New Miscellany: more on fine-tuning (General)

by David Turell , Monday, February 24, 2025, 18:40 (10 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The 20+ physical factors presented in this universe are not biochemical in any way. We do not know enough about the biochemistry of the origin of life to know if physical fine-tuning is involved. Stop lumping the biochemistry of life with the physical attributes of this universe that allow life. The physical structure of this life-allowing universe is a separate issue from the biochemical steps that start life.

dhw: “Allowing life” is not the same as fine-tuning for life, and it is a distortion of language to say that fine-tuning for life has nothing to do with the processes that lead to life! I would say that the 20+ physical factors represent some of the necessary conditions for life, but the fine-tuning is what turns inanimate matter into animate beings. Your next statement directly contradicts other statements:

DAVID: The physical makeup of this universe allows life wherever there is a hospitable
climate.[…]

dhw: Compare this to “The entire universe is fine-tuned for life to appear.” Does the entire universe offer a “hospitable climate”, or is such a climate limited to individual heavenly bodies? Please answer.

Your usual nit-picking. The physical structure of the universe allows life anywhere, but since life requires a comfortable climate it will appear in such places as our Earth, such a heavenly body.

dhw: You have spent years and written books pointing out the uniqueness of our planet, and you insist that your God’s only purpose for creating the universe was to design us and our food. How does this equate with life “popping up” wherever there is a hospitable climate?

God made the Earth hospitable for life as part of His goal.

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DAVID: Anywhere the climate is hospitable in this universe life can appear. Only on Earth, so far.

dhw: Thank you for agreeing that life can only appear if conditions are suitable. It follows that since conditions are not suitable everywhere in the universe, the entire universe is not fine-tuned for life. And “only on Earth, so far” confirms that so far, the only place in the universe that we KNOW is fine-tuned for life is Earth.

Not so. This entire universe is structurally/physically fine-tuned for life.

You have just posed a highly relevant article:

Bacteria fix nitrogen in oceans

DAVID: nature is balanced. Without cyanobacteria and nitrogen-fixing bacteria we would not exist.

dhw: And we would not exist without oceans. Physical and biochemical components combining as part of the fine-tuning of life, which you now agree is NOT to be found in the entire universe.

You are now smutching climate and fine-tuning issues into one lump.

Bird brains

QUOTES: “The genetic tools they use to establish their cellular identity vary from species to species, each exhibiting new and unique cell types.”

“Birds have developed sophisticated neural circuits through their own mechanisms, without following the same path as mammals.”
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DAVID: Cells are not intelligent enough to design a new type of organism.

dhw: So your God provided the first cells with programmes for every species, every strategy, every response to every new threat/opportunity, to be passed on through billions of years even into our present and future. I get it. I just don’t believe it.

DAVID: Immunity proves it. One system makes antibodies for everything!
And:
DAVID: One simple immune system makes antibodies for every enemy. Take a piece of the invader, add a killer portion to it and an antibody appears.

dhw: You have managed to change the subject from bird brains (see above) to the immune system, and you have dodged the fact that your theory also embraces every species, strategy, lifestyle, response to new threats/opportunities etc.

And you still dodge the implications and complications of your theory compared to Shapiro’s.

DAVID: That the antibodies we produce are sometimes inadequate does not answer the point of the simplicity of the system which is adequate 99.9% of the time.

dhw: Same problem as theodicy, though I don’t know where you get your 99.9% from. I still propose that the deaths of millions of people are not to be dismissed, and that it might be less insulting to your God if the “system” was autonomous but fallible cellular intelligence rather than divine but fallible 3.8-billion-year-old instructions.

The insults are from your morbid view of a 0.1% failure rate.