Everything else — multiple universes, changing physical laws — is different methods of making that (incredibly circular) claim more palatable.

In the metaphor of the lottery winner multiple universes don’t enter into it, really the role of multiple universes is played by all of the people who don’t win. They are the universes wherein the finely-tuned physical constants aren’t finely tuned, and so they don’t support life. But, with enough people, (universes,) and variation from person-to-person (universe-to-universe) about how the physical constants are set (which lottery numbers they choose) it is fairly definite that eventually one person will support life (win the lottery).

Theists frequently say something like this: “Our universe has all these constants fine tuned for life. This combination of constants is highly improbable. This improbability cries out for an explanation.”

You cannot make any comment about probabilities, other than to say that the probability of our universe having the constants it does is not zero. With an N of one, that is all you can say.

Now I will paraphrase.

In the “theist’s” argument, the unstated premise is that the values of these constants are randomly distributed among all real numbers. Were that true, yes, it would be highly unlikely to have arrived at the narrow range of these constants capable of supporting macroscopic complexity, including but not limited to life.

In your response you say, in effect, “We don’t know if this distribution is random. In order to discover the distribution of these constants, we must take a statistical sampling and perform an analysis. Only then will we be equipped to make definitive statements about the probabilities involved. Until that time, your unstated premise is assumed false.”

Nothing about this is incorrect, and it would be a fruitful line of discovery if we did have more than one universe to study. But we might not need to use that evidence even if we had it, because we may be able to explain these seeming mysteries theoretically.

It is possible that some unifying theory will be written in the future that is able to produce values for these mysterious constants with minimal assumptions. If that were the case, then there would be no need to assess how probable it is that we got the constants we have, because it would have been shown that the particular values we find are necessarily true in 100% of possible universes.

We certainly have not done this, which is why a fake mystery still exists to some. However, the fact that we one day might makes this debate, to me, a nonstarter.

I think scientists just like to explain things – even concepts that we can’t really explain. Science has made lots of claims over the years that have turned out later to be total bunk. We just want to know everything because we do. And if we don’t, we make shit up that sounds good.

Arm-chair analysis of the anthropic principle – B.S. to cover what we can’t figure out. <—- and that is why I should be a physicist – somebody get me an honorary degree of some sort so I can go hang out with Hawking.

When every question of “Why is X like this” is answered by “Because if X wasn’t like this, you wouldn’t have asked that question”, discourse and intellectual progress starts going nowhere.

It’s only a valid answer because we don’t yet have a better one. Those damn theoretical physicists better get to work.

Theists frequently say something like this: “Our universe has all these constants fine tuned for life. This combination of constants is highly improbable. This improbability cries out for an explanation.”

But wait. We have an N of one!

You cannot make any comment about probabilities, other than to say that the probability of our universe having the constants it does is not zero. With an N of one, that is all you can say.

My own analogy. Suppose I showed a guy a zebra with 20 stripes. This guy had never seen a zebra, nor did he even know if other zebras existed. Then suppose he said: “The probability of this zebra having exactly 20 stripes is highly improbable.”

I hope we can see that this guy is a twit. And so with theists.

I think the “universe evolution” idea presupposes the “multiple universe” idea. They aren’t quite on equal footing, as you seem to present it here.

I’m not sure the problem posed even exists. We’re presented as having won the cosmic lottery, our universe being one favorable environment in an unlivable sea of parameter space. But is there a lottery? Could these favorable parameters have been any different? I think until we know how some of these parameters come about (and, no slight to you, but we haven’t made explicit what exactly we’re talking about) we won’t know how or if they might be different.

Until then, I find the anthropic principle to be angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin navel gazing. (This being similar to, but a bit harsher than, your conclusion. Fuck you for making me agree.)

I hadn’t heard the argument prior to this, but my thought then, and now, is:

There’s nothing especially surprising in a flipped coin landing on “heads”, a thousand times in a row — if the only time you observe the result of a coin toss is when it lands on heads.

In other words, if the physical constants WEREN’T just right for the development of intelligent life, we wouldn’t be here to notice it. So the fact that, when we ARE here to notice it, the constants ARE just right, isn’t really all that remarkable…