My legs are just long enough to reach the ground. Coincidence????

That they stay there? No, gravity is fine tuning.

We have no idea what kind of world isn't tuned for. It could be a lot better than this. If you roll dice and get an eight, you'd have to conclude that your hand was exqusitely tuned to roll an eight.

No, because you can then roll a two and change nothing. The Universe could not be any other way.

I seem to remember someone making this exact elementary logical blunder a while back, when they suggested that life cannot have arisen on Earth by chance because the chances were so remote.

But of course, the chances of life having arisen on a planet where people are alive to ask the question, are 100%.

Similarly:

"the cosmos is — against all odds — perfectly tuned for life"

Well, if we can imagine infinite universes that are not perfectly tuned for life, and only one that is, then pick one at random and it is indeed 'against all odds' that you'll pick the one perfectly tuned for life.

But start from the one with life in it, and ask, what were the chances that a universe with life would be a universe with life, and the answer is 100%.

If you roll a two, you change the result of the throw - of course you change something. If that one roll of the dice is your whole universe, you have no idea that other rolls are possible.

On what basis do you say that the universe could not be any other way? You don't have the luxury of rolling the dice. Other universes may not support life as we know it, but could support life, or existence of some radically different sort, possibly a lot better than what we have now.

You are the ones admitting that the world is fallen, or defective. So the tuning can't be all that great.

There are none.

Brit:

Yes, that's the kind of circular logic that would appeal to Darwinists.

"On what basis do you say that the universe could not be any other way? You don't have the luxury of rolling the dice."

On this exact basis, even many astronomers say that cosmology is not a science...

It's an especially odd coincidence that the Universe appears to be a program to create being who can recreate the Universe:

"[I]f we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."
-Stephen Hawking

We wouldn't know "the mind of God" any more than the person who can understand and explain and operate a Macintosh computer knows the mind of Steve Jobs.(And would you want to?) We would only understand His creation, but not why He created, for example.

And then there is a problem with our being a part of the universe, and the implication that we would be able to understand everyone and everything in the universe without ourselves being as large as the universe. The only way that could be remotely possible is that the universe is extremely redundent and repetitive, with only a few places of interest (read: intellegent life). Then again, that would explain why we may never find someone else out there, as it would make the universe too complicated.

There are a few things we might be able to infer. The universe is suspiciously transparent (it should be either opaque or a void). The Hubble Deep Field is God showing off.

Raoul:

Yet we know the answers asa to how will be quite simple when we finally get them--mightn't our not finding such simple answers suggest that we're being held back because not morally ready? As we were stopped in the Garden from becoming gods.

Yep, all that apparently empty space speaks to a simplisitic universe governed by a few simple and deductable rules. But that simple and deterministic rules can be used to create complex and unpredictable results is nothing new. Welcome to mathematics.

So the question then becomes, is all that empty space necessary? Necessary because the random processes for creating Life have such a low probability that you need space for lots of attempts for the extremely few successes, or necessary so that Life has enough room to grow into? The first, the view that Hawking seems to be pushing, presumes that Life as we know it is a pinacle, and it's only a matter of a short period of time in which we will have "solved" this puzzle of the universe. And then what?

The second, however, says that we're only in one of the first stages. Which is why I've argued in the past that it is our duty to Nature to spread Life throughout the Universe, that we are Gaia's reproductive system. (As for environmental destruction— lots of species die in the process of reproduction.) Once Life gets spread around, and puts all that room to use, then maybe the next stage, what ever that may be, will be possible.

Brit;

That's the basis for the anthropic principle mentioned in the article. Intelligent beings will, of course, always observe a Universe suitable for intelligent life. As a result, observing such a universe (as we do) doesn't carry any information because that's how it must be.

As for parallel worlds and rolling the dice, what scientists do is look at fundamental physical constants (such as the speed of light, or the gravitational constant) as ask "what would a universe be like if this value were different?". What we find is that it only takes small changes in many of those constants to create a universe that is inhospitable to our kind of life. For instance, a small change in the ratio of the strong to electric force would prevent the standard fusion sequence in stars making them too unstable to support habitable planets for geologically long periods. This is what is meant by "tuned" - small changes would lead to radically worse results.

Is this just the result of the anthropic principle? Or is there something deeper going on? That's the question addressed in the book in the original post.

Annoying Old Guy:

Thanks, but isn't it the case that the anthropic principle is the problem you've outlined - any small changes in certain fundamental constants would render life impossible - but that the problem disappears if:

1) there are in fact multiple universes where life is impossible, for the logical reasons I mention above
or
2) life could actually be possible if you tweaked things differently (it's pretty hard to know exactly what the results of multiple tweaking would be)
or
3) if, as the article says, "there is a law that dictates the values of those key cosmic numbers".

Actually, I'm reasonably sure that the problem would disappear in each of these cases. But what I'm struggling with is whether the problem is even meaningful. Just because we can imagine things being aligned differently, so what?

For example, I can imagine infinite things about this pen I'm holding which would make it useless for writing. Such as that it is broken, or blocked, or made of jelly, or is burning hot, or a hundred foot long. But that doesn't make it a miracle that I've got a pen that writes...

