deorum is suggesting there is the most restrictive veiw and the science community isn't going to adopt it until there is some compelling reason.

At about 40 seconds:

"Until we understand those first moments, we should not assume any special reason for their values"

Is this different then saying "they are what they are"?

Yes....here is the full quote...I added back the stuff you left out.

"Perhaps there is a rationale explaination for why the laws of nature were set so precisely at the birth of our universe. Until we understand those first moments, we should not assume any special reason for their values."

Basically the narrator is saying those values could be anything sans some rationale explaining why they were set to the values there were set too.

The whole video is about how abhorent the idea is that we exist simply out of the benevolence of nature or that somehow our future existence influenced how these numbers were set at the birth of the universe...and that it is silly to think it was happenstance.

The video makes a very compelling argument that the appearance of these constants is such that it cries out for an explaination. If the science community was content just accepting them as brute facts...you would have people in the science community making that claim. I don't think anyone does.

If the cosmological constant is a major god proof, why is it, in your opinion, that many of the cosmologists who accept fine tuning are atheists? Why do you think this is a proof for god?

I am sorry but I have not read the entire thread.

Personally, I think that it is too early to jump to the conclusion that - chance cannot have the primarily role in designing something perceived by us to be 'all too perfect or planned'.

I could also jump to the conclusion that - there are infinite universes, where every single possibility = true, most of which are universes that do not even function because the laws of physics are off by .00001%. This may seem absurd but currently - it's equally likely.

Fine Tuning has caused some atheist cosmologist to become theists. Fred Hoyle was perhaps the Richard Dawkins of his day. He coined "Big Bang" as term of derision. But before he died he was making comments like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle

I don't think the fact that the universe appears to be fined tuned is proof of God's existence. It is evidence but it is ambigious evidence. It can also be interpeted to support the multiverse models. I think it is compelling enough that if I were an atheist, I would go from being 99% sure God doesn't exist to somewhat less...like 50%-60% sure God doesn't exist.

I think if it was ever shown that the multiverse models are impossible....most of your atheist cosmologist would become deist.

I don't understand the obsession with the constants in the laws of nature. Take, for instance, the newtonian law that gravity is proportional to one over distance squares. One can do this, if you made that just one over distance or one over distance cubes then it would give very very different results, one doesn't get elliptical orbits of planets for instance. If someone is impressed with knowing the cosmological constant to 120 decimal places (even though this is a misrepresentation) they should surely be impressed with the precision that it is distance squares, a whole number!

So I don't think attention of the constants of physics are warranted any special attention to just laws of physics in general. The intuitive reasons deists focus on them is I think because it is easy to imagine a constant being slowly varied in its values but this is nothing deep.

It seems to me to be entirely obvious that no matter what the laws of physics might be, one can always make the claim that if they were changed they universe would be very different. It is essentially the anthropic principle. So saying that the universe would be different with different laws (in particular, different constants) seems closer to a tautology than evidence for a designer.

Not really. You can't claim that a designer of the laws of physics has designed things that automatically fall out of these laws in the same way that humans design cars which don't automatically occur.

I'll take a watch later, but if the video claims (which I am fairly confident it does not) that we know how to derive these 'universal constants' it is wrong. Regardless, you don't just assume something is false simply because the scientific community has yet to adopt it it as its standard model. The reason you do not accept that the constants are necessary is the very reason you should not accept that they can change.

So what is the point of this then? What does fine tuning show, in your opinion.

Also, I don't know if you mean to write "deist" But Fred Hoyle wasn't a theist, or at least, he rejected both Christianity and Judaism.

From The Intelligent Universe:

"I am not a Christian, nor am I likely to become one."

Exactly. In fact, until we understand them, we shouldn't assume anything at all about their values. The grand irony here is that the proper scientific application of the anthropic principle is a cautionary against drawing conclusions based on one's frame of reference. There isn't anything intrinsically special about the current values of these cosmological constants. They're simply special to you. There isn't anything intrisically special about a diamond royal flush. It's just as likely as any other random five card hand. The fact that it is 'more ordered' or 'appears designed' has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the hand was assembled by intelligence or by chance. A diamond royal isn't special because it is a diamond royal. It is special because it is special to you.