The Higgs Boson aka "The God Particle", and the problem of unnatural fine tuning.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork

How would you describe the problem of fine tuning and unnaturalness to someone who's making an honest inquiry born of authentic interest and curiosity, as opposed to a contemptuous bias, prior to any sort of intellectually honest investigation?

I can give this a go. The problem with the fine tuning argument is that there are infinite possible explanations out there until we find the correct one, or possibly understand that the question is wrong.

Due to my previous intellectually honest investigations I lean more towards the point of view that there is no problem of fine tuning however I'll try not to put my head in the sand and show any contemptuous bias.

Of the infinite answers you presented 5. If I accept that the first 4 are bad answers that doesn't mean the 5th answer is correct. You have to dismiss all other possibilities to have only one remain.

The creator option isn't 1 answer either. We could be a simulation, we could be created by aliens who don't understand their own creation, it could be a giant magical rabbit that did it with methods we can't understand.

An intelligent designer at this stage is an unfulfilling answer to a question that could be wrong in the first place.

originally posted by: Krahzeef_Ukhar

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork

How would you describe the problem of fine tuning and unnaturalness to someone who's making an honest inquiry born of authentic interest and curiosity, as opposed to a contemptuous bias, prior to any sort of intellectually honest investigation?

I can give this a go. The problem with the fine tuning argument is that there are infinite possible explanations out there until we find the correct one, or possibly understand that the question is wrong.

Due to my previous intellectually honest investigations I lean more towards the point of view that there is no problem of fine tuning however I'll try not to put my head in the sand and show any contemptuous bias.

Of the infinite answers you presented 5. If I accept that the first 4 are bad answers that doesn't mean the 5th answer is correct. You have to dismiss all other possibilities to have only one remain.

The creator option isn't 1 answer either. We could be a simulation, we could be created by aliens who don't understand their own creation, it could be a giant magical rabbit that did it with methods we can't understand.

An intelligent designer at this stage is an unfulfilling answer to a question that could be wrong in the first place.

Funny thing is people don't realize they demean god by playing these games.


How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

See many Christians argue this entirely wrong you don't look for god as a solution of things we don't understand. Instead you should be looking for god in thr knowledge we do know. There is nothing that says god has to wave his hand and create some miracle. He could just as easily use natural processes to achieve his goals. For example evolution doesn't have to prove there isn't a god it can very easily be just the method he used to achieve his goal.

But people trying to prove the existence of God by using something we don't understand just mean god is continually removed from our reality. Many scientists believe in God the diffrence is they dont see him as an answer they see his actions in everything they learn. To say god made the universe perfect when we know that's not thr case it's not fine tuned for us to even be here. In fact over 99.999999999999999999999 percent of the universe would kill us instantly hardly sounds optimized at all. As we look into things we even realize that if we designed the universe we could have done much better. But now if God had to work with what he had than it indeed does make sense.

a reply to: dragonridr

To say god made the universe perfect when we know that's not thr case it's not fine tuned for us to even be here. In fact over 99.999999999999999999999 percent of the universe would kill us instantly hardly sounds optimized at all.

I means we should know our place and not muck about elsewhere.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

"This hole must've been designed for me. Even the tiniest difference in shape i wouldn't be here!", said the puddle.

a reply to: dragonridr

God will never be in retreat

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

You said:

I would also ask you to touch on why the appeal to the multiverse theory according to the strong anthropic principal isn't reasonable and in fact operates as a strongly biased and largely atheist position as an attempt to evade the implications of an intelligent fine-tuner.

How would you describe the problem of fine tuning and unnaturalness to someone who's making an honest inquiry born of authentic interest and curiosity, as opposed to a contemptuous bias, prior to any sort of intellectually honest investigation?

The appeal of a multiverse to atheist is there because they have no other choice. It's really that simple. Science has shown us that the universe is a miracle if there's just one. So most Physicist accept a multiverse or a cyclical universe. Either way, they try to get multiple universes with different vacuum conditions.

Many of them just throw out multiverse and they have no clue as to what they're talking about. Multiple variations in a single space with the same or similar vacuum conditions most likely occur. So you can get a universe where Dino's never went extinct or one where America never became a Country but these are just variations of the fine tuning of the universe.

It's goes back to the infinite set of poker hands. You can get all kinds of outcomes and variations of poker games in an infinite set of poker games but the game of poker will never turn into a game of Go Fish. This is because you get variations that's limited to 2,598,960 possible poker hands and the rules put in place by the creator of the game of poker.

