Sean Carroll Debunks Fine-Tuned Argument

[♦ ficino ♦]

This is a summary from Sean Carroll's recent debate with William Lane Craig.  In it, Carroll demolished the Fine-Tuned argument - i.e. that the universe is fine-tuned for life, so it must be the product of an intelligent designer.

 

I love Carroll's emphasis on the fact that theism is not well defined, so it's good at coming up with mushy, after-the-fact rationalizations but lousy at predicting anything:

 

"It’s not hard because theism is not well defined and can be reshaped as necessary, like clay."

 

(like ordinary clay, I wonder, or only like a special kind of clay?)

 

 

Here's the link:

 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2014/04/sean-carroll-slaps-down-fine-tuning-argument-christianity-apologetics-craig-carroll/

[DoubtingNate]

Michael Shermer makes an interesting point in his book that IF we discovered 'proof' of an intelligent being who created the universe, there would be no way to distinguish it from an extraterrestrial being that exists in the natural world.  Because of the advances we have made in science in just a few centuries, it's plausible that in a few more centuries or millenia we could develop the ability to create universes and work the 'tuning knobs' ourselves.  So if we had a way to verify "God's" existence, that means he would be a part of nature and not separate from it.  

[Sexton Blake]

Allowing that there could have been about infinite time in the past, there could have been billions of universes which came and went and this one being just right had life in it. We cannot know about all the previous universes which never had life since there was by definition, no life in them.

 

WLC needs to fine tune his own arguments. With trillions of trillions of stars and planets, and very possibly untold trillions of inhabited planets, how could our single planet possibly mean anything to a maker of Universes? The world's religions see Earth as special, and us as special, but what we have learned in astronomy in just the last two decades tells us that that is caveman nonsense.