Teleological / Fine Tuning Argument

If life adapted to the universe the way it is, how do you know that if the universe was different, life would have adapted to that universe? Perhaps there are other possibilities for life other than carbon based life forms, for example.

Cal Tech theoretical physicist Dr. Sean M. Carroll responds to Willam Lane Craig's teleological argument:
starting right here and running a minute or two: http://tinyurl.com/ofldvkq

Catholic Ryan Denson debunks WSJ "fine-tuning" article:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/29/debunking-wall-street-journal-god-article/

Particle physicist Dr. Victor J. Stenger criticism of the "fine-tuning" argument:
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Cosmo/FineTune.pdf

Other discussions of the fine-tuning argument:
http://blog.fooze.co.nz/2009/07/refuting-fine-tuning-cosmological.html
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Fine-tuning_argument
(I particularly like this one from historian Richard Carrier)
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/finetuning.html

Theist Mass Killers

No religion?

1885 - 1908 Genocide in the Congo by Belgium under King Leopold II (Catholic): 8 to 10 million dead.

1914 - 1918 WW1: Christian hegemony in Europe. A war started by Christian nation and fought almost exclusively Christian nations: produces the largest pile of corpses on the face of the Earth until to date (but to be exceed some 20 years later):  37 million dead.

1915 Armenian Genocide: Muslim Turks kill Christian Armenians: body count 1.5 million.

1935 - 1936: 2nd Italio-Ethiopian War: launched by Christian Italy against Ethiopia, killing 300 thousand.

1936-1939: Christian dictator to be Francisco Franco and his Catholic right-wing party allies (Falange) attack the newly and duly elected Republican government and then win the ensuing war replacing democracy with a fascist dictatorship: body count: 500 thousand.

1939-1945: World War II: A war launched by 95% Christian Germany (1/2 Catholic & 1/2 Lutheran), Catholic Italy and emperor worshiping theist Japan against peaceful nations, resulting in the deaths of more than 60 million people.

1954 - 1962 Algerian War pitting Muslim Algeria against Christian France: 250 thousand dead

1965 - 1966 Indonesia killings (Muslim government killing leftist political opponents): 500 thousand dead

1971 Bangladesh Liberation War (Muslim vs Muslim): 3 million dead.

Yugoslav Wars: 1991 - 1999: (Catholic vs Orthodox & Muslim vs Orthodox): 140 thousand dead.

1994: Rwandan Genocide: (Christian vs Christian) 750 thousand dead


So that's over 110 million dead right there 100% due to theist aggression and the lion's share (over 90%) due to Christian hegemony of Europe (definitely NOT a utopia!!!)

I'm not even counting the Russian Civil War or the Chinese Civil Wars or the 1st or 2nd Indochina Wars, all of which were at least partially to blame on theist nations. Nor am I counting the 100% theist caused 1st or 2nd Gulf Wars, the Arab / Israeli wars the Iran Iraq Wars, the Afghanistan Civil wars or war with US, or the Libyan war or the Indo Pakistani war or many many other wars 100% due to theist to theist nations or the aggression of theist nations.

There's a LOT of blood on the hand of theists over the past 130 years, WELL in excess or 110 million dead... that majority of those deaths coming from Christian aggression and areas under Christian hegemony.

Your story doesn't hang together AT ALL!!!

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Brain-dead Y/A user Ruth actually attempts to list "atheist killers" along with their body counts... she's such a fucking retarded moron nitwit that her list is comprised ALMOST ENTIRELY OF THEISTS!!!!:
https://beta.answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=SY6GZIZJXTCYHXSF6ZFW2CUDCI&t=g
https://beta.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150519105443AAxQHHK

The godless are telling the world that religion is wrong and that belief in God leads to wars of religion.

Yet in one century atheist leaders managed to kill more than hundreds of millions of people.