Just look at the fine tuning of the Cosmological Constant:





The fact that the Cosmological Constant is fine tuned to 120 decimal places shows you that this isn't natural. Therefore, Scientist had to come up with things like 10^500 or 10^1000 false vacua and they still can't naturally produce the vacuum conditions of our universe.

So in order to try and explain this, you would need an infinite set of spaces with different vacum conditions and you still couldn't explain how it gave rise to the constants of our universe.

So the simple way to explain this is to show people that nothing is truly random. Everything has an underlying mechanism that allows variations to occur within a set and this includes the universe. In order to use the multiverse as a way to explain fine tuning, you would have to show evidence of universes that are variations outside of our vacuum conditions.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork
a reply to: TzarChasm

The same thing applies equally to the other constants, in particular, the cosmological constant (degree of fine-tuning).

Please watch the two videos another member posted that I just bumped forward before I saw your post (above). Then you'll be fully up to speed on the issue and how intractable it is.

I don't think that you're grasping the idea here of the true nature of the predicament, which, to avoid the implication of a fine-tuner, superintelligent creative agent, simply MUST evoke the strong anthropic principal, with universes (that don't posses these constants) continually bifurcating until at last, a purely chance, random flux in the zero point field or quantum energy vacuum field gives us the universe we conveniently inhabit by pure chance/coincidence with the constants, all of them, only appearing to be fine tuned as an illusion, due exclusively to our fundamental bias as subjective observers according to the strong anthropic principal ie: it just is, and well, if it were otherwise, by even the slightest degree, we wouldn't be here to measure it, thus rendering the very examination and questioning of it (fine tuning) a moot and meaningless and hopeless question or line of inquiry ie: end of science. In other words, to avoid the fine-tuner by Intelligence (capital I) hypothesis, any scientist or atheist must commit what amounts to intellectual suicide or try to hide in a foxhole that isn't bounded by reason and logic.

It's like a type of playful joke. That's how I interpret the predicament. If my intuition is right, the "how" cannot and will never be solved mathematically, but can be understood and appreciated (to an ever greater degree), according to a whole myriad of implications and other lines of inquiry that logically and rationally stem from and arise out of the recognition of it, once integrated as a fact of life because it forces the question of "why?" once intent and purpose and intelligence becomes the new accepted fact and the very basis for our own existence. It alters the frame of reference by which future inquiry is then made, and instead of making an appeal to the multiverse hypothesis to evade or avoid it's implications, the predicament is faced head-on, until it's no longer a "predicament" or a unresolvable quandary as evidenced in and by our own experience, which has just been made immeasurably richer and more significant, as a result.

In other words the type of rational and reasoning and frame of reference that went into the inquiry, when faced with the predicament, is forced to shift in an appeal to a different type of reasoning, call it supra-rational or ultra-reasonable, no matter how "crazy", unthinkable, or contrary to common sense notions that it may appear to be according to the old paradigm.

It's butts up directly against our own faculty of reason and traditional scientific inquiry, but it's not entirely outside the realm of what can be known in the knowledge of experience or in what some sages and enlightened folks have called the humor of true understanding.

If you fancy your faculty of reason to be rather Spock-like, then you're SOL, but if you're open-minded and willing to consider all possibilities and follow the evidence where it leads, it's only the beginning of a new way of seeing and relating including the re-recognition of one's own place as an integral part of a cosmological unity that had us in mind right from the very beginning.

Would Spock himself not raise an eyebrow or allow the merest hint of a wry grin to touch his lips at the prospect of a new paradigm at the end of more traditional modalities of reason and logic, say in the old Newtonian, materialist monist worldview wherein we can stand apart from it all and from ourselves and simply presume that it's an impersonal thing or vast collection of things yet lacking in intelligence and creative intent and design, when all the evidence in front of us is pointing in the other direction?

I don't care how you want to dress up your rationalizations it is still painfully apparent that you are attempting to wedge the human ego into the cosmic equation. And Spock would tell you as much.

originally posted by: neoholographic

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork
a reply to: neoholographic

So we could end up being such a bubble on an endless foam that got lucky, given enough bubbles, and how could all those bubbles sustain themselves and thus either directly or indirectly support and give rise to this one?

That would also be a very strange way of looking at the problem, but whether endless bubbles or a multiverse, what's the difference?

