Dawkins on arguments pointing to God

Dr Selensky, The problem is, strings and networks of components that are highly contingent (aperiodic and not constrained by mechanical necessity as opposed to crystal unit cells) can always be claimed as in principle accessible by blind chance driven processes. Chance can even take in certainty by necessity as a limiting case. I should also note that on limit cycles, the chaos issue is a side light that changes things, leading to strange attractors. Further to this, if a cycle is much more than 10^25 s it has mathematical rather than physical significance given the issue of heat death. Evident irreversibility of cosmological expansion is also relevant. In context, I do not seek absolute assurance in an empirical discipline, as its findings, on the logic of implication and inference to best explanation is inherently provisional. If Theory T then observations and predictions {O|P . . . } : T => {O|P . . . } cannot be reversed to hold {O|P . . . } => T, on pain of affirming the consequent. So, we hold that on O we have reason to infer high empirical reliability, and hold confidence that subject to contrary instance, T will be our explanatory model as we move the partition ever rightwards but recognise that P is inherently open-ended. That is, Science is a faith-venture, inescapably. Something Newton pointed out in Opticks Query 31. We have no good basis for seeking absolute certainty in empirical matters, and post Godel in strictly deductive logico- mathematical ones either. We must walk by faith and not by sight. Humbling, but then liberating. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, and we humbly but freely respond, there is liberty! In that context, we can freely examine Darwin's pond [or other more recent scenarios] and his implication that diffusive forces can be unwoven to synthesise a self replicating, metabolic encapsulated entity, a living cell. Since the 1950's, to that we can add, code based von Neumann kinematic self replication integrated with a highly complex interwoven circuit of metabolic reactions, involving use of code, algorithms, data in structures, editing, execution machinery, communication networks and control networks. It is not reasonable to hold that in an observed cosmos of 10^17 or so s, 10^80 or so atoms and chem interaction speeds of maybe 10^-12 to - 14 s for the relevant type of organic interactions [being generous], we can reasonably search relevant config spaces. So, once we see FSCO/I involving deeply isolated islands, starting at molecular levels, we can say the monkeys at keyboards/blind needle in haystack approach is not credible, leaving on the table the actually only observed cause of FSCO/I. Intelligently directed configuration, with a trillion member base of observations. Which fits in with, we are speaking of language here, meaning, and physical structures that are inherently contingent and are used to store information-rich organised patterns that work together in tightly integrated functionally specific frameworks. All of this at minimum means intelligent design sits at the table as of right, not sufferance. Once it does so, the reasonable man would bet on it. of course, many then would inject a quasi-infinite multiverse. Without empirical basis. But even so, on issues already discussed above, we are looking at a locally deeply isolated operating point for the physics of our cosmos. Just one point already gives us 2 parts in 10^24 to play with on a reasonable calc based on mass density at 1 ns post singularity. Even with many orders less, we are looking at extreme fine tuning, and there are many more constraints that send the same message. It is almost as though someone is signaling to us. The heavens declare . . . ? So, we see that it is a highly reasonable conclusion to see that the underlying statistical context of thermodynamics in Darwin's pond etc point to design as the most credible alternative to explain life. Design sits at the table as of right from the root of the tree of life, darwinist version, all the way up to us. In a cosmos that seems designed to support such cell based life. (The relative abundance of H, O, C and N blew me away when I saw them, as in here are the principal ingredients written into the physics as among the most abundant.) So, no we cannot claim a definitive demonstrative proof beyond all doubt, but we can show reasonable evidence that points with great cumulative force to design as best explanation of both cell based life and cosmos, in a context where the two are connected. We need to open up our Overton Window BATNA points and rethink in that light. As in Cosmos designer linked to design of life. In a world where we find ourselves to be responsibly free and rational on pain of surrendering sanity. The reaction to such a plea is itself instructive, but not in a pleasant way. KF kairosfocus

KF, I agree. I think it takes a leap of naturalistic faith. But those who are willing, for whatever reason, to take that step might say that a mysterious not-yet-discovered 'natural' process (or processes) of cell self-assembly may have not been ergodic or may have a huge Poincare cycle (orders of magnitudes larger than the life of the universe). An excuse? Yes. A fluke-of-the-gaps argument? Yes. But the fact is, there is no naturalistic counter-argument against their claim. And, consequently, there is no thermodynamics argument against that because thermodynamics is naturalistic. A better argument, in my estimation, is one at the level of system analysis, functionality, language processing, etc. as I already pointed out. These concepts are less naturalistic or at least can be thought of as less naturalistic. Ultimately, there are no fit-for-all arguments even including all sorts and flavours of ID. And there must not be. Everything is a matter of faith. Even science itself fundamentally rests on faith. Even natural reality itself is a matter of faith since there is no scientific way to tell if it exists independently of my inner 'self' or to tell if the regularity I observe is a genuine characteristic of natural reality and not my illusion. So faith is necessarily at the core of everyone's existence. But what kind of faith it is, makes all the difference. I am confident that there is no such process of cell self-assembly but thermodynamics just does not give us absolute assurance that it is so. In fact, science cannot give such absolute assurance. And I am happy with that situation. I would not want science to take the place of religion. That would be fundamentally wrong. Science is to have its own well deserved but very modest role. There are other things far more important than science. EugeneS

KF,

The actual empirical evidence is clear, that it is design that gives rise to such things, to the point where they are readily seen as signs of design.

That's an assertion that some make, anyway. Apparently there are some that disagree.

So, how do we — backed up by good observational evidence — spontaneously get to cell based life from such a start? KF

Yes, that is the question, isn't it? daveS

DS, the challenge is there to be addressed. The actual empirical evidence is clear, that it is design that gives rise to such things, to the point where they are readily seen as signs of design. But, when one has a dominant system, there will be a strong tendency to doubt the challenge. But it must needs be met: either show blind chance and mechanical necessity are credibly producers of functionally specific complex organisation and associated information in forms relevant to life etc, or else face the issues and the strong empirical association. The pivotal case is OOL, as the usual claimed ratchet, natural selection on reproduction, is off the table. Physics and Chemistry are all there are to appeal to in Darwin's pond or the like. So, how do we -- backed up by good observational evidence -- spontaneously get to cell based life from such a start? KF kairosfocus

Dr Selensky, yes, text is functional, and in being functional, it is integrated with meaning processing systems. But as a component it is particularly easy to quantify. Which brings for the the needle in haystack challenge as a key and too often neglected issue. It goes on, to where do we get codes, algorithms, processors etc. Same answer as where we get code. Which is LANGUAGE. KF kairosfocus

KF,

DS, I am not taking down a discipline, I am pointing to an issue on origin of information and information rich functionally specific organisation. That is in a context where stubborn facts and sometimes shockingly simple calculations have fairly frequently been revolutionary in the history of the sciences and of wider history of ideas.

Well, if it is true that the probability of abiogenesis occurring in our universe, given the time available, is less than the chance of a universe full of monkeys producing Hamlet, then I think you've killed abiogenesis dead. That is an epic takedown. Even I can understand that. It is a wonder that the actual scientists working on abiogenesis don't. daveS

KF, Any text without a processor is rubbish (as is the processor without data a pile of junk). Data is not passive in the context of a system for processing it as it activates the routines of its own processing on the receiver side. I think that is the major counter-argument to syntactic analysis of patterns in isolation from their processor. The concept of 'pattern' is inseparable from what this pattern is used for or what it represents in the whole system. It is not a configuration/pattern itself that must be analysed, but the configuration + something that processes it. Function is inherent to the entire system using patterns, not just to a string of symbols. The configuration/pattern itself may or may not be Shannon/Kolmogorov complex. As Jeffrey Shallit argued here many moons ago (and I am grateful to him for emphasizing it), a random text may contain more Shannon information than a meaningful text. It is not the appropriate level of arguing for ID, I feel (at least, in the narrow sense of ID in the context of biology, not in the sense of universal parameter tuning). Meaning is not a characteristic of a string of symbols but a 'derivative' of an entire system of {data+processor}. A signal from a star is only interpreted as data by a receiving system. Outside of the system processing it (and reacting to it), it is no information at all (in the genuine sense of the word 'information'). So information as a concept is only meaningful in the context of the system. Shannon information (and, consequently, thermodynamics), in contrast, does not reflect meaning at all. It is the inseparability of data and processor that is so striking in the organization of the cell or in human and animal communication. Biology is inherently algorithmic/linguistic. EugeneS

DaveS, "This Poincare cycle is quite an interesting concept." Yes, indeed. EugeneS

KF, "The Russian perspective and differing foci often threw a very useful cross-light." I agree. EugeneS

PPS: Philip Johnson's reply:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence.

[--> notice, the power of an undisclosed, question-begging, controlling assumption . . . often put up as if it were a mere reasonable methodological constraint; emphasis added. Let us note how Rational Wiki, so-called, presents it:

"Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses."

Of course, this ideological imposition on science that subverts it from freely seeking the empirically, observationally anchored truth about our world pivots on the deception of side-stepping the obvious fact since Plato in The Laws Bk X, that there is a second, readily empirically testable and observable alternative to "natural vs [the suspect] supernatural." Namely, blind chance and/or mechanical necessity [= the natural] vs the ART-ificial, the latter acting by evident intelligently directed configuration. [Cf Plantinga's reply here and here.] And as for the god of the gaps canard, the issue is, inference to best explanation across competing live option candidates. If chance and necessity is a candidate, so is intelligence acting by art through design. And if the latter is twisted into a caricature god of the gaps strawman, then locked out, huge questions are being oh so conveniently begged.]

That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

--> The second level captcha popped back up and is broken kairosfocus

PS: As for ideological influence, Lewontin:

. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads [==> as in, "we" have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,

[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]

and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth

[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]

. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident

[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]

that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]

kairosfocus

DS, I am not taking down a discipline, I am pointing to an issue on origin of information and information rich functionally specific organisation. That is in a context where stubborn facts and sometimes shockingly simple calculations have fairly frequently been revolutionary in the history of the sciences and of wider history of ideas. The little back-tracking loop in Mars' orbit is a classic, as is the threshold wavelength effect with the photoeffect, not to mention the random dance of Brownian motion. Then there was that puzzling background noise in Microwave sky observations now discussed as 2.7 K Blackbody temperature cosmological background. Likewise, who would have thought combining a more or less linear model of consumption function with Y = x [the Keynesian Cross] and with a categorising of expenditures that is in effect an accounting move: Y = C + I + G + NX, would have potentially revolutionary effect? The way E Latin America fits in with W Africa in shape? And so forth. No I do not claim to be a revolutionary, but simply that there is something to be accounted for and that it brings issues to the table that we need to take design as a serious option. Let us remember those who put the matter on the table:

WICKEN, 1979: ‘Organized’ systems are to be carefully distinguished from ‘ordered’ systems. Neither kind of system is ‘random,’ but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms [i.e. “simple” force laws acting on objects starting from arbitrary and common- place initial conditions] and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an [originally . . . ] external ‘wiring diagram’ with a high information content . . . Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic ‘order.’ [“The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 77 (April 1979): p. 353, of pp. 349-65.] ORGEL, 1973: . . . In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity . . . . [HT, Mung, fr. p. 190 & 196:] These vague idea can be made more precise by introducing the idea of information. Roughly speaking, the information content of a structure is the minimum number of instructions needed to specify the structure. [--> this is of course equivalent to the string of yes/no questions required to specify the relevant "wiring diagram" for the set of functional states, T, in the much larger space of possible clumped or scattered configurations, W, as Dembski would go on to define in NFL in 2002, also cf here, here and here (with here on self-moved agents as designing causes).] One can see intuitively that many instructions are needed to specify a complex structure. [--> so if the q's to be answered are Y/N, the chain length is an information measure that indicates complexity in bits . . . ] On the other hand a simple repeating structure can be specified in rather few instructions. [--> do once and repeat over and over in a loop . . . ] Complex but random structures, by definition, need hardly be specified at all . . . . Paley was right to emphasize the need for special explanations of the existence of objects with high information content, for they cannot be formed in nonevolutionary, inorganic processes. [The Origins of Life (John Wiley, 1973), p. 189, p. 190, p. 196.]

KF kairosfocus

Well it's certainly interesting that this entire discipline can be taken down with such an elementary calculation. daveS

DS, I do not expect a verbal statement of agreement. The space for 1,000 bits is 1.07*10^301. That for 200 k bits is 9.98 *10^60,205; that's for the low end on a first genome. The first search is beyond cosmos resources, I do not even know what to suggest as a yardstick for the second. As for searching for a golden search, a search being a subset the space of searches on a set of cardinality C is of cardinality 2^C which is exponentially harder. In short, there is a serious blind search challenge and the hoped for solutions are in serious trouble. KF kairosfocus

KF,

DS, the challenges of abiogenesis are a LOT harder than the toy examples used to set a threshold.

By this do you mean you know that abiogenesis is much more unlikely than the aforementioned monkeys producing a complete version of Hamlet? Do the abiogenesis researchers agree?

If there were good, empirically well warranted solutions, they would be trumpeted from the roof tops. KF

Obviously. My understanding is that the problem is nowhere near solved. daveS

DS, the challenges of abiogenesis are a LOT harder than the toy examples used to set a threshold. Genomes at 2 bits/base run easily to 100 - 1,000 kbases for first cell based life. If there were good, empirically well warranted solutions, they would be trumpeted from the roof tops. KF kairosfocus

KF,

DS, how does this relate to the stochastic processes of a pond full of chemicals and the high contingency of AA and D/RNA chains?

I don't know much about the state of abiogenesis research, but I believe these scientists would dispute that simplistic probability calculations involving monkeys and typewriters have much to do with their work. Have you ever corresponded with any of them? If so, what did they think of your monkeys/typewriters analogy? daveS

DS, how does this relate to the stochastic processes of a pond full of chemicals and the high contingency of AA and D/RNA chains? (Which are highly informational string structures: *-*-*- . . . _*) How, on adequate empirical observation do you then get to OOL in Darwin's pond or the like if intelligence is off the table; leaving blind chance and/or mechanical necessity in light of statistical issues? (Which is just where the monkeys at keyboards/ blind haystack search challenge comes from. KF kairosfocus

KF,

But I have little doubt that many will insist on preferring blind monkeys pounding at keyboards or blind needle in haystack searches.

I suspect that most evos don't in fact prefer monkeys at keyboards over intelligent design. Rather, they believe that monkeys at keyboards is not a realistic model of the origin of life. These researchers are not stupid, and I think you exaggerate the extent to which they are controlled by ideology. daveS

Dr Selensky, following up. One of the key thoughts I had was when I saw Wicken's wiring diagram remark. That led to, nodes and arcs and description languages reduced to in principle reasonably minimal y/n q chains that create info metrics in a context of functionally specific configurations. AutoCAD etc do much the same. Mandl's 2-state paramagnetic substance then gave focus to the string of coins used by LK Nash in his stat thermod intro. A statistical system that reflects thermodynamics and bridges to binary info storage. With that in hand, we can reckon on strings as a baseline data structure used to compose more complex ones. Also, analogue is readily converted to digital, and the converse. So analysis on strings is without loss of generality, WLOG. In that context we can cut down phase space to look at strings forming a linear configuration space with binary elements. In the space for 500 bits or that for 1,000 bits from 000 . . . 0 to 111 . . . 1, all possible strings of said length can be found. Including, coded algorithms expressed in data structures and the corresponding node arc descriptions for the effecting machinery. But searching the former blindly is a supertask for sol system scale resources and the latter is a supertask for observed cosmos scope resources. The blind, needle in haystack search challenge. Or monkeys at keyboards challenge. As objectors commonly forget, here is wiki on random document generation per monkeys at keyboards:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor for an abstract device that produces an endless random sequence of letters and symbols. One of the earliest instances of the use of the "monkey metaphor" is that of French mathematician Émile Borel in 1913,[1] but the first instance may be even earlier. The relevance of the theorem is questionable—the probability of a universe full of monkeys typing a complete work such as Shakespeare's Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but technically not zero). It should also be noted that real monkeys do not produce uniformly random output, which means that an actual monkey hitting keys for an infinite amount of time has no statistical certainty of ever producing any given text. Variants of the theorem include multiple and even infinitely many typists, and the target text varies between an entire library and a single sentence. The history of these statements can be traced back to Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption and Cicero's De natura deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), through Blaise Pascal and Jonathan Swift, and finally to modern statements with their iconic simians and typewriters. In the early 20th century, Émile Borel and Arthur Eddington used the theorem to illustrate the timescales implicit in the foundations of statistical mechanics . . . . The theorem concerns a thought experiment which cannot be fully carried out in practice, since it is predicted to require prohibitive amounts of time and resources. Nonetheless, it has inspired efforts in finite random text generation. One computer program run by Dan Oliver of Scottsdale, Arizona, according to an article in The New Yorker, came up with a result on August 4, 2004: After the group had worked for 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey-years, one of the "monkeys" typed, "VALENTINE. Cease toIdor:eFLP0FRjWK78aXzVOwm)-‘;8.t" The first 19 letters of this sequence can be found in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". Other teams have reproduced 18 characters from "Timon of Athens", 17 from "Troilus and Cressida", and 16 from "Richard II".[24] A website entitled The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator, launched on July 1, 2003, contained a Java applet that simulates a large population of monkeys typing randomly, with the stated intention of seeing how long it takes the virtual monkeys to produce a complete Shakespearean play from beginning to end. For example, it produced this partial line from Henry IV, Part 2, reporting that it took "2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years" to reach 24 matching characters: RUMOUR. Open your ears; 9r"5j5&?OWTY Z0d...