Mao Ze-Dong (China 1958-61, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000

Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) the purges+ Ukraine's famine 23,000,000

Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886 -1908) 8,000,000

Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) civilians in WWII 5,000,000

Ismail Enver (Turkey1915-20) 2,500,000

Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-78) 1,700,000

Kim II Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) purges and concentration camps 1.6 million

Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000

Yakubu Gowon ( Biafra 1967-1970) 1,000,000

Leonid Brezhnez (Afghanistan, 1979-82) 900,000

Adolf Hitler (Germany 1939-45) 12,000,000

Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000

Suharto (East Timor, West Papua, Communists, 1966-98) 800,000

Tito ( Yugoslavia 1945-87) 570,000

Fumimaro Konoe (Japan1937-39 Chinese civilians) 500,000?

Jonas Savimbi ( Angola,1975-2002) 400,000

Mullah Omar ( Afghanistan 1986-2001) 400,000

Idi Amin (Uganda1969-79) 300,000

Yahya Khan (Pakistan 1970-71) Bangladesh 300,000

Benito Mussolini (1934-45) 300,000

Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire 1965-97) ??

Charles Taylor (Liberia1989-96) 220,000

Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone 1991-2000) 200,000

Michel Micombero ( Burundi 1972) 150,000

Slobodan Milosevic (Yougoslavia 1992-99) 100,000

Hassan Turabi (Sudan1989-99) 100,000

Richard Nixon ( Vietnam 1969-74) 70,000

Efrain Rois Montt (Guatemala 1982-83) 70,000

Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti 1957-71) 60,000

Hissene Habre (Chad 1982-90) 40,000

Chiang Kai-shak (Taiwan 1947) 30,000

Vadimir Iich Lenin (USSR 1917-20) 30,000

Francisco Franco (spain ) 30,000

Fidel Castro (Cuba 959-99) 30,000

Lyndon Johnson ( Vietnam 1963-68) 30,000

Hafez Al-Assad (Syria1980-2000 25,000

Khomeini (Iran 1979-89) 20,000

Augusto Pinochet (Chile 1973) 3,000

At Zarquwi (Iran 2004-06) 2,000

Ruth · 15 mins ago

Answering Questions About Christianity

Original question:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150410215027AAMB8KD
From Y/A user "John"
https://answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=VGTHD7JLI4BJSJ7CZPS7ZZ7SLA&t=g 

John, leave me a comment if you actually read this. Thanks.

1. Do you think Christianity has something different to it then the other religions?
Yes, all religions are different, but it doesn't seem fundamentally different to me. It seems especially similar to Islam. Not fundy Islam, but regular Islam. I have Islamic friends who are not insane (i.e. fundy), so don't take that as an insult.

2. Why is atheist point back to the crusades and just very little bad things Christians do instead of understanding they donate the most amount to charity and help people on a daily basis.
I don't do that unless provoked usually. Plus there's no reason to go that far back: the 1st half of the 20th century reflects a LOT more poorly on Christianity than does the crusades or witch or heretic burnings (well over 100 million dead under Christian hegemony and crazed Christian antisemitism in Europe alone, and all before 1945). A lot of theists will come out swinging making all kinds of claims about how atheists have no morals, and then point to Mao and Stalin (admittedly atheists themselves) but then throw in Hitler, Leopold II, Tojo and Chiang kai-shek (none of which were atheists) for good measure. I recognize that Christians do many beneficial things.

