dAtheist

A Universe ‘Finely Tuned’ for Life Christian creationists and fundamentalists are tremendously fond of asserting that because life does exist as we understand it here on this rock we call home that the known physical parameters of the universe had to have been divinely set in order for this to be the case. They generally further assert that even the slightest alteration in those values would mean that the universe we inhabit and the life in it particularly the human race itself could not possibly exist even though they cannot present any sound argument based on objective, verified evidence for making those remarks. That is beyond their entirely prejudicial ideas based solely on their ancient mythology and their biased interpretations of its contents. They have no other universes to compare this one to, they generally hold no higher level education in scientific fields such as physics, chemistry, biology or astrophysics to make their claims even remotely valid and their only source of support is a subjective mythology that itself gets every statement it contains regarding the universe and both its origin and characteristic completely wrong with respect to reality. What these people are doing is called conformation bias. They are attributing what is to what they want to believe it is in short they are concocting pointless rhetoric designed for the sole purpose of propping up their predetermined conclusions. They are also practicing a form of religious intolerance as they assert that it is their preferred mythology that lies at the heart of this phenomena when using their very own form of ‘logic and reasoning’, if one can stretch those terms beyond their rational limits to be applied here, to declare that inserting the ideas of any other such ideology or religious mythology would be completely invalid if they will even acknowledge that such is possible. However, their final but never openly stated assertion is the most telling and explains why they dismiss the others and that assertion is ‘we are right because we say that we are and we have manufactured support from our book that agrees with us’. Granted if these parameters were different then this universe would also be different but the best scientific minds qualified to actually render such pronouncements on this issue disagree with these religious zealots almost entirely in their declarations that the universe and life could not therefore exist. Most of these scientists state that it could exist although in a different form with minor alterations but there is some consensus that with radical changes it might not be possible for the universe to exist. Yet what the creationists and fundamentalists desperately wish to promote is that with even the most miniscule change in the fundamental parameters the universe could not possibly exist at all because that is what they must pronounce in order to bolster their ideological claims. So let me examine this concept of a ‘universe finely tuned for our existence through divine intercession’ pointing out some of the glaring inherent flaws in these apologetic argument if you will allow me and if one can even call this sort of biased nonsense an ‘argument’. Nearly the entire volume of the universe is almost completely empty, vacuous space with a large portion bombarded constantly with intense electromagnetic and high energy particle radiation making it instantly deadly to all life as we known it. This planet we live on orbits our home star which itself orbit the center of the galaxy once every 200 million years meaning that it will eventually have a close encounter with a supernova that could possibly extinguish all life here were that encounter to occur in sufficient proximity. The universe itself is not only expanding but it has been scientifically determined that the rate of expansion is in fact accelerating indicating that the entire universe itself will eventually end in what is termed ‘heat death’ once the distribution of energy and matter becomes so defuse that stars can no longer form, those that have formed exhaust their fuel and die and there is nothing left but a cold, dead low density universe. Although most fundamentalists seriously believe that their prophesized ‘second coming’ will actually occur with the next fifty years or some other irrational asserted value including many who have and continue to set dates in the very near future that have all without exception failed utterly. As they have for the last 2,000 odd years meaning that because of a mythological belief in a specific version of what is essentially fortune telling they reject observable reality in favor of an imminent and divine destruction of the world. Oddly enough with very, very few exceptions these people, a variant of ‘doomsday cultists’, all continue to buy cars and appliances expected to last for years, take out mortgages lasting decades, save for the children’s college education and far harder to comprehend they rush to seek medical attention rather than taking the ‘express train to heaven’ which is where they preach their ‘real life will begin’.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events This very planet functions due to a geologic mechanism called plate tectonics driven by the internal thermodynamics, a favored creationist tool to oppose science itself, that causes volcanic eruptions that once nearly extinguished life on this planet in the greatest mass extinction known, is responsible for earthquakes that generate tsunamis that in just the past twenty years or so killed a quarter million in a single day as well as releasing ash and gases which have resulted in measurable decreases in global temperatures and sunlight. That aspect of this planet we live on alone is hardly a description of a ‘finely tuned’ environment for the presence of life of any type let alone one so fragile as mankind. Yet fundamentalists claim that, if they dare to accept the geologic science underpinning these events, that this is in reality, theirs not the actual one, the wrath of their deity inflicted on wicked people even though in the next breath they are also likely to claim that this is a loving deity who gave a ‘new covenant’ forgoing such psychopathic rages as clearly and repeatedly documented in their book of magical mythology. Nearly seventy-one percent of the surface area of this planet is covered by water, of the remaining land more than ten percent of that is permanently covered in thick ice caps some up to five kilometers deep, almost thirteen percent is desert both hot and cold where life-giving water is such a scare commodity that those very few people who call those regions home fight of it and about twenty-four percent is covered in mountains all totally unfit for human habitation. That leaves just fifty-two percent of the land which is slightly more than thirteen percent of the entire surface of this planet suitable for even the most difficult and problematic habitation by man. Thirteen percent of this world is available to us to live on with any reasonable chance of success which is barely an eighth of this world and these zealots wish to simply ignore the actual facts, paint the issue with a kilometer wide brush and say ‘yup it was created with us in mind and finely tuned for us alone’. Based on mere percentages this world has far more to offer fish and other aquatic life forms than it does the human race so one could argue that it is ‘designed’ for them if one was so inclined. Add to this objective assessment of the useable surface of planet earth the mere presence of naturally occurring gases like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur dioxide and others that can kill a person in seconds to minutes or cripple them for life as well as alter the global climate to the extent of causing huge variations in temperature that result in massive desertification or ice ages. Yet when confronted with the geological record of such occurrences in the past most of these religious zealots will simply dismiss it out of hand because it dares to disagree with their ideology despite their near total lack of education or understanding of the science involved. Yet the fundamentalists merely assert that this is a finely tuned universe, ergo this planet, designed for us alone, that every creature on this world is ours to exploit without regard for the future and if they do muster the courage to address these glaring facts that refute their assertions they will simply assert another equally inane and useless claim that ‘it all went to hell because of original sin and man’s wickedness’. In the final analysis this is simply one more baseless, unsubstantiated and unsupportable religious assertion attempting to manufacture the illusion that their ideas are based in reality when they are not but exist merely as personal opinions founded on an ancient, primitive, barbaric, irrational magic based mythology. It is just one more attempt to ‘reason god into existence’ and avoid the real issue of their complete lack of actual evidence to support their contention.