Snarky Atheists DEBUNK the INSANE (Fine Tuning) Argument for God PART ONE

[@drakosophos]

Man I’m just getting all sorts of treats via YT videos today. Gotta go make some popcorn at this point. Brb.

[@ubermormon9611]

Dude when are you and I going to chat? I’d love to have you on!

[@drakosophos]

@@ubermormon9611 Anytime my man! I added you in FB a little while ago, not sure if you’re active on there. It was right as you went MIA on us all for a little three recently. Haha. Settling in to listen to this Ep now!

[@latterdayskeptic]

I loved the convo! I do want to make one note though- the fine tuning argument is specifically addressing the formation of the universe itself. It refers to the fine tuning of the cosmological constants that allow our universe to form into the thing we know it to be. Many of your criticisms seemed to be more focused on intelligent design style arguments. But as Seth pointed out in the debate, intelligent design had its ass whooped and so theists have slipped back into the next level of human ignorance and now make claims abut the formation of the universe. It’s only a matter of time until they move the goal post again. They probably will do exactly what you said, Cody- “theism better explains the universe because the multiverse is exactly what Mormonism predicted!” Lol

[@user-ll3wf6bb6c]

You just proved ignorance is bold

[@drakosophos]

3:30 - Yes! The slides were definitely a hindrance. My ancestors, the Greeks taught this in an interesting way. 19:00 - Jacob sent me the premises a few days before the debate and I felt the same that the premises were lacking/focused on only two potential causes where there are others, but I tried to respond as if they were logical, as Seth said you just have to do. 36:00 - I would slightly disagree with you here. It’s a marriage of both. (There’s a secret third word instead of marriage and it’s very Mormon, but that’s for later). The room did not create you. If you’re in the room you can create and destroy the room in an instant, the room can’t necessarily do that to you. In terms of the environment it is both that the environment created the type of beings that could thrive in that environment and the beings thriving created that type of environment. Its bees to pollen, bricks without clay. To say one comes before the other is an attempt to make the tail wag the dog. They are mutually entailed. 37:45 - The dice had another obvious flaw like I noticed with the pool table. How probable is it that there are the groups of 1’s and the 2’s and so on all grouped to a fine tune, but ALSO that the ones he didn’t highlight are all a perfect 1,2,3,4,5,6? Crazy! 41:00 - As a Mormon I didn’t believe the multiverse either, and I still don’t. I have a whole argument for that myself. But it’s easily explained away in the basic language of deep theological Mormonism. There is only the one universe. 44:45 - The vampire bat reciprocal behavior is interesting. In previous cultures past there was a more communal based family system where paternity was not always known so everyone took part in caring for all children, including the women breast feeding. I’m pretty sure I have the book I read it in somewhere. It was a lot about forgotten feminine goddess worship and Venus statue cultures if I remember right. 50:30 - If you listen to this analysis closely enough this is actually just saying “and god would cease to be god” in secular evolutionary language, and that’s where the Mormon buck stops. You have all of these religions, mutations of god, which spring up randomly, and they get filtered by the long-con, or longevity of ways to approach life; if they don’t work you die (physically and also spiritually), or if you find they don’t work and go to alter your mutually entailed environment then god ceases to be god. 1:00:00 - You actually don’t even need to split the zero in half to get the +/- 1. Splitting it is actually where the conversation goes the wrong way. Best to keep it intact. 1:07:45 - This is precisely the claim of Mormonism, imo. They can make this claim because they have info from “outside” of the universe. It’s about understanding the ontological structures. 1:10:10 - I’d say because that’s not the gif of Mormonism. He can’t skip the variables, or he would cease to be god. 1:11:45 - This is because of the conversation about Zero. We look for infinity in the ten thousand things when the answer is at Zero always already. 1:16:00 - Wonderful Chinese! So apt that I mentioned “the ten thousand things” in my last comment. Dao Chapter 42 “Way-making (dao) gives rise to continuity Continuity gives rise to difference Difference gives rise to plurality And plurality gives rise to the manifold of everything that is happening.” Otherwise translated as, Dao engenders one, One two, Two three, And three, the myriad (ten thousand) things. This is all that I was getting at back at 36:00. 1:22:10 - This depends on who is on the train to Auschwitz. The parameters are not tight. People just don’t feel comfortable answering these constraining, confining, questions. Sort of like how others feel uncomfortable with infinity.

