The immensity of the universe;addendum (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Saturday, March 18, 2017, 00:49 (2806 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: dhw has recently again questioned the vastness of the universe as it relates to the appearance of humans. I have found such a reference, but so far cannot locate any support for the contention in the copious material I know:
http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2017/03/08/life-beyond-thulcandra/

QUOTE: "God might indeed decide to make life on earth a unique case, and the vastness of a cosmos uninhabited by other physical beings a matter for himself alone. Indeed, one of the intriguing aspects of cosmic fine tuning is the realisation that a vast universe is necessary to enable the conditions a tiny inhabited world like ours requires. God’s prodigality in doing so much for us would make as plausible, and inconclusive, a case. Yet Chalmers once more shows that extraterrestrial life poses no inherent problem whatsoever for Christianity. Neither, though, does a universe in which life is unique to the earth – a situation (presently the only one for which actual evidence exists) that in contrast poses a big problem for metaphysical naturalism." (David's bold)

DAVID’s comment: the overall intent of the article is to discuss whether Christians can accept more than one colony of humans in God's universe. It appears they can. However, what I found interesting is the contention that part of the fine tuning observations is the requirement for vastness of the universe. That vastness is required is implied in he multiverse theories, but that dos not prove the point. I will pursue it.

As I said before, the uniqueness of life on Earth would reduce the odds against chance, and it is absurd to insist that your God would have confined his life experiments to one blob in infinity. Why it has to be humans elsewhere I do not know, other than what Shapiro calls “large organs chauvinism”. As for the observation that the vastness of the universe is required for life, how the heck does anyone know? Has the author tried and definitively failed to create life without the billions and billions of solar systems extant and extinct? There is and can be no evidence for such a statement, so why make it, and indeed why take it seriously?

The vastness has to be taken seriously as in the Wikipedia article I found:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Carter was not the first to invoke some form of the anthropic principle. In fact, the evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace anticipated the anthropic principle as long ago as 1904: "Such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us, may have been absolutely required [...] in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of life culminating in man." In 1957, Robert Dicke wrote: "The age of the Universe 'now' is not random but conditioned by biological factors [...] [changes in the values of the fundamental constants of physics] would preclude the existence of man to consider the problem."

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Paul Davies's book The Goldilocks Enigma (2006) reviews the current state of the fine tuning debate in detail, and concludes by enumerating the following responses to that debate:
The absurd universe: Our universe just happens to be the way it is.
The unique universe: There is a deep underlying unity in physics which necessitates the Universe being the way it is. Some Theory of Everything will explain why the various features of the Universe must have exactly the values that we see.

Comment: The article makes the point that with inflation the universe became vast before the time arrived when carbon and the metal were formed that support life. It took much time to have carbon appear in stars which then had to age and explode and spread the carbon around. The vastness is due to the slow evolution of the necessary elements for life to appear. Simple concept. Still no answer to multiple humans colonies concept. Could be. Vastness required!