Refuting Vic Stenger: fine tuning (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 05, 2014, 15:15 (3708 days ago) @ George Jelliss

My thanks to George, who has responded to my criticisms of Stenger. I have also had to edit in order to keep within the word limit.-GEORGE: This is just the usual dhw argument about chance. I don't know why you have such a down on chance. Unlike God we do have conclusive evidence that Chance exists! We even have laws about how Chance works.-Of course chance exists. The question is whether you believe chance could produce mechanisms so complex that we still don't understand them and are still unable to recreate them. If ever we do, it certainly won't be by chucking the bits and pieces in a pond and letting chance put them together.-Dhw: ...science and religion (i.e. belief in a "divine creator") are perfectly compatible if you go beyond the limitations of science and try to answer the questions science raises. 
GEORGE: I dare say most of the theologians one is likely to debate these questions are of the bible-believing religious type. If you have a religion based on something else, it may indeed be compatible with science.-This is a very fair answer. I know plenty of religious people who reject a literal reading of the bible, and have adapted their beliefs to the findings of science. "God-guided evolution" is a case in point. It is perfectly possible to believe both in evolution and in God. (See below.)
 
STENGER: "Atheists claim that the universe just "popped" into existence. I can't believe this.
A number of plausible scenarios have been published by reputable scientists in reputable scientific journals. If you insist they are impossible, then you have the burden of disproving them."
GEORGE: My approach to this question would be more philosophical, asking what is meant by existence and time - but we've argued that extensively before.-At least you distinguish between science and philosophy. Stenger is clearly floundering philosophically when he insists that theists carry the burden of proving a negative thesis (none of the numerous atheistic scenarios are possible) and apparently doesn't realize that atheists would therefore also have to prove the negative thesis that God isn't possible either.-dhw: Stenger pooh-poohs NDEs. He says you can only prove they are not hallucinations if "the subject returns with some knowledge that she could not possibly have known prior to the experience". Clearly this is a subject he should have steered clear of, since there are numerous examples of such information being obtained.
GEORGE: There are none that do not have convincing alternative explanations.-I am surprised that you have done so much research on NDEs and can explain all the examples.-Dhw: We have no idea what processes have enabled so-called simple organisms to live, let alone invent the complex forms of life we know today. 
GEORGE: Why should one postulate divine intervention when natural processes, based on chance and physics, appear quite adequate.-I myself do not postulate divine intervention, but again am surprised that you consider chance an adequate explanation for the origin of the complex mechanisms described above. Chemistry and physics do not explain how the processes of life and evolution were set in motion.-Dhw: Objective information and subjective interpretation can be perfectly compatible, and God-guided evolution will still be evolution! Darwin himself explicitly left room for God in his theory.
GEORGE: It should be possible to distinguish God-guided evolution from natural evolution. In the same way that it is possible to distinguish fraudulent science from genuine science. The statistics would be different from what they should be according to the laws of chance.-It depends on the nature of the "guidance". It is perfectly possible for both theist and atheist to accept that all forms of life descended from earlier forms, and branched out into a higgledy-piggledy bush leading, among other species, to us humans. This could, for instance, be the result of chance from the beginning onwards, or of a God creating the initial mechanism and then letting it run its own course, or of a God playing games, or of a God experimenting with or without a particular purpose in mind. The course of evolution and the "statistics" remain the same.-DHW: ...our knowledge of Nature is so sparse, we have no idea what it might encompass. The terms natural and supernatural are therefore meaningless except to those who insist they already know what is natural.
GEORGE: But science has shown that all the necessities for life to begin were in existence ready for abiogenesis to occur. The action of chance and physical law is what "natural" means here. Supernatural would be some form of miracle, breaking these laws.-I'll follow Stenger's advice and leave the science to David. However, since nobody understands the quantum world, and over 90% of the universe is unknown to us (dark matter and energy), we simply do not know what Nature is capable of. And as we don't know what "natural" laws led to life and the evolutionary processes, they do appear to be miraculous. Yes, maybe chance worked the miracle. Or maybe Nature contains some form of intelligence we do not know about (which need not be the God of any religion).