Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, a benevolent God is more likely than not going to exist somewhere.
I would urge you to go learn about QM more. I’m not going to assume what you do/don’t know, but from what I’ve learned about QM there is no argument for or against any god.
were you aware that the ratio of sizes between the Sun and the Moon just happen to be exactly right for there to be total solar eclipses?
This also has to due with the distance between the moon and the earth and the earth and the sun. Either or both could be different sizes, and you’d still get a full eclipse if they were at different distances. Although the first test of general relativity was done in 1919, it was found later that the test done was bad, and later results from better replications actually provided good enough evidence. This is discussed in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
and basically flag the locations of potentially habitable worlds for future colonization?
There are far more stars than habitable worlds. If you’re going to be consistent with assigning probabilities, then by looking at the probability of a habitable planet orbiting a star, you should conclude that it is unlikely a creator set up the universe to make it easy or even possible to hop planets.
They are not essential to sapient life, and so they do not meet the criteria for the Anthropic Principle either.
Right, the sizes of the moon and sun are arbitrary. We could easily live on a planet with no moon, and have found other ways to test General Relativity. No appeal to any form of the Anthropic Principle is needed. And again with the assertion about habitable planets: the anthropic principle (weak) would only imply that to see other inhabitable planets, there must be an inhabitable planet from which someone is observing.
So you didn’t provide any evidence for any god; you just committed a logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance. The way I view the universe, everything you state is still valid. I see the universe as a period of asymmetry, where complexity is allowed to clump together, but it clumps in regular ways defined by rules we can discover and interpret.
I would urge you to go learn about QM more. I’m not going to assume what you do/don’t know, but from what I’ve learned about QM there is no argument for or against any god.
Strictly speaking it’s not something that is explicitly stated, but I like to think that the implication flows from a logical consideration of what MWI actually entails. Obviously MWI is just one of many possible alternatives in QM as well, and the Copenhagen Interpretation obviously doesn’t suggest anything.
This also has to due with the distance between the moon and the earth and the earth and the sun. Either or both could be different sizes, and you’d still get a full eclipse if they were at different distances. Although the first test of general relativity was done in 1919, it was found later that the test done was bad, and later results from better replications actually provided good enough evidence. This is discussed in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
The point is that they are a particular ratio that makes them ideal for these conditions, when they could have easily been otherwise, and that these are exceptionally convenient coincidences for humanity.
There are far more stars than habitable worlds. If you’re going to be consistent with assigning probabilities, then by looking at the probability of a habitable planet orbiting a star, you should conclude that it is unlikely a creator set up the universe to make it easy or even possible to hop planets.
The stars also make it possible for us to use telescopes to identify which planets are in the habitable zone. It remains much more convenient than if all star systems were obscured by a cloud of dust, which I can easily imagine being the norm in some alternate universe.
Right, the sizes of the moon and sun are arbitrary. We could easily live on a planet with no moon, and have found other ways to test General Relativity. No appeal to any form of the Anthropic Principle is needed. And again with the assertion about habitable planets: the anthropic principle (weak) would only imply that to see other inhabitable planets, there must be an inhabitable planet from which someone is observing.
Again, the point is that these are very notable coincidences that would be more likely to occur in a universe with some kind of advanced ordering.
So you didn’t provide any evidence for any god; you just committed a logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance.
When I call this evidence, I am using it in the probabilistic sense, that the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis is higher than the probability of the evidence by itself. Even though these things could be coincidences, they are more likely to occur in a controlled universe meant for habitation by sentient beings. In that sense I consider this evidence.
I don’t know why you bring up the argument from ignorance. I haven’t proclaimed that this evidence conclusively proves anything. Evidence is not proof.
The way I view the universe, everything you state is still valid. I see the universe as a period of asymmetry, where complexity is allowed to clump together, but it clumps in regular ways defined by rules we can discover and interpret.
Why though? Why isn’t the universe simply chaos without order? Why is it consistent such that the spacetime metric is meaningful? The structure and order of reality itself strikes me as peculiar given all the possible configurations that one can imagine. Why don’t things simply burst into and out of existence? Why do cause and effect dominate reality as they do? Why does the universe have a beginning and such uneven complexity rather than just existing forever as a uniform Bose-Einstein condensate of near zero state, low entropy particles?
