The classical creationist argument typically starts something like this... "Our planet and our universe are such a complicated things. And we, as organisms, are no less complicated, I mean who can explain the human mind? Scientists have measured that the exact conditions in which our universe exists are so fragile that if you adjust the rate of the expansions of the universe just a little bit, the conditions for life on earth would vanish. Isn't it implausible, then, that all of this could have come into being just by itself?"
The exact statements are not vital, the key is building this intuition for implausibility. All of this, so unlikely, and yet it is. How can that be?
The correct response is: based on what? In order for something to be plausible or implausible, we have to expect a particular outcome, because "plausibility" is a statement about expectation. "*This* was the expected outcome, *this* is the actual outcome, but we didn't expect it."
In statistics, probability is defined as the likelihood of a particular outcome, somewhere between absolute certainty that it will be one way, and absolute certainty that it will be the other way. If you flip a coin it can either be head or tails. On average, and unbiased coin has 0.5 (or 50%) probability of landing heads. This is not a guess, it is an intuition based on measurement. Given the coin's symmetry, we can measure that flipping the coin a number of times gives a probability of heads close to 0.5. And the more times we flip it, the closer we come to 0.5.
But, if we only flip the coin once, and we get heads, then our *measured* probability of heads is 100%. So if we do one coin flip, and someone says "isn't it implausible that you got heads?" we would say "based on our experience, no other outcome is plausible".
So when someone says "isn't it implausible that the universe came to exist precisely the way that it is?", does this mean this person has a body of knowledge of possible outcomes with their respective probabilities?
Imagine for a moment that the creation of the universe, however you want to picture it, is an experiment that can be repeated. Imagine that you have season tickets to the creation of the universe. You come in, show your ticket, get your popcorn, and take a seat in the audience. Now suppose you watch the universe created 100 times, each with a slightly different result. Suppose that out of those 100 times, only once did it happen with the characteristics that our universe has, the characteristics that make life possible. So out of 100 times, only once did the universe appear the way our universe is. Having witnessed this, it would be reasonable to say that "yes, our particular universe is an unlikely one".
So what about God? Well, if you had seen the universe come into being 100 times, and only one of those experiments was "successful" from our standpoint, what reason do you have to believe that God made it happen? God is not visible to the human eye, so you could not actually have watched him do it. How do you know that God built the successful universe and that all the other tries failed without Him? Maybe *He* was the one messing with the control panel 99 times, and screwed it up every time, and the one time he went to the bathroom it just happened to work? Or maybe he wasn't there at all, maybe he was playing golf at the time. How do you know if you didn't see Him?
We know from our physical world that being able to measure things gives us insight. And once we measure something we get a number. We can measure that the acceleration of gravity is ~9.8m/s2. This is a number we can compare to other numbers. Indeed, the *existence* of this number gives us the intution that perhaps the measurement could have produced a *different* number. If we measure the acceleration of a parachute, it would be a smaller number. If we measure the acceleration of a rocket traveling towards the ground, it would be a bigger number. So why does the acceleration of gravity produce the number 9.8? Is it because God decided this is the best number? Why didn't He choose a different number?
This is a false intuition. The ability to measure something does *not* give us any insight about possible other values this measurement could give. If we measure the acceleration of gravity then we can *contemplate* the possibility that this number could be a different number. But the ability to imagine this possibility does not make it probable, or even possible, for this to occur. It exists only in our imagination.
Suppose you are driving a car. The speedometer says 50km/h, so you know that your current speed has a certain value. Does this fact answer the question "can this car do 150km/h?". No, it doesn't. You can accelerate and find out, but you can't tell just from reading off the value 50. We know something about cars. We know that some cars can do 150km/h and no car can do 1500km/h. If you need to know something about your own car, you can read the instruction manual. And if you need to know something about your universe, you can.... what?
Yes, we can measure certain things in our universe, like the acceleration of gravity, like the size of a molecule. But these measurements do not tell us anything about the possible values the measurements could give. We know that the acceleration of gravity is 9.8m/s2, we've measured it. So what does this mean? That we are lucky? How can we tell from a measurement that always gives the same value what other values are possible? Or probable? If the gravitational force was 100 times weaker, maybe we would all risk going into orbit? And maybe if you car could do 1500km/h it would explode? But it can't. Does this mean you're lucky? How is it luck to avoid something that has a 0% probability of happening?
