VazScep wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

VazScep wrote:Awww...I remember William Lane Craig. T'was a different era.

Yeah! One best forgotten!

I only really stuck around these sceptic communities because, for reasons I never thought too hard about, I had opportunities to talk about stuff in which I was interested. I had long debates with people about infinity because of William Lane Craig, and I guess I have to thank him for that, because it was fun.

DavidMcC wrote:... Even in this universe, life on any given planet is highly unlikely, and it is only the sheer number of slightly different solar systems in it that gave life any real chance to start.

DavidMcC wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:Already done the "fine tuning" myth to death elsewhere. In particular, I addressed the secondary myths attached thereto here four years ago, by presenting two scientific papers whose contents demonstrate that:

[1] Stars (the primary entities responsible for heavier nucleosynthesis) can exist in universes with a wide variety of values of certain fundamental physical constants - approximately 25% of a large parameter space is compatible therewith;

[2] Even eliminating the weak nuclear force from the picture, would have precious little impact upon the habitability of a universe bereft thereof, from the standpoint of human life. A recognisable physics (minus the missing weak force) and chemistry would still be present in some candidate weakless universes.

...

You may make that assertion, but how do you know it is true? You are facing an even worse problem than the one TE confronted me with. The assertion that 25% of parameter space allows life is questionable, because it requires more than just nucleosynthesis to allow life - there has to be a very complex biochemistry, which is therefore dependent on more than just having atoms more complex than hydrogen.

Having systems that replicate.
Where the replication is slightly imperfect.
And some replicators survive to reproduce more often in any given system.

Calilasseia wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:You may make that assertion, but how do you know it is true? You are facing an even worse problem than the one TE confronted me with. The assertion that 25% of parameter space allows life is questionable, because it requires more than just nucleosynthesis to allow life - there has to be a very complex biochemistry, which is therefore dependent on more than just having atoms more complex than hydrogen.

Please point to where in those scientific papers, the authors merely "asserted" their conclusions. I await this eagerly.

• A model of how variation of parameters affects certain requirements for life.
• Calculations based on that model identifying what region of a large parameter space might meet the criteria.
• A measure of the degree of freedom for these parameters. (Not a claim of probability).

• No model.
• No calculations.
• No measure.

romansh wrote:ps what is 25 % of infinity?

Greyman wrote:

romansh wrote:ps what is 25 % of infinity?

25% of a large parameter space.

DavidMcC wrote:

VazScep wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

VazScep wrote:Awww...I remember William Lane Craig. T'was a different era.

Yeah! One best forgotten!

I only really stuck around these sceptic communities because, for reasons I never thought too hard about, I had opportunities to talk about stuff in which I was interested. I had long debates with people about infinity because of William Lane Craig, and I guess I have to thank him for that, because it was fun.

Debates about infinity? I bet they were never-ending!

DavidMcC wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:
EDIT: His statement to the effect it did anyway, because "here we are", does not answer what caused such an unlikely thing to occur in the first place. The interview posed the correct question on this, but Grayling's answer to it was a fudge.

How do you know it's unlikely?

Let me put it this way most physicists would agree that how the universe develops depends a lot on the values of the fundamental constants of that universe, and that complex biochemistry requires fairly precise values, but why should the fundamental constants of the universe have these values and not different ones? The idea that "life would adapt" pre-supposes that life can start in the first place, and that in turn requires particular values of the constants. Even getting atoms at all, places some demands on them, complex biochemistry is even more demanding, particularly of the fine-structure constant, which is basic to all of chemistry.

murshid wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:
EDIT: His statement to the effect it did anyway, because "here we are", does not answer what caused such an unlikely thing to occur in the first place. The interview posed the correct question on this, but Grayling's answer to it was a fudge.

How do you know it's unlikely?

Let me put it this way most physicists would agree that how the universe develops depends a lot on the values of the fundamental constants of that universe, and that complex biochemistry requires fairly precise values, but why should the fundamental constants of the universe have these values and not different ones? The idea that "life would adapt" pre-supposes that life can start in the first place, and that in turn requires particular values of the constants. Even getting atoms at all, places some demands on them, complex biochemistry is even more demanding, particularly of the fine-structure constant, which is basic to all of chemistry.

Do we even know whether the constants can have different values?
.