Theological Fine Tuning

[LordKiran]

There is no single 'biological definition' of life.

Biologists use a variety of definitions, none of which produce a clear distinction between life and non-life that places all the things we want to call 'life' into the 'life' category, while simultaneously excluding all of the things we want to call non-life.

The idea that we have a single, universal, and categorical biological definition of life is widespread, but false.

For example, some of the various definitions of life include the ability to reproduce. But those definitions exclude huge numbers of animals and plants from the 'life' category. A definition in which my 90 year old aunt is not an example of 'life' because she never had children, is a poor definition. You might fudge things, and say that she had the potential to reproduce - but then you still exclude from 'life' any person born without functioning reproductive organs. A definition of 'life' that excludes some living, breathing human beings is not a very good definition.

Sadly though, if we exclude the ability to reproduce from our definition, we end up with things that fit our other criteria for 'life', but which we do not want to categorise as alive - things like hurricanes, landslides, or lava flows, for example.

'Alive' is one of those categories that we all seem to agree on, but are not able to easily define. That's probably because it's not a distinction that has an actual analog in reality - 'alive' isn't as meaningful as we are prone to assume, and reality doesn't fit neatly into the boxes we want to make for it.

Is a virus alive? What about a crystal? What about a crystal made up of viruses?

I don't think broad categorizations are necessarily meant to apply to your aunt as an individual but as a human being in the general sense so I wouldn't say those old definitions are invalidated by her exception to the rule.

Thing is: life isnt some sort of principal rule as gravity or space time. Life is a thing (or rather multiple things): a biochemical process interconnected in spacetime. Your ancestors where vessels containing/being this chemical process. Vessels that branched into other vessels. Follow this back in time you see that in 4dim spacetime we are all connected in a giant, ancient chemical process. Most of life on earth is the current parts of this chemical process, but there may also be some unconnected ones.

Thus life is more of an event than a property of cosmos.

Or a state of autonomous determination.

 

[remez]

As you wish.

I'll let you bow out.
Thanks for trying.

Sorry to say I cant you give any credit for trying though.
I have yet to you take any of the arguments posted to you here seriously.

Come on..... you're not sorry.
and....
And it is obvious you have not taken them seriously.

but....I'm in a generous mood.

I'll give you half a credit for being half right.

 

[bilby]

There is no single 'biological definition' of life.

Biologists use a variety of definitions, none of which produce a clear distinction between life and non-life that places all the things we want to call 'life' into the 'life' category, while simultaneously excluding all of the things we want to call non-life.

The idea that we have a single, universal, and categorical biological definition of life is widespread, but false.

For example, some of the various definitions of life include the ability to reproduce. But those definitions exclude huge numbers of animals and plants from the 'life' category. A definition in which my 90 year old aunt is not an example of 'life' because she never had children, is a poor definition. You might fudge things, and say that she had the potential to reproduce - but then you still exclude from 'life' any person born without functioning reproductive organs. A definition of 'life' that excludes some living, breathing human beings is not a very good definition.

Sadly though, if we exclude the ability to reproduce from our definition, we end up with things that fit our other criteria for 'life', but which we do not want to categorise as alive - things like hurricanes, landslides, or lava flows, for example.

'Alive' is one of those categories that we all seem to agree on, but are not able to easily define. That's probably because it's not a distinction that has an actual analog in reality - 'alive' isn't as meaningful as we are prone to assume, and reality doesn't fit neatly into the boxes we want to make for it.

Is a virus alive? What about a crystal? What about a crystal made up of viruses?

I don't think broad categorizations are necessarily meant to apply to your aunt as an individual but as a human being in the general sense so I wouldn't say those old definitions are invalidated by her exception to the rule.

A definition either correctly categorizes whatever entities you are attempting to categorize; Or it doesn't.

If it doesn't, it's not a good definition.

How do you tell whether my 90 year old aunt is alive or not alive? That question is bound to arise (with a very powerful need for a definitive and correct answer) some time before her funeral...

Obviously, when determining if a person is ready for their funeral, we use a different definition of 'alive' than the one we use when deciding if a virus is alive, or deciding if a prion is alive. But then that tells me that 'alive' doesn't mean the same thing in each of those cases - yet we persist in pretending that they are the same concept. I suspect that's a hangover from vitalism.

Personally I prefer a very broad definition: I would say that Life is defined by the continuation and/or multiplication of chemical reaction cycles, where each cycle can lead to more molecules of the same type being involved in the next cycle than took part in the last, given suitable conditions. By that definition, prions and viruses are alive; It also allows for the possibility of novel forms (eg hypothetical silicon based extraterrestrials) to be recognized as 'alive'.

That definition is useless to physicians or morticians who may be deciding whether to cremate my Aunt; But then, I am not entirely convinced that 'alive' is a particularly useful category for ANY purpose. Humans think it's a special quality, likely because they can't bring themselves to abandon unhelpful ideas, once those ideas have been around for a long time. People are natural vitalists and animists - I will happily say 'The spark of life has gone', or 'My car doesn't want to start', despite not believing that there is any such thing as a spark of life, nor that my car has desires of any kind.