The difference is, there's a multiverse of bubble universes within the same space. So every universe shares the same vacuum conditions. So there's an infinite set of universes like ours where different variations occur. So in one universe I could be President and in another universe I died during birth.

The point is, infinite variations in the same space point to an intelligent Mind behind all things. Yes, randomness can occur but only within th vacuum conditions that produce are universe.

It's like a game of poker. You can have an infinite set of poker hands being played but the outcomes can only occur within the 2,598,960 possible poker hands that can occur based on the underlying mechanism of rules put in place by the designer of the game of poker.

The problem that people have who want to use the multiverse to explain fine tuning is, they have to have an almost infinite set of different spaces with different vacuum conditions and even then the conditions that govern the universe we are in can't occur naturally.

Here's more from an article titled "Why String Theory Is Not A Scientific Theory."

These are, no doubt, predictions about the physical Universe. But can we test any of these predictions?

The answer, so far, is no. The first one is a huge problem: we need to get rid of six dimensions to get back the Universe we see, and there are more ways to do it than there are atoms in the Universe. What’s worse, is that each way you do it gives a different “vacuum” for string theory, with no clear way to get the fundamental constants that describe the Universe we inhabit, which is the second prediction. The third prediction has come up empty, but we would need to achieve energies that are ~1015 times higher than what the LHC can produce to rule out string theory entirely and falsify it. Moreover, supersymmetric particles is not a unique prediction of string theory; finding them would only mean that string theory isn’t ruled out, not that it’s right. And the last prediction is only a mathematical one, not a physical one. It doesn’t give us anything specific to look for or test about our Universe.

www.forbes.com...

That's the ball game.

A single space with an infinite set of bubble universes with the same vacuum conditions is very likely based on current Scientific discoveries. So a universe where Andromeda Galaxy is called the Milky Way and the Milky Way is called Andromeda, Hitler was killed before WW2 and there was a President Mitt Romney is highly likely.

This is very different than an infinite set of spaces with different vacuum conditions where you get different universes with different laws of physics. There's no way for the fined tuned conditions of our universe to naturally occur even in 10^500 or 10^1000 false vacua.

If there are an infinite set of universes within the same vacuum conditions, then one of the universes contains an omnipotent Creator, which by definition of Omnipotent makes that Creator all powerful over all universes.

a reply to: neoholographic

Don't you find the multiworlds theory, within the same vacuum conditions to also be absurd ie: every other choice and possibility that didn't happen, happened?

In quantum computing, just because the electron is in a superposition and follows all paths simultaneously doesn't mean there are an infinite serious of alternative timelines and realities.

Surely there is only one reality and one unfolding now that's held together.

Going back to the follow up post to the OP, and in particular the thinking of Erwin Laszlo, perhaps the best explanation is that of the zero point field or quantum vacuum energy field being an informational matrix whereby no information is ever lost and since it exists in eternity, it's had an eternity to discover the right "recipe" for creation. This alters the concept of God according to traditional concepts, but retains Intelligence as something that eventually arose in eternity, such that "God" became self aware but that in order to explore the question of "who am I"? the creation became an expression of self-exploration, including the evolution of intelligent self aware beings part of who's purpose might be to be in relationship with the Absolute Godhead ie: for the purpose of a shared, mutual experience.

A person alone, cannot really know themselves, since we are a mystery, but that mystery can be explored through interpersonal relationships and there is fun and enjoyment and things to do and see and experience when there's more going on than just one thing that is static.

Because as soon as you have an Intelligent Design, you have intent, and a purpose, and a question or series of questions that's put to every observer.

It adds meaning and significance to what the atheist would have us believe is a meaningless, chance occurrence that "just is", but as I've pointed out, the multiverse strong anthropic explanation, to evade "God" or Intelligence and intentionality in the creation doesn't permit any further inquiry, whereas, with the finding of Intelligence behind the creation, there are a whole host of new lines of inquiry that that opens up.

I am not trying to insert the human ego into the equation but am simply trying to inquire into the meaning and significance of human experience on the basis that the life we experience was meant to be and was intended by anticipation right from the get go with the highest degree of precision and choice imaginable, and then some.

Exploring the strong anthropic principal argument for a moment.. been thinking about this, and it's very curious..

First of all, it HAS to be the way it is, or we wouldn't be here to even talk about it in the first place.