3. If so why is it you feel christians force their religion down your throat?
I don't feel that way. What I'm concerned with are these things:

A. Creeping theocracy like Christian home school advocate and fundamentalist leader Mr. Rushdooney advocates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Reconstructionism (also Google "Christian Dominionists")
Or like Fundamentalist apologists Sye Ten Bruggencate or Eric Hovind advocate:
http://tinyurl.com/ljw9ht7
 
B. Screwing with children's minds like Reverend Furniss did with his children's books:
http://stuffconcerningstuff.blogspot.com/p/father-furniss-books-for-children.html
Or like what these sick "Good News Clubs" for children as young as 5 do at public schools after school hours:
http://tinyurl.com/q8edd4w

C. Undermining science education and critical thinking skills, especially in children (which I consider to be a national security threat as a strong economy and military depend on fundamental scientific research not prayers or incantations or rain dances). For example take a listen to this 16-second long clip of this creationist / fundamentalist pastor Peter LaRuffa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysecinv367w
Or look what it does to children here (clouds their ability to distinguish reality from fantasy):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.12138/abstract

D. End-times nonsense: this really scares me: people who live for the next life, not the only one they'll ever have. When they become so convinced of their religion that they want to just go ahead and get the nuclear war started now so they can be raptured, we're in serious trouble. Sociopathic hucksters like mega-church pastor John Hagee are the epitome of this kind of extremely dangerous insanity:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_Hagee
A good friend of mine fell big time for Hagee's lies, and now he's a paranoid delusional: 51 years old, living with his mom, unemployed and unemployable, drunkard, obese, diabetic... but still a Hagee fan. He used to be a bright fit young man. His life was ruined by that paranoid claptrap.

4. What do you think of Evangelicalism compared to things like Catholicism or other protestant religions?
I am anti-fundamentalist and anti-creationist. Very conservative evangelicals are similar to fundies AFAIK, so I'm not a fan. I prefer mainline churches like Catholics, Orthodox, Methodist, Anglican and Episcopalian and Lutheran because they are not as virulently science hating and fearing as are the others. I was raised Catholic at a community centered around a remote government lab populated entirely by scientists and engineers: I'm used to a community being extremely pro-science. I never met an actual creationist face to face until I was 18. I've never recovered from the experience: it was like talking to somebody straight out of the dark ages. Deeply shocking to me. My community was majority Christians but the families on that remote government base didn't desperately hate and fear science: just the opposite: I didn't know any kids who weren't super into science. It was hard to believe that that kind of ignorance still existed in the United States! Absolutely shocking! My dad is a Methodist: old school. My mom is dead but was a Catholic. My dad's wife is Episcopalian. All my friends growing up came from mainline churches. None of them were dark age crazed science haters. Nor are 80% of Christians world wide. But there is a virulent strain of science hatred and tin-foil hat type fundamentalist paranoid dark-age mentality running through the Bible Belt of the USA. I view it as a mental disease. Here's some normal Christians that aren't like that (I keep a list! Lol):
http://stuffconcerningstuff.blogspot.com/2015/02/theist-scientists-who-believe-theory-of.html

5. Why is it in science when ever they try to figure out something they will always disclose the idea of God.
"disclose the idea of god?" I have no idea what you mean. Do you mean "discard" instead of "disclose?"
They "discard" the idea of god because god is not an explanation: it's equivalent to "it was magic" which is appropriate for neolithoic shaman dancing under a full moon to the frenetic beating of bongo drums, and drinking goat blood and performing human sacrifice... but since the 1600s that is NOT appropriate for Natural Philosophy. Science literally is the search for natural explanations to aspects of reality, thus supernatural explanations (i.e. "God did it") is a dead end that brings science to a standstill. It quite literally is NOT science. If that's how science was run we'd still be using rock tools and sacrificing our 1st born as burnt offerings.

6. Have you ever tried to have legitimate relationship with God? It requires faith.
Yes, I used to believe in God (I assume you mean the Christian one and not one of these) but then I learned basic high school level science and that was the end of that. My community had EXCELLENT science and math teachers: I went to state university in engineering with ALL my math done (two years up through differential equations and linear algebra) plus all my English and history requirements completed (about 50 units total).  Mind you I started out life as an unbeliever. Here's how I know:
http://stuffconcerningstuff.blogspot.com/p/why-i-know-i-was-born-atheist.html
I had to be trained to be a Christian, but it wore off later as I learned physics, chemistry, biology, 1st and 2nd year calculus, philosophy, literature, history, etc. in high school. It was not a traumatic thing for me at all... but it took about a year.

