Deborah,
///Both groups celebrate the evidence that the parameters of the cosmos are fine-tuned for life///
The fine-tuning argument is flawed. It results from:
(a) seeing teleology in everything and
(b) a failure to appreciate the role of random chance and contingency
Consider this: If we look back at our lives, we can identify many chance events that happened by accident, yet changed the course of our lives and made us what we are today. But that single chain of events was not the only course our lives could have taken. Our lives could have taken any of the countless other alternative routes and then we would have ended up differently. It is pointless to look back now and claim that the sequence of past events in our lives were fine-tuned deliberately to lead us to our current position. That’s wrong.
Now consider this: There are innumerable possible paths from the present to the future. Which one of those will eventually materialise is unknown and very much contingent on chance. 10 years from now, it will be meaningless to declare that the successful path was purposefully set up by someone. No, it was not set up by anyone, it was just one among millions of alternatives, but it was the only one that materialised.
It’s exactly the same with the flawed fine-tuning argument. The cosmological constants could have taken any of countless possible values, but they ended up in their current values by sheer chance. Stars, planets and life are mere consequences of the way the universe ended up being. You are now looking back with a teleological mindset and saying that somebody set up the values to produce us. You’re attaching too much importance to yourself.
///most scientists would resist the claim that truth is only discoverable though science.///
I don’t think so. No scientist who understands what he’s talking about will say that objective truths can be reached upon by non-empirical means. To make statements about reality with any degree of confidence, one must propose verifiable hypotheses grounded in evidence and empirical methods. Otherwise anybody could propose whatever he/she feels like saying, just like what theistic evolutionists are doing. You claim that an unknown, imaginary God, who cannot be observed or studied and whose intentions can never be known, set nature in motion - no evidence, nothing required! That doesn’t work because such a God is so abstract and vague that he can be force-fitted to any scenario one desires. Theistic evolution is a scientifically untenable position.