I have a co-worker who's an over-enthusiastic muslim. I successfully avoided him for a while, but he finally catches me and rattles down Thomas of Aquinas' arguments for the existence of god. I point out to him that those are Thomas of Aquinas' arguments for the existence of god and that they're not as fresh as he believes them to be - being reasonably proud of myself for remembering the name Thomas of Aquinas. Then he comes at me with the fine-tuned universe argument. I explain how the anthropic principle does away with that, now wallowing in self-satisfaction for remembering the anthropic principle. He agrees that I have made a good point and we go on our way.
A couple months later he makes the same point, and I tell him we've had the exact same conversation a while back, and I write "the anthropic principle" on a piece of paper and tell him to look it up.
Yesterday I overheard him ask someone else about the fine-tuned universe. I don't think he's being deliberately obtuse, I think he's incapable of absorbing information that clashes with his core belief system, and to a pretty ridiculous degree at that.
It's interesting how that works... I don't know how that works, but it seems to be a very human thing to do.
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