PerseusWizardry
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User ID: 1815
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
What other issues might there be?
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
I didn’t intend this as an argument for Christianity and am not myself religious. Obviously the probability of Christianity is greater given deism, though, and I guess fine tuning suggests a god with an interest in our lives. But it’s indifferent with respect to Christianity vs some other religion like Islam, and I don’t think it’s strong enough evidence that it implies that “one of the world religions must be true.” A Christian would have to use it in a cumulative case for their religion that also invoked some more specifically pro-Christianity evidence. Supposedly they have done so in the form of historical support for the resurrection of Jesus, but I am very skeptical.
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
From the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis:
“The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process“
That sounds very complicated. Many different parts are involved with many different mechanisms, which had to be in place at the right time in many different stages.
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
Why do you think the multiverse exists?
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
I’m not a Christian, just weakly committed to deism based on the fine tuning argument. (Or at least I think the probability of deism is greater than maybe 30%, maybe greater than 50%)
But anyway, yes, if I think something is evidence in favor of something, then its absence is evidence against it.
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
large-scale forces would be disrupting any intermediate stages of genesis,
Why wouldn’t forces work to disrupt intermediate stages of the genesis of a microorganism? You don’t think it would happen spontaneously, in one step, do you?
and it needs more diverse environments to assemble its different parts
A self-replicating molecular organism has very different parts assembled in a very specific way. Why wouldn’t it need a diverse range of assembly environments, if a fighter jet would?
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
I do believe in evolution, but my understanding is that evolution is only intended as an explanation of the diversity of life but not its initial origins. For that, the abiogenesis story is the only serious naturalistic candidate of which I’m aware, aside from the “panspermia” idea that life evolved somewhere more favorable to life and traveled to the earth in a stable vehicle.
PerseusWizardry
11mo ago
Thank you for this thoughtful point-by-point response. It's exactly what I was looking for. About 2: even if these effects are real in humans, who is to say the dosages we are exposed to make a difference? I take your point that the "suddenness" and recency of the increase in transgender ID is not consistent with the endocrine disruptor hypothesis.
Even on utilitarianism, meritocracy is useful. The erosion of meritocratic norms and increasing resentment may cause more harm in the long run than it benefits a few black Harvard students.
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