New Miscellany: more on fine-tuning (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 25, 2025, 10:52 (9 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] 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.

DAVID: 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.
And:
DAVID: This entire universe is structurally/physically fine-tuned for life.

A “comfortable climate” is part of the fine-tuning! “Allowing” provides the basic materials, but at the moment, our Earth is the only place in the universe where we KNOW that conditions have been fine-tuned for life. There may well be others, but self-evidently the “entire universe” is NOT fine-tuned if the requisite conditions are not present! You are making a mockery of language.

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?

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

That is just another way of saying your God “fine-tuned” the Earth for life. So what is this nonsense about life “popping up”, and “life decided to appear” wherever the climate is hospitable?

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.

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

Of course climate is part of fine-tuning! If it was not essential, you’re saying there could be life without suitable conditions for life!

Bird brains

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![…]

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.

dhw: And you still dodge the implications and complications of your theory compared to Shapiro’s. Your dodging is becoming ever more blatant.

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.

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

We are now into theodicy and your efforts to ignore evil on the grounds of “proportionality”. Would you say that the inefficiency of your God’s use of evolution to fulfil his one and only goal, the deaths of millions of people through the failure of his instructions, and the suffering caused by all forms of evil knowingly created by your God are commensurate with the conventional view of your God as being all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful?

Balance of Nature: human and theological implications

dhw: I remain delighted that we are now in agreement on this whole subject, and I suggest we close this thread.

DAVID: Fine noting our differences in attitude.

I note that you are less concerned than I am about the continuation and expansion of the damage we both recognize as real.