Monday, April 30, 2012

Contra Stenger

Here is a paper from arxiv by Dr Luke Barnes of the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich entitled 'The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life'. This focuses on the manifold errors of one Dr Victor J. Stenger. It is probably the best & most detailed discussion of the problem I have yet seen and is well worth a look; as is the blog he contributes to with 3 other cosmologists entitled 'Letters to Nature'.

Discuss this post at the Quodlibeta Forum

5 comments:

unkleE said...

That is GOLD, Humphrey. I read Letters to Nature regularly, and am familiar with Barnes' views on fine-tuning, but getting it all in one well-prepared paper is very useful.

Do you know if it was published in a peer-reviewed journal, or is it just on arXiv? (It looks to me that it was only on arXiv.)

Ignorance said...

This link does not mention it being published in a peer-reviewed journal:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:1112.4647

Doesn't mean it's not going to be, though.

David B Marshall said...

I have not read Stenger's scientific arguments, for a peculiar reason. In The New Atheism, he quoted my book, The Truth Behind the New Atheism, eleven times (as I recall). All these quotes were from the chapter on faith and reason, except for one, cheery-picking something I said in the last chapter. It was clear to me, as the author, that Stenger had not really tried to think through my argument with any seriousness, even though he was quoting it right and left. (And courteously, I'll give him that.) And in a 300 word discussion of that quote from the last chapter, Stenger gives me the impression that he just leaped to the end without reading much of anything in between, claiming I never do what I've been doing throughout the book.

After that, if ever the temptation to read Stenger's other books come up, I suppress it.

David B Marshall said...

I will gladly look this article over, though.

lukebarnes said...

An update ...

http://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/in-defence-of-the-fine-tuning-of-the-universe-for-intelligent-life/

The article has just been accepted in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.