For something to be implausible it has to defy an established trend. So what is the trend we have about universes?
The exact statements are not vital, the key is building this intuition for implausibility. All of this, so unlikely, and yet it is. How can that be?
The correct response is: based on what? In order for something to be plausible or implausible, we have to expect a particular outcome, because "plausibility" is a statement about expectation. "*This* was the expected outcome, *this* is the actual outcome, but we didn't expect it."
In statistics, probability is defined as the likelihood of a particular outcome, somewhere between absolute certainty that it will be one way, and absolute certainty that it will be the other way. If you flip a coin it can either be head or tails. On average, and unbiased coin has 0.5 (or 50%) probability of landing heads. This is not a guess, it is an intuition based on measurement. Given the coin's symmetry, we can measure that flipping the coin a number of times gives a probability of heads close to 0.5. And the more times we flip it, the closer we come to 0.5.
But, if we only flip the coin once, and we get heads, then our *measured* probability of heads is 100%. So if we do one coin flip, and someone says "isn't it implausible that you got heads?" we would say "based on our experience, no other outcome is plausible".
So when someone says "isn't it implausible that the universe came to exist precisely the way that it is?", does this mean this person has a body of knowledge of possible outcomes with their respective probabilities?
Imagine for a moment that the creation of the universe, however you want to picture it, is an experiment that can be repeated. Imagine that you have season tickets to the creation of the universe. You come in, show your ticket, get your popcorn, and take a seat in the audience. Now suppose you watch the universe created 100 times, each with a slightly different result. Suppose that out of those 100 times, only once did it happen with the characteristics that our universe has, the characteristics that make life possible. So out of 100 times, only once did the universe appear the way our universe is. Having witnessed this, it would be reasonable to say that "yes, our particular universe is an unlikely one".
So what about God? Well, if you had seen the universe come into being 100 times, and only one of those experiments was "successful" from our standpoint, what reason do you have to believe that God made it happen? God is not visible to the human eye, so you could not actually have watched him do it. How do you know that God built the successful universe and that all the other tries failed without Him? Maybe *He* was the one messing with the control panel 99 times, and screwed it up every time, and the one time he went to the bathroom it just happened to work? Or maybe he wasn't there at all, maybe he was playing golf at the time. How do you know if you didn't see Him?
We know from our physical world that being able to measure things gives us insight. And once we measure something we get a number. We can measure that the acceleration of gravity is ~9.8m/s2. This is a number we can compare to other numbers. Indeed, the *existence* of this number gives us the intution that perhaps the measurement could have produced a *different* number. If we measure the acceleration of a parachute, it would be a smaller number. If we measure the acceleration of a rocket traveling towards the ground, it would be a bigger number. So why does the acceleration of gravity produce the number 9.8? Is it because God decided this is the best number? Why didn't He choose a different number?
This is a false intuition. The ability to measure something does *not* give us any insight about possible other values this measurement could give. If we measure the acceleration of gravity then we can *contemplate* the possibility that this number could be a different number. But the ability to imagine this possibility does not make it probable, or even possible, for this to occur. It exists only in our imagination.
Suppose you are driving a car. The speedometer says 50km/h, so you know that your current speed has a certain value. Does this fact answer the question "can this car do 150km/h?". No, it doesn't. You can accelerate and find out, but you can't tell just from reading off the value 50. We know something about cars. We know that some cars can do 150km/h and no car can do 1500km/h. If you need to know something about your own car, you can read the instruction manual. And if you need to know something about your universe, you can.... what?
Yes, we can measure certain things in our universe, like the acceleration of gravity, like the size of a molecule. But these measurements do not tell us anything about the possible values the measurements could give. We know that the acceleration of gravity is 9.8m/s2, we've measured it. So what does this mean? That we are lucky? How can we tell from a measurement that always gives the same value what other values are possible? Or probable? If the gravitational force was 100 times weaker, maybe we would all risk going into orbit? And maybe if you car could do 1500km/h it would explode? But it can't. Does this mean you're lucky? How is it luck to avoid something that has a 0% probability of happening?
For something to be implausible it has to defy an established trend. So what is the trend we have about universes?
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