Monday, June 14, 2010

Nunley & The Fine Tuning Argument, Part 2

Considering the Firing Squad analogy:
This person who was intended to be a victim of a shooting, takes of his blindfold and says, wow, I think that I have some evidence that these people intended to miss me as opposed to the hypothesis that they tried to hit me, but I got ridiculously lucky-Nunley
I find it funny how you say that they intended to kill him, but since they missed, its evidence that they didn’t intend to kill him. But what if they intended to kill him and fail, what would you conclude? To say that they didn’t intend to kill him would contradict yourself. To say its the result of chance would be unlikely for such a low probability event, but reasonable if there is an adequate level of confirmation bias. What other options are there? Why not a miracle, or a supernatural force comparable to Neo tampering with the flight path of the bullets?
Why is the supernatural not preferred over chance, especially considering if guardian angels were watching over him, wouldn’t it be much more likely that they would intervene and he would have a significantly higher chance of survival than left by chance? After all, isn’t that what the fine-tuning argument is trying to establish in relation to the formation of the universe? As the angels demonstrate, just because a supernatural entity is likely to produce a certain outcome if they did exist, that outcome isn’t even considered, nor preferred over the slim chance of a natural occurrence. If the supernatural is not preferable over chance in the firing squad case, I find it similarly unconvincing when considering the formation of the universe.

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