Just to be clear: there is no other place Max might get this information but from a ten minute interview? Have you considered the possibility he already knows Susskinds view?

If you watch the ten minute video it suggests that Max does not know Susskinds veiws on the subject otherwise he would not have butchered them as he has.

FYI Here are a couple of videos on the same site interveiwing Steven Wienberg.

http://www.closertotruth.com/video-p...-Weinberg-/616

http://www.closertotruth.com/video-p...-Weinberg-/211

You haven't been reading carefully.

Put another way, for theists invested in their beliefs, pointing out that there is no evidence for a God might bbe seen as attempts to "disprove" God, but that's only because of a lack of comprehension on the theists' end.

Just to add, I guess some nonbelievers' arguments do disprove some conceptions of God. For instance, the problem of evil and the incompetent design of the universe prove that any God is neither good nor perfect. They do not, however, disprove the existence of a God. All of the arguments against the latter are arguments about lack of evidence.

I've read his papers, been to some of his talks and have talked to him. His views are quite well known and well documented on this issue. Lol at anybody using 10 min clips to base their view, when there is so much better material out there. No need to ask how anyone can take you seriously.... because I don't think anybody does.

Stuff like the CC, particle masses and coupling constants look much more like parameters than the rules themselves. I would say quantum field theory IS the rules, not the random standard model constants.

I am not arguing about whether some the rules of physics were designed (most clearly weren't because they are logical consequences of simpler rules). I am simply saying that stuff that falls out of these rules, even if the rules were designed are different than designs where the designer can choose from a menu. Put another way, God has handcuffed himself if his creations are totally predictable by physicists with a supercomputer.

yes thank you I know what it means, but it doesn't resolve your error when you say our existence "influences" the fundamental nature of the universe. this is not the claim of either the strong or weak anthropic principle.

Yep. This is similar to the amputations problem. If God is all powerful, She has handicapped Herself by not growing back limbs that biology would dictate cannot be grown back. Meanwhile, theists attribute all sorts of unlikely but far from impossible recoveries to God.

If this is your argument it is a tautology. It does not allow for anything but intelligent beings to think "this universe is fine tuned for life." If there ever was a universe that was not "fine tuned for life" there would be no life there.

I have to suspect you're making all this up because your un-examinable evidence is not consistent with evidence that is examinable. LOL at a ten minute clip? That dam clip asks him point blank about fine tunning and you think its not relavent to his position on the matter.

There isn't any point in argueing with you on the matter if you want to bury your head in the sand instead of examining the things I present to support my position.

Stu,



http://www.amazon.com/Fallacy-Fine-T...f=pd_rhf_p_t_1


I haven't read it yet, but I read Victor's other book "God: The Failed Hypothesis." and I liked it... Maybe you should give it a try...


there's also some paper on it..

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/v...cy/FTCosmo.pdf

http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/v...o/FineTune.pdf

I've watched the clip now. I still don't think you have a clue what fine tuning means, which has been my argument the whole time and there is nothing in the clip that could have changed that. Why is the cosmological constant fine tuned but not the mass of the Earth? It has to be exact to 30 decimal places in terms of total mass of the visible universe or life on earth couldn't exist... do you think that points to design as well? If you could answer that you would be closer to seeing with the CC is not good evidence of a designer at all, regardless of whether the universe was designed or not.

Max, thanks for making my point. We believe there are 100 billion galaxies in the visable universe and each on of these galaxies has on average 100 billion stars. Now each star is going to have on average X number of planets. Lets assume that X equals 2(its probably bigger but 2 will do). Now that means there are 100 billion times 100 billion times 2 planets in the universe. Quite enough so that there is a very good chance that at least one would have a mass that happened to be "tuned" to within 30 decimal places in terms of the total mass of the universe.

Since we effectly know there are trillions upon trillions of planets, you cannot claim any one of them has been fine tuned. It is the same with the cosmological constant....if there are a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion universes each with seperate and distinct value for the cosmological constant, then you cannot say that it has been fine tuned.