500 bits is about 72 ASCII characters and 1,000 about 143. In short, the evidence underscores the point. In that context, blind chance and/or mechanical necessity are not credible means to produce what we see. What makes far better sense at least outside the materialist cave of ideological shadow shows, is intelligently directed configuration. The known source of language, codes, algorithms, meaningful designs and effecting technology. But I have little doubt that many will insist on preferring blind monkeys pounding at keyboards or blind needle in haystack searches. The stat mech connexion is on the config space and blind evolution of states, which grounds thermodynamics. Again the paramagnetic analogue of 1,000 coins in a string is a good toy example to use to drive home the point. A string of what 0.1 nm width and 100 nm length using 1 Angstrom as yardstick for atom size . . . a dead but useful unit. Yes we need to point out what we are dealing with for life. When it comes to physics, the example above of 2 parts in 10^24 on mass density of the cosmos at 1 ns, brings out what is meant by fine tuning. KF kairosfocus

EugeneS, Sorry for misspelling your name earlier. Thanks for the further details. This Poincare cycle is quite an interesting concept. daveS

Dr Selensky, I must have 20 - 30 Mir books on math, phys and tech, including a desktop mini hand book each for Math and Physics; one of my fav A level books is the 2 vol by Yavorsky and Pinsky, I liked Zeldovich's Math primer and was pleased to then learn of his biography of starting out as in effect a bright janitor. I first took Mir seriously after running into solid books in my uni's sci library. One of my lecturers also recommended them. The problem always was trying to order books, officially or personally. The Russian perspective and differing foci often threw a very useful cross-light. For instance, the study on multi state digital systems has been very stimulating. And I was delighted to see the Russian RPN calculators, being an addict of HP. BTW are there good emulators online? KF kairosfocus

DaveS, Yes. I think you got my idea. As regards the theorem of Poincare-Zermelo, it illustrates KF's statistical points. My limited understanding of it is that the Poincare cycle for a suitable system (whose properties are given by the theorem) is considerably greater than the expected time necessary for it to return from an observed macroscopic state to its initial equilibrium state (an estimate due to M. Smoluchowski, 1915). I hazard a guess it means that the Poincare cycle for the entire universe (if the theorem is applicable) is orders of magnitude greater than the time from now to the thermodynamic death of the universe. That is the scale of things if we want to talk about probabilities of life. But that again does not defeat the invincible serendipity (invincible at the thermodynamic level). The serendipity disappears into thin air when we go up a level from physicality to the algorithmic organization of life. EugeneS

KF, I see. I did not know that. Anyway, I made a mental note. If I encounter it, I will let you know (if I don't forget, of course). EugeneS

Dr Selensky, My familiarity with Mir for 30 odd years was that they made over into English certain key Russian texts, especially for India but then as part of the cold war era these were made available worldwide. Often through the local Communist party bookshop. I found them very good on mathematics, technical subjects and physics, my areas of interest. The propaganda stuff, I paid no attention to, though somewhere I once picked up a copy of the 1977 was it USSR constitution. KF kairosfocus

KF, I had a second look. My bad, these are catalogues of books translated into Russian, not from Russian. So I really don't know how to help you. My has always been that the MIR publishers always did it into Russian from other languages. EugeneS

Dr Selensky, thanks. I actually have vols 1 and 3, the local communist party bookshop had somehow sold vol 2 back when. I suspect the people who have Mir's stuff on technical subjects could make a substantial sum by digitising and selling the digitised books on Amazon or the like. General Physics, for one is -- I only recently learned -- a secret weapon for a lot of people prepping for initial graduate [record? is it?] level physics exams in the US. India has his problems book in current publication. KF PS: I agree most reasonable people will sit up and take notice when they see that we are looking at algorithms with coded data in definable structures, as well as wiring diagram based obviously overwhelmingly specific and complex functional networks implemented with molecular nanotech we can only dream about. But the problem is we are living in a shadow show world here, and it is necessary to blow up the notion that enough monkeys in 200 mn yrs will make life through the Darwin ratchet even in the pre life matrix. As a clue, look at how hotly many cry quote mining and Gish gallop when one points out the problem of systematic gaps,suddenness of appearance and stasis of forms in the fossil record -- looking for anything to hang a charge of dishonesty on, never mind how insubstantial the hook . . . win by any and all means on this one seems to be the attitude. What Gould called the trade secret of paleontology. (My take is here.) kairosfocus

Mung, You read through the lines :) EugeneS

KF, Thanks. I just want to understand what others have to say when they are not necessarily wilfully blind. Sometimes their arguments are worth considering and they can help make more accurate my own arguments. I agree there is a huge opposition to even the idea of an active and caring God at the centre of everything but there are others groping in the dark in Plato's cave who could benefit from a discussion (and sometimes provide a valuable input for us). As regards the books, I did a quick search and I found a webpage with catalogues (in zipped dejavu format) of all book titles translated from Russian by MIR (at least within the periods specified). You could have a look (I did not try to open those files, maybe the catalogues are themselves in Russian) to find out whether translations of the books you want were done at all. http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/M/Mir/_Mir.html You could liaise with them. I couldn't give you any more clues as to whether there are translations of the books you are after, I am afraid. EugeneS

DS, I am not using irreducibly complex in that sense, but in another. Namely, no covering formalism based on a finite, coherent, known cluster of axioms will cover Mathematics -- including any particular version of set theory. We know in part, trust in part and analyse in part . . . KF kairosfocus

PS: In the sense of Behe, that is. I agree that one needs to be conservative. daveS

Hmm. I'm not sure the term "irreducibly complex" fits here. daveS

DS, mathematics, post Godel, is irreducibly complex as no set of coherent and complete, or just known coherent axioms can be constructed for a reasonably complex system. One therefore has to be very conservative in claims. I am confident of the natural numbers and that an active mind can build structures and quantities on them such as the continuum and the like. KF kairosfocus

KF,

DS, I think Lloyd is not necessary, he wants to convert the cosmos including energy into processors. Try David Abel with his workmanlike 2009 calc on plausibility bounds: http://www.tbiomed.com/content/6/1/27 KF

Thanks, I'll take a look. Tbh, I've never been able to make heads or tails of Abel's stuff. The Lloyd paper seems quite accessible, however.

PS: Nowhere do I imply that every mathematical entity is a necessary being, I simply showed that the natural numbers are on a simple conceptual process of successive instantiation, though in fact all are present at once.

Well, if it has been established that each natural number (and the set of natural numbers) are all necessary beings, where do we stop? My understanding is that all of mathematics can be reduced to set theory. I don't know why, assuming your argument shows that 2 is a necessary being, we can't also say that universal sets are necessary beings. daveS

EugenS, Thanks for the information. I can't read Russian, but I will look at the recurrence paradox paper. The algorithmic approach you describe does seem a little more to the point to me, but maybe it's just a matter of preference to me. daveS

What is required for a minimal complete set of instructions to appear? Does it require a processor that must parse and understand those instructions? Speaking of David Abel... Primordial Prescription: The Most Plaguing Problem of Life Origin Science Mung

DS, I think Lloyd is not necessary, he wants to convert the cosmos including energy into processors. Try David Abel with his workmanlike 2009 calc on plausibility bounds: http://www.tbiomed.com/content/6/1/27 KF PS: Nowhere do I imply that every mathematical entity is a necessary being, I simply showed that the natural numbers are on a simple conceptual process of successive instantiation, though in fact all are present at once. From these we can construct all sorts of other entities and work out structural, logical consequences for what are elaborate mental models. Feed in some fire into the eqns and you get physics. That goes to the intelligible reality challenge raised above. Before I took up Hume and Kant. kairosfocus

Dr Selensky I agree, algorithms etc are semantic and meaningful, language based. However, we deal with those who doubt the reality of minds, and who used to routinely cite the apocryphal story of monkeys at keyboards to say in effect evantually random typing pays off as a string is a string is a string and the semantic ones are reachable in the config space. My point is, were every atom a monkey with the equivalent of a 1,000 coins to toss every pico second or 100 times that, they could not search any reasonable fraction of the space of possibilities. So, we see that there MUST be another force at work to account for text and for the node-arc wiring diagrams of FSCO/I. Intelligence directing configurations on intent, as is so familiar. Design. But there is none so blind as one full of Plato's cave shadow shows with BATNA walls pushed here and there by spinmeisters. KF PS: Anywhere to get English for that book? While I am at it is there any way to get some of the old MIR books in English? (Went out of business 2009) E.g. I want vol 2 of Savelyev's General Physics. kairosfocus

DaveS, "I mean if there are calculations showing that 10^17 seconds is far too short a time, what do they show the minimum time required would be?" Can I suggest as an upper bound an analysis akin to Poincare and Zermelo recurrence paradox. http://goo.gl/3MmWxg On a different note, your question is a good illustration of why the kind of statistical calculations KF presents are missing the point, IMO. The point of all biology is that it is algorithmic, not just something very improbable/implausible. In fact, I am reading now a very interesting old book by two Russian mathematicians Uspensky and Semenov: "The theory of algorithms: basic discoveries and applications" (1987). They are followers of Kolmogorov from what I can tell. http://goo.gl/AojDzl (for those who can read in Russian :) ) In the preface they state that one of the distinguishing features of algorithms as a mathematical object, is that they are semantically loaded. One of the key properties of an algorithm is that it has meaning. So syntactically (that is, with a maximum of abstraction from semantics), meaning is a still recognised as a key feature of an algorithm. This was realized as early as in 1987. So the whole thrust of ID, in my humble estimation, is not in statistics but in that biology is algorithmic and consequently is semantically loaded. The key question therefore is not 'what is the max time for something to self-assemble?', but 'where is the source of the first set of instructions for the cell to execute a complete metabolic/replication integrated cycle?' Can this be done by fluke, frozen accident or such like? What is required for a minimal complete set of instructions to appear? Does it require a processor that must parse and understand those instructions? Does the minimal complete set of instructions for the cell to sustain and reproduce reduce to the mechanical laws of particle motion? Does it reduce to chemistry? Or does it require intelligence to set up? Can we glean possible answers from our own human technology? And what does our experience suggest in this regard? EugeneS

KF, I don't have an answer to your post #68. I will take a look at the Seth Lloyd paper & further discussion, but I expect it will take me some time. You are also welcome to consider whether every mathematical object we can dream up is in fact a necessary being, as your argument appears to imply. daveS

F/N: F H Bradley and Hugo Maynell help us tame the tendencies of thought let loose by Hume and given much weight by Kant. (This is what energises an extreme nominalism that tends to dismiss inconvenient explanatory constructs not given imprimatur of methodological naturalism driven by a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism.) First, Maynell in his Hume, Kant and Rational Theism. I quote in extenso to help us see what we have been led not to see and to invite reading in depth of one of those sleeper papers in phil that we should all find useful:

It is very commonly held that there are no sound arguments for the existence of God . . . . In claiming that there are no such arguments, those who reject faith in God as irrational, and those who would cling to faith in spite of reason, commonly appeal to the authority of David Hume and Immanuel Kant.[1] In what follows, I shall try to show that the case made by these philosophers against some at least of the traditional arguments for the existence of God can be refuted. By "rational theism," I shall mean the view that there are sound arguments for the existence of God, which do not either overtly or surreptitiously assume what they set out to establish. Now it is often stated or presupposed that the aspersions by Hume and Kant on rational theism have no connection with those implications of their thought which are generally rejected out of hand, like Hume's scepticism,[2] and Kant's confining of human knowledge to a merely seeming world of "phenomena" as opposed to the real world of "things in themselves." I shall try to show that such an assumption is quite mistaken. Science and common sense both presuppose that by means of our experience we can get to know about a world which exists, and largely is as it is, prior to and independently of our human existence, let alone our enjoyment of the relevant experience. For example, it was not until the late eighteenth century that William Herschel, by making the relevant observations and using his intelligence, discovered the planet called Uranus. But there was such a planet long before the discovery was made . . . . There is a great truth which Plato discovered, with some assistance from the Pythagoreans; this is, that there is a real intelligible world which underlies the sensible world of our experience and which we discover by asking questions about that sensible world.[3] This truth is at once presupposed and copiously illustrated by science; it is parodied by the mechanistic materialism which some suppose to be the metaphysical implication of science.[4] Now there is a crucial division in thought about the world, and one fraught with consequences, between those who maintain that the intelligible aspect of reality apparently discovered by Plato is intrinsic to it, and those who are convinced it is a mere subjective device evolved by human beings for describing or controlling it . . . . According to Hume, all human knowledge is based on and confined to "impressions" of experience and "ideas" which are faint copies of these . . . . But Hume's demonstration that, while causality is utterly crucial to our understanding of the world, a consistent empiricism[10] cannot justify belief in causality,[11] is a tribute to his genius and an indication of his permanent importance for philosophy. It was Hume's failure (on either interpretation of the bearing of his thought) to justify causal reasoning which particularly impressed Kant; and he brought about his so-called "Copernican revolution" in philosophy largely to meet the difficulty. It was not the case, as previous philosophers had thought, that our minds must or could conform to a world existing prior to and independently of themselves; on the contrary, the world so far as we can know it must conform to our minds.[12] The significance of Hume, as Kant saw it, was that he had shown that the former route was impossible to follow . . . The only solution to these problems, as Kant saw it, was that our minds impose the causal connection upon events, rather than, as earlier philosophers had supposed, somehow reflecting a real causal relation which obtains between events prior to and independently of the apprehension of them by our minds. Kant saw that causality is not the only aspect of the world for which the problem arises. The "categories" (to use his own term) of thing and property, necessity and contingency, unity and plurality, and so on, are also imposed by the mind upon phenomena.[14] Even space and time are rather modes of our apprehension of things, than aspects of things as they really are.[15] What can we say, then, of "things in themselves," or things prior to and independently of the apprehension of them by our senses and our minds? All we can say of them is that they do somehow give rise to the phenomenal world by impinging on our subjectivity;[16] we are necessarily and forever debarred from real knowledge of them . . . . The traditional arguments for God's existence all make, from Kant's point of view, what is fundamentally the same mistake; they assume that the intelligible structure or framework which the human mind imposes upon things, in the course of gaining knowledge of them, belongs to things prior to and independently of human knowledge. Those who try to argue for the existence of God on the usual traditional types of ground are like people who gaze on the heavens through a telescope, and confuse what is in fact a piece of dust within the telescope with a star or a planet. For example, to argue that a God must exist as cause of the world, as very many have tried to do, is to overlook the fact that causality is one of the categories and so inapplicable to things in themselves, and furthermore that it is to be applied within the world of phenomena, rather than to the world as a whole. [--> F H Bradley, cf. below, has somewhat to say to this "little error at the beginning"] But the believer in God should by no means be discouraged by this; Kant regarded himself as destroying the pretensions of knowledge in order to make room for faith [--> thus enters a redefinition of faith that has led to much mischief] . . . . But it is a presupposition both of common sense, and of science as usually understood, that a real material world exists and is as it is prior to and independently of the human mind at least, and that the human mind can come to know about this independently existing world. There were rocks, trees, and rivers before human beings arrived on the scene to perceive them, and there were hydrogen and oxygen, electrons and protons, before scientists first theorized to the effect that there were . . . . If one accepts the strength of the case which the idealists developed by making Kant's philosophy self-consistent, that the material world is derivative from mind; but also admits that the world exists and is as science progressively discovers it to be, prior to and independently of the human mind; then one is driven to the conclusion that the world depends on a mind or minds which are other than the human. The idealists argue persuasively that the material universe is dependent on mind; their opponents rightly insist in effect that it is absurd to suppose that the mind or minds it depends on are human. That the world exists and develops on the basis of a single self-consistent set of laws seems to suggest that theism is a more rational option than polytheism . . . . A modification of empiricism which may be felt to meet these objections is this. While we can properly be said sometimes to know what is not and cannot be the direct object of our experience, we can be said to know only what commends itself as the best explanation of our experience. While no-one has ever seen a positron, very many have seen experimental results of which the best available explanation is that there are such entities. I cannot perceive another's feelings of anger or boredom; but I can certainly perceive evidence in her attitude or speech or gestures of which the best explanation is that she is bored. No-one can now perceive the death of Abraham Lincoln by shooting; but they can perceive a vast amount of evidence, in records surviving from that time, which can hardly be explained except on the assumption that he did die in such a manner. However, if the basic principles of empiricism are expanded to take account of such awkward cases in the way I have just described, it is by no means clear that they any longer rule out rational theism. For it may be insisted that the existence of something like God is needed to account for a very general fact which is a matter of experience in a wide sense-that the universe is intelligible. Alternative explanations, or claims that no explanation is needed, may well be held to be less satisfactory . . . . the points raised by Hume and Darwin in this connection [teleological reasoning] are simply not relevant to the argument that I have been setting forward, which infers creative intelligence from the intelligibility of the world, not design from its order . . . . I conclude by summing up the argument which I have put forward in this article. Plato discovered the real intelligible world which lies behind the merely sensible world, and which (as Aristotle emphasized after him) is to be found by inquiry into the sensible world. The whole subsequent development of science is a massive vindication of this discovery. Plato's Christian successors soon caught on to the fact that one intelligent will, which conceives and intends it rather as human beings conceive and intend their own actions and products, is ultimately the only satisfactory explanation for the existence and nature of such an intelligible world. Hume, as a consistent empiricist, in effect denied the world's intelligibility, and his account of knowledge, which has proved a fruitful source of atheism, leads just as ineluctably to scepticism. Kant, who was impressed by the sceptical conclusions which followed from Hume's premisses, strongly reasserted the intelligibility of the world as apprehended both by common sense and by science; but wrongly inferred that, since such apprehension plainly involves mental creativity, the world thus apprehended must be a merely seeming world of appearances dependent on human minds, and not, as would be held by all who are not subjective idealists, existing and being as it is largely prior to and independently of those minds.[34] The right conclusion is (following the idealists, and Kant's objections to Hume) that the world shows signs of mental creativity, but (following common sense and materialist objections to idealism) that it is absurd to say that this mental creativity is human. The creativity is consequently to be attributed to a Mind (or minds)[35] other than the human.

