How do atheists respond to the fine tuning argument about God?

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Dictionary definitions:

"having or showing determination or resolve.
“the purposeful stride of a great barrister”
synonyms: determined, resolute, resolved, firm, steadfast, single-minded; More
2.
having a useful purpose.
“purposeful activities”
 
tonyrey said:
Dictionary definitions:

"having or showing determination or resolve.
“the purposeful stride of a great barrister”
synonyms: determined, resolute, resolved, firm, steadfast, single-minded; More
2.
Click to expand...
Yes, and I see no way of understanding that life shows great determination or resolve, although of course a living thing could display such purposefulness.
tonyrey said:
having a useful purpose.
“purposeful activities”
Click to expand...
Right. That’s fair enough. Having a useful purpose. Is that what you meant? How do we think or behave as though life has a useful purpose?
 
But the idea that there are not merely numbers, but rather very specific numbers, seems to be the point.

I get that you don’t find the fine tuning argument persuasive. However, is it a reasonable argument?

It seems to me that when you combine the following that the argument is reasonable:
  1. The overwhelming odds against their being anything more than nothing
  2. a universe with a beginning (also a beginning in the context of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics)
  3. That same universe, without very specific constants, would not exist
  4. The overwhelming odds against those very specific constants being what they are
  5. The unlikeliness that given 3), there would be a planet that is also “finely tuned” (or pick a term you like better) that is the right size, right distance from the sun, right angle on tilt, with a moon with the appropriate gravity, etc… that makes life possible
  6. The overwhelming odds against organic coming from the inorganic, and with information (DNA) being programmed into our cells.
With the above, is the argument for fine tuning (at the levels of the universe, planet, cell) pointing to a designer, reasonable? (Whether or not you find it persuasive).
 
When we are reasonable we think and behave as if we are intended to be reasonable and live according to the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity which are based on Christ’s teaching that we are all brothers and sisters who have one Father in heaven. If we existed by chance we would be related solely by an accident of birth, morality would be just a human convention and life would be nothing more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing”, i.e. absurd…
 
You can add another to the list.

I have always found it absolutely astonishing that every person has EXACTLY the correct amount of skin to cover his or her body. Now surely that points to design?
 
so your perspective is the “we are just lucky to be here” reason?
 
tonyrey said:
as if we are intended to …
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OK, so the “purpose” you detect is not actually a purpose inherent in life, but is someone else’s purpose (God’s presumably?) for us. Our lives, then, have a purpose for God in your view, and this purpose is to follow Christ’s morality. If that morality arose instead from some other source, that might possibly mean that we were not part of someone else’s plan. Why would that make human life absurd, or rather make it more absurd than otherwise?

What makes you scorn relationships which are “solely accidents of birth”? (You are referring here to my relationships with my parents, my siblings, my children, my grandchildren — characters in a tale signifying nothing, apparently.)
 
KMC said:
so your perspective is the “we are just lucky to be here” reason?
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Aren’t you?

You either believe that you are SPECIFICALLY here because it was planned thus, and I can’t emphasise how self centered and egotistical that position sounds to me, or you have got a winning ticket in the celestial lottery.
 
Those are the only 2 options. But it doesn’t follow that because you think something is self centered or egotistical that its not true or can’t be an option.

The idea of winning a celestial lottery does not make sense to me. Seems to me, If there were no God, there would be nothing at all.

You never did answer my original question re Fine Tuning…“is it reasonable?” (regardless of your disagreement with it)
 
My son graduated from Stanford with a pre-med degree. He’s taken quite a few biology and chemistry classes and is currently in med school. (He also got an A in Andrei Linde’s class on quantum physics…Linde is renowned physicist). I would say he is quite knowledgeable about the topic. However, there are host of other experts, however, I have regular conversations with my son.

While my son doubts the existence of a Christian God, he said what keeps him at a minimum, deist, is DNA, and the information contained therein…and that chemicals randomly organizing to form information controlling a complex organism (within a time of something less than the age of the earth…whenever the earth was sufficiently cooled) seems unbelievable. It would be like finding a computer in the woods and just thinking “it formed by random chance in the last 4.5 billion years.”
 
KMC said:
Those are the only 2 options. But it doesn’t follow that because you think something is self centered or egotistical that its not true or can’t be an option.

The idea of winning a celestial lottery does not make sense to me. Seems to me, If there were no God, there would be nothing at all.

You never did answer my original question re Fine Tuning…“is it reasonable?” (regardless of your disagreement with it)
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If we were a liquid organism living in a hole somewhere, then someone might suggest: ‘You know, this hole suits us perfectly. It cannot be by accident. Just imagine if we were to ‘fine tune’ the hole so that it was different, then we wouldn’t exist as we are. We might not even exist at all’.
 
