Almost any change to the laws of physics would result in no intelligent life evolving. For instance, if neutron mass was a little less than it was, proton decay would have taken place so there would be no atoms at all; the production of oxygen and carbon and indeed, any higher elements above that in stars depend on the careful setting of two nuclear levels. The chemistry on which known life depends involves intricate folding and bonding patterns that would be destroyed if the fine structure constant were a little different.
The fine structure constant has its place in stellar reactions too. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy. There are MANY such qualities, all falling within the narrow range for life to evolve. And your answer is, basically,. How is that different from the man surrounded by sixty guns, mentioned above, when all sixty guns misfire at once?
Which is basically your thinking above. Refute WHAT? Okay, now I know what your big argument is — the Anthropic Principle.
None of that follows from any of the preceding. Wikipedia has a perfectly good answer to your conundrum: only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing any such fine tuning.
Yes, the universe supports intelligent life. You run along and have fun with it though! Why the Anthropic principle, and not the Testudinal principle?
Do you see the problem with that? If God, than that means that biological life is not needed to sustain personhood and intelligence. The Anthropic principle tries to explain the physical universe by posing a being that eliminates the need for a physical universe to exist. Since we have well-documented gaps in our understanding of physics, it is entirely possible that other universal constants will be found not to be independent.
Good point. But what does that say if the only constants possible are the ones that allow intelligent life to develop? If so, I know of some near-saints out there. Although you realize you actually just gave a possible justification for angels, jinn, or Nyarlathetop existing—?
But we are dealing with a universe that is physical, where life arose through long evolution, etc. Like to send cat pictures. But if they are beings within a universe, then they most likely needed special constants to evolve, and then we have to explain THEM, etc. Look, either the universe exists as the final cause or there is a final cause beyond the universe.
We can even hear it or photograph it, via the Kobe thing. Something else has to be. We can speculate, but such would only be good guesses. I submit the above—ALL of the above—is tautological thinking and leads nowhere. Yes, including extraordinarily, astronomically improbable events.
Every possible outcome is extraordinarily improbable. This is mathematically demonstrable. If you were consistent, you would have to be in such a state of shock all the time as to be incapable of functioning.
This is not some mathematical riddle where there is one right answer. Whenever we determine something about the early nature of the universe, it has always — and will always — raise even more questions. There is never going to be one final answer. Not even a shred. God explains nothing, because you cannot explain nor demonstrate God.
The Testudinal principle has precisely as much explanatory power as the Anthropic principle, and as much evidence i. But nothing is explained this way.
You have no good reason to assume that a god would want to create a universe in general, and a universe like ours in particular. The question that jumps to my mind is: so what? But to conclude from it that the Universe if fine tuned, you have to first presume that it was created for a certain goal, one that is better fulfilled by a life-supporting universe than a lifeless one. I would say more explanation is needed, and certainly some sort of logical theory or demonstration that such is the case, but that depends, again, on your philosophic stand on inquiry in general.
I would venture to say that intelligent life is one —probable? That says nothing about humanity specifically— or earth, for that matter. But again, if the values that only can exist are the ones that foster intelligent life…. The very specific small range of values that allow us to even be discussing it—in some cases breathtakingly small, like the number of spatial dimensions, or the cosmological constant—argues to me, Mona Lisa specificity.
After all, they can never be directly observed or found in isolation. Just curious. Because there are trillions of things happening—every second. In which various constants and boundary conditions are only in the extremely narrow range that allows intelligent life to develop. All—as far as we can prove—not related to each other.
Gods have not been observed even indirectly. False equivalence. The life and death of a universe is a huge point of contention. For all we know, this same universe has gone through trillions of birth-death cycles already. We simply do not know. This is why I say so clearly that you cannot accept the unknown. You have to assume that the universe works the way you want it to be, because nothing else will support your conclusion.
Any conclusion. Present your evidence for God or give up. You cannot use as evidence anything that would have been true without the existence of any gods. We're soaking in it. Believers, on the other hand, are not soaking in atheism. Many atheists are trying to change this, of course, and are working to make atheism more visible and harder to ignore -- but there's still a huge amount of ignoring, and of ignorance.