F H Bradley is no less stinging for all his gentle tone, as he opens his argument in his 1897 2nd edn of Appearance and Reality:

We may agree, perhaps, to understand by metaphysics an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance, or the study of first principles or ultimate truths, or again the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole. Any such pursuit will encounter a number of objections. It will have to hear that the knowledge which it desires to obtain is impossible altogether ; or, if possible in some degree, is yet practically useless ; or that, at all events, we can want nothing beyond the old philo-sophies . . . . To say the reality is such that our knowledge cannot reach it, is a claim to know reality ; to urge that our know-ledge is of a kind which must fail to transcend appearance, itself implies that transcendence. For, if we had no idea of a beyond, we should assuredly not know how to talk about failure or success. And the test, by which we distinguish them, must ob-viously be some acquaintance with the nature of the goal. Nay, the would-be sceptic, who presses on us the contradictions of our thoughts, himself asserts dogmatically. For these contradictions might be ultimate and absolute truth, if the nature of the reality were not known to be otherwise.

In short, there are fairly serious short-comings in Hume's arguments, and in Kant's ugly gulch between the inner world of phenomena and the outer noumenal one of things in themselves as they actually are. In that context, it is entirely in order to essay on the project of a reasonable faith, grounding a worldview on a set of first plausibles (our faith-point) that on comparative difficulties will come out as a superior understanding or explanation i/l/o factual adequacy, coherence and balanced explanatory power. Here, it is crucial to recognise that our minds do recognise and discern an at least partly intelligible ordering of the world, tot he point where even random statistical phenomena often follow orderly and stable patterns of probability. One of those points is, we find it reasonable on noticing some thing, why is it so (or possible or not so), to ask: why, what is the sufficient or at least adequate explanatory reason for this? And if someone would object, the answer is patent: simply ask and pursue the inquiry. The weak form of the principle of sufficient reason just given is enough. Granting, that we are responsibly free rational beings who find ourselves in a world that on track record is at least partially and powerfully intelligible. An intelligibility antecedent to our own thinking or experiencing and inquiring. That already puts mind on the table as a serious candidate explanation for the grand structure of the world. (Blend in our being under moral government, and that points to a mind that is good and properly stands as the IS that grounds OUGHT, at world root level. For sure, Hume's guillotine argument on being "surpriz'd" to see is-is then suddenly is-ought, can only be comprehensively answered if the roots of existence and those of responsible, rationally free intelligence are one and the same.) We have no good reason to lock ourselves into Kant's version of Plato's cave; surely the diffused light from the outer world streams in to invite us to ponder whether something is there beyond the shadow shows in our heads or in our communities on our screens and in the Overton Window conventional wisdom hemmed in by various "don't go there or else" BATNA points. I therefore find the project of rational, ethical theism to be a reasonable and responsible endeavour. In that light, on pondering the issue of being, I find that we can distinguish between impossible and possible beings, and of the latter, those that are contingent and those that are necessary due to being embedded in the framework required for any given possible world to exist at all. (For instance, I find that two-ness [thus the abstract entity, the number two] must exist is undeniably so and that it is central to any concept of distinct identity, as say a bright red ball on a table effects a world partition, W = {A|~A}, and such then entails the immediate corollaries that A is not in the same sense and circumstances ~A also, and that any entity x will be -- per dichotomy of identity -- A or ~ A but not both and not neither. Without this, the whole project of rationality collapses, and r cannot communicate to discuss it. Just think: I vs ~I and T vs ~T just to get to the word "it." In short we here look at core aspects of the intelligibility of the world.) Once such is seen, we can also see that nothing, true non-being is by contrast with being, and that many things follow from there being something -- a world -- rather than nothing, not a world. For, pondering on say a fire leads to the immediate recognistion of enabling, on/off causal factors such as oxidiser, fuel, heat and a chain reaction [Halon extinguishers fight the chain]. Contingent beings depend for the support of these factors, and the sufficient cluster of factors for a given instance of a fire must include at least its on/off enabling factors. Contingent beings then will be in some possible sets of world circumstances, and not under others. They exist in some possible worlds and not in others. Impossible beings will not exist in any possible world, as there will be contradictions in core characteristics so they beings cannot be instantiated at all. Classically, the square circle. Trying to be squarish or trying to be circular are in mutual opposition and cannot be resolved in an actual object. The necessity of two-ness then points to another class of beings: necessary beings, which must be in any possible world, as such are connected to the framework for a world to exist. Once any reality other than utter nothingness exists [and surely that is the case], such will be there, do not have a beginning and cannot cease. Obviously, one cannot simply arbitrarily assert that X is a necessary being, there are basic criteria that have to be met for something to be a serious candidate. For instance, nothing made up by bringing together separate parts and assembly or interaction can be necessary. Bye bye Flying Spaghetti Monster. Nor can something that has a beginning at a finitely remote point or which can cease from being as there are on/off enabling factors that can be off, more generally. Similarly, utter nothingness is not a good candidate, as it is non-being. Going further, were there ever once utter nothing, as non-being has no causal powers [that is a postulate that commends itself on grounds of there being nothing to exert effects], such would forever obtain. But, a world is, indeed a world in which we find ourselves as responsibly free and rational beings sitting here to have a discussion that presumes we are free to follow facts and logic and are responsible to seek a true understanding: one that -- per Aristotle's apt summary in Metaphysics 1011b -- says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not. God -- by contrast with spaghetti monsters and utter nothingness -- is a serious candidate, as the inherently good creator, a maximally great and necessary being at the root of reality. This then leads to the implication of necessity of being, that such a serious candidate will either be impossible as a square circle is impossible, or else actual. (And no atheist has ever properly shown God is impossible of being, indeed there is every good reason to think him possible. Start from the millions whose lives have been transformed for the good by him, then ponder the astonishingly intelligible world without and our own minds, hearts and consciences within.) Where, with the sort of thought that traces to Hume and Kant at least held in check, it is at minimum not unreasonable to see God as the necessary being root of reality. Indeed, to identify him as the Mind behind reality, the necessary being cause that is its root -- source and sustainer, the governor who is the IS who grounds OUGHT as inherently good. Now, I do not demand assent to God as real, but do beg leave to point out that if you would dismiss him, you have at least some responsibility to show that God is credibly impossible as a being, and to show a good ground for the OUGHT that governs us, apart from might and manipulation filtered through survival of the fittest or the like, make 'truth' and 'right' etc. In closing for the moment, I think the anonymous author of the Ep Heb (likely Apollos or possibly Barnabas) has somewhat to say to us:

Heb 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 For by it the people of old received their commendation. 3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible . . . . 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. [ESV]

So now, whose report will we believe, and why? KF kairosfocus

KF, Thanks, I'll look at your calculation in #68 this evening. Gotta run now. Are universal sets necessary beings? daveS

DS, take 10^80 atoms as observers. !0^12 - 14 observations of the state of 1,000 coins/s ot via Mandle a string of 2-state paramagnetic atoms in a weak aligning field so parallel or antiparallel. Run for 10^17 s. Compare to the 1.07*10^301 possibilities for 1,000 bits. 125 bytes. On rough calcs that's 1 straw to a haystack that dwarfs the observed cosmos. For a minimal life form just genome is 100 - 1,000 kbases. For each additional bit the config space doubles. We need proteins, cell wall organelles etc all organised and effecting the metabolic system of reactions, etc etc. Able to reproduce on an embedded self replication facility, Codes and comms systems, control systems, etc. Cosmos scale resources applied to an exceedingly generous pond etc, will not be enough to begin to scratch the surface of the blind search required. And of course chaining AAs and bases is highly contingent. KF PS you have enough to see why numbers will be present in any world. kairosfocus

KF,

DS, the time line since the big bang is 13.7 BY, 10^17s is (to order of magnitude) the same, in seconds.

Yes, I noticed that. I'm asking why it is a lower bound for the time required until OOL.

Second, I simply lay out that numbers will be present in any possible world as abstract entities, by starting with the set that collects nothing, and proceeding to create a successive collection that we can identify as N, the natural numbers.

And this is usually done using the restricted comprehension and pairing axioms in ZFC. If this is a valid move, then I should be able to use any axiom systems, including those that admit a universal set, no? And hence any object constructed by such means, including a universal set, must be a necessary being. daveS

DS, the time line since the big bang is 13.7 BY, 10^17s is (to order of magnitude) the same, in seconds. Whip out a calculator and do the calc, no need to play the oh is it in peer reviewed literature game -- here, not even a letter or a a paper but a Monograph . . . something that would be book length! Second, I simply lay out that numbers will be present in any possible world as abstract entities, by starting with the set that collects nothing, and proceeding to create a successive collection that we can identify as N, the natural numbers. I then proceeded to show how 2 + 3 = 5 will be self evidently and undeniably, necessarily so in any possible world as a consequence. From this, we see the reality of necessary beings by simple demonstration. And, we learn something about the character of such: they will be embedded in the framework for a world to exist, that is how we cannot have a world W without such necessary beings. I need not expound on grand elaborations and debates in Mathematics to do that. Again, an irrelevancy to be set aside. What is relevant, is that God is a candidate necessary being, and is a serious one, not something like the parody of putting up a flying spaghetti monster. Such a serious candidate will either be impossible in the way something like a square circle is -- its core attributes stand in mutual contradiction -- or else it will be actual. All this, in the context where we do want to find a NB at reality's root. For, first, stepwise traversal of an infinity of discrete finite causes is absurd (e.g. we cannot count up to or down from infinity one step at a time, we point to it or we propose a set that delivers the whole at once), and were there ever an utter non-being -- a true nothing -- as such has no causal capacity, that is what would forever obtain. If something now is, something always was. Something not part of the sort of stepwise sequence we just saw. 100 year ago, the physical cosmos as a whole in some form was hoped to be that, i.e. the steady state model. But that has long since collapsed and we now see the big bang at a finitely remote start point driving a dynamic causal succession down to today. Finitely remote beginning, credibly, on simple back projection of widely observed expansion, dating us to 14 BYA or thereabouts. Stellar patterns are also consistent with that, starting with branch from main sequence in globular clusters. Thus, contingent, as the nature of atomic matter itself would lead us to more or less expect. Crying out for a begin-ner. Even in the face of a multiverse proposal. Not, on religious traditions etc, but on the empirical evidence. The logic of being is therefore very relevant. KF kairosfocus

KF, Re #63: Has anyone written a detailed monograph on this 10^17 second bound? The details I've seen so far seem rather scant. To #64:

(Where we can start with the set that collects nothing and compose the natural numbers etc, {} –>0, {0}–> 1, {0, 1} –> 2, etc.)

It appears you are using at least the axioms of restricted comprehension and pairing from the ZFC system. Are all axiom systems, and hence all of mathematics, available in all possible worlds? If so, do universal sets (sets which include (as elements) all objects, even themselves) exist in all worlds? daveS

F/N: Let me elaborate at 101 level, in further response to Dawkins' assertions as clipped in the OP. First, CRD may be well advised to address the evident self-falsification by self-referential incoherence of his favoured evolutionary materialism: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/atheism/fyi-ftr-the-self-falsification-of-evolutionary-materialist-scientism/ Next, as the spaghetti monster parody is now so often trotted out by atheistical advocates of the new atheist ilk to try to win by ridicule (i.e. the key point is to be lost in the scornful laugh . . . ), its ill-informed failure needs to be highlighted: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/education/fyi-ftr-addressing-the-flying-spaghetti-monster-fsm-parody-on-the-idea-of-god-in-philosophy-of-religion-and-systematic-theology/ Going further, we need to ponder the nature of being and implications for the causal root of our world. I clip: ______________ https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/education/the-reasonableness-of-god-as-world-root-being-the-is-that-grounds-ought-and-cosmos-architect/ >>The core challenge being addressed . . . is the notion that belief in the reality of God is a culturally induced, poorly grounded commonplace notion. An easily dismissed cultural myth or prejudice, in short . . . . No, we are not here claiming certain proof of the reality of God that once dismissed can lead to an assumed atheistical default. Instead, ethical theism starts as a responsible worldview with substantial evidence and reasoning so that proper education will respect it as a serious option and will address the comparative difficulties challenge . . . — factual adequacy, coherence (logical and dynamical) and explanatory adequacy — faced by all worldviews . . . . we briefly reflect on modes of being and the significance of such for world-roots given functionally specific complex organisation, cosmological fine tuning and our patent status as under moral governance as pointers. First, an in-brief:

>>Our observed cosmos — the only actually, indisputably observed cosmos — is credibly contingent. That points beyond itself to adequate cause of a fine tuned cosmos set to a locally deeply isolated operating point for C-Chemistry, aqueous medium, cell based terrestrial planet life. Life which BTW is based on coded information . . . language! right from the origin of cell based life . . . used in exquisitely intricate cybernetic systems that run the smart gated, encapsulated metabolic automata with integral code using von Neumann kinematic self replicators we find in cells. That in the end through even multiverse speculations, points to necessary, intelligent, awesomely powerful being as source. Design by a creator beyond the cosmos. One intent on life like ours. Mix in moral government and we are at the inherent reasonableness of a creator capable of grounding ought. Just one serious candidate, the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being, worthy of our loyalty and the reasonable service of doing the good in accord with our evident nature. No, we are not talking about poorly supported popular notions here, but of course, when the evolutionary materialist lab coat clad magisterium controls and censors what gets into the curricula they can make it seem that way.>>

Now, we can think of possible vs impossible beings (you, me, a unicorn vs a square circle). The latter cannot be in any possible world as the cluster of core requirements (a) squarishness and (b) circularity stand in mutual contradiction and cannot all be actualised in one and the same thing at once under the same circumstances. The former, can exist in at least one possible world, whether or not they are actual in this world (the only generally observed actualised world). Also, try to imagine a world in which the truth asserted in: 2 + 3 = 5 is false or was not so then came into being at some point or can cease to be so. No such world is possible, this proposition is a necessary though abstract being. That is, it is so anchored to the roots and framework for a world to be actualised that it will be so in any possible world: || + ||| –> ||||| (Where we can start with the set that collects nothing and compose the natural numbers etc, {} –>0, {0}–> 1, {0, 1} –> 2, etc.) This allows us to understand that of possible beings some are contingent, some are necessary. Contingent beings will exist in some actualisable worlds but not in all such possible worlds. Necessary beings, by contrast are foundational to any actualisable world existing. Contingent beings, then, depend on what I have termed external, on/off enabling causal factors (strictly, dynamically necessary causal factors), much like a fire depends for its beginning and sustained existence on heat, fuel, oxidiser and an un-interfered- with combustion chain reaction: Fire_tetrahedron [Image] By contrast, necessary beings do not have that sort of dynamical, causal dependence. This has a major consequence, especially when we see that we live in a world that per the big bang and fine tuning considerations, is credibly contingent and in fact credibly finitely old, typically 13.7 or 13.8 BY being a conventional estimate: The Big Bang timeline -- a world with a beginning [Image] Typically the talk is of a singularity and perhaps a fluctuation. But the point is, finitely remote, changeable, composite, contingent. Caused, requiring a sufficient cluster of underlying dynamical antecedents/ factors that include at minimum all necessary factors. But there is more. For by contrast with being we can have non-being, a genuine nothing (and no a suggested quantum foam with fluctuations, etc, is not a genuine nothing, regardless of clever talking points). vNSR [Image] Illustrating a von Neumann, kinematic self replicator with integral universal computer Non-being can have no causal capabilities, and so if there ever were a genuine nothing, such would forever obtain. That is, if a world now is (and a credibly contingent one) it points to something that always was, a necessary, independent, world-root being dynamically sufficient to account for the world that now is. A world with evident beginning at a finitely remote point, with evident fine tuning that sets its physics to a locally deeply isolated operating point that sets it up for C-chemistry, aqueous medium terrestrial planet, cell based life. Life, that is based on smart gated, encapsulated metabolic automata that enfold an integral code using — language! communication and control systems! — von Neumann kinematic self replication facility. A class of machines we know how to conceptualise and initially analyse, but not at all how to design and implement. Worse, where we are conscious, intelligent, morally governed life forms in this cosmos that require a bridge between IS and OUGHT. [--> Think here of CRD and fellow New Atheists moralistically pointing accusing fingers at theists and expecting to be taken seriously] Already, we see that a very reasonable worldview stance would be that the cosmos comes from a necessary, highly intelligent, designing world root being who is a necessary being, and thus would be immaterial and intelligent, so minded. Even, through a multiverse speculation (which is spectacularly in violation of requisites of empirical substantiation and the multiplication of entities without clear necessity). Moreover, as one scans the debates on worldviews foundations across the centuries, it is clear that there is just one credible place for there to be an IS that also grounds OUGHT in a reasonable way: the roots of reality. There is just one serious candidate to be such a necessary being — flying spaghetti monsters et al (as we already saw) need not apply, they are patently contingent and are material — namely,

THE GOD OF ETHICAL THEISM: the inherently good and wise Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being; one worthy of our loyalty and of the reasonable and responsible service of doing the good in accordance with our evident nature and circumstances.