------

Mind you, even if none of 1, 2 or 3 were the case, it still wouldn't constitute evidence for an Intelligent Designer of the universe.

Nor would a law like the one in (3) indicate a Law-giver, as OJ suggests.

In fact, I'm not even sure that it would even be a meaningful question to ask "who made that Law?"

And anyway, I haven't had breakfast yet.

Brit:

You're arguing that your pen isn't a product of intelligent design?

OJ:

I'm not arguing anything in particular, just wondering whether the anthropic principle is a meaningful question.

I thought you'd seize on that aspect of the pen analogy soon after I'd written it.

A better, less easy-to-misconstrue analogy might be: suppose I'm walking in the country and I find a nice rock to sit on. Now I can imagine all sorts of things about that rock which would make it useless as a seat. Such as that it is ten times bigger, or a tiny pebble, or covered in stinging nettles, or is boiling hot or icy cold, or home to a venomous snake.

But my ability to imagine infinite similar things does not make it an incredible miracle that I've found a nice comfy rock to sit on.

I'm not totally sure myself if the analogy applies or not, mind.

You are the pen. Why would the Universe be arranged in precisely such a manner that you might sit on a rock and ponder it?

The Universe is what it is, and the anthropic principle answers nothing.

What's more, presuming some Creator capable of such fine tuning is just a self-deceiving dodge, in that it sweeps away the origin of such a Creator.

And if there is such a Creator, its fascination is clearly with galaxies uncountable, not some unintended, and probably unknown, consequence on a speck in one of them.

The one speck with beings made in His image.

"The one speck with beings made in His image."

Talk about hubris.

We know no such thing.

What we DO know is that we haven't been told everything, not told much, really.
The odds of that statement being true are vanishingly small.

OJ, until you see God, you have no idea who, or what image you were created from. It's all a little presumptuous on your part - for all you know you were created in the image of God's intestinal parasites.

"When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.' Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." Luke 14:9-11

Jeff:

"the anthropic principle answers nothing"

Agreed, but it does pose a question worth pondering.

Going back to darwinism, you and I know that it is was not a God-killer in the absolute sense (since it says nothing about anything before the earliest forms of life etc).

Nonetheless, it is a God-killer in the sense that it destroyed what was traditionally the best argument for God: the notion of God the Designer. Paley’s argument from design was actually a very powerful one, pre-Darwin. Post-Darwin, it has been met head on and annihilated.

So this kind of argument – "anthropic-principle-to-Intelligent-Universe-Designer" – can be seen as a repetition of the Paley argument, but with a retreat to more abstract ground.

It’s a pretty hopeless argument from ignorance, certainly. And its proponents would have to pretend that they really can imagine some kind of Being somehow existing literally in nothing – no space, no time - spontaneously created, and able to spontaneously create space and time and matter. Which they can't. And they'd certainly have their work cut out persuading me that I ought to be worshipping this Being, or that it would care if I did.

But as yet we can only point out that they don’t know, and nobody can know. With evolution-by-natural-selection, we have the tools and a mountain of evidence to show that design in evolution is unnecessary. I don’t think we have those tools when it comes to this question yet.

So if there is a debating ground, it must be over the question: "why is there something rather than nothing?"

Although, having said all that, I still tend to the view that that is probably a meaningless question.

Brit:

That your theory of how life evolved can't account for how life began is not exactly a strength.

Michael:

That's what we were told and there's no evidence He lied.

Brit:

"With evolution-by-natural-selection, we have the tools and a mountain of evidence to show that design in evolution is unnecessary."

Are you referring to the finch, the Hawaiian fruit-fly, the vole or (Dawkins' favourite)the African horesefly larvae? Or maybe all of them? A slam dunk, indeed.

Drowning in evidence, are we?

Peter:

Those 'hilarious' items you mention are part of the evidence from natural history. There are many more items from many more disciplines, but we've discussed this at inordinate length elsewhere.

By "tools" I was referring to the basic principles of natural selection (replication, mutation and inheritance; variation; that some organisms are more likely to reproduce in the environment than others). All of which can be observed.

OJ:

"That your theory of how life evolved can't account for how life began is not exactly a strength"

On the contrary, it is a strength. 'My theory' does not assume any more than the minimum amount it has to.

OJ:

"That your theory of how life evolved can't account for how life began is not exactly a strength."

The concept you are looking for is "irrelevance."

It is irrelevant to the Theory of Evolution how life began. That is neither a strength nor a weakness, it is just plain irrelevant.

Peter:

Are there any instances of recursive systems that don't develop self-organized complexity over time?

If not, then why should Natural History be any different?

Jeff:

Not irrelevant. Inconvenient, so ignored.

Your system question is on point though--the version of evolution you believe in does require a designer using recursion.

OJ:

Absolutely irrelevant--it is simply outside Evolution's problem space.

The version of Evolution I believe in requires recursion as one of its characteristics. Period.

The version you believe in requires firm conclusions from absolute ignorance.

Perhaps you can posit a Natural History system consisting of more than one generation that does not have recursion.

"outside Evolution's problem space"?

Of course it is, because it can't answer the most basic question about howe life evolves.

Your recursive system is nested in mine.