[@transcendentphilosophy]

Excellent thoughts man! That was so funny how you got an inside scoop into Jacob's debate prep. Just an FYI, the dice in the thumbnail were designed by me not Jacob lol. This arrangement was meant to show his selection bias. He only showed a single page covered in 6s. I created a "zoomed out" perspective showing Jacob's 6s in the top right corner, but also showing that in the grand scheme of things his "too good to be true" improbability is just a fluke. For converting 0 into +1 and -1, would you imagine there is no causal action here that catalyzes the transformation? Or there is a causal action, but just not a splitting action? For the Daoism part, yeah I agree there are many ways to interpret and phrase it! I find the usage of 生 very interesting.

[@drakosophos]

@@transcendentphilosophy Oh, I see! I missed that distinction. Yeah, in so many words I’d still say there is a “causal action” just no need for splitting. Essentially it’s the same outcome you’ve described with +/- and antimatter, just a modified view of the initiatory.

[@jamescrane6583]

Jacob's argument is just a variation of the merging of the first cause and Kalam arguments. All things that exist have either a designed or random cause. The organized universe began to exist. Thus the universe's cause is design. Also, everything Jacob knows about multiple universes he learned from spiderman movies.

[@ubermormon9611]

*goes and rewatched Spider-Man to see what I’ve been missing

[@thekolobsociety]

@4:43 Cody, Religious worldviews don’t dismiss “scientific” truths. It embraces all truth and therefor “scientific” truth falls in the category of “all truth”, which is what religion is concerned about. Scientific truth is simply what we can observe with our natural eye. To say Jacob cannot appeal to science is to not understand his position. In other words, you are straw-manning Jacob in implying that his own worldview cannot overlap with another. What do you think about this?

[@ubermormon9611]

My first disagreement here is that religion is "fundamentally" NOT concerned with "all truth" it is concerned with Hope/Comfort for the members and POWER for the leaders. If the goal of all religion was to find the truth we would see groups unite over time as they gain common ground with one another. We do not see that. Instead we see groups splitting as leadership have disagreements or want control. In other words, we don't see the paths aligning as more questions are answered by science. We see the number of groups and sects increasing. If you are trying to think in a scientific way than I would like to hear you explain why you consistently distort the the causal relationship in order to make your fine tuning argument stronger. You insist that the earth is habitable for human life so that it could have human life on it and in order for this to work there has to be a mind who planned everything from the beginning. I insist that the earth was habitable, therefore humans evolved to inhabit. Ask yourself, which explanation uses more of "what we can observe with our natural eye? and which explanation is creating more unverifiable claims?" Lastly, I imply that these two world views cannot overlap because they don't. I don't think I am straw-manning here. Jacob is trying to use analogies with dice, cards, and odds to make an argument for God. This isn't science, these are just analogies about rolling dice and machines that are built to make cars. Should we trust religion to explain why the weather is the way it is like the vikings? Should we trust men who claim to be prophets to accurately translate Ancient Egyptian texts? At best, religion is in the business of comfort while science is in the business of explaining reality. Since these are different topics and themes, i dont think it is possible to say they overlap. (it sounds like our fundamental disagreement is here and maybe this is something we could talk about on a live episode one day.) I'm sure this was full of grammer and spelling errors, all the more reason to chat in real life.

[@123mneil]

I'm not sure our ignorance is getting smaller. It doesn't really hurt your point or anything. Just a thought I had. I feel like the more we understand the more we realize we don't know.

[@ubermormon9611]

I think we are slowly realizing WHAT happened and then the “ignorance” becomes HOW did this happen. Science can usually explain the mechanism for HOW. My pet peeve is that then religion shoehorns questions like “what was the motive?”

[@moonman5543]

Beautiful episode, he lumped evolution into random chance, selective pressures is not random chance, it is random mutation based on selective pressures. Random chance would be like a godless theory of panspermia

[@ubermormon9611]

He either wants evolution to be random chance, or some thing that was designed by God. It’s so frustrating, that he clearly understands why it fits into both categories, but can’t see how it could be in a third category of its own. This is we’re the motivated reasoning comes in because if there is a third option, (which there clearly is) the false dichotomy the other premises are all set on top of crumbles quickly and there is no argument.

[@123mneil]

Hehe. Post game show. :)

[@ubermormon9611]

The post game show of the debate we all needed but didn’t deserve.

[@transcendentphilosophy]

@@ubermormon9611 😆