Interesting Recent Unrelated Posts
Listen to an interview with Bible scholar Dr. Jaco Gericke.
Then check out Dr. Keith Parsons on Robin Collins's fine tuning argument.
And don't miss Dr. Ken Pulliam's posts related to slavery in the South. With regard to slavery the pro-slavery arguments were stronger than the abolitionists. See for yourself what the pro-slavery contingent said.
Then check out Dr. Keith Parsons on Robin Collins's fine tuning argument.
And don't miss Dr. Ken Pulliam's posts related to slavery in the South. With regard to slavery the pro-slavery arguments were stronger than the abolitionists. See for yourself what the pro-slavery contingent said.
2 comments:
I'll repost the remark I made on the other blog here, as this is a summary of my objection to the so-called "fine-tuning" argument. As I point out, I'm astonished that theists aren't bothered by the argument's implications for an omnipotent god, and haven't over the course of many years yet heard an answer to this point:
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I can't fathom why the implications of the fine-tuning argument with respect to the creative freedom of a god isn't troubling to theists. Were the universe so incredibly fine-tuned that any slight deviation would render life impossible, this doesn't exactly leave a great deal of room for a god, who it seems would then be left with no choice whatsoever in how to create a universe. What are we to make of supposed omnipotence in light of this, if one were to have in mind the conventional Christian god?
I can't concur, however, that there is such a "pinpoint" tuning. Victor Stenger's book, "God: The Failed Hypothesis" proposes that there is quite a bit more room for the various constants to float than is usually assumed. A recent article in ... Scientific American? ... also suggests (and supports Stenger's other assertion) that fine-tuning generally assumes that one and only one variable is adjusted at a time, which if one were to adjust more than one at a time, many other combinations may be derived that would be hospitable to our familiar form of life (i.e., one variable compensates for another), not to mention the potential for many other forms of life that may not be familiar to us but nonetheless would be viable life.
Chris(t),
There's hardly a good path around the anthropic principle. The only way to deal with it is to move straight through it. Most attempts to go around it are akin to religious people trying to skate the law of entropy.
As to a rebuttal to your point, I'd turn to Leibniz if you want to stay within the boundaries of the conventional Christian God, Spinoza if you don't.
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