That is, ethical theism is a reasonable, and intellectually viable worldview stance. It is also a descriptive term for the underlying worldview of the Judaeo-Christian Faith and theological tradition that is core to our civilisation and the foundation of that tradition, God. Where the God of Scripture says of himself c 1460 BC, I AM THAT I AM, i.e. necessary, eternal being, something not understood as to significance until many centuries later. And in that context, it is the Christian tradition that this same God has come among us, as Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ who fulfills the prophecies in that scriptural tradition and now sends forth his apostles and disciples into the world who are to be as wise as serpents but harmless as doves . . . . So, let us ponder Stroebel on Jesus . . . >> ______________ In such a context, it seems clear that CRD was sadly mistaken to give a blanket dismissal to the case for ethical theism as a reasonable and informed worldview and way of life. KF PS: A somewhat more detailed. worldviews framed discussion is here: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-2-gospel-on-mars-hill-foundations.html#u2_bld_wvu kairosfocus

DS, That is one reason (not the only one) we see talk of quasi-infinite multiverses; the degree of functionally specific complexity of life and the degree of isolation of the operating point of our cosmos in parameter etc space -- as we have seen -- put us to a point where that begins to look like where alternatives to design as the best explanatory causal process have to go. Only to run into Boltzmann brains and wall carpeting flies vs lone ones swatted by a bullet. Design is a very reasonable view on its own. Multiply by the other converging lines of evidence and it may point to how hard one has to work not to go there. Then, bring in the issue that God is a serious candidate necessary being root of reality and the issue atheists face is not whether God seems implausible to them based on the perspectives imposed by their worldview but that such a NB candidate is either impossible or real. (Where parodies such as flying spaghetti monsters immediately fail the serious candidate test, being composite so contingent.) Multiply by our finding ourselves inescapably under moral government -- e.g. when (as is so often seen, not least with Dawkins) atheists point accusing fingers at theists, they imply an appeal to such moral government -- and the challenges to atheism and fellow traveller views exponentiates. KF PS: Recall, our observed cosmos gives us ~ 10^17 s, 10^80 atoms (with carbon a fairly small proportion and C on the surface zones and/or atmospheres of suitable terrestrial planets in star system and galactic habitable zones therefore far more rare) with 10^12- 10^14 chemical type interactions/s as a realistic limit. kairosfocus

KF,

PS: DS, 10^17 s or so is all we have got.

I mean if there are calculations showing that 10^17 seconds is far too short a time, what do they show the minimum time required would be? daveS

F/N: Those inclined to take Mr Dawkins' views on the soundness or otherwise of theistic arguments may well find it helpful to read here as a starter: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Holt.t.html?_r=0 (Not to mention, the list of materials here: http://www.proginosko.com/2009/04/responses-to-the-god-delusion/ ) Clipping:

The least satisfying part of this book is Dawkins’s treatment of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The “ontological argument” says that God must exist by his very nature, since he possesses all perfections, and it is more perfect to exist than not to exist. The “cosmological argument” says that the world must have an ultimate cause, and this cause could only be an eternal, God-like entity. The “design argument” appeals to special features of the universe (such as its suitability for the emergence of intelligent life), submitting that such features make it more probable than not that the universe had a purposive cosmic designer. These, in a nutshell, are the Big Three arguments. To Dawkins, they are simply ridiculous. He dismisses the ontological argument as “infantile” and “dialectical prestidigitation” without quite identifying the defect in its logic, and he is baffled that a philosopher like Russell — “no fool” — could take it seriously. He seems unaware that this argument, though medieval in origin, comes in sophisticated modern versions that are not at all easy to refute. Shirking the intellectual hard work, Dawkins prefers to move on to parodic “proofs” that he has found on the Internet, like the “Argument From Emotional Blackmail: God loves you. How could you be so heartless as not to believe in him? Therefore God exists.” . . .

Craig on the who designed the designer/ the designer is complex argument here is also a useful side-light. I add the note that in the case of God as candidate designer, it seems there is a want of understanding of necessary and eternal being as well as of mindedness as not being constructed and assembled out of bits and pieces. There is therefore an aura of flailing at parodies or caricatures there. Unfortunately, this is an era in which that may easily be missed. More to come. KF PS: DS, 10^17 s or so is all we have got. kairosfocus

KF, 10^17 seconds is definitely too short of a time for the OOL to occur? What's the tightest estimated lower bound? daveS

DS, just for completeness, 1 MY would be far too small for any proposed model of OOL and of body plans, much less the naturalistic versions of cosmology to get a solar system. What is the shocker is that -- apart from people being persuaded of it through the sort of a priorism Lewontin so frankly spoke of and applying methodological naturalism to lock out consideration of alternatives, 10^17 s or thereabouts is also hopelessly too short for OOL etc. KF kairosfocus

KF, I don't believe you demonstrated that. As far as I am concerned, design is always on the table in discussions here, so your point is moot. I think any reasonable person would say that positions 1 and 2 above are wildly inconsistent. Anyway, I think this topic has been exhausted. daveS

DS, What I showed is that debates over YEC views are irrelevant and therefore a distraction. KF kairosfocus

KF, First, I don't think it's possible for me or anyone to take design off the table, regardless of the age of the universe, and that has nothing to do with what I'm arguing. My point consists of the first sentence in my post #4. Let me summarize two positions I believe you hold, and which I find so hard to understand. Correct me if I'm wrong: 1) The evidence against YEC is not persuasive enough to cause you to declare that YEC is false. 2) If the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, then you do find the density example cited above to be at least as persuasive as real-time evidence collected in a lab setting. daveS

F/N: Smith Craig Debate 2003, in effect the other end of the debate spectrum: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/does-god-exist-the-craig-smith-debate-2003 QS Opening clip: >>The question [of whether] God exists may sound as if the atheist knows that she does not exist, which is no positive theory about what does exist. You know, this has been true of traditional atheism. Well, I believe here that there should be a new form of atheism, one that presents a positive theory of what exists and that this positive theory has a logical consequence that God does not exist. 1. One form of the existence question is this: did God create the universe? I reject the traditional atheist response, as well as the theist response. The traditional atheist response is that the universe does not need an explanation of why it exists and therefore does not need a divine Creator to give an explanation. I reject this since I think the universe's existence does need and does have an explanation. The universe created itself. After this I argue that atheism, but not theism, explains humans' moral behavior. Scientists have been saying for a long time that the universe began about 15 billion years ago with an explosion they call the Big Bang. Bill believes the Big Bang was caused by God and I believe it both caused itself to exist and caused the later states of the universe to exist. At the Big Bang there is a line of simultaneous causes and effects. This is implied both by a Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics and by the EPR correlations - for those of you in the audience who are science majors - which imply - you don't need to understand either of the sciences to understand my talk - and these theories imply that there are instantaneous causal relations between simultaneous events . . . . The first state of the universe consists of an indefinitely or infinitely long chain of simultaneous events that are causally connected to each other . . . . 2. OK, my second major argument is about morality, about the foundation of objectivity of morality. But first I'll talk about the foundation of morality. Now theists, including Bill, have a moral argument for God's existence. They say we need God in order to have a foundation or ground of morality and moral behavior. We need God, they say, to explain why moral behavior exists. Well, I think this is false. Biologists have already explained how moral behavior came into existence and its ground or foundation. The explanation is that in mammals living millions of years ago, the mother wanted her offspring to survive and reproduce. This means the mother selected for her sex partner the male mammal who is most likely to care for the offspring. By selecting caring men, the genetic trait of caring and helping became the predominant trait of our ancestors. Caring and helping is the genetic trait we inherited, both from mothers and fathers caring for their children . . . >> Craig: >>Now in the debate tonight, we need to ask ourselves two fundamental questions: I. Are there any good arguments against God's existence? and II. Are there any good arguments for God's existence? I. Well, what about that first question: Are there any good arguments against God's existence? Quentin thinks that there are, and he presented two arguments to prove that God does not exist. 1. His first argument is that there cannot be a divine cause of the universe because there is an infinite regress of simultaneous causes. Now, I'm not sure, frankly, what Quentin is talking about here. I assume that he's talking about a simultaneity class of events, quantum events, perhaps, that are simultaneously related. But I think that we can avert this question by simply considering what is the cause of the initial cosmological singularity that spawned the universe. For the initial singularity is part of the universe. The universe is comprised of all its space-time points and its boundary points. The initial singularity is the beginning of the universe, the first state of physical reality. As Stephen Hawking explains, “All the matter and energy [were] compressed into a single point, or singularity . . . . the entire observable universe . . . started out compressed into such a point.”1 And since that point is not governed by quantum laws of physics, there cannot be this infinite regress of simultaneous causes at the singular state. So the real question is, where did the singularity come from? Did it just pop into being out of nothing? The theist claims that God created the initial singularity and thereby caused the universe to exist. Now in order to rule out this possibility, Quentin in his most recent work has to stipulate that the initial singularity exists both necessarily and a se.2 That is to say, it exists not only in every possible world, but it does so independently of any other reality. But now the problem is that there's just no evidence whatsoever that the initial singularity has such extraordinary properties. Nothing in classical or quantum cosmology even suggests that the singularity is metaphysically necessary. In fact, there's no evidence to suggest that the singularity is even nomologically necessary. That is to say, it's not even necessary according to the laws of nature. The laws of nature permit all sorts of non-singular cosmological models. Thus, the singularity cannot be metaphysically necessary. Moreover, there's no reason to think it exists a se either. Quite the opposite is true: the singularity is the boundary of the space-time manifold; so if the manifold didn’t exist, neither would its boundary points. Quentin, in his written work3, admits that the space-time universe did not have to exist; but he imagines that its singular boundary point, like the smile of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, would still continue to exist even in the absence of the reality it bounds! But there is no physical reason to believe such a remarkable assertion. Now, if this is correct, then not only is there no inconsistency in the theist's view that God created the singularity, but Quentin's supposed argument for atheism actually turns out to be an argument for God's existence. We can formulate such a contingency argument as follows: 1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in some external cause. 2. The universe (including any singular state) exists. It follows from (1) and (2) that the universe has an explanation of its existence. Premiss (3) states: 3. The universe (including any singular state) does not exist by a necessity of its own nature. 4. Therefore, the universe has an external cause. The explanation of the universe must be found in a being which transcends space and time, is metaphysically necessary ,and is changeless and immaterial. Now the only things we know of that can exist in that way are either abstract objects, like numbers, or a mind. But abstract objects don't stand in causal relationships and so cannot be the explanation of the universe. So the explanation of the universe is most plausibly a transcendent Mind, which is minimally what everybody means by "God". So thank you, Quentin, for the first argument! . . . . 2. Well, that now brings us to Quentin's second argument for atheism, which is that God cannot be the foundation of moral values and duties. He gives two reasons for this. a. First of all, he says that if moral values are grounded in God, then this is subjective because it's just God's opinion. Well, I think not. On the theistic view, the Good is identical to the moral character of God. God's character is necessarily holy, loving, just, kind, etc. And these attributes are constitutive of the Good. Now God's moral nature in turn expresses itself toward us in the form of certain divine commands, which become for us, then, our moral duties. And thus these commands are not arbitrary or subjective, but they flow necessarily from God's nature. As the prominent philosopher William Alston says, “If God is essentially good, then there will be nothing arbitrary about his commands; indeed it will be metaphysically necessary that he issue those commands.”6 b. What, then, about the problem of evil? Well, I would simply say that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering and evil in the world. Quentin knows philosophy of religion well enough to know that no atheist has ever been able to shoulder the tremendous burden of proof of showing that God does not or cannot have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil in the world . . . . I think Quentin's argument for atheism supplies the materials for an argument for God's existence. For if there is no God, then it's plausible that the moral values and duties which have gradually evolved among homo sapiens are not really objective. By “objective” I mean “valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.” For example, to say that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right, and it would still have been wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in brainwashing or exterminating everyone who disagreed with them. Many atheists and theists alike agree that if God does not exist as a transcendent anchor point, then the moral values and duties that have evolved in human society are not objective in that way. In other words, 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. Now this first premiss seems eminently plausible. For on the atheistic view, human beings are just animals, relatively evolved primates; and animals don't have moral obligations. When a lion kills a zebra, it kills it, but it doesn't murder it. When a great white shark brutally forces a female into submission, it copulates with her, but it does not rape her. For animals are not moral agents with moral duties to observe. But on the atheistic view, human beings are just animals. Their morality is just the result of socio-biological evolution. Just as members of a troupe of baboons will exhibit altruistic behavior because it is advantageous to the species in the struggle for survival, so human beings have evolved certain behavior patterns which enable us to cohabit in society and so are beneficial for the species. But there’s nothing objective about this herd morality. Now if you find such a view morally abhorrent, then I agree with you. It’s evident, I think, that objective values do exist, and deep down we all know it. Quentin and I, in fact, agree on this. Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren’t just socially unacceptable behavior; they're moral abominations. Some things are objectively wrong. Similarly love, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good. Accordingly, we can affirm: 2. Objective values and duties do exist. But then it follows logically and inescapably that: 3. Therefore, God exists. God thus provides a foundation for the moral values which the atheist just has to accept by faith. In summary, then, far from giving us good reasons to think that God does not exist, Quentin has provided us with three positive arguments for God's existence, namely, the contingency argument, the teleological argument, and the moral argument. II. In effect, then, we've already answered the second question that we put ourselves tonight, namely: Are there any good arguments for God's existence? We've already got three! But in my remaining time let me add one more: the cosmological argument. We have good reasons, philosophically and scientifically, to believe that the universe is not eternal in the past, but had an absolute beginning. But something cannot come into being out of nothing. Therefore, there must be a transcendent cause of the origin of the universe. We can formulate this argument as follows: 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. Now by “begins to exist” I mean “comes into being,” and the idea here is that things don’t just pop into being uncaused. Now in his written work, Quentin claims that certain cosmological theories, like the Hartle-Hawking theory, can explain how the universe comes into being without a cause.9 But the fundamental problem with Quentin's objection is that his interpretation of the Hartle-Hawking equations is, I think, incoherent. For Quentin interprets them to give an unconditional probability, say, 99%, that the universe would come into being uncaused out of absolute nothingness. And it’s important to appreciate that by “nothingness” we mean not a physical void or empty space, but absolute non-being. But how can being arise from non-being, especially with a 99% probability? What explains the origin of the universe in this lawful way? Well, you might be tempted to say that the laws of nature explain why the universe comes into being out of nothingness with 99% probability. But that can’t be right because, as Quentin himself said in his first speech, the laws of nature are simply propositions in a certain mathematical form describing the regular behavior, potentialities, powers, and dispositions of things in the natural world. The laws of nature are at most abstract entities which can’t cause anything. But the origin of the universe can’t be explained in terms of the potentialities, powers, and dispositions of things in the natural world because those factors don’t exist until the natural world exists, and we’re trying to explain the origin of the natural world. So it seems that the powers, potentialities, and dispositions must belong to nothingness itself. Nothingness must possess some disposition to spawn a universe with 99% probability. But this is clearly incoherent. For nothingness, absolute non-being, has no properties whatsoever--no dispositions, no potentialities. Such properties inhere only in actual things . . . . So premiss (1) seems necessarily true. If the alternative to theism is the claim that the universe popped into being uncaused out of nothing, then it takes more faith to be an atheist than a theist! Now, premiss (2) is that: 2. The universe began to exist. Recall, by “the universe” we mean all physical states, including whatever exists at any point in, or on the boundary of, space-time. And Quentin and I agree that the universe is not infinite in the past but began to exist. From the two premises it follows that: 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. Conceptual analysis of what it means to be a cause of the universe enables us to deduce that as the cause of space and time, this cause must be an uncaused, timeless, changeless, immaterial, personal agent of enormous power which created the universe. So in conclusion, then, we’ve seen no good arguments, I think, to believe that atheism is true. And we have seen four reasons, namely, the contingency argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, and the cosmological argument, to think that God does exist. Therefore, it seems to me that theism is the more rational world view.>> KF kairosfocus

DS Assume for the moment, the world (sense: observed cosmos) is ~ 10 or 100 or 1,000 kY old. That would certainly imply it is designed. Not relevant. Assume for the moment it is 13.75 BY old, the last current typical number I have seen. The beginning points to a begin-ner, in a context where contingency points -- even through multiverse speculations -- to a necessary being root of reality. Yes that's phil, but the phil of being and of cause is a basis for science. Next, go to 1 ns post singularity, the general era on a typical BB timeline in which we move from electrons, quarks etc to baryons relevant to atoms. The mass density at this stage, to 2 parts in 10^24, leads to gravitational fine tuning that puts us to dissipation or crunch already. This too points to design, putting us at a deeply isolated operating point. Along with dozens of other factors. So, on either fork, design is seriously on the table. KF kairosfocus

KF,

And so* . . . ?