The question then that arises has to do with the initial conditions, including the Higgs mass and all the constants and whether they were intelligently selected or not, setting aside the frame of reference by which such a choice could be made ie: from God's perspective as an eternal uncreated creator.

If those initial conditions could not have been any other way in order for us to be here, then the question of what other way it might have been becomes moot and a meaningless line of inquiry.

Also, even from a hypothetical God POV, how could the laws of physics and all these "fine-tuned" constants and razor's edge of combined forces and numbers have even been "selected" in the first place? How could they said to be "unnatural" since we are, quite naturally, here.

As soon as the strong anthropic principal is evoked, then the circular reasoning goes nowhere, and any scientific inquiry becomes meaningless. We can measure until the cows come home, but we'll never discovered the how or why that these forces and laws of nature are what they are.

To say simply that "God did it" is as unsatisfying as the atheist position that it was and is a mindless process devoid of any Intelligence or intentionality. Neither position takes us any further along the road of discovery, but what I dislike about the atheist's position is the assumption involved, that the universe and the processes that have given rise to life possess no real significance, meaning or purpose, intelligence or intent (yawn) which is a projected apriori bias that limits and constrains any inquiry into even the possibility of an Intelligent Design. It also deadens the universe in so many ways, which appears, in case of some among us, to cause them to lose a passionate, childlike awe and wonder at the miracle of it all, given it's exceedingly improbable nature (no matter how it all began or came to be), which just doesn't seem to be an appropriate reaction/response to the fact of life or our place in it as observers and inquirers. We are not just a thing but are intrinsic to the whole of it all as a process, whether intentional or by mere chance (which seems absurd in light of the evidence to the contrary).

What I'd be curious about therefore, setting aside the strong anthropic argument, which is terribly unscientific, as is the postulate that it MUST be just a random chance amid an infinite series of hypothetical universes with every possible configuration of laws of physics, just to avoid the implications of Intelligence as a first/last cause due to a strong bias against that possibility - is this idea about "fine-tuning" and a selection in favor of life as we know it.

I believe, from what I've been able to gather, that this fine-tuning reveals an almost infinite series of adjustments and reductions and corrections from what would be expected to happen "naturally" according to prediction based on the standard model, which pegged the Higgs mass at something much much MUCH greater than what was observed, with no more swarms of particles forthcoming, thus removing the other hypotheses, like string theory/multiverse, supersymmetry, and compositeness to explain it.

Of course it's possible that we'll get a Grand Unified Theory or TOE (theory of everything) that will eventually explain it, but you'll note in the video given in the OP that the scientists were already working with what he called a Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (QFT) or a mathematical framework capable of reconciling Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, which unifies the strong and the weak nuclear force (but still leaves dark matter and energy, which comprises over 90% of the universe, unexplained, so we're still missing something..)

I guess the bottom line is that modern science is now in a very real predicament.

If unnatural fine-tuning is proven, which is appears to have been from what these scientists are saying, then that's an extraordinary finding, however perplexing and however disturbing it may be to staunch atheists who've always asked for proof and evidence of an Intelligent Creative Agent aka God but who seem to get angry when that evidence is presented by deduction.

Anyway, I'm going to watch that video again and pay more attention to what the particle scientist from the LCH at CERN has to say about it in his presentation "The Higgs Boson: A Natural Disaster!" to better understand what fine-tuning and unnaturalness really means.

Here in the YouTube Video we've moved to where he starts talking about it.. ("The Natural Disaster")

youtu.be...

www.quantumdiaries.org...

I'm open and curious about this and it's implications.

What you don't want to be is heavily bias with arms crossed, a closed mind, and a #ty attitude because your worldview and paradigm could be turned on its head, which isn't very scientific, or very wise.

At least these scientists are trying to grapple with it as it presents itself, no matter how perplexing the findings may be and who are prepared to consider the implications ie: that it may be unnatural and the product of an Intelligent selection in favor of the life we experience, instead of just "what is" without the ability to make any further inquiry.

youtu.be...

I see after watching it, that he didn't go there (Intelligence with a capital I) as the other possibility, and only offered the multiverse with strong anthropic principal hypothesis as one possibility (without mentioning the other and perhaps more obvious one), while extrapolating from that using an analogue to show how the orbits of our solar system giving rise to life as we know it, can also be attributed to mere happenstance amid an infinite variety, given all the possibilities, and that, therefore, we are fundamentally biased since we can only be as we are in our present configuration.

