• Philosophim
    2.6k
    This seems to have evaded the question. Sure, if it lacks a reason for being, it equally lacks a reason for not being. The question was where 'finite' was somehow relevant to that statement.noAxioms

    The intention was not to evade. The intention was to point out there if there is no reason for something infinite to exist, there can equally be no reason for something finite to exist. If something exists without prior reason, then it exists apart from any necessity of being. If it is, it is. And if something infinite can exist without prior reason, there is nothing to rule out something that is finite that exists without a prior reason.
  • Wayfarer
    22k
    Your assertion notwithstanding, how does the weak anthropic principle (or the strong for that matter) not explain why they are as they are? If they were not as they are, there'd be no observers to glean the suboptimal choice of laws.noAxioms

    All I take from the 'anthropic principle' is that the evolutionary sequence which we understand from science doesn't begin with the beginning of life on earth, but can be traced back to the origin of the universe. And that given everything now known about the nature of the physical universe, it would have been far more likely that it would not have given rise to complex matter and organic life, and that there's no reason why it should have. So it's not a matter of chance or happenstance. That is by no means a proof of God or anything else, but it is a good reason not to look to science for an alternative, as science treats the 'laws of nature' as given, which indeed they are.
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