I certainly didn't say it was irrelevant or useless to "explore" this issue. But with the issues of inflation, dark matter, and dark energy still unresolved, I tend to take any claims about what was going on 1 billionth of a second after the Big Bang as tentative. Especially in comparison with evidence collected in real time in the lab. And again, you have yet to take a position on whether the age of the universe is ~10,000 years or ~13.8 billion years. You should be at least as skeptical as me in this particular instance of "fine-tuning". daveS

F/N 2: Newdow's opening arguments -- remember, this is an atheism spokesman who has made claims that US Constitutional law should be changed in favour of the atheistical agenda, so he bears a significant responsibility to have his ducks in a row: ______________ >>Argument 1: Dr. Newdow's first argument was to dismiss the terms of the debate and claim that he had nothing to prove since he was not making a statement about existence, but about non-existence. In other words, he argued, the burden of proof is on the one who affirms that something or someone (in this case "God") exists, not on the one denying such an existence. He declared that he could not be construed to have lost the debate simply because he could not prove that God doesn't exist. [summariser's comment:] Both debaters agreed on the resolution to be debated, Atheism vs. Christianity, (and the question of which way the evidence points) several months before the debate. Now is not the time for Dr. Newdow to attempt to change the resolution . . . . Argument 2: Dr. Newdow's second argument was to make a new debate resolution: Using empirical methods alone, the existence of God cannot be established. Dr. Newdow declared that the only evidence he would accept for the existence of God would be empirical evidence, that is, evidence that can be tested by the senses, such as is done in scientific experiments. "Show me God," he said, "and I'll believe in him." Based on these two premises (he doesn't have to prove anything; and any existence can only be proved empirically), Dr. Newdow declared that he had no evidence that God exists and so he has won the debate by default. Dr. Newdow tried to limit areas of proof to the empirical, as though empiricism is the only way to affirm the existence of anything . . . . Argument 3: Dr. Newdow reviewed what he considers to be the necessary elements of a good scientific test: (1) randomness (test subjects must be of a great enough number over a wide enough spectrum to allow for random results dictated by the sample pool rather than the medication); (2) control conditions (nothing extraneous to the experiment can be introduced); (3) double blind (neither the subjects nor the experimenters can know who gets the drug and who gets a placebo); and (4) prospective (it must be repeatable with future testing). Applying these four criteria to the existence of God, Dr. Newdow says God fails. In other words, he concluded, there is no scientific data establishing the existence of God. One can't use statistical abnormalities to prove one's case. Evidence for God is a case of statistical abnormality; His existence is not actually supported by the evidence . . . . Argument 4: Belief in God, according to Dr. Newdow, is as credible as belief in faith healers, UFOs, crop circles, astrology, psychics, or the miracle fat-burning product available on cable TV. Belief in God is as supported by the evidence as belief in any other mythical creature such as the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus . . . . Argument 5: Dr. Newdow pointed to a variety of factors to account for why so many people believe in God: (1) they respect their elders or previous generations; (2) they feel better if they believe in God and it seems to give their lives transcendent meaning; (3) they twist the data to serve their belief; (4) they are gullible and believe what they want to believe, regardless of the data; (5) they re-interpret every event as supporting belief in God, whether it does or not (e.g., if Aunt Mary recovers, God healed her; if Aunt Mary dies, it must have been God's will); (6) they continue to believe what they have been raised to believe (e.g., Muslim children grow up to Muslims, Buddhists to be Buddhists, etc.); (7) they enjoy the social and personal benefits they receive from believing in God; (8) they are unwilling to criticize or closely examine what they already believe . . . . Conclusion: Dr. Newdow posed a challenge to the mostly Christian audience: How many of you pray? How many of you believe God hears your prayers? How many of your believe God answers your prayers? When most people raised their hands to all of the questions, Dr. Newdow said, "Then all of you pray right now that God will appear to me on this stage so that I can believe in him." He waited a few seconds and concluded, "God didn't appear, so I guess he doesn't exist." This was Dr. Newdow's main point and he returned to it repeatedly throughout the debate. He really seemed to believe that if God did not appear to him as commanded, he had won the debate . . . [Contrast Rom 1:18 - 25 and 1 Cor 1:18 - 25] >> _________________ Later, we go on. KF kairosfocus

F/N: Let us note Dawkins in the clip cited in the OP:

Dawkins prefaced his answer by making it clear that he is not “in any sense admitting that there is a good argument,” and insisted that “there is no decent argument for the existence of deities.” . . .

Of course an argument for deities -- small-g gods -- is not the focal issue, God as inherently good creator, the necessary being root of reality and a maximally great being, i.e. the God of ethical theism, is. I find it interesting that after a day or two, we still do not find any atheistical objectors standing up to defend Dawkins; core contention. (We can take the balance of the above i/l/o a live case of what fine tuning is as a result of sensitivity analysis, on the fine tuning issue, given say what was pointed out at 24.) To begin to take up this issue, I think the introductory remarks on theistic arguments in a debate between atheistical media personality Michael Newdow and former IVCF Apologetics spokesman and Christian Pastor Cliffe Knechtle in 2002 will be a useful start-point: ______________ http://answers.org/atheism/debate.html >>Pastor Knechtle began by summarizing what each debater should be able to produce in defense of his position. He said that Dr. Newdow should present a positive case for the atheist viewpoint. Pastor Knechtle was prepared to present a positive case for Christian theism. Pastor Knechtle offered 5 arguments for the truth of Christian theism:[3] Argument 1: The origin of the universe demands an uncaused, timeless, very, very powerful Source that we call the Christian God. He proposed three alternatives to explain the existence of the universe: (1) Something came from nothing; (2) The universe itself is eternal; or (3) The universe was created by something (or someone) eternal. Pastor Knechtle argued that whatever begins to be has a cause; the universe began to be; therefore, the universe had a cause. This is called the cosmological argument for the existence of God. There are various forms of this argument used by different philosophers, the Thomistic, the Leibnizian, and the Kalam.[4] Argument 2: The intricacy and complexity of the universe on both a macro and a micro level indicates an Intelligent Designer. [--> I would take this in two distinct stages: design as best explanatory causal process, then candidate designers] Pastor Knechtle pointed out that if oxygen levels on earth were higher or lower, animal, human, and plant life couldn't exist. If the earth were closer to the sun it would be too hot to support life; if it were farther away it would be too cold. [--> these are rather simple cases, the issue is a much bigger interlocking set of fine tuning instances cf Kreeft's argument no 8 cited in 24 above] He argued that the inter-dependent complexities of the cell, the human eye, and the eco-system displayed intelligent design that could only come from an Intelligent Designer, such as the Christian concept of God. [--> a designer of life on earth needs not be God, but put fine tuning of the cosmos with it and a much stronger frame of intent comes out] He gave the classic analogy of the watch: If you find a watch on the sidewalk, you assume it was made by a watchmaker, that it did not come to be as a product of accidental combination of atoms over time. In the same way, the universe displays even greater evidence of design, so we can logically infer an Intelligent Designer (God). [--> In addition, for life, I would point to Paley's self-replicating, time keeping watch] This is called the teleological argument for the existence of God. The focus on the exact conditions necessary for human life is often called the anthropic principle.[5] . . . . Argument 3: The existence of moral absolutes (such as justice, truth, good, etc.) can only be explained by an infinite Moral Lawgiver, or God. Pastor Knechtle argued that ethics are not merely a matter of convention, agreement, intuition, or genetic programming, but instead reveal the existence of a Moral Lawgiver whose ethical nature provides an adequate foundation for moral absolutes in human society. He argued that, for example, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews was not merely subjectively wrong or evil, but objectively and absolutely evil. He argued that individuals might consider it evil through intuition, societies might judge it by its social destructiveness, and communities might agree that it is evil because the majority of people agree; but none of those subjective, human-based ethics can adequately account for the absolute ethic that it is always and absolutely wrong to do these things - or, for example, to torture innocent children. Such absolute ethics are not dependent on human thought or conscience, but on the Moral Lawgiver who is beyond the limits of the universe in which we live. [--> we are under moral gov't and the only level where an IS that can ground OUGHT for that to be so is at the world-root. There is just one serious candidate, God as already explained.] This is called the moral argument for the existence of God. The moral argument can be used not only to show that God must be the source of absolute ethics, but also to justify the Christian understanding of why there is injustice, evil, and suffering in the world. One can apply moral absolutes grounded in God to justify our outrage at the injustice we see in the world around us. At the same time, since moral absolutes are grounded in God, we can be assured that there is meaning in suffering and that justice will ultimately prevail in God's provision for the future.[9] Argument 4: Humanity's desire for meaning and value in life presupposes the existence of God. [--> C S Lewis' hunger for Joy beyond what this world can offer] Pastor Knechtle argued that every human society throughout history and around the world has a belief in God, even though their understanding of God may differ. He argued that our innate desire to experience the transcendent, to have value and meaning even after death, can only be accounted for if there is a God who implanted these beliefs and desires in us. He quoted the early Christian church father Augustine, who said, "Our hearts are restless until they find their meaning in God." Pastor Knechtle contrasted this search for significance with the atheist world view in which life has no transcendent meaning and there is no significance beyond the biological. He quoted the existentialist Camus, who argued for existential meaninglessness. Pastor Knechtle characterized the atheist world view as "life is nothing more than a cosmic joke." Pastor Knechtle used the analogy of the headstone: between your birth date and your death date is the sum total of your life: a mere dash between life and death. On the contrary, he argued, we are created for the purpose of knowing and loving God, and God loves us so much he sent his Son to die for us. In the atheist world, according to Pastor Knechtle, atheist Michael Newdow's love for his daughter is nothing but a bio-chemical reaction, it cannot be justified or grounded as a real value without God. Argument 5: The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is so verifiable historically that it passes any reasonable test for history or ancient literature. It can be accepted as not only reasonable, but a true historical event.[10] This argument ties in with the previous four arguments in two ways. First, it is itself an argument for the existence of God because it argues that only God could do what Jesus did, raise himself from the dead. Second, the one who rose from the dead has demonstrated the credentials necessary to tell us that God exists and what God is like. Now Jesus' words in the New Testament document become more than just historical statements. They have risen above or out of mere history to be revealed as God's words speaking about reality. Pastor Knechtle continued, if Jesus rose from the grave, then this validates his claims to be the Son of God, and we can know that God exists, that he loves us, and that we can have a relationship with him because of Jesus Christ. Pastor Knechtle argued that our first accounts of the bodily resurrection (found in 1 Corinthians 15) date from within 20 years of the actual event. At this point, Pastor Knechtle is using the New Testament books as historical documents reporting an historical event. Elsewhere he shows the historical reliability of the documents that make them valid historical sources. That the New Testament is God's Word is an entirely different issue that goes beyond the scope of this debate. Interestingly, while Pastor Knechtle gives a range of 20 years, even some liberal scholars agree that the content of the opening verses to 1 Corinthians 15 represent material adopted by the first Christians within a decade of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. This account of the resurrection appearances relates that more than 500 people were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Christ. He provided the evidence that Jesus actually died on the cross and that the tomb was empty after three days. He argued that the resurrection accounts have the ring of authenticity, especially in that those who became believers had started out as disillusioned disciples who were not expecting a resurrection. There is also a ring of authenticity in the record that women were the first witnesses of the resurrected Christ. Since women in that time were not considered reliable witnesses, someone merely inventing a resurrection would not have concocted their story in a way that had the risen Jesus witnessed first by those who could not testify in court. Because of the physical demonstrations the risen Christ made and the life-changing impact those had on his followers (whose hopes had been dashed at his death), we can be assured that this resurrection was physical and bodily; it was not an illusion, mysticism, wish fulfillment, or spiritual projection. British scholar and Christian author C. S. Lewis noted, "If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it isn't. We can't compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We're dealing with fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has not facts to bother about."[11]>> _________________ Now, let us proceed. KF kairosfocus

F/N: Putting the worldviews challenge posed by Dawkins in claiming there are no good arguments to God (though fine tuning seems to give him pause) issue back on the table: http://research.avondale.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=teach http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Intro_phil/toolkit.htm#intro --> Note tips here: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/kairosfocus/resources/Intro_phil/toolkit.htm#tips http://www.kingsgrantbaptist.com/documents/WorldviewGeisler.pdf http://www3.dbu.edu/naugle/pdf/WV-HistyTheolImplications.pdf We are dealing with a worldviews issue, and we need to ponder the debate and talking points on arguments pointing to God in that light. Let me again point to Plantinga on two dozen or so theistic arguments: https://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/articles/plantinga_alvin/two_dozen_or_so_theistic_arguments.pdf Notice where he begins these lecture notes:

I've been arguing that theistic belief does not (in general) need argument either for deontological justification, or for positive epistemic status, (or for Foley rationality or Alstonian justification); belief in God is properly basic.

[--> a reasonable worldview start-point, especially on one's experience of reality or one's community's experience of reality and of encounter with God . . . here the millions transformed by encounter with God in the face of the risen Christ i/l/o the witness of the 500 to the birth, life, ministry, passion and resurrection in fulfillment of 100's of OT prophecies etc is very much in the background]

But doesn't follow, of course that there aren't any good arguments. Are there some? At least a couple of dozen or so. Swinburne: good argument one that has premises that everyone knows. Maybe aren't any such arguments: and if there are some, maybe none of them would be good arguments for anyone. (Note again the possibility that a person might, when confronted with an arg he sees to be valid for a conclusion he deeply disbelieves from premises he know to be true, give up (some of) those premises: in this way you can reduce someone from knowledge to ignorance by giving him an argument he sees to be valid from premises he knows to be true.) These arguments are not coercive in the sense that every person is obliged to accept their premises on pain of irrationality. Maybe just that some or many sensible people do accept their premises (oneself)What are these arguments like, and what role do they play? They are probabilistic, either with respect to the premises, or with respect to the connection between the premises and conclusion, or both. They can serve to bolster and confirm ('helps' a la John Calvin); perhaps to convince. Distinguish two considerations here: (1) you or someone else might just find yourself with these beliefs; so using them as premises get an effective theistic arg for the person in question. (2) The other question has to do with warrant, with conditional probability in epistemic sense: perhaps in at least some of these cases if our faculties are functioning properly and we consider the premises we are inclined to accept them; and (under those conditions) the conclusion has considerable epistemic probability (in the explained sense) on the premises.

Food for thought. KF kairosfocus

And so* . . . ? *[As in, on what grounds is it irrelevant or useless or not a reasonable physicist's step or reasoning to explore the sensitivity of the relevant expansion equations to the value of mass density, and to find the extreme sensitivity to one part in 10^24 or so significant? That, earlier it was apparently even moreso significant, to 1 part in 10^59 or so? Why would a reasonable person reject that this is a classic example of what is meant by the "natural" emergence of the fine tuning issue during scientific investigations and its SCIENTIFIC -- cosmological -- significance?] kairosfocus

Mass of an aggregate, typically, is a very contingent matter.

Yes, but 1 nanosecond after the Big Bang is not quite typical. daveS

PPS: Let me note this is not about changing laws of physics but the scope of mass per unit volume, by a factor of order 1 part in 10^24. Mass of an aggregate, typically, is a very contingent matter. kairosfocus

DS, the case illustrates fine tuning in the context of a cosmos hosting life such as ours at this point on its timeline, with actually two levels of sensitivity. At t0 + 1 ns, a single grain of fairly coarse sand's weight relative to the cosmos density, is the difference between over expansion and early collapse, about 1 part in 2 *10^24. This speaks to fine tuning and uses the sensitivity analysis approach. At an earlier point we are looking at 1 part in 10^59, which is far beyond that degree. KF PS: This illustrates a specific case of fine tuning on its own terms, at the other end from 4%. kairosfocus

KF, I'm well aware of these examples of course, but it doesn't address any of my questions in post #41. Incidentally, I do find it intriguing that you quote a datapoint referring to the state of the universe 1 nanosecond after the Big Bang, yet steadfastly hold to a neutral position on the standard vs. bible-base (YEC) timelines you discuss on your website. Yet I'm the selectively hyperskeptical one. daveS

DS, there is a concrete example just above, showing sensitivity analysis and fine tuning, a case that would meet any of the descriptive responses you seem to wish to deride by snatching out of context while obviously arising during a scientific investigation. KF kairosfocus

KF,

eye opening

We can add this to "intriguing", "impressive", and "suggestive". daveS

PPS: An almost at random illustrative case: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmo_03.htm#FO >>The figure above shows a(t) for three models with three different densities at a time 1 nanosecond after the Big Bang. The black curve shows a critical density case that matches the WMAP-based concordance model, which has density = 447,225,917,218,507,401,284,016 gm/cc at 1 ns after the Big Bang [--> That's what 1 grain of sand in a then very small volume]. Adding only 0.2 gm/cc to this 447 sextillion gm/cc causes the Big Crunch to be right now! Taking away 0.2 gm/cc gives a model with a matter density ?M [Omega_sub_M] that is too low for our observations. Thus the density 1 ns after the Big Bang was set to an accuracy of better than 1 part in 2235 sextillion. Even earlier it was set to an accuracy better than 1 part in 10^59! Since if the density is slightly high, the Universe will die in an early Big Crunch, this is called the "oldness" problem in cosmology. And since the critical density Universe has flat spatial geometry, it is also called the "flatness" problem -- or the "flatness-oldness" problem. Whatever the mechanism for setting the density to equal the critical density, it works extremely well, and it would be a remarkable coincidence if ?o were close to 1 but not exactly 1. >> (Look at the image at the linked, please.) --> Does this put a handle on one case, just one among dozens? a grain of sand difference in the universe density 1 ns after the singularity [when the observable universe was [let me clarify: comparatively] tiny] and runaway expansion or already crunched down. kairosfocus

KF,

DS, The set C and/or R, i.e. the complex numbers and the reals, especially — given issues of ranges of values — the near neighbourhoods of the values standardised in our models.

Pardon, but that's very nonspecific. Furthermore, how do you justify taking "near" neighborhoods of measured constants in our universe? How do you test this assumption? I can reel off many potential configurations that don't lie in the set you described. For example, why can't we have differing numbers of constants in some universes? And how do we know the configuration space is infinite? Now let me stress again: I don't reject fine-tuning out of hand, it's just that it leads to questions which even you must admit are currently unanswerable. daveS

DS, The set C and/or R, i.e. the complex numbers and the reals, especially -- given issues of ranges of values -- the near neighbourhoods of the values standardised in our models. Way back in 6th form, I remember discussions on the r^2 term in inverse square law forces. Yesterday, I was looking on evaluations and tests on rest mass of photons which is theoretically zero, but is open to being evaluated. As for origin of the cosmos, that is a significant scientific focus for cosmology. I found it eye opening to see discussion of how the universe we inhabit came about and has the structures and patterns it has. Including getting to the periodic table of elements and the significance of cosmological parameters for C-Chemistry, aqueous medium cell based life. Seeing the big picture that unifies or at least asking about it, is a key scientific issue. And, a worldviews issue -- including cleansing ourselves from Plato's cave message dominance and policy dominance ideological agendas and games. Games that may well lead us into marches of folly. Yes, a lot of people are less familiar with such broad and deep topics, but I can vividly recall the impact of standing in the dark night with a child to discuss a lunar eclipse in progress and the significance of the milky way running roughly N-S as galactic disk, with centre in Sagittarius. Sol system, galaxy, galaxies, stars and more those point to big issues and interesting ones. As well as how such appear in the celestial sphere, especially something as familiar as the night sky . . . literally a nightly, full colour universe show courtesy your friendly local Creator. The Heavens declare . . . Understanding our world and its roots is no small insignificant thing. KF PS: The interested may want to look here: http://iose-gen.blogspot.com/2010/06/cosmology-and-timelines-of-world.html#cosmointro kairosfocus

KF, You use this and similar phrases several times:

... the space of the relevant variables etc ...

