Christopher Hitchens Impressed With The Fine Tuned Universe Argument

Discussing the fine-tuning argument, the late journalist, public speaker, author of 'God Is Not Great' and key spokesperson for ‘New Atheism’, Christopher Hitchens’ confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

[dannygjk]

The fine-tuned argument is a logical fallacy.

[theamalgamut]

A fine tuned universe, tuned to destroy itself one day, with a star that will eventually die and kill us in the process.. Takes skills to create something like this.

[dragonzragnorack]

The universe isnt fine tuned for us we are fine tuned for it, come on guys this shit isnt hard😂😂

[mormacil]

We can't survive in 99.99% of the universe. We can't even survive on 99% of this planet. How is it possibly fine tuned for us.

[jamescareyyatesIII]

I'm God. Prove I'm not God! See how it easy it is?

[NN-wcdl]

Who decides what's rare in a cosmological perspective? There's a difference between what you see on the street outside your window and what happens in a vast and enormous place we can't imagine. Most things are "rare" in the eyes of human beings, or should be. We may not have enough information to determine what is rare, but that does not justify religious fantasies.

[Matt-skhi]

The strongest argument in a bunch of weak arguments does not make a good argument.

[Fighting-Spirit]

Its sooo fine tunned that in the future our Sun will explode destroying entire Solar sistem.

[deusexmacchina]

Wow, that's a moronic argument...
"Hey look, the water is exactly in the shape of of the vessel that contains it!"
Life happened on earth because some conditions where met due to many parameters where in a certain way, but if those parameters were different it doesn't mean no life in the universe, it means no life on earth. Other planets under the different set of parameters can still meet the conditions

[bogdanflorin]

I think you're conflating someone admitting something "might" be possible and not discounted "out of hand" to respect..
No honest atheist ever said. I believe with 💯 certainty that a God is impossible.

The prevailing atheist argument/question is to prove it with actual scientific and/or tangible evidence.

[noahprice]

It might be your best argument but it is not a good argument, a sentient puddle would look at the pothole it’s in thinking it must have been created exactly for the puddle, I mean, the pothole is perfectly sized for the puddle, the puddle fills this pothole perfectly to the brim, how could the hole not be specifically made for the puddle? Life in the universe is the same concept, it may seem like it was made for us, but we were evolved to fit the world around us, not the other way around

[frankpulmanns]

As Sean Carrol said "The fine-tuning argument is best argument apologists have. And it's terrible."

[DanielLopez-kseh]

What I would call a high level atheist (as Hitchens clearly was) don’t have atheism as their main characteristic. They are critical thinkers first and as a consequence they are atheists. We could begin explaining the “fine tuning “ with what we know so far, use arguments like the puddle argument, but the first place where one must begin is using the main tool of the critical thinker and that is simply saying I don’t know. When people fear accepting they don’t know they start feeling the temptation to leap to comfortable conclusions

[renevalice]

Canceling out design within a given universe would be a bit too odd, especially when you consider that even improbability and randomness may in fact have a sort of architectural makeup, from an inventing architect, roaming and replicating things near and far. Very fair and fascinating to argue about.

[AMECHlKl]

The fact that a millions of switches have to be set to just the right setting in order for life to flourish AND the fact that it could be completely random make sense to me.
Considering the trillions and trillions of dead empty planets, planitoids, moons, debris, and other general kafuckery floating around in space, I'd say with the statistics alone, paired with what we just generally know about the formation of planets suggest that at some point it would have had to happen.
Giant, huge, enormous coincidences happen every single day. Along with the fact that the probability for anything is never zero. I could flip a coin a thousand times right now and they can all come up heads, the chances are low but it's still possible. It might take my entire life before I find success, but it's still possible. And the universe has had far more time to throw shit at a wall before something started to stick and eventually became earth.

If the earth was fine tuned, that implies it started with intent. And if God is real, and knows everything, then it wouldn't have had to fumble its way from a lump of molten core to what we have today.
If God was fumbling its way to the modern day, at least we can do away with "God's plan" and just call it "God's improv"

[manamanathegreat]

So, we're just gonna ignore him when he said the arguments against fine tuning are conclusive...
ok.

[williamzame]

Is the Universe really conducive to life? We have evidence for life only on one planet; our own galaxy contains billions of planets and there are billions of galaxies in the Universe.

[williamwilson]

There are no good arguments for a god. Certainly not for the thousands of gods created by humans over the centuries…like the Abrahamic gods. Those are easily discarded.

[Ashoerchen]

The planet earth is perhaps the only place in the vast universe with trillions of planets on which conditions are so that life could develop. As a possibility, this must be conceded for reasons of intellectual rigour. But even if it were true, it simply would be the reason why life developed on the planet earth, and not elsewhere. And for exactly the same reason all kinds of chemical, physical and perhaps biological facts on other worlds have combined in the way that their respective conditions allow. This causal relationship is so banal that it is fishy to come from a mind like Hitchens'.

[crashtestdummy]

Here Hitchens begins to see what many Theists have seen for a long time. It's often strange to watch Hitchens in his later years. He almost became a Theist in some respects.