Yes, without the fine tuning we would not exist!
And that fine tuning needed the birth and death of many stars over billions of years, just to create the building blocks that were/are the basis of life as we know it.

It's all well and fine to call something as complex as human life the product of blind chance!

But when comparing apples with apples, the odds are far better in favor a whirlwind whipping through a junk yard and creating a far less complex, flyable 747! [Well if you could repeat it enough times?]

Perhaps when we know what dark matter really is and why it's so powerful, we might just be able to get some sort of handle on the true cause of creation and life as we know it!

Personally, I believe if life has a specific purpose, and I believe it has; then that purpose is the realization of dreams?
Which by the way, rarely ever have anything to do with money or the acquisition of wealth for its own sake!
But revolve around things like passing that exam, winning that dream job, winning that contract and so on!

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of man can achieve.

We've come a very long way since the Wright brothers and powered flight; why even a man called Armstrong walked upon the moon!
It seems the only real limitations to our dreams, are those we impose on ourselves.

So what is next?

A working prototype warp drive (beam me up Scotty) and a pathway to millions of uninhabited but earth like stars; and a very long way out of Africa?

Incidentally, I think the planet and all life was well and truly made before a man, allegedly Christ walked among us, creating his alleged miracles!
Even so, he is reportedly on the public record as saying, "it is not I who does these things, but the father in me"!
Rhrosty.

Dear Rhrosty,

<<Yes, without the fine tuning we would not exist!>>

With or without the fine tuning - we do not exist anyway!

But without this fine tuning, our human bodies would not exist, so we could not identify with them and realise our dreams through them.

<<So what is next? A working prototype warp drive... and a pathway to millions of uninhabited but earth like stars...?>>

How about finding who you really are and where is the origin of those dreams?

Christ had the answer: "I and my Father are one" [John 10:30]

The author poses what could appear to some as good questions when he asks:

'So, can there be "exceedingly ingenious design" without an exceedingly ingenious designer? Can there be so many instances of minutely precise fine tuning without a fine tuner?'

Surely the first two questions are examples of what is really meant by begging the question which is assuming the answer to a question in its asking. When you ask can there be "exceedingly ingenious design" with a designer, your question already assumes that the planet on which we live has been exceedingly ingeniously designed. Something quite different emerges if you ask your question properly: "Can there be so many instances of the appearance of minutely precise fine tuning without a fine tuner?" And suddenly the answer becomes obviously: "Yes".

It should help the ID-ers to think occasionally about this: How many planets are there, in this universe or others, in which the apparently relevant constants did not happen to produce a life supporting environment ? The answer is we don't know but the number is probably beyond our comprehension.

And the next question: Given the infinite-like number of such opportunities in the Universe for a cluster of relevant constants to have proved capable of supporting life like ours, is it feasible that on at least one occasion, they just did? The answer is clearly yes and we are just one piece of evidence that it happened. But there might be others. Indeed, many others beyond our perception.

And when the author concludes his question begging with the rhetorical flourish, "In the case of any other observed phenomenon, such questions would be taken as rhetorical", an adequate riposte turns out to be, "No they wouldn't".

I agree with GlenC. The writer obviously intends a proof of the existence of God from intelligent design. There were similar but not as sophisticated attempts in the 18th C that led only to Deism and to a loss of the crux of Christian faith. These abstract arguments lead us nowhere. Or, rather, they lead to a theism that is irrelevant to our lives and thus a theism that produces a similar outcome that atheism produces.

Sells,

>>So, do we base Christianity on the existence of a divine creator or on the crucified Christ?<<

Not many Christian thinkers would have seen these as mutually exclusive; NT is a completion of OT not an either-or alternative. Neither is metaphysics as an explanation of Genesis seen as an alternative to ethics based on Jesus’ teachings.

Suseonline,

>>What if we have never seen the son or the father?<<

Have you ever “seen” a single light wave or corpuscle (photon)?

“Why do you want to prove the existence of God? Do you need a torch to see the sun?" (Oriental wisdom).

>>How do you know the Christian God is the true God?

The question is rather, how do you know that the way Christians see God (Trinity, Incarnation, etc) is better than how others see Him. This is much more complicated than the question of how do you know that the way Einstein saw gravitation was an improvement on how Newton saw it.

>>Why should we believe in a book written, and rewritten, by fellow humans?<<

You would not be able to use e.g. a computer if generations of scientists and engineers have not believed in things written by other humans and sought their own explanations/ interpretations of them.

Squeer,

ditto. Natural scientists do not scrap everything earlier generations achieved but build on them, re-evaluing, re-interpreting, re-explaining them. Perhaps other thinkers and activists should do the same.

Rhosty,

>>when we know what dark matter really is and why it's so powerful<<

And do you know what e.g. gravitation “really is”, except that it is a concepts in powerful theories able to make verifiable predictions, whereas dark matter is not (yet)?

>>It seems the only real limitations to our dreams, are those we impose on ourselves. <<

It seems that this is what the author of the story about the tower of Babel wanted to warn us against. If you cannot jump a few centimetres it is because of limitation you imposed on yourself, however, you cannot jump ten meters for limitations that are beyond your self-impositions.

Merry Christmas to everybody.

I'm inclined to go for a combination of Yuyutsu's fourth option and Rhosty's dream theory.

The distance between an electron rotating around an atom's nucleus using the perspective of a golf ball orbiting a basketball would be approximately a mile away. Those tiny atoms that make up everything we accept is solid, are mostly empty space. Everything in our perceived world is mostly composed of emptiness. Are we simply projecting what we want to see on a kind of hologram world that is as changeable as the Holodeck on the Enterprise?

Perhaps we are all living in a collective dream with infinite possibilities. We each only experience our own dream but somehow we can also share experiences when its required to validate certain conditions.

Perhaps this is why some people have experiences with aliens and UFO's, whilst the majority never have such an encounter. Same applies for the God experience, miracles, ESP, etc; not everyone experiences everything but the things they do are their reality. Just a thought and no, I haven't smoked anything tonight.

Happy Holidays