And far too much of this ignorance is willful and deliberate. People ignore us, even when they're supposedly trying to figure us out. When believers write and talk and think about atheists, and about what they imagine atheists think and feel -- why don't they bother to ask us? What are they afraid of finding out? I've read and talked with a lot of believers -- and with a lot of atheists who used to believe. And it's hard to avoid the conclusion that, if believers actually found out how atheists think and feel, it would present a serious challenge to their beliefs.
When you look at the most common arguments for religion and against atheism, you'll find that most of them aren't actually arguments. They're not attempts to look at the evidence and logic supporting theism and atheism. They're attempts to deflect the question. They're attempts to shield religion from ever being seriously questioned. The notion that any criticism of religion is intolerant; the idea that religion shouldn't have to defend itself in the marketplace of ideas; the endless parade of "Shut up, that's why" arguments that typically get marshaled against atheists Not to mention the more obvious attempts to silence atheists -- like preventing atheist high school students from organizing clubs , and overt bullying and harassment of atheists , and blasphemy laws in theocracies that put atheists in prison and even execute them.
Religion is like a house of cards -- protected by a massively strong fortress. And one of the largest pillars in this fortress is the bigoted mythology about atheists. The idea that atheists are amoral? That our lives lack meaning and joy? That we're only atheists so we can reject religious rules? That we hate God? That our atheism is shallow, and we reject it and embrace religion when faced with suffering and death?
That we have no basis for human emotions like love and friendship and grief? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that all this mythology exists to keep believers from listening to anything we have to say.
The very existence of atheists and atheism is a challenge to religious belief. Religion relies on social consent to perpetuate itself. Religion is the Emperor's new clothes It's easier to ignore those voices if they're marginalized.
While atheism came in various shapes and sizes, Whitmarsh also argues that there were strong continuities across the generations. Ancient atheists struggled with fundamentals that many people still question today — such as how to deal with the problem of evil, and how to explain aspects of religion which seem implausible.
These themes extend from the work of early thinkers — like Anaximander and Anaximenes, who tried to explain why phenomena such as thunder and earthquakes actually had nothing to do with the gods — through to famous writers like Euripides, whose plays openly criticised divine causality. Perhaps the most famous group of atheists in the ancient world, the Epicureans, argued that there was no such thing as predestination and rejected the idea that the gods had any control over human life.
Such rulings left no room for disbelief. Whitmarsh stresses that his study is not designed to prove, or disprove, the truth of atheism itself. Battling The Gods is published by Faber and Faber.
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4. For image use please see separate credits above. The study suggests that not all Greeks recognised the gods, and that atheism was fairly acceptable in ancient polytheistic societies.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Our selection of the week's biggest Cambridge research news and features sent directly to your inbox. Enter your email address, confirm you're happy to receive our emails and then select 'Subscribe'. Good grief They believe in God but just hate Him, are Nihilist, have no morality because there is no divine punishment, worship science and think that it has all the answers and of course, approve of coldly logical solutions to our problems like just exterminating a random number of surplus population and are of course, thus in favour of brutal dictatorial regimes whether communist or fascist doesn't matter that do this sort of thing; are arrogant, inflated with pride in their own superior intellect and of course, spiteful and insulting to any who disagree with them.
Aside from personal misunderstandings and misrepresentations there are the general ones about atheism itself, such as it cannot exist or be logical as it must claim to know absolutely every particle of the universe known or unknown in order to claim that they know that God does not exist. Lord Jesus calls Christians to spread the gospel , and Jesus spirit gives ideas to Christians who he calls to help people receive the good news of Lord Jesus Christ of His salvation for all who will recieve SO if Christians do not spread the gospel and ignore the Plan of God , then it will be the time for Jesus to come and He will come to bring renewal to the earth So then if you do not like Christians spreading the gospel , then you will not like it when Jesus comes and destroys the spirit behind those who inhibit the spreading of the Gospel So what spirit is behind those who want the gospel stopped?
Well it is the dragon who go after those who keep the commands of Jesus and hold to their testimony of Jesus Christ, and it is the antichrist who rejects the commands of Jesus Christ and hold up logic and reason against the purpose, power, and faith and holds up idols against the commands of Jesus And then there is the false prophet who give contradictory ideas which are contrary to the purpose and character of God and His plan See these three spirits which are fallen angels , Jesus say that he will destroy when He come , which Jesus says is during a rise of sin in the world and a slow down in belief of His salvation plan for the world Originally Posted by hljc.
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