Tuesday, October 13, 2015

The Goldilocks Zone


I'd like to make an observation about the atheist trope that the Copernican revolution demoted human beings. The position of the stars and planets in traditional geocentric system is partly based on naked-eye stargazing, and partly on aesthetics. The distance between one star or planet and another is pretty arbitrary on that scheme. The concentric circles are more a matter of artistic symmetry than anything else. It's prettier if they are evenly spaced. But they could be closer or farther apart at random. In that (Medieval/Ptolemaic) system, it has no physical effects. 

Contrary to the atheist trope, the relative position of the earth is far more significant in modern astronomy. The earth is in the Goldilocks Zone. 

And that figures in the fine-tuning argument. There's a very narrow tolerance for life. Many variables must line up just so for life to be possible. 

At a functional, substantive level, the relative position of the earth is far more important, far more "privileged" in modern astronomy than Ptolemaic astronomy or Dante. 

1 comment:

  1. A lot has been said about the fine tuning argument, it's chock full of well attested facts. Anti-theists conveniently ignore these facts.

    ReplyDelete