Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God?

[georgeib]

I'm not aware of anything that suggests there must be a cause in the way I gather you're using the term.

P1 Everything that begins to exist must have a cause

P2 The universe began to exist

C The universe has a cause.

[WillBrink]

P1 Everything that begins to exist must have a cause

P2 The universe began to exist

C The universe has a cause.

Those don't follow each other as you may think they do, and cause and causality are their own topics. The very word "cause" is something we use as a word that tries to fit things into neat boxes we need to fathom such topics, that can't be put in such boxes. That's a whole other rabbit hole...

[georgeib]

Those don't follow each other as you may think they do, and cause and causality are their own topics. The very word "cause" is something we use as a word that tries to fit things into neat boxes we need to fathom such topics, that can't be put in such boxes. That's a whole other rabbit hole...

I would encourage you to do a bit more research on this topic, Will. These absolutely follow each other, and form a very coherent argument.

The causal nature of things is really a difficult concept to deny. And is something that is foundational to the way we seek truth and discern reality. Science is founded on this premise. Without causation, there is no logic of any kind. To deny causation is to deny logical coherence of every observation we make.

Everything that is caused has a cause. The universe is caused, and therefore has a cause. In most people's minds that is understood to be the Big Bang, however, relatively few people stop long enough to consider the question of the Big Bang's cause. "An infinitely small, and infinitely dense singularity explodes." To me infinitely small sounds a lot like "Nothing."

All causes are logically outside of, and independent of whatever it is they cause. The cause of space-time (the universe) is by necessity outside of both time and space.


ETA: The argument that was floated prior to the Big Bang theory was the steady state theory. With the steady state theory, it was a lot easier to circumvent the cosmological argument. However, due to overwhelming observational data (the expansion of the universe, and early universe images) we now know that space-time had a definite beginning.

[WillBrink]

I would encourage you to do a bit more research on this topic, Will. These absolutely follow each other, and form a very coherent argument.

The causal nature of things is really a difficult concept to deny. And is something that is foundational to the way we seek truth and discern reality. Science is founded on this premise. Without causation, there is no logic of any kind. To deny causation is to deny logical coherence of every observation we make.

Everything that is caused has a cause. The universe is caused, and therefore has a cause. In most people's minds that is understood to be the Big Bang, however, relatively few people stop long enough to consider the question of the Big Bang's cause. "An infinitely small, and infinitely dense singularity explodes." To me infinitely small sounds a lot like "Nothing."

All causes are logically outside of, and independent of whatever it is they cause. The cause of space-time (the universe) is by necessity outside of both time and space.

That is pure human-cenrtric thinking and the need for things make sense to us, A + B must = C. The universe is under no obligation to make any sense to us (1), holds vast secrets yet to be understood (such as the fact it's made of matter we know very little about and runs on something we know nothing about...) and I assure you, I have done some research on the topic, at least within my limited physics and cosmology background. If you have a source I should look at as the causal nature of the universe, happy to read it.

(1) to paraphrase Neil Degrasse Tyson

[georgeib]

That is pure human-cenrtric thinking and the need for things make sense to us, A + B must = C. The universe is under no obligation to make any sense to us (1), holds vast secrets yet to be understood (such as the fact it's made of matter we know very little about and runs on something we know nothing about...) and I assure you, I have done some research on the topic, at least within my limited physics and cosmology background. If you have a source I should look at as the causal nature of the universe, happy to read it.

(1) to paraphrase Neil Degrasse Tyson

Ok, Will, go ahead and give me a single example of something that began to exist without a cause. I'll wait...

You're literally arguing against one of the most basic and widely accepted logical progressions. But okay man, aim high. Nobel prize in your future if you can pull it off.

[WillBrink]

Ok, Will, go ahead and give me a single example of something that began to exist without a cause. I'll wait...

You're literally arguing against one of the most basic and widely accepted logical progressions. But okay man, aim high. Nobel prize in your future if you can pull it off.

Again, depends how you are using the term, and to repeat, If you have a source I should look at as the causal nature of the universe, happy to read it. "Cause" means something very different to a cosmologist than it does to non scientist type, just as the word "theory" does. The "cause" of the universe as a huge amount of evidence large and small, as in quantum level, is inflation that started from an infinitely dense singularity of some sort. What physicists will tell you is the term "singularity" means they really don't anything about it and that's the term they use, but they do have very good evidence about what happened when it expanded from that point.

That comes around to another human-centric position that "something can't come from nothing" but the humans can't work with idea of "nothing" so they reject what they can't process. In his book The Grand Design, 2012, Hawkings discusses how something comes from nothing.

Or, ours is a universe created from the exit side of a black hole from another universe, and other possible theories. Point being, "cause" depending on use and intent, like so many terms we use to make sense of things, may not exist like time, which recent thinking posits does not actually exist at all, but is a emergent property of entropy.

How are you defining cause here? See also:

Is Causality a Necessary Tool for Understanding Our Universe, or Is It a Part of the Problem?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8307540/

[LoboTBL]

To consider the Earth to be unique in the universe is statistically preposterous. Even if one were to assume that the Earth is indeed unique in our galaxy of hundreds of billions of individual stars, which it almost certainly isn't, there are hundreds of millions of known galaxies and each of them also consist of hundreds of billions of stars. Those numbers actually tend to suggest the probability of other Earthlike planets elsewhere in the known universe.

[Disciple]

For example, the cosmological constant is fine tuned to 1 part in 10^120. The gravitational constant is 1 in 10^34.

What does this mean? The values of these constants are only known to a few digits of precision.

[WillBrink]

To consider the Earth to be unique in the universe is statistically preposterous. Even if one were to assume that the Earth is indeed unique in our galaxy of hundreds of billions of individual stars, which it almost certainly isn't, there are hundreds of millions of known galaxies and each of them also consist of hundreds of billions of stars. Those numbers actually tend to suggest the probability of other Earthlike planets elsewhere in the known universe.

More like hundreds of billions and the new telescope already suggesting those numbers are way low. Humans can't think in numbers like that, so they will ignore or reject it outright. However, OP is not about life beyond earth per se, but how astoundingly fine tuned the universe is for us to exist at all, be we alone in it or not.

[tn1911]

What does this mean? The values of these constants are only known to a few digits of precision.

Actually it’s not very precisely known at all, its a physical constant that is very difficult to measure accurately because it’s an extremely weak force compared to other forces. In fact it’s estimation has changed many times throughout history.