Life Is Fine-tuned to the Universe

While slight changes in the constants of physics could make life as we know it impossible, what about life as we do not know it? We have no reason to believe that our kind of carbon-based life is the only form that is possible under every possible variation in constants and the laws of physics. I have shown that long-lived stars, which are regarded as necessary for the building of the chemical elements that constitute living structures, can be expected for a huge range of physical constants. Similarly, [physicist] Anthony Aguire examined the universes that result when six cosmological parameters are varied by orders of magnitude and found that they do not preclude the existence of intelligent life.

Furthermore, modern cosmology indicates that multiple universes may exist with different constants and laws of physics. In that case, it is no more surprising that we live in a universe suited for us than it is that we live on the planet suited for us—Earth rather than Mars or Venus. The universe is not fine-tuned to life; life is fine-tuned to the universe. [Citations omitted.]

--Victor J. Stenger (1935-2014), physicist, "Flew's Flawed Science" 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Impossibility of Illogical Thought

Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we should have to think illogically. It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an 'illogical' world would look like. It is as impossible to represent in language anything that 'contradicts logic' as it is in geometry to represent by its a coordinates a figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a point that does not exist.... In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.... Self-evidence, which [Bertrand] Russell talked about so much, can be dispensable in logic, only because language itself prevents every logical mistake.--What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus   3.03, 3.031, 3.032, 5.473, 5.4731 (H/T: Roderick T. Long )      
Read more

Is He Having a Laugh?

According to the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the government is God's appointed agent on earth, and each of us owes it allegiance and obedience. If that's so--and I for one don't believe either part of that statement--I'd like some believer to explain what God had in mind when he arranged things so that one of the two major-party clowns running for president will be elected in November. Is He having a laugh?
Read more

What Was the Point of the Bible?

It's more than plausible that the Five Books of Moses and the rest of the Hebrew Bible are about political domination and submission. (The other bibles may well be that too, but I haven't read them.) It's reasonable to think that the authors wrote them on behalf of, or to curry favor with, their rulers in an attempt to make the masses afraid to think for themselves and perhaps defy the ruling elite. (They may have had more than one motivation, of course.)  There were 12 tribes that a ruling class wished to hold together through anticipation of divine rewards and fear of divine punishment. The objective was to promote allegiance. (I can imagine an honorable but misguided motive for this -- group survival in a violent world.) The scriptures were a warning: do what we say your god commands or Yahweh will be so angry he will do some or all the horrible things that are threatened and in some cases perpetrated throughout these books. Follow his commands to a T (as conveyed by us)
Read more