This is part of what I asked for earlier. Can you specify mathematically the space of the relevant variables? Edit: I'll echo what I stated way back in #8: I don't reject the fine-tuning argument altogether, but in your previous post you touch on several "linked" issues, including the decidedly nonmundane problem of the origin of the universe(!) That's a perfect illustration of my point. daveS

DS I again point out what you seem utterly unwilling to acknowledge exists. Sensitivity analysis of models etc is STANDARD practice, to see how things behave if the variables, parameters etc move away from whatever values were standardised. When that was done it soon became evident that the physics of the observed cosmos is at a deeply isolated operating point in the space of the relevant variables etc. That is striking as a finding on the various eqns etc used to construct the explanatory models. And it is relevant directly to their use given the facts on precision and accuracy. Where, relevant mathematical topics, techniques and praxis as well as those of modelling, are always relevant to and inextricably intertwined with science. It also raises questions as to how such came about, and those questions embrace both science and philosophy. Such also obtains for string theory and multiverse models, both of which are major foci in science. The other point I indicate is a strictly logical one. When any system of propositions entail a conclusion that people find unacceptable, a fairly common move is to reject the U to deny one or more of the Ps. Sometimes it is reasonable, other times it is unreasonable. In either case, the issue then becomes, what implied commitments are now on the table, and how do they stand up to the alternatives per comparative difficulties. With the question of selective hyperskepticism a legitimate part of that if a double standard is being exerted on what one will accept vs reject. And, when New Atheism, so called is explicitly on the table -- as in Dawkins et al -- motive is always going to be an important and legitimate question. Let me put up how Plantinga discusses the same point:

Note again the possibility that a person might, when confronted with an arg he sees to be valid for a conclusion he deeply disbelieves from premises he know to be true, give up (some of) those premises: in this way you can reduce someone from knowledge to ignorance by giving him an argument he sees to be valid from premises he knows to be true.

That sort of induced ignorance will always be open to question and needs explaining, especially if the rejected premises are such that they would not be questioned in another reasonably related context. On the fine tuning issue, the issue on the table is tht this matter did not come about from Hoyle and Fowler doing metaphysics, but astrophysics. The two neighbouring resonances for C and H turn out to be crucial in making these two elements no 4 and no 3 in cosmic abundance. Sensitivity assessment on the resonances shows that 4% one way, 1/2% another way, and bingo, the circumstance that supports a water based, C-Chemistry life architecture is undermined. Sensitivity analysis. Not, esoteric metaphysical speculation. Standard praxis in ever so many fields of analysis, tied closely to analysis of observational or manufacturing errors and error propagation. Red flag issue, if suddenly dismissed or studiously ignored as a relevant to the discussion. Quite similar to how, suddenly [well, for years now among design inference objectors in the circle around UD], pointing out that a sol system of 10^57 atoms or an observed cosmos of 10^80 atoms is not going to be able to credibly search blindly in a config space of 10^150 or 10^301 respectively meets with attempts to dismiss or worse. Never mind, the easily established point that there is such a thing as functionally specific, information rich configuration that can have high complexity beyond that sort of threshold. Or, that such Wicken wiring diagram nodes and arcs meshes constrained by requisites of functionality rooted in tightly coupled interactions of parts, will confine us to very narrow zones in the field of possible clumped and/or scattered configs. What I followed GP and likely he Dembski in referring to as islands of function [in wide seas of non-function]. Never mind, further, that the idea of some golden search being hit on blindly that makes all of this irrelevant in a Darwin's pond or the like, runs into the problem that a blind search somehow selects a subset of a config space. Instantly, we know that the set of subsets of a space of cardinality C is of exponentially higher cardinality 2^C. Dembski was right to highlight that search for a good search, S4S, faces a much harder challenge than direct search. (He of course used a more elaborate argument, I am simplifying to draw out the problem.) Then, the implication of there being a proposed iconic tree of life in effect demands that we have a vast continent of incrementally accessible functional forms, never mind what just the protein fold domain in AA sequence space data tells us about a large number of small structurally isolated domains so prevalent that we have a lot of such divergences between neighbouring species, including I gather us and chimps. Body plans, credibly, come in islands of function, and the fossil evidence of commonplace stasis, gaps, sudden appearances etc supports that. Coming back full circle, the first point on the table is that fine tuning is credibly real -- once we start from plain vanilla things like sensitivity analysis, is generally accepted as real, and the issue that most have therefore addressed is where it comes from. Multiverse vs design is the main debate. The challenge that multiverse faces, is that a multiverse generator is itself fine tuned, including BTW, a forcing law that would lock the constants in our sub-cosmos. Next, our cosmos is at a deeply isolated operating point in the relevant parameter space. Which is there once the math is on the table and we have no grounds to lock the numbers in the way pi is locked. (Think about how Einstein put in a term [cosmological constant, now in crude terms the yeast bubbler term that pushes expansion rate of the "loaf" that has galaxies in it like raisins] to get rid of expansion in was it 1915-16 for GTR cosmological models, only to have this term become a part of the overall discussion after red shift was put on the table then also as fine tuning came up, as to what value, why.) That brings up how expansion points to a finitely remote beginning and begs the question: begin-ner. Yes, there are converging issues here. Multiple pieces need to fit together coherently. Beyond, we see the point that in a quasi infinite multiverse we are looking at the point that a Boltzmann brain popping up in a local domain would be more likely to be observed than what we observe. And yes, that is a debate out there. Clipping Albrect and Sorbo:

A century ago Boltzmann considered a “cosmology” where the observed universe should be regarded as a rare ?uctuation out of some equilibrium state. The prediction of this point of view, quite generically, is that we live in a universe which maximizes the total entropy of the system consistent with existing observations. Other universes simply occur as much more rare ?uctuations. This means as much as possible of the system should be found in equilibrium as often as possible. From this point of view, it is very surprising that we ?nd the universe around us in such a low entropy state. In fact, the logical conclusion of this line of reasoning is utterly solipsistic. The most likely ?uctuation consistent with everything you know is simply your brain (complete with “memories” of the Hubble Deep ?elds, WMAP data, etc) ?uctuating brie?y out of chaos and then immediately equilibrating back into chaos again. This is sometimes called the “Boltzmann’s Brain” paradox.

The linked issue of inflation is also fine tuned to get to the sort of cosmos we see. Leslie's carpet of flies on the wall is likewise far more likely than the locally lone fly gets swatted by a bullet . . . and tack driver rifles and marksmen able to use them are incredibly fine tuned. We are in a zone with a swatted lone fly. That is not going to just go away, and it is appropriate to speak of that as fine tuning. And, a very simple and powerful candidate explanation for fine tuning is a marksman who knows how to swat it with a bullet, armed with a tack driver of a rifle. Which, per the OP, is something that the likes of Dawkins will find extremely unwelcome. And in this thread, I always have the OP in mind as main focus. KF kairosfocus

KF: And as I have repeatedly pointed out, no one is stopping you from using these arguments. Would you characterize Hoyle's conclusion that his results were impressive and suggestive "science"?

But then, if one used to accept P1, P2 . . . Pn and discovers that they jointly entail U an unwelcome conclusion, some will reason ~ U so relevant Pj is rejected. The issue then becomes, what price rejection.

This looks to fall in the category of motive mongering to me. Do I regularly claim to be able to read your mind? I don't think so. daveS

DS, sensitivity analysis -- as has been repeatedly pointed out -- is standard procedure not something exotic or dubious. That is exactly what appears in Hoyle's discussion of the C and O resonances tied to the abundance of these elements, which he found quite impressive and suggestive. But then, if one used to accept P1, P2 . . . Pn and discovers that they jointly entail U an unwelcome conclusion, some will reason ~ U so relevant Pj is rejected. The issue then becomes, what price rejection. KF kairosfocus

KF,

DS, pardon but there you go again. The fine tuning issue is a mathematical one, with broad implications. It needs to be addressed.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't address it. You can explore the impacts of constants having whatever values you like. I am saying some of us are not likely to find the results especially persuasive, at least relative to more mundane evidence for design. Maybe you do, but you are not me. I originally posted in this thread because at first I was slightly surprised that Dawkins himself said fine-tuning is the best argument for the existence of God that he's heard. daveS

DS, pardon but there you go again. The fine tuning issue is a mathematical one, with broad implications. It needs to be addressed. So does the related point that he observed cosmos had a beginning a finite time ago, pointing to its contingency and need for a begin-ner. Next, the concept in question has long since been discussed. As for the search challenge implied by a large space of possibilities, that has been on record since Dembski in NFL. Let me quote him:

p. 148:“The great myth of contemporary evolutionary biology is that the information needed to explain complex biological structures can be purchased without intelligence. My aim throughout this book is to dispel that myth . . . . Eigen and his colleagues must have something else in mind besides information simpliciter when they describe the origin of information as the central problem of biology. I submit that what they have in mind is specified complexity [[cf. here below], or what equivalently we have been calling in this Chapter Complex Specified information or CSI . . . . Biological specification always refers to function. An organism is a functional system comprising many functional subsystems. . . . In virtue of their function [[a living organism's subsystems] embody patterns that are objectively given and can be identified independently of the systems that embody them. Hence these systems are specified in the sense required by the complexity-specificity criterion . . . the specification can be cashed out in any number of ways [[through observing the requisites of functional organisation within the cell, or in organs and tissues or at the level of the organism as a whole.

[NB: Dembski cites: Wouters, p. 148: "globally in terms of the viability of whole organisms," Behe, p. 148: "minimal function of biochemical systems," Dawkins, pp. 148 - 9: "Complicated things have some quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been acquired by ran-| dom chance alone. In the case of living things, the quality that is specified in advance is . . . the ability to propagate genes in reproduction." On p. 149, he roughly cites Orgel's famous remark from 1973, which exactly cited reads: In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity . . . And, p. 149, he highlights Paul Davis in The Fifth Miracle: "Living organisms are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly specified complexity."] . . .”

p. 144: [[Specified complexity can be more formally defined:] “. . . since a universal probability bound of 1 [[chance] in 10^150 corresponds to a universal complexity bound of 500 bits of information, [[the cluster] (T, E) constitutes CSI because T [[ effectively the target hot zone in the field of possibilities] subsumes E [[ effectively the observed event from that field], T is detachable from E, and and T measures at least 500 bits of information . . . ”

2^500 = 3.27 * 10^150, 2^1,000 = 1.07*10^301, where per his universal bound estimate, the number of observable states of 10^80 atoms in 10^25 s acting as observers at a rate of 10^45/s is something like 10^150. This is similar to bounds estimated by Abel. In sh0rt, 1000 bits will exhaust the universe with a search of less than 1 part in 10^150 of the space of 1,000 bits. The sol system of 10^57 atoms and at a more reasonable rate of 10^12 - 14 acts/s will be exhausted by 500 bits. The common implicit notion is that here is a golden search out there. Dembski discussed search for a good search S4S, a simplified view is that a search is a subset of a set. So, the cardinality of a set being C that of the set of searches will be 2^C, the power set. Search for a good search is exponentially harder than the already hard direct search. This is the context in which it is fair to conclude that cosmos or sol system scope resources would be swamped by the scope to be searched. For 1,000 bits, comparing a 10^17 s, 10^12 - 14 tries each atom per sec, the scope of search to that of the config space would be as one straw to a haystack that dwarfs the observed cosmos. Blind search is not a good tool for anything of complexity beyond 143 ASCII 7 bit characters, or 125 bytes. This is a key part of the context where FSCO/I is only seen to come about by intelligence acting based on insight and imagination. As we see from simply composing text for comments here. KF PS: You can label sensitivity analysis as speculative all you want. It is not. Without good reason to hold that parameters and constants, values of things like mass of the cosmos etc are locked as the value of pi is, it is reasonable to explore the impacts of their having held differing values. And, the presence of an undetected super law that locks would imply a higher level of fine tuning for that law at least as exacting as the cumulative exactness of the laws it locks. Which is so, whether or no you are interested in it. kairosfocus

KF,

DS, First, if you simply state a preference, why enter a debate on a broad issue and act as though that very broadness is a flaw?

Two things: 1) As a common man/layperson, I'm not the only one who finds arguments concerning fine-tuning of the fundamental constants unconvincing. If you show me something a little more concrete that fits in a petri dish, you would have a better chance of convincing me. This is just an FYI from a member of your target audience---some of us prefer this sort of evidence. 2) It's not the broadness of topic that I'm talking about. Rather, I'm referring to arguments which are by their very nature speculative (IMHO), which I referred to above.

Five years back, in a discussion initiated by the pseudonymous Mathgrrl, I went with VJT and others and used a threshold metric form that is self explanatory and simple in showing how at 500 or 1000 bits, relevant search resources are exhausted.

This seems like something worthy of publication. Have any of the heavy-hitters, actual working researchers, acknowledged your calculation? daveS

DS, First, if you simply state a preference, why enter a debate on a broad issue and act as though that very broadness is a flaw? Second, maybe you need to see Mr Ewert's further remarks on discussion. The problem with your characterisation of a descriptive phrase is it pretends it is an idiosyncrasy introduced by some dubious bloggist who needs to be put in its place by being demanded to publish an abbreviation in peer reviewed literature deeply hostile to design thought. Neat dismissive talking point. Not so fast. I am certain you have been present when it has been repeatedly pointed out that the concept in fact is 40 years old as something used in this context and is due to Orgel and Wicken, who spoke to specified complexity in a bio-functional context and to how wiring diagram based, functionally specific organisation is information rich. This concept was picked up by Thaxton et al in the early 80s in drafting TMLO and antedates Dembski et al. In NFL, in discussing specified complexity, Dembski clealy states and cites as to how in the biological context such is cashed out in terms of function. Meyer, speaks to specified function in the context of being information rich specified complexity. Durston et al speak to random, ordered and functional sequence complexity and provide a quantification. Five years back, in a discussion initiated by the pseudonymous Mathgrrl, I went with VJT and others and used a threshold metric form that is self explanatory and simple in showing how at 500 or 1000 bits, relevant search resources are exhausted. So, as far as I am concerned, any need for the concept to be in the literature has long since been passed and the insistence on a dismissive talking point in the teeth of repeated correction is an indicator of selective hyperskepticism rather than any serious objection. I use an abbreviation that is convenient, FSCO/I, with reasonable basis. Deal with it on a reasonable basis please, not a selectively hyperskeptical talking point dismissal in the teeth of correction and concrete demonstrations of the reality the phrase describes. Starting with the exploded view of an Abu 6500 3C reel, the node arc process flow network of an oil refinery, the nature of text strings in English etc or machine readable code, and the process flow network involved in cellilar metabolism, or just the code based synthesis of proteins in the ribosome. With all due respect, the bottomline is that insistent dismissive denial of evident and manifest reality because one does not like a descriptive abbreviation for a summary phrase, is a sign of selective hyperskepticism, not serious discussion. KF kairosfocus

KF,

Saying you have a preference elsewhere does not change what the case is.

Absolutely. It's just my preference.

FSCO/I is real [etc]

Maybe so, but I share Winston Ewert's position on this concept. Have you tried submitting a paper on FSCO/I to BIO-Complexity or some other journal? Has the acronym ever appeared in print?

Are you at least willing to accept that serious thinkers may have good reason for thinking that way?

I do understand that serious thinkers, even skeptics such as Steven Weinberg, acknowledge that fine-tuning is an argument to be reckoned with. daveS

F/N: In the face of a worldviews challenge from Dawkins, some may find the discussion here on: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.com/2010/11/unit-2-gospel-on-mars-hill-foundations.html#u2_bld_wvu helpful. KF kairosfocus

DS: The issue raised in the OP and the relevant evidence are what they are. Dawkins has spoken to fine tuning (and -- let me add -- to a grand worldviews assertion that there are no good arguments pointing to the reality of God), you have raised several points, I have summarised the case in response to the context. Saying you have a preference elsewhere does not change what the case is. Though, it is significant to note that there is a very specific point I have made regarding sensitivity analysis and a wider point about complex interactive multi component entities that requires the parts to be co-adapted and properly organised to work together. Beyond all this, there is a longstanding fairly specific point long made: FSCO/I is real and on a trillion member basis reliably points to design as cause. This is backed by a needle in haystack, blind search challenge which supports why the observations are as they are. Cell based life, and major body plans, are full of FSCO/I. Is or is that at minimum, reason to be open to the possibility that cell based life is designed? Likewise, a significant number of eminent thinkers in the field see fine tuning as a reality of the cosmos that supports C chem, aqueous medium, cell based life. There is a debate on what that points to. Some think, selection effects in a multiverse -- others point to Boltzmann brains and the lone fly vs carpet of flies issue. Others are at minimum open to the point that such fine tuning points to design. Are you at least willing to accept that serious thinkers may have good reason for thinking that way? That then feeds the rope vs chain issue. KF PS: A worldviews level case is generally a cumulative, convergent, mutually supportive evidence argument by comparative difficulties case. In that context the range of evidence relevant to the reality of God and the reasonableness of believing in God will all be relevant. So will be what Dawkins et al seem to typically fail to recognise: there are implied worldview commitments and implications in rejecting the cluster of evidences and linked arguments that are held to point to God. The cumulative commitment in their new atheism, is open to very serious challenge. And that needs to also come to the table, for, every tub must stand on its own worldview bottom. That includes addressing, for instance the necessity of our having responsible rational freedom as a basis for rational discussion, and it includes a coherent accounting for our being under moral government. It also includes a major historical and current case in point on which millions claim life transforming experience of God: Jesus of Nazareth, risen from death as vindicated Messiah, with 500 unbreakable witnesses and eyewitness lifetime record as well as the resulting global movement. In this context issues of implying mass -- even grand, beyond Plato's cave type -- delusion and deception for human rationality are very relevant. PPS: Such worldviews comparative difficulties issues include factual adequacy across a worldview range, coherence [logical and dynamical], balanced explanatory power in a grand discussion of best explanations across competing alternatives. Where Dawkins' confident manner assertion there are no good arguments pointing to God is as grand a worldview assertion as one gets. I hardly need to underscore that his God Delusion was widely rebutted from various informed directions as grossly inadequate philosophically. Indeed as in effect sophomoric or even strawmannish. kairosfocus

KF, Your post #25 illustrates the point I am trying to make. As I stated in my post to EA above, I would be most persuaded by a minimal example of design. In #25 (and elsewhere in this thread), you bring in every topic under the sun. If we're talking about scientific evidence for design, do we need to discuss objective moral law and Jesus?? daveS

EA,

daveS: I would agree that evidence for design in biology is stronger than evidence for design in cosmology. However, not because it is on “a more modest scale.” Rather because it includes additional factors or evidences.

