Refuting Robin Collins argument for fine-tuning

by bohm 22 Replies latest jw friends

  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    The problem with the fine tuning argument is that the universe doesn't need fine tuning to create matter or life. Even if we moved the earth several thousands of kilometers away from the sun or closer to it, it wouldn't make much of a difference to life. Even if it was a lot closer, it may have put different types of pressures on life forms so it would've looked different but it still would've made life possible.

    Life, once started, is enormously hard to kill. The universe is big, so big that even the most improbable things will happen all the time. And the fine tuning argument fails as we have had several extinction events throughout the earth's history, if the earth was fine tuned for life, those wouldn't have happened and we wouldn't be on the brink right now (on the geological timescale). Go see a natural history museum and see for yourself.

    Fine tuning seems probable because it seems evolution has 'intelligently' shaped our bodies to survive. But therein lies the fallacy, if it were different we wouldn't have survived and we wouldn't be able to ask the question. Or we would've been shaped different, life, after all, adapts and even then we would still accept the status quo as being 'fine tuned'. Evolution fine tunes our bodies through continuous adaptation and rejects most adaptations for being unfit, those adaptation simply die so the only successful ones seem fine tuned but they simply are adapted to the current circumstances.

    If everything was fine tuned for life, we wouldn't have such chaos, death and natural disasters.

  • bohm
    bohm

    Anony Mous: The type of fine-tuning collins consider is not the lameass fine tuning the WT writes about, but has to do with the laws of nature, eg. the expansion of the universe etc. and not with simply considering the earth was a bit further away from the sun (as he explain in his article).

    If for instance the expansion of the universe was slightly different there would have been no galaxies and so most likely very few heavy elements, hence the fine-tuning problem.

  • bohm
    bohm

    AnonyMous: Also, Collins argument does not rely on there must be fine-tuning problem (ie. there is need for some explanation), only that there propably is. So simply saying that there may be other explanations, ie. that life is more resistent to changes in the enviroment than we think it is or that there is some underlying reason why the laws of nature cannot be any different does not invalidate his argument.

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