Which leaves us in that strong anthropic principal predicament at the end of science, by avoiding the other possibility as outlined by people like Haisch and Laszlo ie: an intelligent correction, subtraction or reduction, as a type of Intelligent filtering of the absolute formless potential of the Zero Point Field ie: with Intelligence in order so that this experience we call life might be possible.

This implication though, in either case, is that we exist in the only one possible configuration that can exist in order for us to exist.

What's interesting here, and something that I was thinking about earlier, is that the implications of that would mean that this possibility we are in, even though it's the only possible one that we could find ourselves in, according to the paradox of the strong anthropic principal, is nevertheless one distinct possibility in the fullness of eternity, which begs the question, even from a creator God's POV, and that is precisely why and how just one such possibility would be available in the entire field of what isn't doable.

In other words, why is there even such a configuration available in the first place, out of an eternity of infinite possibility and impossibility?

The universe is both inevitable, and impossible.

It is therefore a miracle, no matter how you look at it, whether as an atheist or a theist.

Noting so I can come back when I have the time to really think about this. Very, very interesting!

This life was like a seed of possibility in eternity, already available as a possibility.

Whether it was placed there, or was already always available and just awaiting a particular moment in eternity to be born, is a very curious idea, imho.

I think Haisch and Laszlo's view makes the most sense, in that it's not a capricious and arbitrary random addition from nothing, but, an intelligent and intentional subtraction or limitation from the absolute formless potential of a fully-informed "Godhead" who found a breakout point.

But was the seed already there, awaiting discovery, or implanted, as if from a thoughtform or an idea?

"It just is" will never satisfy our curiosity and neither will the strong anthropic principal or the multiverse theory.

Maybe God is just waiting for science to find his fingerprints, but that when we ask the question of "how?" he will laugh, and when we ask the question of "why?" he will love.

AnkhMorpork:

How would you describe the problem of fine tuning and unnaturalness...

The universe does seemingly carry aspects of fine tuning, but the question to ask when discovering such aspects is to determine if the 'fine-tuning' would remain consistent and unchanged throughout the length of the entire existence of the universe, and also remain consistent and unchanging even as the environment changed, or do those discovered seemingly fine-tuned aspects in the universe have varying lengths of duration, at the end of which they dissipate and fade?

If those seemingly fine-tuned aspects of the universe remain in-situ and consistent throughout the entire length of the existence of the universe and its ever-changing environment, only then can you say that they are unnatural, and only then can fine-tuning support a 'God' hypothesis.

Life on earth only came about because the distance of earth to the sun is seemingly fine-tuned for life to have emerged, but we know for a fact that this optimal distance (the so-called 'Goldilocks Zone') is actually only temporary on the cosmological scale, and small changes to it will eventually eliminate all life from earth. The Goldilocks zone as a fine-tuning cannot support a 'God' hypothesis because it is only temporary.

I'm just glad that the universe is friendly to our being here, because I for one am glad that it's here and that we're here.

If it was an idea, then it was a good one!

That it was by a chance happenstance.. I think that can be ruled out. The fine-tuning and combination obviously contains a selection bias in favor of this life.

When it was intended or conceived or discovered as one possibility in a field of limitless possibility, well now that's an interesting question if viewed as an eventuality or inevitability no matter how or why it came about.

Seems it was always there (as a possibility).

That's freaky.

This is what eternity eventually looks like.

I see it as an expression of a perfect will as part of an ongoing evolving process, in alignment with people like Haisch and Laszlo, but it's still curious that such a configuration, if not invented out of thin air, might be somehow already embedded into the eternal flux of the Zero Point Field or vacuum energy state.

And God said "Let there be light" and there was light..

Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Field, by Physicist Bernard Haisch

a reply to: elysiumfire

I get what you're saying, but I think it's also important to consider as well that the universe has non-local, holographic properties that may contain all information in terms of everything that has ever happened and will ever happen in space-time within an evolutionary framework as recorded by the Akashic Field or Zero Pont Field. If so, various changes over time, including everything that led up to this one, were embedded into it, or intended, which doesn't mean that it won't continue to change and evolve and take on other forms and variations, also woven right into those same initial conditions beginning with the end in mind so to speak.

We still find ourselves perched on a razor's edge, but that it won't last forever and may shift and change if/whenever the Higgs mass/field changes for example, is worth considering, but it still doesn't mean that what we're experiencing now was not intended from initial conditions to be "just so" at this time in the evolution of the universe, with we ourselves as part of that creative expression.

