The Anthropic Principle

[Evilshy 5,090]

As best I can explain it, the Anthropic Principle states:

 

An observable object must allow the observer to exist.

 

Sounds pretty obvious, right? Stupidly obvious. Tautologically obvious, even. But is it really?

 

Broken down, it means that if something can be observed, that thing has to exist in such a way that the observer can also exist. Still sounds obvious, right?

 

Well, then why can't people understand it?

 

It's seems like the most common argument I hear for Intelligent Design is "how can such a universe have been created by chance? How can life have been created by chance? It's too complex, somebody must've created it", and they go on to say how that somebody is god and how you must have faith and other standard religious talk.

 

Well, how do we know there haven't been countless other universes where life never began? How do we know there aren't countless other universes where space expanded to slowly or too quickly, preventing astronomical structures (galaxies, solar systems, etc) from forming? How do we know there aren't countless universes where the fundamental forces don't work the same way, or don't even exist, and thus our understanding of physics couldn't apply to them at all?

 

Humans don't happen to live in a universe where there is randomly all this fantastic shit going on, we live here because of the fantastic shit.

If you had 10 tanks of fish, and set up a computer to randomly only feed one tank, you wouldn't say "hey, the only fish who survived happen to be in the tank with food, what a coincidence!". You say "hey, those fish survived because they got food."

 

It's the same way with us! We exist here because the state of the universe is such that life could begin, and evolve into more and more complex creatures, until humans emerged and were able to think "hey, how did all of this even happen?". This universe has had ~14 billion years in which life could've started. We don't know how big it is, how many worlds are in it, were life also had the potential to start. Our vision of the universe is limited by the speed of light; we are only able to see things that are less than 14 billion light years away, since light coming from anything farther than that hasn't had time to reach us. We don't know how many other countless earthlike planets are out there! And we have the audacity to think that thus couldn't have happened by chance? Are we so arrogant as to think that life can't be the product of randomness, simply because we are one of the many results? Of course we think like that. Because it did happen that way. If it hadn't, we wouldn't be hear to discuss it.

 

Roll some dice. Two 6's aren't any more likely to come up than any other combination of two numbers. But we are still surprised when they do. Now imagine that the dice stay hidden when you roll them, and you are only told about them if you get two 6's. In fact, you don't even know the dice exist unless double 6's are rolled. Would you be surprised to get them? Of course, the odds against it are quite large, comparatively speaking, and you have no reason to believe there are even dice being rolled until you are told about them. But it's still possible. It doesn't require a miracle.

 

It's the same thing. We wouldn't know about the universe if it hadn't existed in a state that allowed us to evolve and continue to exist. We simply don't know how many other universes are out there where there is no life, or there is more life, or that are completely unrecognizable. We simply don't know.

 

So don't you dare use it as some proof of a divine creator.

 

 

 

/rant

 

 

 

 

 

 

tl;dr - Evilshy is pissed about some fallacious arguments used by many religious people to "prove" Creation, and he rants about the Anthropic Principle.

Not really sure how to summarize this, other than to either read my post, or look it up yourself

 

Now that I read this, I think I did a poor job of explaining it. Oh well. It makes perfect sense in my head :/

[Swordfishtrombone 384]

Why are you telling us this? Not reeeaaaly in any position to disagree with you here.

[Starshine 16,333]

I had to open the Wikipedia to understand what was that about

... and yet I still couldn't fully understand it

/derp

 

Anyway, as far as I can see there's no clear connection between this Anthropic Principle and Creationist theories. Maybe someone care to elaborate?

[I_wesley125 393]

As far as I know most of us are atheist so your not telling us something we don't already know.

[Evilshy 5,090]

I had to open the Wikipedia to understand what was that about

... and yet I still couldn't fully understand it

/derp

 

Anyway, as far as I can see there's no clear connection between this Anthropic Principle and Creationist theories. Maybe someone care to elaborate?

 

 

Christians say things like "how can life have been created randomly on a planet that just happens to be able to support it?" while I argue that life didn't randomly start on a planet that just happens to support it, life happened BECAUSE the planets is able to support it. It's not a coincidence, it's a causal relationship. They say "why didn't life start on some other planet and then die out? Because god made it that way." and I reply, no, it's because life couldn't have started on a planet unable to support it. Yes, I know this doesn't DISPROVE intelligent design, but it does poke logical holes in a very common argument for it.

 

I had actually been thinking along these lines for years, and only recently discovered it's actually a legitimate philosophical thing. And the only reason I made this was because I heard some Christian dude make that argument, but I couldn't just stop and argue with some random dude, so I had to vent somewhere else. The forums seemed a good candidate