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"God created it" and "large numbers and evolution" are both ultimate wildcard explanations, when used carelessly. Both can be equivalent to adding infinity to

"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.

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.