Well, I'm saying that I would find evidence on a more modest scale more persuasive. Not necessarily that there is very little biological evidence. Experiments which could be done in a lab in the context of the current known laws of physics. A minimal example of design, if you will. That's what I would like to see. daveS

It’s still a very, very bad argument, but it’s the best one going,” he added, noting that a major problem with the argument is that it leaves unexplained where the fine tuner came from. Well, I find it silly when people want to squeeze reality into their small heads. Especially divine reality. He contradicts himself because with regard to evolution he admits that people cannot comprehend the scale of things (while he can, of course). How then can he not apply the same to his own absurd claim that there must be an explanation of God. Who told him that must be the case? It's the same old distinction between scientists and poets noted by Chesterton. The professional illnesses of scientists are paranoidal hyperskepticism and the inability to see differences between reality and a scientific model. EugeneS

F/N: There is a principle, that one should not take counsel of one's opponents, should not fight on ground of their choosing (i.e. if ambushed a first task is to break out of the kill zone), and should not allow such to frame the terms of a discussion or debate. In applying that principle, it leads me to the contrast between a chain and a rope: a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, but because a rope depends on the interaction of its components starting with individual fibres, the strength of the whole is far more than the strength of each fibre. This is often forgotten in a world of shadow show games, dismissive talking point tactics, deep ideologically driven polarisation and closed minded selective hyperskepticism. Accordingly, let me put on the table a useful skeletal summary by Wallace:

(1) The Temporal Nature of the Cosmos (Cosmological) (a) The Universe began to exist (b) Anything that begins to exist must have a cause (c) Therefore, the Universe must have a cause (d) This cause must be eternal (uncaused), non-spatial, immaterial, atemporal, and personal (having the ability to willfully cause the beginning of the universe) (e) The cause fits the description we typically assign to God (2) The Appearance of Design (Teleological) (a) Human artifacts (like watches [--> I add, don't forget Paley's thought exercise of the self-replicating time keeping watch in Ch 2 of his nat theol]) are products of intelligent design (b) Many aspects and elements of our universe resemble human artifacts (c) Like effects typically have like causes (d) Therefore, it is highly probable the appearance of design in the Universe is simply the reflection of an intelligent designer (d) Given the complexity and expansive nature of the Universe, this designer must be incredibly intelligent and powerful (God) (3) The Existence of Objective Moral Truth (Axiological) (a) There is an objective (transcendent) moral law (b) Every law has a law giver (c) Therefore, there is an objective (transcendent) moral law giver (d) The best explanation for this objective (transcendent) law giver is God (4) The Existence of Absolute Laws of Logic (Transcendent) (a) The laws of logic exist i. The laws of logic are conceptual laws ii. The laws of logic are transcendent iii. The laws of logic pre-existed humans (b) All conceptual laws reflect the mind of a law giver (c) The best and most reasonable explanation for the kind of mind necessary for the existence of the transcendent, objective, conceptual laws of logic is a transcendent, objective, eternal Being (God) (5) The Unique Nature of Our World and Universe (Anthropic) (a) Our universe appears uniquely designed so: i. Life can exist ii. This same life can examine the universe (b) This unique design cannot be the result of random chance or unguided probabilities (c) There is, therefore, a God who designed the universe to support human life and reveal His existence as creator of the Cosmos

In addition, we have the fact of millions of people who attest to having encountered the living God in life transforming ways through the experience of believing the gospel of Christ rendered credible through the testimony of the 500 witnesses. If just one is right, God encountered in the face of Jesus is real. But if one is willing to argue to mass delusion, that then raises severe questions about the reliability of the deliverances of human thought and conscious experiences. A road no wise person will go down. And, there are more facets, many more. KF kairosfocus

EA & DS: I would actually highlight that both the cosmological and the biological design inferences are examples of arguments to design as causal process. This, in light of the phenomenon of functionally specific complex organisation of many parts to form a coherent whole. A whole, that a little sensitivity analysis or playing with tolerances will soon show (mathematically for the cosmos, empirically for biosystems) is at a deeply isolated operating point in a configuration space. Both arguments are quite strong to the mind not bent on not seeing their force. (For my part, I am haunted by Jesus' warning to certain people: "BECAUSE I tell the truth, you cannot understand/acknowledge/receive what I am saying." There is such a thing as the fallacy of the closed, selectively hyperskeptical, en-darkened mind. Too often, such will only be inclined to change through existential crisis where, struck down off their high horses on the road to a Damascus of their agenda, they are shocked by pain and light. But we have no general promise of such an encounter, only a warning that refusal to heed the evidence of the world without and the mind, heart and conscience within leaves us without excuse and liable to a debased, en-darkened mind that feeds a benumbed conscience and a life out of moral control. We must address our responsibility before evident truth we do or should know, not the hopeless task of appealing to and persuading those determined not to see things other than in terms of the shadow shows of some Plato's cave or other.) The biological and cosmological domains are indeed epistemologically independent, but interacting. To get to observed cell based life, you have to get to circumstellar, habitable zone terrestrial planets in spiral galaxy habitable zones, in a cosmos where H, He, O and C as well as N are sufficiently abundant and where you meet dozens and dozens of varied criteria. Then you have to get through a Darwin's pond or the like to ground OOL. As in, origin of C-Chemistry, aqueous medium, metabolic cells with integral communication, control and regulatory systems embracing the additional factor of codes and the further factor of an integrated von Neumann kinematic self-replicator facility. Onward, you have to account for multicellular, far more informationally complex body plan based life forms with plans that have to be embryologically AND ecologically viable from the outset . . . or they never get started. For these, materialist just so stories told while dressed up in a lab coat are not good enough. But, the cosmological side is not to be despised. DS, you full well know that sensitivity analysis is a commonplace feature of design studies, as happens routinely in say electronics , , , as in, red band on a resistor 2% likely expensive metal oxide, Gold band, 5%, silver, 10%, none 20%. Where, you better design with sensitivity and drift in mind without over-much dependence on a technician to keep things in whack (especially if selling to consumers), And, when one sees multiple components that are mutually coupled in interactive ways and that one is dealing with a system at a tight operating point, that is a strong sign of co-ordinating intent. Let me again clip Kreeft from his argument no 8, adapting Norris Clarke:

Starting point. This world is given to us as a dynamic, ordered system of many active component elements. Their natures (natural properties) are ordered to interact with each other in stable, reciprocal relationships which we call physical laws. For example, every hydrogen atom in our universe is ordered to combine with every oxygen atom in the proportion of 2:1 (which implies that every oxygen atom is reciprocally ordered to combine with every hydrogen atom in the proportion of 1:2). So it is with the chemical valences of all the basic elements. So too all particles with mass are ordered to move toward every other according to the fixed proportions of the law of gravity. In such an interconnected, interlocking, dynamic system, the active nature of each component is defined by its relation with others, and so presupposes the others for its own intelligibility and ability to act. Contemporary science reveals to us that our world-system is not merely an aggregate of many separate, unrelated laws, but rather a tightly interlocking whole, where relationship to the whole structures and determines the parts. The parts can no longer be understood apart from the whole; its influence permeates them all. Argument. In any such system as the above (like our world) no component part or active element can be self-sufficient or self-explanatory. For any part presupposes all the other parts—the whole system already in place—to match its own relational properties. It can’t act unless the others are there to interact reciprocally with it. Any one part could be self-sufficient only if it were the cause of the whole rest of the system—which is impossible, since no part can act except in collaboration with the others. Nor can the system as a whole explain its own existence, since it is made up of the component parts and is not a separate being, on its own, independent of them. So neither the parts nor the whole are self-sufficient; neither can explain the actual existence of this dynamically interactive system . . .

John Leslie points out:

One striking thing about the fine tuning is that a force strength or a particle mass often appears to require accurate tuning for several reasons at once. Look at electromagnetism. Electromagnetism seems to require tuning for there to be any clear-cut distinction between matter and radiation; for stars to burn neither too fast nor too slowly for life’s requirements; for protons to be stable; for complex chemistry to be possible; for chemical changes not to be extremely sluggish; and for carbon synthesis inside stars (carbon being quite probably crucial to life). Universes all obeying the same fundamental laws could still differ in the strengths of their physical forces, as was explained earlier, and random variations in electromagnetism from universe to universe might then ensure that it took on any particular strength sooner or later. Yet how could they possibly account for the fact that the same one strength satisfied many potentially conflicting requirements, each of them a requirement for impressively accurate tuning? [Our Place in the Cosmos, 1998 (courtesy Wayback Machine)]

Robin Collins:

Suppose we went on a mission to Mars, and found a domed structure in which everything was set up just right for life to exist. The temperature, for example, was set around 70 °F and the humidity was at 50%; moreover, there was an oxygen recycling system, an energy gathering system, and a whole system for the production of food. Put simply, the domed structure appeared to be a fully functioning biosphere. What conclusion would we draw from finding this structure? Would we draw the conclusion that it just happened to form by chance? Certainly not. Instead, we would unanimously conclude that it was designed by some intelligent being. Why would we draw this conclusion? Because an intelligent designer appears to be the only plausible explanation for the existence of the structure. That is, the only alternative explanation we can think of–that the structure was formed by some natural process–seems extremely unlikely. Of course, it is possible that, for example, through some volcanic eruption various metals and other compounds could have formed, and then separated out in just the right way to produce the “biosphere,” but such a scenario strikes us as extraordinarily unlikely, thus making this alternative explanation unbelievable. The universe is analogous to such a “biosphere,” according to recent findings in physics . . . . Scientists call this extraordinary balancing of the parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe the “fine-tuning of the cosmos” . . . For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies–whose early writings were not particularly sympathetic to theism–claims that with regard to basic structure of the universe, “the impression of design is overwhelming” (Davies, 1988, p. 203) . . . A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below: 1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.) 2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.) 3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.) 4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 ) 5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.) . . .

Sir Fred Hoyle, on the impact of the first fine tuning case in point:

From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? . . . I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has “monkeyed” with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.[F. Hoyle, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982): 16.]

Hugh Ross, Canadian Astrophysicist and champion of Old Earth Creationism, aptly uses the picture of tuning the resonance circuits of a radio to give a bit more context:

As you tune your radio, there are certain frequencies where the circuit has just the right resonance and you lock onto a station. The internal structure of an atomic nucleus is something like that, with specific energy or resonance levels. If two nuclear fragments collide with a resulting energy that just matches a resonance level, they will tend to stick and form a stable nucleus. Behold! Cosmic alchemy will occur! In the carbon atom, the resonance just happens to match the combined energy of the beryllium atom and a colliding helium nucleus. Without it, there would be relatively few carbon atoms. Similarly, the internal details of the oxygen nucleus play a critical role. Oxygen can be formed by combining helium and carbon nuclei, but the corresponding resonance level in the oxygen nucleus is half a percent too low for the combination to stay together easily. Had the resonance level in the carbon been 4 percent lower, there would be essentially no carbon. Had that level in the oxygen been only half a percent higher, virtually all the carbon would have been converted to oxygen. Without that carbon abundance, neither you nor I would be here. [[Beyond the Cosmos (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress Publishing Group, 1996), pg. 32.]

And, as for the notion that it is just one or two oddballs out there -- and BTW Hoyle as holder of a Nobel-equivalent prize, holds enough weight that even his lone voice should give pause, here is Luke Barnes:

There are a great many scientists, of varying religious persuasions, who accept that the universe is fine-tuned for life, e.g. Barrow, Carr, Carter, Davies, Dawkins, Deutsch, Ellis, Greene, Guth, Harrison, Hawking, Linde, Page, Penrose, Polkinghorne, Rees, Sandage, Smolin, Susskind, Tegmark, Tipler, Vilenkin, Weinberg, Wheeler, Wilczek. They differ, of course, on what conclusion we should draw from this fact . . .

Note his context:

The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life has received much attention in recent times. Beginning with the classic papers of Carter (1974) and Carr & Rees (1979), and the extensive discussion of Barrow & Tipler (1986), a number of authors have noticed that very small changes in the laws, parameters and initial conditions of physics would result in a universe unable to evolve and support intelligent life . . . . The claim that the universe is fine-tuned can be formulated as: FT: In the set of possible physics, the subset that permit the evolution of life is very small. [--> notice, this is not an "anti-evolution" argument, though I would suggest the broader form, life-permitting configurations in the field of possibilities] FT can be understood as a counterfactual claim, that is, a claim about what would have been. Such claims are not uncommon in everyday life. For example, we can formulate the claim that Roger Federer would almost certainly defeat me in a game of tennis as: "in the set of possible games of tennis between myself and Roger Federer, the set in which I win is extremely small”. This claim is undoubtedly true, even though none of the innitely-many possible games has been played. Our formulation of FT, however, is in obvious need of refinement. What determines the set of possible physics? Where exactly do we draw the line between "universes”? How is "smallness” being measured? Are we considering only cases where the evolution of life is physically impossible or just extremely improbable? What is life? We will press on with the our formulation of FT as it stands, pausing to note its inadequacies when appropriate. As it stands, FT is precise enough to distinguish itself from a number of other claims for which it is often mistaken. FT is not the claim that this universe is optimal for life, that it contains the maximum amount of life per unit volume or per baryon, that carbon-based life is the only possible type of life, or that the only kinds of universes that support life are minor variations on this universe. These claims, true or false, are simply beside the point. The reason why FT is an interesting claim is that it makes the existence of life in this universe appear to be something remarkable, something in need of explanation. The intuition here is that, if ours were the only universe, and if the causes that established the physics of our universe were indierent to whether it would evolve life, then the chances of hitting upon a life-permitting universe are very small. As Leslie (1989, pg. 121) notes, [a] chief reason for thinking that something stands in special need of explanation is that we actually glimpse some tidy way in which it might be explained” . . .

Walter Bradley gives the wider context, by laying out some general "engineering requisites" for a life-habitable universe; design specifications, so to speak:

- Order to provide the stable environment that is conducive to the development of life, but with just enough chaotic behavior to provide a driving force for change. - Sufficient chemical stability and elemental diversity to build the complex molecules necessary for essential life functions: processing energy, storing information, and replicating. A universe of just hydrogen and helium will not "work." - Predictability in chemical reactions, allowing compounds to form from the various elements. - A "universal connector," an element that is essential for the molecules of life. It must have the chemical property that permits it to react readily with almost all other elements, forming bonds that are stable, but not too stable, so disassembly is also possible. Carbon is the only element in our periodic chart that satisfies this requirement. - A "universal solvent" in which the chemistry of life can unfold. Since chemical reactions are too slow in the solid state, and complex life would not likely be sustained as a gas, there is a need for a liquid element or compound that readily dissolves both the reactants and the reaction products essential to living systems: namely, a liquid with the properties of water. [[Added note: Water requires both hydrogen and oxygen.] - A stable source of energy to sustain living systems in which there must be photons from the sun with sufficient energy to drive organic, chemical reactions, but not so energetic as to destroy organic molecules (as in the case of highly energetic ultraviolet radiation).

Such requisites met in the context of a finely tuned observed cosmos plainly make design of the cosmos a plausible view, even if it is in the context of what has been termed a multiverse. As D. Halsmer, J. Asper, N. Roman, T. Todd observe of water, a seemingly simple wonder molecule whose properties go back into the roots of the physics of the cosmos and then spread out into a wide range of factors setting the solvent context for cell based life to the point that NASA first hunts for water:

The remarkable properties of water are numerous. Its very high specific heat maintains relatively stable temperatures both in oceans and organisms. As a liquid, its thermal conductivity is four times any other common liquid, which makes it possible for cells to efficiently distribute heat. On the other hand, ice has a low thermal conductivity, making it a good thermal shield in high latitudes. A latent heat of fusion only surpassed by that of ammonia tends to keep water in liquid form and creates a natural thermostat at 0°C. Likewise, the highest latent heat of vaporization of any substance - more than five times the energy required to heat the same amount of water from 0°C-100°C - allows water vapor to store large amounts of heat in the atmosphere. This very high latent heat of vaporization is also vital biologically because at body temperature or above, the only way for a person to dissipate heat is to sweat it off. Water's remarkable capabilities are definitely not only thermal. A high vapor tension allows air to hold more moisture, which enables precipitation. Water's great surface tension is necessary for good capillary effect for tall plants, and it allows soil to hold more water. Water's low viscosity makes it possible for blood to flow through small capillaries. A very well documented anomaly is that water expands into the solid state, which keeps ice on the surface of the oceans instead of accumulating on the ocean floor. Possibly the most important trait of water is its unrivaled solvency abilities, which allow it to transport great amounts of minerals to immobile organisms and also hold all of the contents of blood. It is also only mildly reactive, which keeps it from harmfully reacting as it dissolves substances. Recent research has revealed how water acts as an efficient lubricator in many biological systems from snails to human digestion. By itself, water is not very effective in this role, but it works well with certain additives, such as some glycoproteins. The sum of these traits makes water an ideal medium for life. Literally, every property of water is suited for supporting life. It is no wonder why liquid water is the first requirement in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. All these traits are contained in a simple molecule of only three atoms. One of the most difficult tasks for an engineer is to design for multiple criteria at once. ... Satisfying all these criteria in one simple design is an engineering marvel. Also, the design process goes very deep since many characteristics would necessarily be changed if one were to alter fundamental physical properties such as the strong nuclear force or the size of the electron. [["The Coherence of an Engineered World," International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, Vol. 4(1):47-65 (2009). HT: ENV.]

