Anyway, there's an interesting website regarding the anthropic principle at
http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/anthropic/html
Bill Jefferys and Michael Ikeda (who created the website) claim that the fine
tuning of the physical constants is actually an argument against a Designer.
I won't try to summarize their argument--read it for yourself. I've been
debating (without much success, I might add) Bill Jefferys on this in Talk
Origins for the past few weeks and I'm not sure if he's right or not. It
does seem extremely counterintuitive.
Bill Jefferys, btw, is a Christian. Our debate has been very civil, which
isn't something that always happens in Talk Origins. I'm feeling a little
disoriented too--normally I'm the Christian Darwinian arguing in favor of
naturalistic explanations against my fellow Christians with a more
creationist bent. But here I'm more on the creationist side.
Jefferys and Ikeda hope to have some version of their website published in a
scholarly journal (I wonder which one would be appropriate?) sometime soon.
I suggested that it might be interesting to see them debate Dembski or Hugh
Ross or William Lane Craig somewhere online, but Jefferys said he doesn't
want to do this until their work is published, and even then he'd prefer the
debate to be conducted in a more scholarly setting. I did ask him if he
minded if I posted his website on the Calvin College evolution reflector and
he said he didn't mind. (Which is logical, since he called attention to his
website on Talk Origins.)
I don't know if Jefferys or Ikeda have time for any more online debating,
but I'm hoping by posting this to start some discussion of his website in
this forum. So after reading their site, what do you folks think of their
argument? Can you see any flaws in it?
I'll be gone for a few days, but I hope there are some posts on the subject
when I get back.
Donald Johnson