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I find the anthropic principle unpersuasive. It is entirely irrelevant to the question it tries to answer. Imagine applying it in a different circumstance. I

by Dove 16y ago

I find the anthropic principle unpersuasive. It is entirely irrelevant to the question it tries to answer. Imagine applying it in a different circumstance. Imagine two people coming upon a computer terminal, upon which was typed an elaborate love letter addressed to one of them. "What's this? John has written me a love letter!" "Nonsense, it's just noise. Probably a stack dump or something." "What? The odds are clearly against that." "Ah, but if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we? Since the letter is necessary for the discussion, it requires no explanation." This is clearly wrong. The correct rejoinder is, "Yes, that's just the point. We shouldn't be having this discussion, but we are. Hence the letter still requires explanation, and the simplest is that John wrote it." The fact that our universe suits us does require explanation. If it didn't suit us, we couldn't ask the question, true enough. But that's just the point. We shouldn't be here to ask the question and yet here we are. It still requires explanation. Now, you can say, "Well, the universe is one of many, and we're in the one that suits us because we couldn't live anywhere else." Fine. Count the universes, run the probabilities, that's an explanation. Or you can say, "God created it." That's an explanation, too. What you cannot say is, "If it didn't suit us, we wouldn't be having this conversation, so it requires no explanation." That's a bunch of anti-intellectual sophistry that just annoys the people trying to honestly grapple with the question.

Dove 16y ago
As a further friendly jab to atheists in present company, I've always found cosmological discussions funny. Here they are, willing to believe in an infinity of infinities of parallel universes, with varying physical laws and constants. They cannot detect them, they cannot describe them, they cannot say anything about them other than that there must exist enough of them for the probabilities to work out. Bazillions upon bazillions of totally barren invisible universes, just so this one can have stars. Meanwhile, I believe in a God who has intervened in history in a recoded and well attested way, who leaves behind lots of witnesses to his activities in the present and the past, whose prophecies come true and whose wisdom on human nature closely matches fact. He claims to have created the universe and I believe him. And the atheists think I'm the one who believes in things without evidence.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Atheists probably think you believe in things which require you to disbelieve in other things which appear to them to be identical. You believe in X, but not in Y where Y is isomorphic to X.
Groxx 16y ago
Certainly, but "God created it" is the ultimate wild-card explanation. It's identical to saying "because." In what way is that simpler? I can balance this equation: x = x + 1. The solution is to add God to both sides. Simple! The quote is primarily meant to point out that we wouldn't likely exist in a location that isn't nigh-ideally suited for us, both because we require it to continue and because we adapt to match it. Using it to prove God exists strikes me as a greater misuse than using it to prove it's possible God doesn't, given any comprehension of large numbers and evolution.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  "God created it" and "large numbers and evolution" are both ultimate wildcard explanations, when used carelessly. Both can be equivalent to adding infinity to both sides of your equation. > "we wouldn't likely exist in a location that isn't nigh-ideally suited for us" Right, but that only answers a weak variant of the argument. The stronger variant is that the universe shouldn't have any locations suited for the evolution of any form of intelligent life. The fact that we're here indicates that there is a location suited for the evolution of intelligent life, which requires an explanation. There are lots of approaches you can take to provide an explanation. "We wouldn't be asking if we didn't exist" is a weak and unsatisfying approach.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    >Both can be equivalent to adding infinity to both sides of your equation. Admittedly very accurate, but not quite the same. To pull from another oft-repeated quote, time + randomness will never create a pocket watch, because there is not a series of changes which leads to it within dumb evolution. God / intelligence can. What evolution+time describes is very much a strict, significantly-smaller subset of a God's capabilities.
    - lotharbot 16y ago
      > What evolution+time describes is very much a strict, significantly-smaller subset of a God's capabilities. The rational numbers are a significantly-smaller subset of the real numbers. Yet adding a countable infinity to both sides of your equation is just as useless as adding an uncountable infinity. Similarly, "God did it", "there are a lot of universes", "we wouldn't be able to ask if we weren't here so it doesn't need explaining", and "evolution + time" can all be very unsatisfying answers to the stronger variant of the argument I described above. They're all essentially big wildcards, though some are bigger than others. Whichever argument you choose needs a LOT more detail before it becomes better than simply adding infinity to both sides of the equation.

by Dove 16y ago

Dove 16y ago

As a further friendly jab to atheists in present company, I've always found cosmological discussions funny. Here they are, willing to believe in an infinity of infinities of parallel universes, with varying physical laws and constants. They cannot detect them, they cannot describe them, they cannot say anything about them other than that there must exist enough of them for the probabilities to work out. Bazillions upon bazillions of totally barren invisible universes, just so this one can have stars. Meanwhile, I believe in a God who has intervened in history in a recoded and well attested way, who leaves behind lots of witnesses to his activities in the present and the past, whose prophecies come true and whose wisdom on human nature closely matches fact. He claims to have created the universe and I believe him. And the atheists think I'm the one who believes in things without evidence.

Groxx 16y ago
Atheists probably think you believe in things which require you to disbelieve in other things which appear to them to be identical. You believe in X, but not in Y where Y is isomorphic to X.

Groxx 16y ago

Certainly, but "God created it" is the ultimate wild-card explanation. It's identical to saying "because." In what way is that simpler? I can balance this equation: x = x + 1. The solution is to add God to both sides. Simple! The quote is primarily meant to point out that we wouldn't likely exist in a location that isn't nigh-ideally suited for us, both because we require it to continue and because we adapt to match it. Using it to prove God exists strikes me as a greater misuse than using it to prove it's possible God doesn't, given any comprehension of large numbers and evolution.

lotharbot 16y ago
"God created it" and "large numbers and evolution" are both ultimate wildcard explanations, when used carelessly. Both can be equivalent to adding infinity to both sides of your equation. > "we wouldn't likely exist in a location that isn't nigh-ideally suited for us" Right, but that only answers a weak variant of the argument. The stronger variant is that the universe shouldn't have any locations suited for the evolution of any form of intelligent life. The fact that we're here indicates that there is a location suited for the evolution of intelligent life, which requires an explanation. There are lots of approaches you can take to provide an explanation. "We wouldn't be asking if we didn't exist" is a weak and unsatisfying approach.
- Groxx 16y ago
  >Both can be equivalent to adding infinity to both sides of your equation. Admittedly very accurate, but not quite the same. To pull from another oft-repeated quote, time + randomness will never create a pocket watch, because there is not a series of changes which leads to it within dumb evolution. God / intelligence can. What evolution+time describes is very much a strict, significantly-smaller subset of a God's capabilities.
  - lotharbot 16y ago
    > What evolution+time describes is very much a strict, significantly-smaller subset of a God's capabilities. The rational numbers are a significantly-smaller subset of the real numbers. Yet adding a countable infinity to both sides of your equation is just as useless as adding an uncountable infinity. Similarly, "God did it", "there are a lot of universes", "we wouldn't be able to ask if we weren't here so it doesn't need explaining", and "evolution + time" can all be very unsatisfying answers to the stronger variant of the argument I described above. They're all essentially big wildcards, though some are bigger than others. Whichever argument you choose needs a LOT more detail before it becomes better than simply adding infinity to both sides of the equation.