Nunley & The Fine Tuning Argument

My reaction to Troy Nunley's lecture on the fine tuning argument: Part 1, Part 2

Isn’t the fine tuning argument just a big example of confirmation bias? We confirm the one hit of a universe that is suitable for life and don’t observe any of the misses. Same with the firing squad, the people before and after probably shared a quite different fate, but we are asked to consider a sample of one. To ask “what if this really rare thing happened?” without counting the misses is trivial. This is the essence of what the anthropic principle is, which seemed to go unaddressed and he just waived the multi-verse off without consideration.

He basically just asserts that the probability of god existing and creating the universe is higher than it naturally occurring. Does anyone know how he calculated the probability of god? As we see later, saying that an outcome is more likely if something exists does not make that option necessarily more plausible than other options.

I don’t think the firing squad is a particularly good example. It basically assumes that there is no chance that they can all miss unless intentionally. The situation is assuming no mechanical failure (all bullets fire), and no human error (marksmen) at close range with multiple shooters (the original had 50). Now, if I asked people whats the chance that Tiger Woods would miss a one inch putt 50 times in a row, I bet people would say that would never happen unless intended, just like the firing squad. Which leads to 1. If they intend to hit them, then they will hit them. 2. They did not hit them 3. Therefore, they did not intend to hit them. To compare this to the formation of the universe would essentially say that there it is not possible naturally, which he has not shown.