Randy: I think this is where our disagreement is. I'm arguing a different set
of facts. The entire hinge of the ID argument is that values outside
narrow ranges for these physical constants PREVENT life from evolving
because they prevent life from existing at all.
And I have tried to show to you that 1) the range might not be that narrow 2) we do not understand if life outside this range is possible, perhaps not in the form we are used to but since we might be the product of the physical constants, that is not surprising. Your argument hinges on the presumption that no life form at all is possible outside this narrow range.
Now even if you are right, the fact that we are here could still be chance, anything outside the range and we would not have been here to discuss it.
Randy: What I'm saying is that it's impossible for life to adapt to conditions which prevent it from
living because it would die before it could reproduce and leave adapted offspring. Here's another way to put it:
Randy: In a universe with no oxygen it is impossible for oxygen-breathing life
to begin and then develop an adaptation to the lack of oxygen.
But that assumes that oxygen is the only gas which could be used for breathing.
Pim:Other life forms which would have a better chance under different
constants were not so lucky. The problem is this, is the adaptation of the `lifeforms to the physical constants what we are seeing right now or is it the other way around that the universe was adapted for the life forms. For the former there are some good mechanisms but for the
latter ?
Randy: Of course, it has to be the former. From the scientific perspective the physical constants are, by definition, constant and therefore incapable of any adaptation or change.
In this universe at least but science does recognize the possibility that a universe's constants might be fixed during its 'birth'.