The bible uses the analogy of pottery. You can have the best finely tuned universe (i.e. clay), you’d still need to shape that clay into a finely tuned vase (i.e. the solar system’s specific anomalous properties) in order to get the desired result.
No, that’s the point with a fine-tuned universe. It’s fine-tuned so as to ensure that among the many different kinds of solar-systems that evolve, there will be Earth-like solar systems among them. No later intervention needed.
It is the impeccable logic you describe above that led me to post about the limits of the Fine Tuning argument.
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This is a shift in the discussion from whether ‘the anomalous Sun’ requires post-origin interventions to what God could or couldn’t do.
yeah there wasn’t a set goal in the op so that’s ok as long as I’m consistent.
I think you failed to understand the point of his criticism. There has to be a hole for the puddle to conform to (and the water came from somewhere else). Likewise, life cannot form or survive until there is an environment for it to ‘conform to’. There are so many layers of fine-tuning and anthropic coincidences it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it’s like my ten thousand coin flips all coming up heads, theoretically possible but you really want to be looking for the real reason.
Yes, this gets at why the criticism is wrong, and @T_aquaticus is right.
The criticism is taking a God’s eye view at the puddle and hole. And @T_aquaticus (and Douglas Adams) is taking a puddle’s eye view.
So sure, you are going to look at it differently, depending on which view you take.
Getting back to the fine tuning question, should we take God’s eye view or should we take a human’s eye view.
If we have already concluded that there is a creator god, and we are trying to understand man’s place in the world, then it may make sense to take a God’s eye view.
If, however, we are discussing the question of whether there is a creator god, and if we are using fine tuning to support the hypothesis that there is God, then we must look at this argument from a human’s eye view. Otherwise we are assuming what we are wanting to argue for.
So count me as agreeing with @T_aquaticus and Douglas Adams, while disagreeing with you and that criticism that you linked.
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It is also an ontological view, not just a ‘God’s eye view’, and it is not inappropriate for us to take an ontological view (not to mention a teleological one).
(I would think more highly of you and consider it more cordial if you would capitalize God more consistently, as in ‘creator God’.)
I used lower case when referring to a generic “creator god”, and upper case for a specific God. I was perhaps not completely consistent, but that was the idea.
Apart from that, it depends on whether you are doing apologetics, as in convincing Christians to remain Christian. But if the aim is to make a case for people might not be Christian, then it is a mistake to assume what you are attempting to argue for.
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Speaking in the company of Christians, though, please recognize that there is only one creator God, but thanks for trying.
…is an oxymoron, because remaining a Christian is not a choice any more than you can choose to be unbirthed.
And I will again appeal to the 10,000 coin flips coming up all heads. That is not assuming what you are trying to prove, that is recognizing that something else is going on besides mere probability.
Yes, and that would be the kind of thing the fine-tuning argument for the physical constants is supposed to explain.
That would not apply to the Earth and solar system, as those are implied by the physical constants. The argument normally goes that the conditions of the early universe were such that, given the laws of physics, the universe would evolve into the kind we see, with trillions of galaxies, and that this would ensure that among these trillions of galaxies a solar system like Earth’s would form.
That means God is not required to later intervene and independently create the solar system, rather the laws of physics are supposed to ensure that the universe is large and complex enough that such solar systems will be likely to evolve.
Likewise, life cannot form or survive until there is an environment for it to ‘conform to’.
Hence, fine-tuning of the laws of physics proponents will argue, the laws of physics were set up such that given the also fine-tuned initial conditions of the early universe, there will eventually come to exist such environments when the generations of stars have produced the heavy elements, spread them into interstellar clouds, which will collect into new solar systems and planets and so on. God isn’t required to play the creationist party tricks where he runs around pushing on planets into their correct orbits, or slowing down the rotational speeds of stars. Rather, the universe has been made so big, with enough matter and energy in it, that among all the different solar systems that will evolve over it’s lifetime, it is guaranteed to produce solar systems like Earth’s. You know, God’s divine foresight allowed him to create it so. That’s generally the argument.
