Veritas Forum: Behe & Swamidass, "God and/or Evolution"

Josh, a few times after the presentations and follow up, you seemed to be pushing for an opportunity to ask Behe one or more questions (and to allow Behe to do likewise). I was wondering if you might share with us some of the questions you had in mind.

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I agree with you on overall strategy, you’re not likely to change anyone’s mind by calling them dishonest to their face. And it may even be true in the long term that, if you are respectful even where you might have doubts about the sincerity of the other side, you’re still more likely to succeed than if you “stamp your feet” so to speak.

That said, I think Tour’s question to you is an example of what you call public posturing. There may be some grain of genuine interest in the question he’s posing, but him taking the Q&A in your debate as an opportunity to ask that question is obviously not because he expects you to stand there and lecture on the biochemistry of evolutionary change. If he really wanted to know, he could have sent you an email.

It was a question designed to have some sort of rhetorical effect. He asked, and you didn’t really answer, and that was the purpose of asking it.

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I’m certain you’ve misread him.

Same thing with calling the universe fine-tuned. Pressupposes a tuner

I can of course be wrong, and in this case I hope I am.

You can define “tuning” independent of a tuner.

Go for it

Sensitive dependence on free parameters.

Okay. So our universe’s existence is built on a sensitive dependence of free parameters. Go with that instead of saying it’s fine-tuned. That begs the question. Because what tunes things?

Yes, and some people have proposed the multiverse, others have proposed God. Others still have proposed both.

I’m in the it doesn’t need an explanation camp, FWIW

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@swamidass

For Fine Tuning to be a definitive argument, one has to believe it is a definitive proof of God.

If nobody really believes Fine Tuning is a definitive proof of God, then - - parallel to the argument against the logic of I.D. - - Fine Tuning is merely something which people who have ALREADY accepted Christianity can talk about.

Huh?
Any possibility you can flesh that out a bit more? (short english words please :slight_smile:)
Is that a complicated way of saying chance? What does a multiverse do besides give better odds (greater opportunity for chance to do it’s thing)?
You are not suggesting are you, that chance has the power to do anything?
David Hume apparently stated it something like, ‘chance is only our ignorance of real causes’. That sounds solid to me.

A free parameter is like a knob that can be turned to any position.

Dependence means that the output depends on the position of the knob.

Sensitive dependence means that extremely tiny changes to the knobs position produce large changes to the output.

There is no reference to probability here because there is no statement of (or knowledge of) what proportion of knob positions produce the desired output.

There is also no knowedge of whether there even are knobs, how many there are, or what the range of possible positions might be. Do they go up to 11, or just to 0.01?

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That’s a different question. I’m just explaining what I meant in that sentence fragment.

My brother in law just suggested I watch a video on the use of 3-d printing in the manufacture of real, space going, full-sized rockets. Quite amazing.
Not sure that that will spark much interest here, but it was when I heard Tim Ellis, the American aerospace engineer and the co-founder and CEO of Relativity use the vernacular of Josh Swamidass that I thought it might interest.
Josh talking about ‘the grand question - what does it mean to be human’,

And Tim Ellis ‘toying’ with the question, ‘what is the point of being a human being’,

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