 

[Learner]

No, saying something is "Tuned" expressly requires the intent of an external actor who does the tuning. It would be like saying the galaxy was artificed into being but with no creator. The nature of the word artificed in the given context explicitly requires and artificer for the words to make sense.

Also for the universe to be created goes against the idea that the universe is eternal which sort of undermines the idea of god as an allegory for the universe.

Ah ok, I can sort of see your point : "The concept of eternal universe. I have always thought (which could be wrong) was in the context that the universe was about the existence of "physical matter" (this bit not eternal) ...which we can observe.

 

[bilby]

There's always a lot of confusion in these debates, due to people using different definitions for things like 'universe', 'God', 'alive', and many other key words and phrases. If we could agree on a set of definitions before we start to discuss these things, a lot of that confusion would vanish - but the infrequency with which people agree on definitions in advance, and then abide by them, suggests that for many people confusion is not a bug, but a feature.

A sufficiently confused set of claims allows one to rationalize almost any position. It certainly makes Special Pleading fallacies a lot easier to slip into the mix.

 

[Learner]

Looking back at some of the other posts (Rem,Lion,tigers) I was using the same context after all. "Physical universe" it is.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Looking back at some of the other posts (Rem,Lion,tigers) I was using the same context after all. "Physical universe" it is.

Quite. Is there any other kind?

 

[Juma]

As you wish.

I'll let you bow out.
Thanks for trying.

Sorry to say I cant you give any credit for trying though.
I have yet to you take any of the arguments posted to you here seriously.

Come on..... you're not sorry.
and....
And it is obvious you have not taken them seriously.

but....I'm in a generous mood.

I'll give you half a credit for being half right.

Can you show me any post where you actually, seriously, takes in what other posts you.

 

[ruby sparks]

Can you show me any post where you actually, seriously, takes in what other posts you.

I take a post seriously if it's not full of woo wibble. I took your apparent request for Irish music seriously, didn't I? And if you want some coaching in English, I'll take that seriously too (it's 'take' not 'takes', and 'post' not 'posts').

I am probably being a bit pedantic. Maybe I spend too much time in the more intelligent subforums.

 

[Lion IRC]

The Christian God is eternal, thus has no beginning, he has no cause.

1. How did you arrive at that position? You see, I suspect that you more or less read it somewhere or were told it, and you believed it.

2. Unlike yours, my theories don't suffer from special pleading.
...

If remez's premise about God being eternal is special pleading then so too is the contrary negation of that premise which is equally self-asserting.

Where did you get your information? Did you "read it somewhere or were told it"?

 

[bigfield]

The terminology of special pleading applies to an argument. This "first-cause" arguments have been around for thousands of years. And for thousands of years the universe and God were thought to be eternal and thus without cause. That the universe was considered eternal was not a scientific claim. It was a metaphysical claim based on proper reasoning. The same reasoning I conclude for God. However, most plausibly science has recently (past century) kicked the universe out of the category of the eternal. Thus the Biblical God is all that reasonably remains as the best explanation for the first cause. There is no special pleading, only elimination. To claim special pleading in this context of the KCA, you would have to ignore or be ignorant of thousands of years of history as to why the universe was considered eternal.

The Big Bang theory only describes the expansion of the universe as far back as the Planck epoch, where the laws of relativity and quantum mechanics cease to apply. It's a common misconception that the Big Bang theory describes the beginning of the universe. Physicists aren't even certain what happens to time--which is a property of the physical universe--during the Planck epoch.

The Cosmological Argument has been special pleading since Plato and Aristotle argued for unmoved movers. The only support they, or Thomas Aquinas after them, can offer is a bald assertion that such an agent (or agents) must exist. It makes no difference whether one argues from motion, causation, or existence.

 

[ruby sparks]

If remez's premise about God being eternal is special pleading then so too is the contrary negation of that premise which is equally self-asserting.

Sorry, I'm not responding to gibberish today, but if you personally are happy with that confused word salad, then I'll leave it to you to explain to remez why his premise would be no better a self-assertion that its negation.

 

[Bomb#20]

Sorry, I'm not responding to gibberish today, but if you personally are happy with that confused word salad, then I'll leave it to you to explain to remez why his premise would be no better a self-assertion that its negation.

That sentence ungrammatical. Not glass houses people in stones throw should.

 

[Bomb#20]

The universe can't be scientifically described as "finely tuned" for life, full stop. We do not yet have enough science to scientifically tell the difference between a fine-tuned universe and a life-was-practically-inevitable universe.

It is scientific observation which suggests/shows that life is exceedingly improbable - orders of magnitude - given the known constants.

No. The observations are scientific, but the inference from them that life is exceedingly improbable is not scientific. Given the known constants, what we know scientifically is that 100% of the universes we've observed with those constants have life. That's not a basis for inferring that life is improbable. If what you meant was, not given those known constants but instead given that those known constants could have been different, that's unscientific twice over. We have no observational evidence that the known constants could have been different, and, even assuming they could have been different, we have no observational evidence of what their probability distributions were. Without that data, any calculation of the probability of any particular alternate outcome is speculation, not science.