There are so many layers of fine-tuning and anthropic coincidences
Or perhaps there was just “fine-tuning” of the initial conditions and physical constants, and all else are byproducts of that. At least, according to the classic fine-tuning argument for the physical constants and initial conditions of the universe.
You seem to be saying something different, you want multiple layers of fine tuning. You want God to fine-tune the physical constants and initial conditions (for what?), AND you want God to intervene and mess with our solar system because you seem to think that if He had not done so, our solar system would not have evolved into it’s present state that has allowed complex life to evolve. A God that has to run around and dial the knobs all the time because he lacked the intelligence and foresight to set up the system to ensure it’s desired outcome from the beginning.
it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it’s like my ten thousand coin flips all coming up heads, theoretically possible but you really want to be looking for the real reason.
You want to be looking for simpler, and prefer more over less likely explanations, that’s the preference. The principle of parsimony. That however nips fine-tuning in the butt (of all kinds), because we now have to consider the probability that among all possible imaginable Gods, it is a God that would want to pick our particular set of physical constants that exist. So it really solves nothing to posit a fine-tuner, it doesn’t make the picture any more likely. The more detailed and specific you make your fine-tuner(and you have made him extremely detailed and specific by claiming he would want to pick our set of physical constants and personally intervene to manage the solar system), you have made your God just as unlikely as the set of physical constants you are trying to explain by appealing to God.
And there is a hole. Problem solved.
And there is an environment where life can survive. Therefore, it’s not surprising that we find life surviving in that environment.
We have no idea what the probabilities are because we don’t know how universes form nor do we know how many universes exist.
Why was my post hidden by community flagging? Please someone here explain to me what is wrong with my previous post.
You wrote “butt”, not “bud”?
There are many. Perhaps all but one are fictions. But we are still allowed to refer to fictions.
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I don’t think you understand, in fact I know you don’t understand the precision of God’s providence. (Maybe because you don’t believe in it. 
) We are not saying that God fine-tuned so that a solar system like ours could evolve, but that this one would. In fact, if we could back up and start over, things, including species in the biosphere, would be no different.
I am not sure what gave you reason to infer that. Maybe my use of the term ‘layers’? That is not at all what I meant.
Christians know why God created universe. Is that what you are asking? That also rebutts all of your other nonsense.
Perhaps
and
It wouldn’t be hard to infer disrespect, in fact it is difficult not to infer prideful disdain. And it is obnoxious.
Not if you understand why he created the universe.
I can accept that you feel that way.
We are not saying that God fine-tuned so that a solar system like ours could evolv
Who is the “we” you are speaking on behalf of here? All Christians? You and a few others here on this forum? Believe it or not, you’re not the first Christian I have interacted with, and I have had various types of fine-tuning arguments put to me. So when I describe one such argument in my post and constrast it to yours, that is because it is a type of argument some Christian has put forward.
but that this one would.
How do you know that God wanted this one specifically? I mean God wanted humans with five fingers on one hand and inconsistent degrees of bodyhair? How do you know God didn’t intend for there to be a roughly humanoid species, and that the important thing to Him was the fact that such a species would at some place eventually develop with the capacity for language, reason, and moral and ethical instincts, and then revealed Himself to any such species that evolved in His universe?
Do you know for a fact there isn’t some other intelligent species out there in the universe, somewhat different from Homo sapiens, but still “created in his image” through an evolutionary process, to which he has revealed himself and offered salvation and eternal life?
In fact, if we could back up and start over, things, including species in the biosphere, would be no different.
Cool story bro. No different? Not a single atom? A few nucleotides? Perhaps a mole on your forearm slightly missing? You also believe the same exact patterns of rainfall would obtain again, with literally the same drops landing in the exact same spots all over again?
You again neglect (read that ‘fail’) to understand why he created the universe. You also apparently do not understand the concepts of omniscience, omnipotence and sovereignty.