However if it turns out that there is only one universe and if its cosmological constant were off by one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion life would not exist...then you are a pretty much forced into accepting that either the universe is fine tuned or the biggest longshot concievable was hit.

Similiarly if it were shown that there was only 1 planet in the universe which also had a mass "tuned" within 30 decimal places to the total observable mass of the universe...and such a "tunning" was necessary for life...then yes the mass of the solitary planet in the universe which also just happened to be tuned to exactly the ratio necessary for life...would indeed be evidence of fine tunning by a designer(it could be happenstance too but no reasonable person would believe that).

Cliff note: Max your argument fails miserably because you assume that there are many bites at the apple and that assumption has yet to be proved with regard to the cosmological constant....please try again.

Perhaps God has handcuffed himself for reasons know only too Him....or perhaps it is some higher dimensional sixth grader is pushing her simulation skills to the limit hoping to at least place in the science fair. Both are still indicative of intelligent design.

You can't really use soap bubbles and snowflakes as a reasons to think the fundamental rules of the universe are the result of an emergent complex process. Emergent complex processess depend on pre-existing rules so ultimately, if you trace things back far enough...you will end up with fundamental rules of the universe that are either:

A)designed
B)brute facts(no reason what so ever to take this super restrictive veiw unless you are an atheist desperate to maintain a particular paradigm)
C)a reality in which all possible rules/ rule combinations play out in multiple sub realities
D)that it was simply random happenstance...but this is not very believable.

Then the inductive argument is:
Premise 1: Most rules which appear to be designed are in fact designed.
Premise 2: The fundamental rules of the universe appear to be designed.

Conclusion: More likely than not the fundamental rules of the universe are in fact designed.

I dont get it, who cares that a fine-tuner, fine-tuned the universe, its changes nothing, NOTHING. How do we use this new found information? ummmmmmmm........we cant.

GG.

Well for one you would use this new founded knowledge to abandon atheism and become at least a deist.

which leads us.... nowhere.

Deism is much closer to atheism then it is to theism IMO

provided we are talking about deism as its classically understood.

It is still a significant shift in your paradigm.

How so? What do I do now that I know there is some non-involved creative force? It honestly would change nothing for me that I can see.

if you are defining deism as a force, sure. But who cares about a force? If deism refers to an intelligent mindful creator then it is no where near atheism.

Lolz... you are approaching notready status of ridiculousness. The point is fine tuning problems, as you understand them, are just hierarchy problems. The point of the planets example was that you can make any number you want fine tuned if you measure it at an unnatural scale. Add in dark energy and dark matter and you get a ridiculously fine tuned number for the mass of the earth. But even that is irrelevant. I can just make up a scale in which the mass of the Earth is fine tuned to 10^10^10^10 places. Going on about trillion trillion like a 3rd grader misses the point completely. In terms of arguments for design, the cosmological constant is actually much worse than the argument you can make from other parameters because we can compare say coupling strengths without need for some mysterious outside scaling parameter. Anyway, i am likely done with this baring a substantial improvement in your comprehension.

How would you know the creative force is non-involved?

Yes, that's what I am defining it as, because that's what it is. Deism doesn't refer to an intelligent mindful creator unless we are basically making up our own definition of what deism is, which is why I thought we agreed not to use that term if that's what is being referred to.

Clearly some people care about a force, because deism is, after all, an actual stance on this issue that many people take.

But it is not a definition that anyone uses here. I am sure that when stu talks about a deistic god as the intelligent creator he is not talking about a force, if he was it nothing he is saying would make any sense. the laws of physics would be god and that would not solve anything. An intelligent creator cannot refer to a force, this is a conversation about an intelligent creator so bringing up your definition of deism doesn't really make much sense.

And deism as a force is certainly not the standard definition.