The obliquity is mutual. It makes no difference to the science, to the study, apart from its subjective effects, what the scientist believes. You say: we cannot come to know God from such studies. I disagree. If we posit Him then science tells us much about Him. Scientists critically examine their insights constantly, that’s their job. The question then is are our beliefs consistent with our insights. There is no critically examined insight about constants that can be affected by God.
While I do not find any “nature, therefore God” argument to be coherent, the puddle response to fine tuning has always struck me as missing the point. A puddle will conform to any landscape. The fit does not matter.
That the universe permits life is not in itself the whole claim. What is remarkable is the combined observation that life requires such a narrow fit of constants to happen, and those are what we find. If life were easy and any lump of rock readily turns into worms, there would be no fine tuning discussion.
Can we have silicone life, energy beings, fog creatures, and life other than how we know it? My guess is no, but your mileage may vary. There is a subjective element to fine tuning. But it seems to me to be much easier to come up with descriptions of alternate inert universes than universes which permit self awareness.
3 Likes
Our beliefs are about something. Our scientific insights are based on the scientific method, which requires, amongst other things, objects for study, theory related to the material. The discussion boils down to the often discussed - science cannot obtain an object called god for study.
So I ask, what beliefs from a scientist regarding God, determine the insights he would derive from the scientific method?
That’s asking whether pigs have wings. Nothing whatsoever about taking the leap of faith can change the absurdity of existence i.e. objectivity, except subjectively. How things feel. They are utterly orthogonal. False faith distorts objectivity especially in making up the subjective fallacy of fine tuning, the penultimate ‘gap’. Faith is not in the music of the spheres in the keys of c, e, G and h. It’s in God through Jesus.
Lord, give me faith in you, please.
A believing scientist could concur with Jeremiah about the stability of the universal physical constants.
This is what the LORD says: If I have not established my covenant with the day and the night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth…
Jeremiah 33:25
The unbeliever has no foundational, principial reason to understand why they are constant and not changing, merely experience… they just are.
Vinnie, you are right on the money. And there is more! How about the dinosaurs and the other extinctions? God did not dictate how the universe evolved, but God certainly guided it. None of these events could be coincidental.
The multiverse is a red herring. It has absolutely to do with our universe.
1 Like
They are constants so… stability is superfluous. My point is that both a believing scientist and a non-believer, would come to the same conclusion re constants are constant. 
They may then diverge in an opinion regarding their subjective beliefs. The theist may quote the bible (as you do), or regard these as strong inference in that we are studying God’s handiwork (as I do), while the atheist may try to ‘fit’ this into an ever changing (evolving) outlook, with considerable dificulties.
No, that’s the point. Why are they at their particular values and stable. Saying that they’re stable is what is superfluous.
Of course they would. backatcha. 
(Unless they were YEC ‘scientists’. 
)
That is what I meant.
I know. You’re missing my point.
You need to make your point with some detail. So, why?
I thought that implicit by this point since explicit above. Because that is how the Creator of the cosmos determined they should be.
Ok… I was curious if you were also referring to the fine-tuning discussion.
Not particularly. It is a little interesting to imagine if some of the constants could be temporarily and locally variable. I’ll try and pursue that in my next sci-fi trilogy. 
E = mc squared. For most people constancy means sameness. For nature and God it means balance.as found in the above equation.
Thanks for reminding me of something else beautiful:
e^{i\pi}+1=0
Speaking of sameness, this relates too:
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
There is nothing true theologically or scientifically in this quote, so why did you post it?
Such as? Naturalists have no difficulty fitting nature in nature. The music of the spheres included. Let alone considerable ones. Unmitigated theists are the ones with the considerable difficulties.