Here's an analogy. Gravity follows an inverse square law. An inverse square law results in orbits closing on themselves to form ellipses. Change the exponent from 2.00 to 1.99 or from 2.00 to 2.01, and orbits no longer close on themselves. Planets spiral into the sun or drift away into interstellar darkness. Shall we say then that the inverse square law is an example of the universe being fine-tuned for life? You won't find that 2.00 on anybody's list of fine-tuned constants. Why not? Because when Newton came up with it, there was no explanation for the 2.00, just observational evidence, and it could have been imagined to be fine-tuned; but then Einstein reinterpreted gravity as curved spacetime and, by the by, showed why the exponent had to be exactly 2.00. You just can't explain gravity as a consequence of non-Euclidean geometry and get inverse radius-to-the-power-2.01 accelerations out of it. So the 2.00 drops out of everybody's lists of fine-tuned constants (if anybody had been theorizing about fine-tuning in 1915).

The point is, we currently have no scientific basis for assuming the same thing won't happen to every other so-called fine-tuned constant once we finally figure out quantum gravity.

And last time I checked, science is still stuck on the question of abiogenesis - not religion.

The question of abiogenesis is this: Why does the universe contain complex goal-oriented processes?

Science: We don't know but we're trying to find out.
Religion: Complex goal-oriented processes exist because a First Complex Goal-Oriented Process decided to create them.

If you call that science being "stuck" and religion not being "stuck", we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[remez]

Come on..... you're not sorry.
and....
And it is obvious you have not taken them seriously.

but....I'm in a generous mood.

I'll give you half a credit for being half right.

Can you show me any post where you actually, seriously, takes in what other posts you.

Granted I was being light hearted with Ruby there, and since you came into that moment, my response to you was light hearted as well. I was simply trying to get out of her way, because she was making a fool of herself. Now she is even yelling at me for stuff you said in post 69, check it out………

Can you show me any post where you actually, seriously, takes in what other posts you.

I take a post seriously if it's not full of woo wibble. I took your apparent request for Irish music seriously, didn't I? And if you want some coaching in English, I'll take that seriously too (it's 'take' not 'takes', and 'post' not 'posts').

I am probably being a bit pedantic. Maybe I spend too much time in the more intelligent subforums.

I felt it best to let her go. There are actually several proverbs that provide counsel to that situation. But I was very serious about the Irish music.
But....
With regards to your comment about my seriousness I was rather surprised. I thought you would have reached the opposite conclusion (after witnessing my recent battle with abaddon that you were lightly involved with) that I was way too serious and surgical with the reasoning.

So I am truly curious of your judgment regarding this ……………………..so where in my posts of 42, 43, 44, and 46 did you consider me not serious? For I assure you, I was dead serious.

 

[ruby sparks]

It's possible that both Juma and I have become contaminated by contact with so much woo.

 

[Learner]

You can't take all the blame my friend. It happens to us when contaminated with sci-fi.

 

[Keith&Co.]

You can't take all the blame my friend. It happens to us when contaminated with sci-fi.

Yes, but if you accidentally learn something from such exposure, you can pray it away.
If we get woo-ified, it takes much longer to effectively detox.

 

[Learner]

Looking back at some of the other posts (Rem,Lion,tigers) I was using the same context after all. "Physical universe" it is.

Quite. Is there any other kind?

Well this may make a difference then and clarify Remez's POV a little better i.e. "physical things" (God not being one of these) - gasses,stars, planets and biology ... the existence is not eternal. The forces that act on them ...who knows ?
(putting aside the theist pov)

 

[Juma]

Granted I was being light hearted with Ruby there, and since you came into that moment, my response to you was light hearted as well. I was simply trying to get out of her way, because she was making a fool of herself. Now she is even yelling at me for stuff you said in post 69, check it out………

Can you show me any post where you actually, seriously, takes in what other posts you.

I take a post seriously if it's not full of woo wibble. I took your apparent request for Irish music seriously, didn't I? And if you want some coaching in English, I'll take that seriously too (it's 'take' not 'takes', and 'post' not 'posts').

I am probably being a bit pedantic. Maybe I spend too much time in the more intelligent subforums.

I felt it best to let her go. There are actually several proverbs that provide counsel to that situation. But I was very serious about the Irish music.
But....
With regards to your comment about my seriousness I was rather surprised. I thought you would have reached the opposite conclusion (after witnessing my recent battle with abaddon that you were lightly involved with) that I was way too serious and surgical with the reasoning.

So I am truly curious of your judgment regarding this ……………………..so where in my posts of 42, 43, 44, and 46 did you consider me not serious? For I assure you, I was dead serious.

Yes. I dont doubt you are serious. But that wasnt what I wrote.
I wanted you to show a case where you seriously CONSIDERS other posters arguments.
But that was obviously to hard...