@philosophyminis: Christopher Hitchens spent his life taking apart the arguments for God, but there was one that he found the most intriguing, and one that he couldn't dismiss out of hand. It's known as the fine-tuning argument. And it goes like this. Imagine that the universe is made up of a series of numbers: the mass of an electron, the strength of gravity, the force that binds an atom together. Now imagine that those numbers exist on dials. If you turn the dial of gravity just a fraction one way, then the stars will never form. Turn the force inside the atom, and carbon never exists. Turn the energy of empty space, and the universe collapses before it even gets going. Out of every setting that the dials could hold, almost none produce a universe that can hold life, and yet ours does. So, the question is, did something set the dials? Does fine-tuning require a fine-tuner? Hitchens never believed in God, and many atheists' answers depend on more numbers, still: a multiverse. Maybe ours is just one bubble among countless others, their dials set at random, and we simply live in the one where they happen to land, right? But the problem is that to dodge one universe you can't explain, you have to invent infinite ones you can't see. So, which is the smaller miracle: that one universe was made on purpose? Or that endless ones were made with none?
Jonny Thomson
Region: GB
Monday 13 July 2026 13:36:15 GMT
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thetruthy1 :
It’s not a miracle. The universe as it was s is the result of this. No entity “set” anything
2026-07-13 22:16:09
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HumanBean :
Think Hitchens veered pretty close to the puddle argument on this one.
2026-07-13 20:36:37
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wipeoutpisrael :
Fine tuning to us , doesn't mean there is actual fine tuning it just means that nature is finding a balance and it's unlikely that we will know what that balance is
2026-07-13 20:05:12
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KingDavidXI :
With the trillions of galaxy that exist, we are one that everythings just right. Fine tuning isn't an argument for god.
2026-07-13 21:44:14
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tdawsont :
Or all the dials are interrelated so you really only have to set one dial
2026-07-13 18:28:06
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Matthew Poole :
Singular chance exists on the same plane as all variables. No one variable can be dismissed as an actuality of plausibility than all other variables. Therefore all variables are plausible chance 😳
2026-07-13 20:52:15
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valen.camargo :
Serіously, if you havеn’t read The Ѕеcrеt Life Formula by Zanе Murрhy yet, what аre уоu еven doіng? Іt’s a totаl gаmе changer.
2026-07-13 17:53:16
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JimCrz 🌍 :
Isn’t this like being astonished that the puddle is exactly the right shape to fill the hole?
2026-07-13 16:17:56
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zuki :
And the puddle says "look how well this small pit fits me. It has the correct shape for me to be in. If it had any other shape i couldn't fit in it"
2026-07-13 20:39:58
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Pantso :
The God argument also doesn't answer this, since you have to invent an all powerful entity that is far more complex than the complexity of the universe still ✌
2026-07-13 15:29:26
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Ksetra :
We cannot exist in am impossible universe. We are in the possible one, so the numbers are secondary characteristic, not the primary cause.
2026-07-13 19:21:02
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RealityMatters64 :
Fine-tuning isn’t evidence for God. It assumes the constants could have been different, assumes they’re improbable, assumes life was the goal, and then jumps to a designer. None of those assumptions have been demonstrated.
2026-07-13 19:06:22
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Fiona :
The Anthropic Principle. If the numbers in the universe didn’t support life, we wouldn’t be here to observe it and wonder at how lucky we are the numbers were “just right.”
2026-07-13 13:53:39
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lindholm_mats :
The whole argument depends on that the numbers can vary at all.
2026-07-13 14:23:13
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My face :
I don’t think Christopher hitchins ever said “an invisible wizard is the most probable answer”
2026-07-13 17:18:02
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iGhostEdd :
well there's the Big Bang Theory so what if there's just this Universe that kept exploding and imploding countless times until most of if not all of the dials were good enough for it to never collapse on itself again (just yet, at least) thus, as everything we see in nature, it evolved so that it could survive itself?
2026-07-13 21:20:49
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chrismottram590 :
Imagine you are a being that requires slightly more gravity and not carbon based living in your univese. You'd have exactly the same argument for YOUR universal constants. The simple answer is it would be different, that's all.
2026-07-13 15:45:43
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monktonator :
The anthropic argument does fine. If the context in which the universe exists allows a vast range of configurations, but you do not know how many configurations exist simultaneously or how many configurations have existed in the past, then you cannot make any arguments about the probability of our universe or the 'size of the miracle' because you cannot quantify the true chances.
2026-07-13 17:50:15
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Larry Taylor :
Nonsense. Even if fine tuning existed, then over countless iterations all those others versions of the universe cease to be habitable, but it only takes one universe for everything we know to exist.
2026-07-13 17:23:08
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Horatial :
Doesn’t that argument presuppose that the universe we live in, with its various settings, is the only universe in which life is possible? It just so happens we are an example of a type of life that fits our universe. There’s nothing to suggest that, we’re the universe formed differently, life couldn’t emerge.
2026-07-13 17:51:12
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Sergio San Jorge :
The answer is in the question. Every energy structure “close” to being an atom but with a slightly different forces did not converge into an atom. If gravity had a slightly different value the stars or accumulations of mass and energy would’ve been completely different and those variables may have originated a different form of life. When you open the door to “what if” for the question you can no longer use reality as a reference and every answer can also be based on “what if”.
2026-07-13 16:36:23
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bizinga1 :
It’s much much simpler. You don’t need to invent multiple universes that one cannot see. If the parameters are not conducive to life that wonders how it got here then there be no life to ask these questions. So it’s really a silly question since we are here.
2026-07-13 16:08:49
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Neochoriki :
The chances that all this happens by chance is nearly nil.
2026-07-13 19:09:38
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1888፲፰፻፹፰ :
asking you the 6th time to analyse The Ethiopian philosopher Andrias Eshete's Theory about Fraternity. 🙏
2026-07-13 16:09:01
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drucifer :
I give you the infinite regress argument….
2026-07-13 14:22:03
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