7. Do you think real Christianity has a positive or negative influence on society?
Christianity itself, a bit more negative than positive in general, but Christians can be very positive, including ministers and priests. There is a sense of community at church and I won't deny that. I would have VERY little  problem with Christianity if it was all like what I was used to growing up: pro-science, and non-fundamentalist. In fact I do on occasion still attend a mass or service for some sort of social function (plus I was dating a non-denominational woman who'd sometimes go to the United Methodist or the Catholic service, and I'd sometimes go with her). Growing up I never once heard a minister (sometimes I'd go to my dad's church) or priest criticize science, get involved in politics, berate homosexuals or atheists or other religions, try to scare people with garbage about Bible prophecy, end times, rapture or John Hagee like insanity, or do anything but behave like pillars of the community. That's why I have such a violently hostile  reaction seeing charlatans like Hagee or Pat Robertson or Bryan Fischer spew their vile clap trap, hogwash and hokum.

8. What do you not like about Christianity?
I think I made that clear already! Lol.

9. What do you think of the bible?
I'm very interested in the Bible, much more so now than when I was growing up. Here's a page I've written about the New Testament and what I've learned:
http://stuffconcerningstuff.blogspot.com/p/new-testament-nt-earliest-fragments-and.html
Here too:
http://stuffconcerningstuff.blogspot.com/p/whats-wrong-with-kjv.html
I'm extremely interested in the history of the Bible and especially the NT. The more I learn the more inconceivable it is to me that anybody could take much of it literally.

10. My most important question is why do people like Richard Dawkins have so much hate towards religion? Its really not that bad and he goes really far with it do you agree with him?
I've been a Richard Dawkins fan since the 1980s: I absolutely LOVED his 1st book "The Selfish Gene." There was nothing in there about religion. But I've read all his other books since, except the God Delusion. I think that Dawkins, because he's an evolutionary biologist, sees the corrupting influence of fundamentalist religion on science much more so than other sciences and he finally had enough and snapped. I don't blame him one bit (I still remember the shock of encounterinig a living creationist when I was 18). Now does he take it too far? Perhaps. I don't agree with him that ALL religion is as bad as he makes it out to be. My attitude is more along the lines of the "non-overlapping magisteria" concept of his fellow biologist Stephen Jay Gould.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-overlapping_magisteria
However I think that Dawkins definitely has a case to make, and he's not the only one. My favorite "public" atheist is physicist Sean M. Carroll (there's a biologist who gets involved in these issues too named Sean B. Carroll who I'm also a fan of, but Sean M. is my favorite). Carroll has a position closer to Dawkins but IMO he's much less "combative" sounding. Carroll also thinks that physicists such as Krauss should be less dismissive of philosophy. Here's a good example of Carroll in action if you're not familiar with him:
http://tinyurl.com/mbhah5k
Here too:
http://tinyurl.com/lxs5xjd
I had a Christian email me two days ago to thank me for posting this Carroll presentation: (he said he didn't agree w/ Carroll, but really enjoyed the talk):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFp5PPSTiDc
I'm also a huge Richard Feynman fan and Victor J. Stenger fan too (also both atheist physicists). Feynman's book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" re-invigorated my own interest in science and is the whole reason I went to grad school. I can't recommend it enough (it spends very little time on religion).
I might as well show you my favorite Christian scientist too while I'm at it: cell & micro biologist Dr. Kenneth R. Miller: hero of keeping religion OUT of the science classroom where it doesn't belong:
http://tinyurl.com/qyzv262
"I certainly would advise any fellow Christian not to stake their faith on the idea that this is a problem [abiogenesis] that science will never solve. We have a way of solving these problems."
-- Dr. Ken Miller

