Via Intelligent Design, an infinitely-inteligent, creator god cannot be logically justified

I. From the way Pro has defined the resolution I will be concentrating on the Fine Tuning (Intelligent Design of the Universe) Argument rather than Biological Intelligent Design. The definition of God in question is rather important, since that sets the criteria I need to defend, the God I will be defending has the following attributes (and it consistent with those set by Pro earlier): Omnipotent - all powerful (not necessarily infinitely powerful) Omniscient - (infinitely intelligent) Creator/designer I will build my case this round and save the majority of my rebuttals for the following round, now without further ado. II. The Fine Tuning Argument The fine tuning argument for the universe I regard as one of the best arguments there currently exists for the existence of God, and definitely the strongest scientifically supported one. So before I present the evidence, I will formalize briefly formalize this argument: P1) If the universe is finely tuned, then it has a fine tuner P2) The universe is finely tuned C1) The universe has a fine tuner P3) If the universe has a fine tuner, it is all-powerful and all-knowing, and the creator C2) The universes’ fine tuner is all-powerful, all knowing and the creator (God) I am certain that Pro will challenge both all three of these premises, of course, however they are very much easily defendable in light of modern physics. Defence of Premise 2: To summarise this defence we have: P1) Either the fundamental constants were set intelligently (fine tuned) or non-intelligently (randomly) P2) Most likely not non-intelligently (randomly) C1) Most likely the fundamental constants were set intelligently (finely tuned) C2) (from C1) The universe is finely tuned I will defend this premise first, as it is likely to be the most ferociously disputed one, but also fortunately the most empirically supported one. The universe, as is currently known, is extremely well described by quantum mechanics, the standard model, and relativity. These theories so far tell us a great deal about the behaviour of the universe, and accurate models constructed from these, physicists call this ‘working from first principles’. [1] What has been realized is that ‘working from first principles’ we find the universe hinges on a number of fundamental constants of nature. What is more striking is that variations in these fundamental constants of nature would lead to a completely sterile universe. Not just a sterile universe for life, but also a universe completely devoid of anything interesting to speak whatsoever, including basic chemistry. The fine balance that the universe is in, and the fact that there is no reason whatsoever to suspect the universe couldn’t have been anything different (i. e. these fundamental constants set to some other values) leads us to the conclusion that the universe necessarily must have been tuned to allow for the conditions that life arose from. [2] Note that this does not necessarily mean life (much less Earthbound life) objectively was the goal of this tuning, as it would likely have been an outcome of any tuning made to create an ‘interesting universe’, for whatever reason. These ‘first principles’ reduce down to several fundamental constants of nature. The ones I will be discussing are the speed of light, the cosmological constant, the Newtonion gravitation constant and the strong nuclear force, there are more but it is unnecessary to discuss them. The strong nuclear force is known to have a tolerance of just 0.5% in either direction. [3] Increasing the strength of the strong nuclear force would lead to all the hydrogen formed in the big bang to form diprotons, which would make nuclear fusion nigh impossible within stars, and also removes the most useful and abundant element, Hydrogen, from the list of available elements. Reducing the strong nuclear force would make essentially every single element above hydrogen unstable, and thus we would be left in a universe filled with nothing but hydrogen (no chemistry, no life, nothing interesting). The cosmological constant is known to be very finely tuned also, increasing it would have led to the universe expanding at far too great a rate for galaxies and stars to form. [4] A lower value would have led to the universe collapsing into a black hole before the party started. No chemistry, no life, nothing interesting. Similarly for the gravitational constant, increasing it would lead to knock on effects, such as the universe collapsing to become a black hole, and far too short lived stars to sustain evolution. Too low a gravitational constant would lead to the universe diffusing into a cloud of hydrogen and helium. [4] Of course we don’t know the entire search-space of how much these fundamental constants could have potentially varied by, but it is quite clearly a far stretch to imagine that all these constants would have hit their current values that allow for anything interesting to occur in our universe whatsoever, randomly. With an intelligent agency to do the fine tuning, this problem immediately disappears. Since the intelligent agency can adjust the variables, and an agency, or being, with sufficient intelligence and power to do so would be able to accomplish this. Defence of Premise 1: I do not see Pro contesting this premise, if the constants were deliberately finely tuned then it clearly follows that a conscious entity finely tuned it. If she does I would be most intrigued into how she would go about doing so. Defence of Premise 3 These cosmological constants are tied into the very clockwork of how our universe operates. It goes without saying that any being that is capable of manipulating these is a being that is all-powerful. As that being is capable of doing essentially anything and everything with our universe. It’s like a person who can change the rules of a chess game, the shape of the board, and how the pieces move while the game is being played. Clearly the person doing such has abilities and power that no thing confined within the rules is comparable to, much less above. Moreover, for this being to perform this extent of fine tuning, they must be able to foresee billions of years of stellar & universal evolution, and understand the very fundamental fabric of the universe itself. Which is knowledge that many scientists and philosophers resign to never being able to know for themselves, thus fulfilling that this being must be omniscient. III. Rebuttals: Complexity:Pro's argument against complexity is not relevent yet to this debate, and I would agree that the level of complexity has no bearing on whether or not it is designed. Fine tuning & an Omnipotent God:I would beg to differ on her point regarding the incompatibility of omnipotence and being capable fine tuning. As I mentioned with my chess analogy, being capable of setting out the whole game, and the rules it abides by, very much fulfils the required definition of omnipotent. Moreover even if Pro's argument was valid, it only shows god is performing at a certain 'power level'. Someone who is capable of lifting 100 kgs can also lift 10 kgs, there is no contradiction here. As for why, I don't see a reason why I need to supply it, but just to throw one out there, it may well be logically impossible to create a universe where it was not finely tuned to accomplish the results that god wanted. We just don't know. IV. Conclusion: I have given two routes to demonstrate the resolution false, and at worst, unsound. The resolution is negated, back to Pro! V. References:[1] . http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] J. D. Barrow, F. J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle , Oxford University Press, 1986. [3] . http://www.focus.org.uk... [4] . http://www.reasonablefaith.org...