Behe vindicated, again!

That coincidence being, to be clear, the fact that photochemistry happens where it is possible rather than where it is impossible. Quite a coincidence! In a similar coincidence, my wife (only ONE woman from about three billion possible females on this planet!) and my spouse (likewise, a one-in-three-billion individual) are the same woman!

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So, @Giltil, how do you figure that the range from 400-700 nm is an “infinitely small region of the EM”, especially given the figure you point us to? Feel free to show your work, so others here can understand the assertion.

After you do this, perhaps you can point us the analyses Denton has done on the outputs of other stars. How does he determine that what so amazes him is in fact a stunning coincidence, as opposed to the ways that stars work?

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That’s nothing. Ever notice how the sun never shines at night?? How’s THAT for coincidence! :laughing:

Sorry Gil, I don’t mean to pick on you - I just think this argument might have gone off the rails. :wink:

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Laugh if you want. The audience at that lecture seemed quite rapt, and no doubt more than a few dug into their pockets to buy Denton’s book, and maybe even make a donation to the DI. So who gets the last laugh?

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I don’t know, but goodness, gracious: if you were a shady grifter, wouldn’t you love to have access to the DI’s mailing list? That’s got to be a gold mine. I’ll bet there’s a considerable overlap with the people who get tripped up by telephone scams. “The IRS is going to arrest me unless I buy it a bunch of Target gift cards? Consider it done!”

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I guess you are appealing to the weak anthropic principle (WAP) to defeat the teleological argument made by Denton. But it happens that many great minds have rejected the WAP, including Dawkins. So no, it is not the case that Denton argument has gone off the rails. The video below illustrates this nicely:

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The thing is that according to Denton, most stars in the universe emit light within the extremely tiny region of utility for life. So it doesn’t seem that the WAP would be applicable here. Here is another quote from Denton: The cosmos is, so to speak, flooded with the light of life! In the radiant output of the stars and the flooding of the cosmos with the right light, nature signifies her unique fitness for « light eating » organisms like ourselves.

What is the alternative to most stars emitting large amounts of light in the visible spectrum. Explain the physics of an IR star, or an x-ray star.

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No, that is not the argument that is being made.

Rather, the argument is that in a universe as vast as ours, the number of planets that will possess the conditions under which humans could evolve is very large, just as a matter of probabilities. It’s as if we knew the multiverse was true and could therefore refute the fine tuning argument from that alone.

For me, the real unanswered question (or the real mystery) is this:

Why do Christian apologists keep coming up with such appallingly bad arguments?

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Because there aren’t any good apologetic arguments?

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Except that Denton is not a Christian !

So the great coincidence is that fusion releases energy that, by the time it gets to the surface of a star, is neither too energetic nor not energetic enough. But of course it would actually be possible for some kind of life to take advantage of greater or lesser energies; all that would be required is different chemistry: higher-energy bonds in the first case, lower energy in the second. Or do you claim it’s impossible to get power from microwaves or radio?

No mystery. It’s all that’s available.

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There is a long tradition of it. From the scriptures:

ARTHUR: Master! Your people have walked many miles to be with You! They are weary and have not eaten.

BRIAN: It’s not my fault they haven’t eaten!

ARTHUR: There is no food in this high mountain!

BRIAN: Well, what about the juniper bushes over there?

ELSIE: Hhhh!

FOLLOWERS: Heh! A miracle! A miracle! Ohh!..

SHOE FOLLOWER: He has made the bush fruitful by His words.

YOUTH: They have brought forth juniper berries.

BRIAN: Of course they’ve brought forth juniper berries! They’re juniper bushes! What do you expect?!

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Gentlemen. It should be recognized that fine tuning does not arise as a piece of ID fluff. The idea, melded with the anthropic principle and the multiverse, has engaged the attention of recognized physicists including Mario Livio, Martin Rees, Paul Davies, Andrei Linde, Leonard Susskind, and Lubos Motl, and several more, as at least worthy of a serious response. Some just concern themselves with cosmological flatness, and others see further synergy in the details of nucleosynthesis and path to life.

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Are you saying that the argument from fine-tuning of the universe is a bad argument? If yes, could you explain why?

I guess it follows that apologetics is fine tuned for making bad arguments :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Okay then that’s just the same fine tuning argument as usual, because fundamental physics control the relationships between star formation, stellar nuclear fusion, and the radiative properties of stars. The probability that stars emit energy mostly in a particular part of the spectrum is not independent of the probability that stellar nuclear fusion(and it’s relationship to the periodic table of elements and the resulting possible chemistries) can occur.

I concur with @CrisprCAS9 that I think you have some work to do if you want to convince us that the universe could have contained mostly stars that would have been emitting most strongly in the IR/Radio, or X-ray/Gamma parts of the spectrum, yet still allowed the existence of life.

True, but that raises another question: why do they even bother?

I truly don’t get the thinking (or “thinking”) here. It’s plain that at the very best, on a good day with a pleasant breeze and a conversational companion who isn’t very challenging of your assumptions, the most you can get out of a fine-tuning argument of the highest quality is a “golly.” Not “ergo, a Designer exists.” Not “ergo, a Designer probably exists.” Not “ergo, there is at least some evidence of design,” but only “ergo, well, Golly!”

That said, the world has room for people being sort of wordlessly awed by things. A person could say, “well, I know this shows nothing at all, but I still look at the universe and say, golly, how could there not be a god?” This would be honest and unpretentious. It would not claim any persuasive power over anyone other than its speaker. One cannot rebut such things, but can only say, “well, I guess it may seem that way to you; not to me.”

After thousands of years of theists pointlessly chasing their own tail on these sorts of “arguments” for the existence of their various ghosts, vampires and other things which go bump in the night, or bump for all eternity, or whatever bumping they do, you might think that the appetite for arguments that are as unproductive as this would eventually be satisfied and one final burp would signal the end of it. But, no. These asinine propositions have got to keep assuming new form, but always on the same framework. The Yugo, now Mercedes-badged, must still be test-driven until the rubber cement that’s holding the hood ornament on fails.

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If he’s not at least a deist, then one has to wonder who he thinks is responsible for all these cosmic “coincidences” he keep harping on about. :roll_eyes:

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