- The return of an old favourite(?)! Christians’ Favourite Delusions. The other 35 posts in this series start here.
The vast universe, almost infinite in size, was created, according to Christians, with the sole purpose of bringing us humans and the other creatures who share this planet with us into existence. This fine-tuning argument is used to ‘prove’ that the God of the Bible really exists.
According to Ken Ham, we’re the only life forms in the universe, while other Christians speculate that there may be other intelligent creatures out there somewhere. If there are, then, so says the late Larry Norman, ‘(Jesus) has been there once already and has died to save their souls.’*
The fine-tuning argument proposes that the universe exists so that this minute, insignificant blue dot we live on, and possibly a few other tiny specks, could produce life of some sort. But what of the rest of the universe: the other 99.9999% that doesn’t have life, because it is entirely hostile to it; the vast bulk of the universe that is made up of nebulae, gas clouds, lethal radiation, black holes, anti-matter and lifeless planets?
Taken as a whole, the universe is cold and dead; not finely-tuned for anything, let alone life. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Richard Carrier debunking the whole fine-tuning argument:
‘[T]he only way we could exist without a God is by an extremely improbable chemical accident, and the only way an extremely improbable chemical accident is likely to occur is in a universe that’s vastly old and vastly large; so atheism predicts a vastly old and large universe; theism does not …
Likewise, if chance produced this universe, we should expect it to be only barely conducive to life, indeed almost entirely lethal to it (as in fact it is), since there are vastly more ways to get those universes by chance selection, than to get a universe perfectly suited to life throughout. … Design predicts exactly the opposite.’
And here, several more scientists, philosophers and other interested parties do the same thing:
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/non-fine-tuned-universe/
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2015/12/31/sean-carroll-debunks-the-fine-tuning-argument-for-god/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9O5wXsgqrc
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/fine-tuning-argument-debunked
https://www.answers-in-reason.com/religion/christianity/fine-tuning-debunked-holy-koolaid/
Life is remarkable, it is true (but then we would think that, wouldn’t we, when we are it) but it is no more remarkable than any other of the phenomena the universe has produced in its 13.7 billion years of its current existence. No God has been required for any of it. No fine-tuning = no fine-tuner
*In his 1972 song ‘UFO’.
rejectingjesus, 
Human beings are infinitesimally minute in the scope of the Earth, yet alone the Universe. tAnyone who actually believes we are somehow “special” has a very distorted perception of reality.
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I really need to start paying better attention to what I’ve typed! “LET alone the Universe” and no t before Anyone. Sheesh!
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Yes, absolutely. It’s supreme arrogance to suppose we are cosmically significant.
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The expansion of the universe ensured that energy would cool into matter. Gravity ensured that matter would collect and compress and eventually fusion would occur, creating stars.
Life, including human life, is a chemical process. It’s really not that incredible that such a chemical process would arise in a universe full of chemicals, even if only in extremely small pockets where those processes are supported.
I don’t see “chance” applying to much since the Big Bang, if then. “Inevitable” seems a better description.
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Great comment, koseighty. Really sums up life, the universe and everything!
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42!
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There is no reason the conditions of gravity and chemistry (as well as the balanced four fundamental forces) that provided for the development of the universe and existence of life like ourselves or any other we know of was inevitable. The fundamental conditions could have been any of a multitude of things or the same basic thing, which was pretty much hydrogen, in varying degrees or quantities without producing this universe. Just by basic math this universe was not inevitable. So why this universe and not another?
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Undoubtedly not another. Undoubtedly not even most of this one.
Where, Don, was your fine-tuning, foreshadowing, inner-voice whispering God – the one you say is involved in the minutiae of human activity – in Texas on Tuesday? You can argue for him all you like, but it’s all academic. When it comes down to caring for little children, for the world he supposedly loves, he’s nowhere to be found.
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Well done, Don! Thank the heavens that you have a god so infinitesimally small as to fit into any gap that exists in our knowledge!
What existed before the Big Bang?
Honest Truth Seeker: We don’t know.
Delusional Don: GOD!¡!
Just to be clear: We don’t know if the fundamental forces or the beginning conditions of our universe could have been different. There is speculation in theoretical physics. But we haven’t answered those questions yet. To pretend they could have been different before the science is in is the type of thinking that gives us holy books with a flat earth covered by a solid dome to keep the cosmic ocean from drowning us from above.
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Neil, he was there. Think of the outcome. What I saw was people turning to eternal truth for comfort when they could not make sense of the present. I say pain turn people to God. And that is his purpose in all things.
I also saw brutally demonstrated that the world is falling apart. That was what God predicted when the world turns it back on him. We have created the conditions that were the seed bed out of which evil sprouted. But the same is seen in Ukraine and in the destruction of the environment that is contributing to global warming and famine and tensions between nations that will overflow shortly into war. We have created these things by our refusal to live by God’s design. We have created these things including Uvalde by choosing to reinvent the wheel and doing a lousy job of it.
In the case of this young man who committed the murders, we failed to be our brother’s keepers. We failed to love him and we allowed him to experience rejection and bullying that gave rise to his rage and murderous actions.
God allows us to reap what we sow that we may know what have sown. And what we have sown is awful.
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Absolute tosh. How did you see people turning toward ‘eternal truth’? They were crying out for their lost children, senselessly murdered. And all you can offer is a fatuous, unfeeling cliche.
Your ‘it’s only going to get worse unless we return to God’ line doesn’t cut it, either. Your thinking is shallow, Don, your compassion even more risible.
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I am afraid your perspective is so skewed by cynicism that it carries little weight.
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YahwehJesusGhost, killing innocent kids for 6,000 years to make some point about “eternal truth.” You’d think people would clue in that if this god did exist, it is a moral monster. Thank the gods, old and new, it doesn’t.
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Yes, I think so too. I’m afraid though that his delusion overrides everything else. His reasoning, critical skills and humanity are all bent out of shape in service of a deplorable, imaginary deity. Sadly, he’s not alone.
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This comment turns my stomach … I say pain turn people to God. And that is his purpose in all things.
PAIN is his purpose in all things??? No wonder there are atheists!
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My view is skewed? My god, Don, you’ve got away with plugging your great and mighty yet strangely impotent God for these past few months but that’s it. Off you go.
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Don has a special mix of ignorance, arrogance, dishonesty, delusion and condescension — with a sprinkle of “god can do no wrong” applied to an obvious moral monster of a god – that makes him an insufferable prick. It’s too bad. I think he could be a nice enough person if he wasn’t infected with Christianity.
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