That's another part of it though - why the stability to date and the "friendliness" to our being here now which as you point out will not always be so friendly to this life we know, unless we are able to harness some new law of physics for instantaneous interstellar transit, allowing us to move out into a universe where life and complexity is still on the rise, that too could be our destiny, as intended.

Life and the rise of complexity in a relatively stable universe, at least by some accounts may exist for something like 100 trillion years.

If the Higgs is unstable, then that won't be the case, but if it was, why would we be here as if by design?

AnkhMorpork:

I get what you're saying, but I think it's also important to consider as well that the universe has non-local, holographic properties that may contain all information in terms of everything that has ever happened and will ever happen in space-time within an evolutionary framework as recorded by the Akashic Field or Zero Point Field.

What I posited in my earlier posting is merely a suggestion based on logic, that a universe as old as ours is, would inevitably gain aspects that would randomly fall into forms of order, and that sentient intelligent life forms would inevitably observe such order as being 'intentional' and 'designed'. The universe holds far greater random chaos than order, and from our base here on this random (but beautiful planet), everything we can observe would seem deliberately ordered.

From the initial start of the 'Big Bang', order emerged within and up to the first 20 minutes of the initial inflation, beginning with the fusion of sub-quanta elements such as quarks, which led to the coupling of protons (2 'UP' quarks and 1 'DOWN' quark) and neutrons (1 'UP' quark and 2 'DOWN' quarks), which in turn brought about the emergence of the lighter atomic elements of hydrogen and helium, with some deuterium and lithium thrown in. As temperatures cooled further, heavier atomic elements emerged from the internal processes of stars that formed from the lighter atomic elements. All this signifies a sort of order from the absolute chaos of universal inflation.

Until sentient intelligent life forms evolved this unordered order meant nothing. Any form of stability in a world of chaos will always look as if it was intentional and designed, and therefore must have an author? Sub-quanta and the atomic elements they form are not the cause of order, but its product. Order arose because the four forces of strong nuclear and weak nuclear, electromagnetism and gravity, checked (at their respective levels) the sub-quanta and atomic elements into stable relationships and maintain them there, and they did and do this because of the absence (or dissipation of) higher energies.

Does, and could, all this have an author? At current knowledge levels it has to be conceded that there is a very small probability, simply because we do not know enough about the universe and therefore we cannot discount it. The issue is we are not looking for an author, but a cause, and an author is simply one of other causal probabilities. We know that complex stability does not last due to entropy, the more complex a system is, the more fragile it is and requiring ever greater maintenance. This finite length of duration in stabilities is what discounts the 'God' hypothesis.

With regard to the Akashic field, which you erroneously correlate with zero-point field, and treat as the memory bank of the universe, cannot be so correlated. Zero-point field is vacuum energy, the absolute minimum of energy at ground state, and is said to have zero entropy. The Akashic field does not have an absolute ground state, because it is always having new information added, and thus would never be at absolute rest phase, therefore it cannot be the zero-point field which is at absolute rest phase.

a reply to: elysiumfire

The real question is whether our present configuration is the product of random chance/happenstance, or, was generated by anticipation with everything fine-tuned just so in order so that this experience could be made possible.

AnkhMorpork:[quite]The real question is whether our present configuration is the product of random chance/happenstance, or, was generated by anticipation with everything fine-tuned just so in order so that this experience could be made possible.

It's just one of many questions, and it does not take any precedence. My two earlier postings adequately addressed this question.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

its funny how this:

Because as soon as you have an Intelligent Design, you have intent, and a purpose, and a question or series of questions that's put to every observer.

It adds meaning and significance to what the atheist would have us believe is a meaningless, chance occurrence that "just is", but as I've pointed out, the multiverse strong anthropic explanation, to evade "God" or Intelligence and intentionality in the creation doesn't permit any further inquiry, whereas, with the finding of Intelligence behind the creation, there are a whole host of new lines of inquiry that that opens up.

is immediately followed by this:

I am not trying to insert the human ego into the equation but am simply trying to inquire into the meaning and significance of human experience on the basis that the life we experience was meant to be and was intended by anticipation right from the get go with the highest degree of precision and choice imaginable, and then some.

what you say you are not doing is exactly what you ARE doing. trying to borrow significance by associating the human species with some figure of cosmic royalty. if we can draw a straight line from this factor to that factor then we are automatically cool by default which placates our sapient ego.