KMC said:
My son graduated from Stanford with a pre-med degree. He’s taken quite a few biology and chemistry classes and is currently in med school. (He also got an A in Andrei Linde’s class on quantum physics…Linde is renowned physicist). I would say he is quite knowledgeable about the topic. However, there are host of other experts, however, I have regular conversations with my son.

While my son doubts the existence of a Christian God, he said what keeps him at a minimum, deist, is DNA, and the information contained therein…and that chemicals randomly organizing to form information controlling a complex organism (within a time of something less than the age of the earth…whenever the earth was sufficiently cooled) seems unbelievable. It would be like finding a computer in the woods and just thinking “it formed by random chance in the last 4.5 billion years.”
Click to expand...
There is information everywhere. Some of it incredibly complex. Some of us are, I believe, genetically inclined to think that it cannot have happened by accident. Or natural means. Others are not so inclined.

Either way, that in itself doesn’t make you, your son, or me correct in how we preceive things.
 
Your analogy might be more accurate if you added a few additional things such as:
  • The hole must be exactly angled 89 degrees to the base. If the angle is off by one in 1 quadrillion, it would not live
  • The temperature of the liquid must be exactly 72.000000000001 degrees. If that temperature varies by one in 10^20, it would not live
  • the height of the liquid organism in the hole must be exactly 45 cm. If it were one atom higher or lower in height it would not live
After adding about another 17 or so additional fine tuning elements with similar narrow tolerances, we can add several more for the planet on which this hole is found.

then we can discuss how we have the ability as liquid organism to have the cognition to have such a thought. And discuss how each of the sub-parts of this liquid organism have stores of information guiding their operation, that somehow came from random chance.

Perhaps then, it might be a similar analogy
 
Bradskii said:
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KMC:
My son graduated from Stanford with a pre-med degree. He’s taken quite a few biology and chemistry classes and is currently in med school. (He also got an A in Andrei Linde’s class on quantum physics…Linde is renowned physicist). I would say he is quite knowledgeable about the topic. However, there are host of other experts, however, I have regular conversations with my son.

While my son doubts the existence of a Christian God, he said what keeps him at a minimum, deist, is DNA, and the information contained therein…and that chemicals randomly organizing to form information controlling a complex organism (within a time of something less than the age of the earth…whenever the earth was sufficiently cooled) seems unbelievable. It would be like finding a computer in the woods and just thinking “it formed by random chance in the last 4.5 billion years.”
Click to expand...
There is information everywhere. Some of it incredibly complex. Some of us are, I believe, genetically inclined to think that it cannot have happened by accident. Or natural means. Others are not so inclined.

Either way, that in itself doesn’t make you, your son, or me correct in how we preceive things.
Click to expand...
Did the computer code driving Google happen by random chance? Seems entirely possible with your perspective.
 
If you add one plus one you get two. If one of those amounts is out by even the tiniest fraction (add as many zeros after the decimal point as you like) then you don’t get two.

There IS only one result for that simplest of operations. Every time. All the time. Likewise if you combine a neutron and a photon you get deuterium. Every time. All the time.

This is the way things work. If you want to suggest that it could be different, then EVERYTHING could be different. So do you want to suggest that the universe could be fine tuned so that one plus one does not equal two? That’s what you are proposing.
 
Bradskii said:
If you add one plus one you get two. If one of those amounts is out by even the tiniest fraction (add as many zeros after the decimal point as you like) then you don’t get two.

There IS only one result for that simplest of operations. Every time. All the time. Likewise if you combine a neutron and a photon you get deuterium. Every time. All the time.

This is the way things work. If you want to suggest that it could be different, then EVERYTHING could be different. So do you want to suggest that the universe could be fine tuned so that one plus one does not equal two? That’s what you are proposing.
Click to expand...
Math is not reality, but a description or model of reality. A finely tuned reality to many people, including myself, many physicists and others is quite impressive. I get you are not impressed. If you don’t mind me asking, what is your occupation? It would help me put your comments in perspective. Some arguments resonate with some people, and not with others.

Also, as an Atheist, is there an argument for God, that while you don’t agree with it, is one you would consider a “good argument”?
 
No. One plus one equals two is as real as you can possibly get. There is nothing more axiomatic. Mathematics is then a system we use to describe that reality.

Don’t get the two confused.
 
numbers exist only in your head…they not a ‘real being’ (in the philosophical sense), like a rock, a person, a dog, etc. Philosophers would call them ‘mental beings’. Other examples would be dreams, past, future, abstractions, other mathematical entities like circles, squares, logical relations, negations and others.

You could write the a number on a piece of paper, but what you would have in reality is paper with a pattern of ink.

Could you answer my other questions?
 
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