Also I think Dawkins' anti-religious ways are somewhat overemphasized: he says he still goes to church at Christmas time and sings carols! He makes it clear that he was not traumatized at all by his Christian upbringing. Thus it's clear he's a "cultural Christian" as I am (I go to church at Christmas time and sing carols too, with my dad because it make him happy). I'm very proud of my dad. He worked all his life as an engineer at that government test and research base. I have three much older half siblings and one full brother who's 10 years older. My full brother and I share my mother, and he was a super science nerd... he was my hero growing up. He and I are atheists. My older half siblings did not grow up with us and were in fact married off by the time I was born. They turned out to be fundies. They tried to convert our dad, several times. He patiently heard them out, but he was having none of it. He tried to talk some sense into them actually: tried to get them to fear and hate science less. I'm not sure he was successful, but I was very proud of him for not getting carried away by that fundy madness. To this day he's got an EXCELLENT head on his shoulders (he's 97 years old!). He's on the computer all the time: facebook, youtube, writing emails and even books! They sell three of his books at the Natural History museum in his city (the same place I grew up). His friends were (most are dead now) equally brilliant. It was a great environment to grow up in!

11. Some evangelicals have called their beliefs a relationship with God rather then a religion what do you think of that?
That cracks me up! Especially when atheists are accused of being a "religion." It makes no sense to me. It sounds like a marketing ploy. Like those old advertisements for Zest. "It's not soap it's Zest!" Lol. They should just say "Yeah, we're basically soap." That would sound a LOT more honest.

BGV Theorum

From September 6, 2013 Letter from Vilenkin to WLC:

"The question of whether or not the universe had a beginning assumes a classical spacetime, in which the notions of time and causality can be defined. On very small time and length scales, quantum fluctuations in the structure of spacetime could be so large that these classical concepts become totally inapplicable. Then we do not really have a language to describe what is happening, because all our physics concepts are deeply rooted in the concepts of space and time. This is what I mean when I say that we do not even know what the right questions are."

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/honesty-transparency-full-disclosure-and-bgv-theorem#ixzz3Wu3HEBHr

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From Krauss' facebook page, dated September 24, 2013:

"from me and Alex Vilenkin--sigh--in muted response to some claims that have been posted by some whose buttons have probably been pushed by being wrong: "In response to the noise regarding the use of an email communication between the two of us in a dialogue with William Lane Craig, there are two relevant points we have decided to make.
1. we both willingly agreed to the request from Dr. Craig to have the full email, which had been edited on the powerpoint slide simply to save time during a 15 minute presentation by Krauss, as there was nothing in the full correspondence that either of us were concerned about sharing.
2. we both agree that the edited version does not distort the content or ideas expressed in the original email at all. Those who are claiming otherwise, including apparently Dr. Craig, are mistaken.
Lawrence Krauss and Alex Vilenkin""

https://www.facebook.com/lawrence.krauss/posts/10202038311981732

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From Carroll's blog about this part of the debate (February 24, 2014)

"The cosmological argument has two premises: (1) If the universe had a beginning, it has a transcendent cause; and (2) The universe had a beginning. He took (1) as perfectly obvious, and put his effort into establishing (2). Partly he used the celebrated (by theologians) Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which says that a universe with an average expansion rate greater than zero must be geodesically incomplete in the past"

...

"My attitude toward the above two premises is that (2) is completely uncertain, while the “obvious” one (1) is flat-out false. Or not even false, as I put it, because the notion of a “cause” isn’t part of an appropriate vocabulary to use for discussing fundamental physics. Rather, modern physical models take the form of unbreakable patterns — laws of Nature — that persist without any external causes. The Aristotelian analysis of causes is outdated when it comes to modern fundamental physics; what matters is whether you can find a formal mathematical model that accounts for the data. The Hartle-Hawking “no-boundary proposal” for the wave function of the universe, for example, is completely self-contained, not requiring any external cause."

...

