Drew
Member
I am going to start a thread on this topic. It has nothing to do with evolution - the focus is instead cosmology. I plan to adopt the strategy of only responding to those posters who I believe are interested in a serious and even-handed discussion of this issue. Obviously, anyone can post whatever they want, but I do not intend to be drawn into sub-conversations that I deem are fruitless. And, of course, I will not "complain" about what other posters write - I have no right at all to limit other people's input.
OK, with that out of the way, here goes.
I saw a youtube clip in which Christopher Hitchens (a very aggressive critic of religion of all forms) "concedes" that the so-called fine-tuning argument is the creationist's best piece of evidence. Note that I use the term "creationist" to denote any person who believes God created the universe (even if He did so billions of years ago).
The idea is that in order for structures and life to have evolved, certain physical constants must have assumed very special values. Here is one example: There is a quantity, omega, which represents the balance between the attractive force of gravity and the speed of the expansion of the universe following the Big Bang. If omega had not been exactly equal to 1 at the very beginning, life could not have formed in our universe (at least this is what expert Martin Rees asserts).
I think this is what Hitchens is talking about - it is very tempting to conclude that some "agent" must have selected omega to be exactly 1. There is, not surprisingly, a counterargument - if there are many universes, ours might just be the one where omega happened to exactly equal 1 whereas in all the other universes, omega was not equal to 1 and none of them produced life. In that "multi-universe" model, the argument for a "creative hand" is basically lost. It's like someone who wins the lottery - it may seem like a miracle to that person but, of course, it is not.
Anyway, I find the fine-tuning argument to be quite compelling. I believe there are other quantities, beside omega, that had to assume very specific values or otherwise life could not have arisen.
OK, with that out of the way, here goes.
I saw a youtube clip in which Christopher Hitchens (a very aggressive critic of religion of all forms) "concedes" that the so-called fine-tuning argument is the creationist's best piece of evidence. Note that I use the term "creationist" to denote any person who believes God created the universe (even if He did so billions of years ago).
The idea is that in order for structures and life to have evolved, certain physical constants must have assumed very special values. Here is one example: There is a quantity, omega, which represents the balance between the attractive force of gravity and the speed of the expansion of the universe following the Big Bang. If omega had not been exactly equal to 1 at the very beginning, life could not have formed in our universe (at least this is what expert Martin Rees asserts).
I think this is what Hitchens is talking about - it is very tempting to conclude that some "agent" must have selected omega to be exactly 1. There is, not surprisingly, a counterargument - if there are many universes, ours might just be the one where omega happened to exactly equal 1 whereas in all the other universes, omega was not equal to 1 and none of them produced life. In that "multi-universe" model, the argument for a "creative hand" is basically lost. It's like someone who wins the lottery - it may seem like a miracle to that person but, of course, it is not.
Anyway, I find the fine-tuning argument to be quite compelling. I believe there are other quantities, beside omega, that had to assume very specific values or otherwise life could not have arisen.