The premise is applied only to things we don’t have scientific explanations for- therefore I guess we will have to disagree as I still see it as an argument from ignorance.
Is this some kind of alternative world you live in? Beyond humans doing stuff via known mechanisms we have zero evidence of anything beyond this.
The question of fine tuning is really a question of initial conditions. Because we don’t have any clue as to what kinds of probability distributions underlie the fundamental constants then nobody knows the answer to that question.
Maybe you, like I do, believe that the fundamental constants ultimately find their source in a Creator though I would say it’s silly to claim anything physicists have ever calculated say anything about any gods either way… just like everything else in science as science is blind to test the supernatural.
In fact, it seems that many scientists know the answer to that question since they have explicitly or implicitly put forward the multiverse idea for the unique reason to avoid the repulsive conclusion for them that the fine tuning is evidence for divine design.
On the other hand, other prominent scientists reject the idea of a multiverse and assume to conclude that the scientific discovery of the fine tuning points to devine design.
The bottom line of this fine tuning thing is that it is wrong to say that science is blind to the supernatural.
This is dishonest (or misinformed). Multiverses are predictions of models based on the universe we SEE. Cosmologists did not come up with the MV to explain away FT
This is not dishonest but may very well be misinformed. I’ll try to investigate this issue and if it appears that I was wrong, I will correct or withdraw my claim.
No they don’t know the answer to that question. Would you be willing to learn what physicists can actually do related to fine tuning? Or why a multiverse hypothesis exists that may or may not explain the origin of the physical constants? Or how nobody actually knows either 1) the ranges of values that are life permitting (which we can try to model) or 2) the underlying probability distributions which would require new physics like a theory quantum gravity, something like string theory, and a theory of something like inflation? Since we don’t have those theories, it’s mere speculation how a physicists would address any so called fine tuning.
But one thing a physicists shouldn’t do it say ‘hey, we have no idea where these fundamental parameters came from, let’s quit trying to figure it out and say it’s some god.’ And another a physicists shouldn’t do is pretend we can just say multiverse and there’s no need for more physics.
The multiverse is just as supported as this universe being the only one in existence. If we don’t know how many universes there are then we can’t make any claims about how unlikely this universe is.
Also, basing arguments on what you think other peoples’ secret motivations are is usually a bad route to take. Mindreading is very fallible.
Okay, from what I’ve been able to see, I have to admit that I was misinformed. As you said, «cosmologists did not come up with the MV to explain away FT ».
This is a strange statement for we have evidences for only one universe, ours. Therefore, how can you say that the multiverse is just as supported as the singleverse?
We don’t have evidence that this is the only universe. If someone wants to make claims about the improbability of this universe existing then they need to confirm the number of universes that exist.
I can say that because we don’t have any evidence for how many universes there are. Can you cite any evidence that this is the only universe that exists?
I didn’t feel that your tone was particularly rude, and you were civil and fair enough to offer me the possibility of being misinformed instead of dishonest.
Now, and I am sorry about that, but I may have to temper my retractation since meanwhile I come upon an interview of Paul Steinhardt, a physicist who helped create the theory of inflation but later came to reject it. In this interview, he says these 2 things that I quote below:
the whole point of inflation was to get rid of fine-tuning.
Scientific ideas should be simple, explanatory, predictive. The inflationary multiverse as currently understood appears to have none of those properties. These concerns and more, and the fact that we have made no progress in 30 years in addressing them, are what have made me skeptical about the inflationary picture.
Based in part on Steinhardt’s testimony, I would now risk the following statements :
Cosmologists did not come up initially with the multiverse to explain away the fine tuning of the universe
However, the fine tuning of the universe has later been and still is a powerful incentive to push/promote the multiverse.
I hope this inflection won’t reduce your chances of having a good night this time😉
Here’s an interview of Steven Weinberg where he repudiates the claim that the multiverse was invented to deal with fine tuning problems. He’s speaking here about the eternal inflation multiverse models. The relevant part is 38 minutes 10 seconds in.
It is my understanding that the inflationary model was invented to explain certain observed properties of our universe by positing a mechanism in it’s early history (the inflationary mechanism). It was later discovered that this inflationary mechanism would entail many such inflationary episodes in isolated areas of space (not sure if I got this exactly right), and that these inflationary pockets would be similar to our own universe. So there would be many such inflating universes, possibly with different properties and constants. So inflation was not invented to create a multiverse, a multiverse was one of it’s unintended but unavoidable consequences.
“But in modern cosmology, the multiverse is not a theory at all. Rather, it is a prediction made by other theories—theories that were invented for completely different purposes. The multiverse wasn’t invented because people thought it was a cool idea; it was forced on us by our best efforts to understand the portion of universe that we do see.”—- Sean Carroll
I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I’ve always thought that the multiverse was a very strange idea that defies common sense. I don’t like it. But of course, that doesn’t mean it is false. Now, If I could, I will ask the Christian proponents of the multiverse what they think of Steinhardt’s view below:
« Scientific ideas should be simple, explanatory, predictive. The inflationary multiverse as currently understood appears to have none of those properties. These concerns and more, and the fact that we have made no progress in 30 years in addressing them, are what have made me skeptical about the inflationary picture. »
Welcome to science. The reason we have science and the scientific method is that common sense is often wrong. The entire point of doing science is to remove biased human intuition. If common sense ruled science then we wouldn’t have quantum mechanics, heliocentrism, or any number of counter-intuitive theories.
Don’t let 30 years get you down it took Kepler a good 40 years to work out his three laws!
Inflation itself is actually a simpler explanation than what Steinhardt is working on but there is a separate component to inflation which is called eternal inflation which only appears in some of the models. It is only eternal inflation that leads to the multiverse. We have evidence for the first type of inflation or something like it but not evidence for eternal inflation as of yet at least.
Part of the original motivation for inflation yes was to explain the so-called flatness problem, the apparent horizon problem, and the lack of any magnetic monopoles. But to be honest we don’t even know if those are problems that need solving because they require knowledge of physics that we don’t yet have at very high energy skills. But what is really interesting about something inflation like is that it did lead to a number of simple testable predictions that were confirmed by better measurements of the cosmic microwave background for example. This is a nice review paper covering inflation:
Side note: what fine-tuning means for physicists is different from how it’s used in apologetics. It does have to do with the initial conditions and if they appear unlikely based upon our understanding of the underlying probability distribution of initial conditions. It’s really nothing more than that and inflation would be completely separate from the actual constants of nature itself.