As a sanity check you might want to apply the fine tuning of the universe argument to the fine tuning of our solar system.
Sorry, the fine tuning of the universe is well attested by leading physicists:
Dr. Paul Davies:
"The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly. You see, even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life -- almost contrived -- you might say a 'put-up job'."
Stephen Hawking "A Brief History of Time":
"The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers (i.e. the constants of physics) seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life".
Dr. David D. Deutch:
"If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he is hiding his head in the sand. These special features ARE surprising and unlikely."
Bernard Carr and Martin Rees, Nature:
"Nature does exhibit remarkable coincidences and these do warrant some explanation."
Bernard Carr:
"One would have to conclude either that the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidences or that the universe was indeed tailor-made for life. I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor!"
Freeman Dyson:
"The problem here is to try to formulate some statement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. In other words, the problem is to read the mind of God."
Vera Kistiakowsky, MIT physicist and past president of the Association of Women in Science:
"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."
Arno Penzias, who shared the Nobel Prize for physics for the discovery of the cosmic background radiation:
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan."
Roger Penrose:
"I would say the universe has a purpose. It¹s not there just somehow by chance."
Cosmologist Edward Harrison:
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God‹the design argument of Paley‹updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."
Allan Sandage:
"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."
Okay, get busy with the character assassination, or as you put it, "evaluate their credibility" - maybe they're all on the take, probably a bunch of liars. |
