On the Fine Tuning Argument for the existence of God

[MG 2.0]

We don’t know, right?

You should say "We don't know" more often.

Oh, I have, in one way or another. You need to pay more attention.

Regards,
MG

[doubtingthomas]

Oh, I have, in one way or another. You need to pay more attention.

Regards,
MG

Did Joseph Smith see Jesus?

[MG 2.0]

Oh, I have, in one way or another. You need to pay more attention.

Regards,
MG

Did Joseph Smith see Jesus?

Let’s not derail. I saw an interesting post. I responded. Let’s leave it at that.

If that poster wants to respond, fine.

Regards,
MG

[doubtingthomas]

Let’s not derail. I saw an interesting post. I responded. Let’s leave it at that.

If that poster wants to respond, fine.

Regards,
MG

I thought you were going to say "We don't know".

[Rivendale]

The sheer tapestry of Mormonism is enough to make any skeptic hold pause. A void in his established true word for 1830 years is solved by a visiting long dead Native American. This personage gives information where a buried record of an ancient culture can be found. This record can only be seen by a pre-ordained person the rest of human kind must imagine their validity. This writing can't be studied and can't be independently verified outside of Mormonism, nor does its vestiges appear in any known modern writings. After the Book of Mormon is finished the plates are taken back.

Now that the church is established and correct principles can be instituted one of the first orders of business is to implement polygamy. Of all the horrors in the 19th century that needed addressing this is paramount? Wait it gets better. The book of Abraham introduces bizarre views on the cosmos not to mention the disastrous interpretation of the papyrus. If this is how a Mormon god works it is sheer insanity. Especially if it is true.

Fine tuning.

Look at the results. If LDS history and moved one way or the other along the way, (no polygamy, no Book of Abraham, no ‘Negro Question’, etc.) what would have been the result? We don’t know, right?

What we do know is what we see NOW. And this IS the result of the so called ‘messy’ history. Four fold mission of the church. Doing fairly well. The parameters seem to meet certain expectations, functions, and characteristics that many see as being a result of God’s intervention in the affairs of mankind.

What god do you have in your wallet?

Regards,
MG

Apparently god is not the author of confusion. But yet here we are. Doing fairly well financially is about it. People still suffer and die despite the prodding of religious sacred prayers. People still invent reasons for the inconsistency that their religion(s) offer up. The whittling whistle that Mormons do past the graveyard is the same one that has motivated humans since they realized their own mortality. Now it just has a scientology power swing that Hulk Hogan would envy.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Let’s not derail.

Regards,
MG

[Physics Guy]

Do we even know what the fundamental natural "constants" are? We have identified a number of physical parameters that we can (in our minds and in our computers) play about with, and predict effects from that play, but I don't believe that we:

• have identified all relevant parameters, or
• found the most basic and fundamental parameters

For all we know at this point, we are barely scratching the surface.

There are fewer constants than one might think, because a lot of things that are called So-and-so's Constant are really just unit conventions expressing our human perception that quantities are qualitatively different kinds of things, when in fact they are not. For example Boltzmann's constant just lets us express thermal energy in special units that we only use for thermal energy, namely degrees of temperature, rather than in the units we use for other kinds of energy. That's no different from traditionally measuring horserace distances in furlongs rather than miles, or elevations in thousands of feet rather than miles. The numbers of furlongs or feet in a mile are not natural constants; neither is the Boltzmann constant.

The same thing is true of several other constants, moreover. The speed of light isn't really a natural constant, just a conversion factor that we use because we prefer to measure time in special units we call "seconds" rather than in meters. A light-nanosecond is about a foot, so we could measure time in gigafeet. We don't like to do that, so we have c as a constant.

As a matter of fact there are no real units at all in the world. There are only pure numbers. This isn't obvious, but it was pointed out by Max Planck that if you combine various powers and ratios of his (Planck's) constant, Newton's constant for gravity, and the speed of light, then you can make natural units of length, time, energy, mass ... everything. This implies that the Planck and Newton constants are actually only unit conventions, like the speed of light, representing our perception that mass and energy are qualitatively different from distance.

There does remain a set of dimensionless numerical parameters in our current fundamental theory which are simply measured empirically. The most famous is the fine structure constant, which is a dimensionless representation of the fundamental electric charge. It's close to 1/237, but not exactly that. Is it in fact a meaningful mathematical constant like pi or the natural logarithm base e? Or does it only have that value because God picked it arbitrarily for inscrutable reasons? Or are there bazillions of other universes out there having all different values of the fine structure constant, and our value is just the one we happened to get? No-one knows.

The masses of all the fundamental particles, as multiples of the Planck mass, are also just magic numbers that we have measured but cannot explain. These ones are all really small numbers, and that's important, but it's also weird.

There could certainly be more fundamental constants like these which we haven't yet found, but there are enough already—I think there are like 16 or 20 of them or so—to give us some stuff about which to wonder.

[malkie]

Do we even know what the fundamental natural "constants" are? We have identified a number of physical parameters that we can (in our minds and in our computers) play about with, and predict effects from that play, but I don't believe that we:

• have identified all relevant parameters, or
• found the most basic and fundamental parameters

For all we know at this point, we are barely scratching the surface.

There could certainly be more fundamental constants like these which we haven't yet found, but there are enough already—I think there are like 16 or 20 of them or so—to give us some stuff about which to wonder.

I think that it's possible, for example, that two or more of the currently-known constants are/may be related, and could be combined. We found something similar with the so-called fundamental particles, and fundamental forces. I remember (not really ) when electricity and magnetism were thought to be totally separate phenomena, and when there were only electrons, protons, and neutrons.

So I would be quite surprised if no more for-the-moment fundamental constants were found, considering how little we know, for example, at the far ends of the size and energy spectra.

To be sure, I'm speaking as a non-scientist, so perhaps my ideas are simply a result of ignorance.

[dastardly stem]

To be sure, I'm speaking as a non-scientist, so perhaps my ideas are simply a result of ignorance.

Same here whenever I try to speak on such topics. To me its worth pointing out those scientists or in most cases non-scientists delving into these topics in order to try and argue for a God seem to do so by playing off the ignorance of the masses. Those in the scientific know see right through it for the most part, but the rest of us just take one side or the other based on what we really want to to be true, all too often. It feels like a pernicious game until you realize these scientists and microphoned non-experts really think God's hidden just aching to give tiny hints in the least reasonable of ways. And to complicate it for us as nicely as they can, we get scientists and non-expert non-God believers also pushing some stupid crap from time to time, attempting to cancel religion. Those jerks really hurt us because, I mean, as my predilections have advised, religion is no longer helpful and is moreso a hindrance to us these days. How would I justify that? I mean there are arguments to make, I suppose, but how would I really know what things would be like without religion? Oh Jebus, help us all!

[huckelberry]

Constants? I am not very sure why they figure large in an argument for god. I think it is amazing that stuff is organized in such sturdy structures as atoms which are so constructed as to be able to form complex organic molecules which can work together to be living organisms which can become so well organized that they can discuss the situation.