To me, the mark of a true rationalist is an understanding of the nature of truth. And the truth is that the truth is uncertain. I don’t pretend like the interesting coincidences are proof of God. To be intellectually honest, I don’t know that there is a God. I don’t know that the universe around me isn’t just a simulation I’m being fed either though. Ultimately we have to trust our senses and our reasoning, and accept tentatively some beliefs as more likely than others, and act accordingly. The mark of a good rationalist is a keen awareness of their own limited degree of awareness of the truth. It is a kind of humility that leads to an open mind and a willingness to consider all possibilities, weighed according to the probability of the evidence associated with them.
Perhaps in some other universe the local people are happy that the majority of their universe does not consist of dark matter and dark energy, and that their two moons have allowed them to find out some laws of physics more easily.
I would urge you to go learn about QM more. I’m not going to assume what you do/don’t know, but from what I’ve learned about QM there is no argument for or against any god.
This also has to due with the distance between the moon and the earth and the earth and the sun. Either or both could be different sizes, and you’d still get a full eclipse if they were at different distances. Although the first test of general relativity was done in 1919, it was found later that the test done was bad, and later results from better replications actually provided good enough evidence. This is discussed in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
There are far more stars than habitable worlds. If you’re going to be consistent with assigning probabilities, then by looking at the probability of a habitable planet orbiting a star, you should conclude that it is unlikely a creator set up the universe to make it easy or even possible to hop planets.
Right, the sizes of the moon and sun are arbitrary. We could easily live on a planet with no moon, and have found other ways to test General Relativity. No appeal to any form of the Anthropic Principle is needed. And again with the assertion about habitable planets: the anthropic principle (weak) would only imply that to see other inhabitable planets, there must be an inhabitable planet from which someone is observing.
So you didn’t provide any evidence for any god; you just committed a logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance. The way I view the universe, everything you state is still valid. I see the universe as a period of asymmetry, where complexity is allowed to clump together, but it clumps in regular ways defined by rules we can discover and interpret.
Strictly speaking it’s not something that is explicitly stated, but I like to think that the implication flows from a logical consideration of what MWI actually entails. Obviously MWI is just one of many possible alternatives in QM as well, and the Copenhagen Interpretation obviously doesn’t suggest anything.
The point is that they are a particular ratio that makes them ideal for these conditions, when they could have easily been otherwise, and that these are exceptionally convenient coincidences for humanity.
The stars also make it possible for us to use telescopes to identify which planets are in the habitable zone. It remains much more convenient than if all star systems were obscured by a cloud of dust, which I can easily imagine being the norm in some alternate universe.
Again, the point is that these are very notable coincidences that would be more likely to occur in a universe with some kind of advanced ordering.
When I call this evidence, I am using it in the probabilistic sense, that the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis is higher than the probability of the evidence by itself. Even though these things could be coincidences, they are more likely to occur in a controlled universe meant for habitation by sentient beings. In that sense I consider this evidence.
I don’t know why you bring up the argument from ignorance. I haven’t proclaimed that this evidence conclusively proves anything. Evidence is not proof.
Why though? Why isn’t the universe simply chaos without order? Why is it consistent such that the spacetime metric is meaningful? The structure and order of reality itself strikes me as peculiar given all the possible configurations that one can imagine. Why don’t things simply burst into and out of existence? Why do cause and effect dominate reality as they do? Why does the universe have a beginning and such uneven complexity rather than just existing forever as a uniform Bose-Einstein condensate of near zero state, low entropy particles?
To me, the mark of a true rationalist is an understanding of the nature of truth. And the truth is that the truth is uncertain. I don’t pretend like the interesting coincidences are proof of God. To be intellectually honest, I don’t know that there is a God. I don’t know that the universe around me isn’t just a simulation I’m being fed either though. Ultimately we have to trust our senses and our reasoning, and accept tentatively some beliefs as more likely than others, and act accordingly. The mark of a good rationalist is a keen awareness of their own limited degree of awareness of the truth. It is a kind of humility that leads to an open mind and a willingness to consider all possibilities, weighed according to the probability of the evidence associated with them.
Perhaps in some other universe the local people are happy that the majority of their universe does not consist of dark matter and dark energy, and that their two moons have allowed them to find out some laws of physics more easily.