"The second premise of the Kalam argument is that the universe began to exist. Which may even be true! But we certainly don’t know, or even have strong reasons to think one way or the other. Craig thinks we do have a strong reason, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem. So I explained what every physicist who has thought about the issue understands: that the real world is governed by quantum mechanics, and the BGV theorem assumes a classical spacetime, so it says nothing definitive about what actually happens in the universe; it is only a guideline to when our classical description breaks down. Indeed, I quoted a stronger theorem, the “Quantum Eternity Theorem” (QET) — under conventional quantum mechanics, any universe with a non-zero energy and a time-independent Hamiltonian will necessarily last forever toward both the past and the future. For convenience I quoted my own paper as a reference, although I’m surely not the first to figure it out; it’s a fairly trivial result once you think about it. (The Hartle-Hawking model is not eternal to the past, which is fine because they imagine a universe with zero energy. In that situation time is an approximation rather than fundamental in any case — that’s the “problem of time” in quantum gravity.)"

...

"On my part, I knew that WLC liked to glide from the BGV theorem (which says that classical spacetime description fails in the past) to the stronger statement that the universe probably had a beginning, even though the latter is not implied by the former. And his favorite weapon is to use quotes from Alex Vilenkin, one of the authors of the BGV theorem. So I talked to Alan Guth, and he was gracious enough to agree to let me take pictures of him holding up signs with his perspective: namely, that the universe probably didn’t have a beginning, and is very likely eternal. Now, why would an author of the BGV theorem say such a thing? For exactly the reasons I was giving all along: the theorem says nothing definitive about the real universe, it is only a constraint on the classical regime. What matters are models, not theorems, and different scientists will quite naturally have different opinions about which types of models are most likely to prove fruitful once we understand things better. In Vilenkin’s opinion, the best models (in terms of being well-defined and accounting for the data) are ones with a beginning. In Guth’s opinion, the best models are ones that are eternal. And they are welcome to disagree, because we don’t know the answer! Not knowing the answer is perfectly fine. What’s not fine is pretending that we do know the answer, and using that pretend-knowledge to draw premature theological conclusions. (Chatter on Twitter reveals theists scrambling to find previous examples of Guth saying the universe probably had a beginning. As far as I can tell Alan was there talking about inflation beginning, not the universe, which is completely different. But it doesn’t matter; good scientists, it turns out, will actually change their minds in response to thinking about things.)
I very much hope that I hammered these points home enough to help clarify issues in the minds of listeners/readers. But from Craig’s (lack of) reaction, and from the online discussion from his supporters, I doubt it will make any difference. He will continue to quote Vilenkin saying the universe probably had a beginning, which is fine because that’s what Vilenkin actually thinks. He will not start adding in the fact that Guth thinks the universe is probably eternal, nor will he take the even more respectable position of not relying on people’s individual opinions at all and simply admitting that we don’t have good scientific reasons to think one way or the other at the moment. But we’ll see. (And to reiterate: I think the whole discussion is enormously less important than the bigger point that a “cause” is completely unnecessary even if the universe did have a beginning.)"

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/02/24/post-debate-reflections/

General Pictures

For Biblical inerrantists

If you believe that every word in the Bible is true, I beg you to please demonstrate that to me. I'll tell you how shortly, but first lets take a look at a few relevant Bible verses:

Mark 11:22-24 King James Version (KJV)

^"22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.

²³ For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

²⁴ Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

So please, if you would like to convince me, could you move La Cumbre Peak (34°29′40″N 119°42′45″W ) 15 miles (24.1 km) due south, into the Pacific Ocean? I can just look out my window and watch whenever you're ready. That would be great, thanks!

If not, I'll just assume that some of the Bible isn't actually true, but rather hyperbole. Thanks again!

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General Y/A Memes

http://www.chesterfieldvalleydental.com/smile-gallery.html

http://i.imgur.com/M2fZmeW.png