In short, the elegantly simple water molecule is set to a finely balanced, life-facilitating operating point, based on fundamental forces and parameters of the cosmos. Forces that had to be built in from the formation of the cosmos itself. Which fine-tuning from the outset, therefore strongly suggests a purpose to create life in the cosmos from its beginning. Moreover, the authors also note how C, H and O just happen to be the fourth, first and third most abundant atoms in the cosmos, helium --the first noble gas -- being number two. This -- again on fundamental parameters and laws of our cosmos -- does not suggest a mere accident of happy coincidence:

The explanation has to do with fusion within stars. Early [[stellar, nuclear fusion] reactions start with hydrogen atoms and then produce deuterium (mass 2), tritium (mass 3), and alpha particles (mass 4), but no stable mass 5 exists. This limits the creation of heavy elements and was considered one of "God's mistakes" until further investigation. In actuality, the lack of a stable mass 5 necessitates bigger jumps of four which lead to carbon (mass 12) and oxygen (mass 16). Otherwise, the reactions would have climbed right up the periodic table in mass steps of one (until iron, which is the cutoff above which fusion requires energy rather than creating it). The process would have left oxygen and carbon no more abundant than any other element.

In short, sensitivity analysis has a power all of its own, and has caught serious and widespread attention among quite weighty thinkers. Indeed, that is a context in which multiverse suggestions have gained wide currency. Though, there are multiple problems with such suggestions. For one, the Boltzmann Brain popping up in a limited domain and fading away is far more "likely" and/or similarly, finding ourselves in John Leslie's portion of the wall carpeted with flies. Instead, pretty commonplace sensitivity analysis on the math -- commonplace enough that it is refusal to do it that would flag itself as odd -- shows that we are at a complex, locally at least, deeply isolated operating point in the domain of the physics that sets up a cosmos. That is a part of a blazing light from the heavens that has knocked us off our high horse. The other part is, we inhabit a cosmos that credibly had a finitely remote beginning usually estimated at 10 0- 20 BYA on several grounds, and refined to about 14 BYA, more exactly 13.75 BYA on cosmological expansion grounds. That which begins to exist is patently contingent, and it is therefore subject to cause beyond itself, not least it points to causally necessary enabling on/off factors that need to go on for a beginning. In simple terms, when we hear a little bang, we instinctively turn around and look for the source. (Especially here in M/rat -- 20 years ago I remember being "spotted" by an airport worker at ANU as coming from here. Why? When a noise happens you all jump and look around. Our friend off to the S makes noises!) When we face a Big Bang, it is very reasonable to go looking for a big bang-er. More broadly yet, we know atomic matter to be contingent. Contingency like that points to necessary being root, where -- were there ever an utter nothing, such non-being would forever obtain. And yes, this is a wide-ranging worldviews case to be evaluated on comparative difficulties. Such is the nature of the beast. KF kairosfocus

JC, have you studied the tyrannies of C20 -- especially Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot? Or, the American and global Abortion holocaust? Or the power of the Marlboro man advertising campaign and its health consequences? Or more recent campaigns? The appeal to common experience, the common sense of being morally governed -- oops, where does that come from and what is the implication of treating it as ultimately illusory and/or driven by blind forces of chance and/or necessity? -- and social consensus too often boils down to the amoral, nihilist credo, might and manipulation make 'right' and 'truth' etc. (It also implies that the morally based lone voice dissident [who generally has little power beyond his voice and courage to stand "contra mundum"] is always wrong by definition. The powerful and influential -- of course -- get away with pushing things because they have enough clout to play astro-turfing games and/or to manipulate sufficient numbers emotionally.) That is, we are at a sadly familiar point of seeing the absurdity of socio-cultural relativism. That is, the door to manipulative marches of folly lies open. Complete with the shadow shows of a Plato's cave -- ask yourself, who was buying those shows, why? Likewise, who is paying for and who is controlling today's mass media equivalent and educational equivalent? Do you really want to leave morality in those hands? Where, further, as the case in Ac 27 highlights, such clearly includes the case where money/power interests and their bought and paid for technicos manipulate a "democratic" majority into a march of folly and injustice. Where too, the issue now is not so much "the majority is right," but "my bought and paid for majority/consensus (especially when that includes influential institutions) is is right . . . for me." At least, until things blow up when the march of folly goes over the cliff. Well did Plato warn us about intellectually fashionable evolutionary materialism 2350 years ago:

Ath. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ --> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity] . . . . [Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-

[ --> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics and law: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by "winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . " cf a video on Plato's parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]

These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,

[ --> Evolutionary materialism -- having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT -- leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for "OUGHT" is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in "spin") . . . ]

and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ --> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ --> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush -- as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them.

The lessons of long, sad history -- bought and paid for with blood and tears -- speak, but are we listening? KF kairosfocus

daveS: I would agree that evidence for design in biology is stronger than evidence for design in cosmology. However, not because it is on "a more modest scale." Rather because it includes additional factors or evidences. In addition to fine tuning generally, some of the additional strengths of the argument in biology just off the top of my head would be: - Many billions of examples, versus a sample size of 1 - Design in biology is more experimentally supported, rather than just theoretically - Biology is closer to our experiential realm (note that even ardent materialists like Dawkins admit biological systems "appear to be designed") - Biological systems can be directly compared to systems that we know in fact were designed - The resulting systems in biology are more complex and specified than the resulting systems in cosmology (e.g., a cell compared to a solar system) - Perhaps most key: biological systems contain and operate on the basis of digitally coded information - Finally, it is stronger because design in biology holds, even if the cosmos were formed by accident ---- That said, the argument for fine tuning in the cosmos is quite strong, and has compelled a fair number of formerly materialistic scientists to question their materialistic assumptions and consider the possibility of design, or at least admit the lack of a good materialistic explanation for the origin of the cosmos. Eric Anderson

KF: "JC, propose another IS that can ground ought at world foundation level..." I did. For society to survive, individuals in the society must agree on a set of rules. You haven't explained why these can only be the result of an inherently good god. I assert that these rules are the result of human reasoning. Can you provide a reason why this can't work Jonas Crump

KF, I just don't know that what Fred Hoyle & ilk find intriguing gets you very far. Surely Hoyle in particular demonstrates that very smart people can be utterly wrong, even in their own fields. daveS

JC, propose another IS that can ground ought at world foundation level and lets discuss on comparative difficulties, which is how phil works. I advise against flying spaghetti monsters and the like as they fail to be anywhere near to necessary being candidates. While you are at it find a non root reality basis for being a morally valuable being -- bonus points if it is evolutionary materialist. KF kairosfocus

KF: "This points to the need for an IS that grounds OUGHT. The only level we will find such is the root of reality." Agreed. But why does this require an "inherently good god"? Do you know of any successful (long term) society that does not share a common moral stance (rules)? If we accept the fact that we are beings that can reason, why can't we derive these rules without a god? Jonas Crump

JC, the relevant point from human history is that we find ourselves unavoidably under moral government and that to preserve the life of the mind must implicitly acknowledge that we are responsibly and rationally free. (Or argument is pointless.) This points to the need for an IS that grounds OUGHT. The only level we will find such is the root of reality. And that connects to the issue of a necessary being root of reality. The only serious candidate to answer to the bill of particulars will be an inherently good creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. Which is what ethical theism has always discussed. It is also worth noting that the logical problem of evil has had much less force in the forty or so years since Plantinga's free will defense, cf here. KF kairosfocus

DS: I presume you have taken time to read the linked 101. Try water and what goes into getting both water and organic chemistry based on C, as it struck Hoyle:

From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? . . . I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has “monkeyed” with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.[F. Hoyle, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982): 16.]

This is rather modest fine tuning, but without it we would likely not be here. There are many more cases. Robin Collins remarks:

Suppose we went on a mission to Mars, and found a domed structure in which everything was set up just right for life to exist. The temperature, for example, was set around 70 °F and the humidity was at 50%; moreover, there was an oxygen recycling system, an energy gathering system, and a whole system for the production of food. Put simply, the domed structure appeared to be a fully functioning biosphere. What conclusion would we draw from finding this structure? Would we draw the conclusion that it just happened to form by chance? Certainly not. Instead, we would unanimously conclude that it was designed by some intelligent being. Why would we draw this conclusion? Because an intelligent designer appears to be the only plausible explanation for the existence of the structure. That is, the only alternative explanation we can think of–that the structure was formed by some natural process–seems extremely unlikely. Of course, it is possible that, for example, through some volcanic eruption various metals and other compounds could have formed, and then separated out in just the right way to produce the “biosphere,” but such a scenario strikes us as extraordinarily unlikely, thus making this alternative explanation unbelievable. The universe is analogous to such a “biosphere,” according to recent findings in physics . . . . Scientists call this extraordinary balancing of the parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe the “fine-tuning of the cosmos” . . . For example, theoretical physicist and popular science writer Paul Davies–whose early writings were not particularly sympathetic to theism–claims that with regard to basic structure of the universe, “the impression of design is overwhelming” (Davies, 1988, p. 203) . . . A few examples of this fine-tuning are listed below: 1. If the initial explosion of the big bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 1060, the universe would have either quickly collapsed back on itself, or expanded too rapidly for stars to form. In either case, life would be impossible. [See Davies, 1982, pp. 90-91. (As John Jefferson Davis points out (p. 140), an accuracy of one part in 10^60 can be compared to firing a bullet at a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away, and hitting the target.) 2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.) 3. Calculations by Brandon Carter show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 to the 40th power, then life-sustaining stars like the sun could not exist. This would most likely make life impossible. (Davies, 1984, p. 242.) 4. If the neutron were not about 1.001 times the mass of the proton, all protons would have decayed into neutrons or all neutrons would have decayed into protons, and thus life would not be possible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 39-40 ) 5. If the electromagnetic force were slightly stronger or weaker, life would be impossible, for a variety of different reasons. (Leslie, 1988, p. 299.) . . .

The serious options generally on the table are multiverse with us being in the lucky corner, and design. For the former, the problem is, local isolation of our operating point. That cries out for explanation, and we are back at the lone fly on a stretch of wall swatted by a bullet vs being in a patch carpeted with the critters issue highlighted by John Leslie. And again, this pivots on sensitivity not distributions. Where it is exactly by playing with the equations that some of the most significant insights have come. So, yes, you may not be interested in this issue or linked ones such as the one and the many. But that does not mean the issue is not real or significant. What I have always said in any case is that we have multiple interlocking, supporting issues that point in the same convergent direction, and the cumulative effort and worldviews cost to deny them all is stiff indeed. KF kairosfocus

KF: "PS: One hint, God, by definition would be the inherently good creator of the cosmos, a necessary — thus eternal and connected to the root of a cosmos existing — and maximally great being..." Maybe I am confused, but why must god be inherently good? Is that a requirement? Or just wishful thinking? What evidence do you have for his inherent goodness? Certainly not human history Jonas Crump

F/N: I suggest a glance at Luke Barnes, for the interested person: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4647v1.pdf Clipping a little: >>The ne-tuning of the universe for intelligent life has received much attention in recent times. Beginning with the classic papers of Carter (1974) and Carr & Rees (1979), and the extensive discussion of Barrow & Tipler (1986), a number of authors have noticed that very small changes in the laws, parameters and initial conditions of physics would result in a universe unable to evolve and support intelligent life . . . . The claim that the universe is ne-tuned can be formulated as: FT: In the set of possible physics, the subset that permit the evolution of life is very small. FT can be understood as a counterfactual claim, that is, a claim about what would have been. Such claims are not uncommon in everyday life. For example, we can formulate the claim that Roger Federer would almost certainly defeat me in a game of tennis as: \in the set of possible games of tennis between myself and Roger Federer, the set in which I win is extremely small". This claim is undoubtedly true, even though none of the innitely-many possible games has been played. Our formulation of FT, however, is in obvious need of renement. What determines the set of possible physics? Where exactly do we draw the line between \universes"? How is \smallness" being measured? Are we considering only cases where the evolution of life is physically impossible or just extremely improbable? What is life? We will press on with the our formulation of FT as it stands, pausing to note its inadequacies when appropriate. As it stands, FT is precise enough to distinguish itself from a number of other claims for which it is often mistaken. FT is not the claim that this universe is optimal for life, that it contains the maximum amount of life per unit volume or per baryon, that carbon-based life is the only possible type of life, or that the only kinds of universes that support life are minor variations on this universe. These claims, true or false, are simply beside the point. The reason why FT is an interesting claim is that it makes the existence of life in this universe appear to be something remarkable, something in need of explanation. The intuition here is that, if ours were the only universe, and if the causes that established the physics of our universe were indierent to whether it would evolve life, then the chances of hitting upon a life-permitting universe are very small. As Leslie (1989, pg. 121) notes, \[a] chief reason for thinking that something stands in special need of explanation is that we actually glimpse some tidy way in which it might be explained". Consider the following tidy explanations: This universe is one of a large number of variegated universes, produced by physical processes that randomly scan through (a subset of) the set of possible physics. Even- tually, a universe will be created that is a member of the life-permitting set. Only such universes can be observed, since only such universes contain observers. There exists a transcendent, personal creator of the universe. This entity desires to create a universe in which other minds will be able to form. Thus, the entity chooses from the set of possibilities a universe which is foreseen to evolve intelligent life 2 . These scenarios are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive, but if either or both were true then we would have a tidy explanation of why our universe, against the odds, supports the evolution of life . . . There are a great many scientists, of varying religious persuasions, who accept that the universe is fine-tuned for life, e.g. Barrow, Carr, Carter, Davies, Dawkins, Deutsch, Ellis, Greene, Guth, Harrison, Hawking, Linde, Page, Penrose, Polkinghorne, Rees, Sandage, Smolin, Susskind, Tegmark, Tipler, Vilenkin, Weinberg, Wheeler, Wilczek 5 . They differ, of course, on what conclusion we should draw from this fact . . . . >> In short, the matter is a serious question, not idle and empty speculation that can be dismissed with a talking point or two. (The clips come from a 70+ pp paper replying to Stenger's attempt to dismiss the fine tuning.) KF kairosfocus

KF, Yes, if you think that is a productive approach, by all means, go for it. I'm just saying that I would find clear evidence of design on a modest scale more convincing. Some example where you don't have to bring the entire cosmos into the picture. daveS

DS, the issue is the cluster of laws, parameters, constants, values and how they interact in our universe to yield an operating condition. And since Hoyle et al from the early 1950's [for the moment is getting closish to 70 years . . . a tad long to be waiting on promissory notes, and the trend has been the multiplication of the pattern across time so the trajectory is not what you seem to suggest], it has been a shock to discover just how many things have to be just so for the whole to work. Hence, fine tuning: a cluster of functionally organised, interacting components that are mutually extremely precisely co-adapted. In a context where (a) there is no credible mechanical necessity forcing the range of things in close match, and (b) if that were found, it would simply push the fine tuning up a notch. Of course, one may at will use dismissive remarks to set this aside, but it does not change the fundamental point. KF kairosfocus

KF,

No, the issue does not go away so easily, which is why it has haunted cosmology for a full generation.

Well, it's your show, so you guys can focus your efforts on whatever you prefer. If it were me, I would be more interested in finding evidence of design in our own universe, under known physical constants, laws, etc. Just regular, "boring" science, in other words. Less speculation over intractable (at present) issues that have stumped the cosmologists already. daveS

F/N: The following argument, No. 8 from Kreeft's collection as was linked previously, has much food for thought in it in this context . . . and in the onward context of the living cell that is based on those oh so strangely most abundant elements, H, He, O, C (recall that resonance that caught Hoyle's eye) and with N close by, getting us to stars and galaxies, the periodic table as a whole through star actions, water, organic chemistry, proteins:

Norris Clarke, who taught metaphysics and philosophy of religion for many years at Fordham, has circulated privately an intriguing version of the design argument. We present it here, slightly abridged and revised; for your reflection. Starting point. This world is given to us as a dynamic, ordered system of many active component elements. Their natures (natural properties) are ordered to interact with each other in stable, reciprocal relationships which we call physical laws. For example, every hydrogen atom in our universe is ordered to combine with every oxygen atom in the proportion of 2:1 (which implies that every oxygen atom is reciprocally ordered to combine with every hydrogen atom in the proportion of 1:2). So it is with the chemical valences of all the basic elements. So too all particles with mass are ordered to move toward every other according to the fixed proportions of the law of gravity. In such an interconnected, interlocking, dynamic system, the active nature of each component is defined by its relation with others, and so presupposes the others for its own intelligibility and ability to act. Contemporary science reveals to us that our world-system is not merely an aggregate of many separate, unrelated laws, but rather a tightly interlocking whole, where relationship to the whole structures and determines the parts. The parts can no longer be understood apart from the whole; its influence permeates them all. Argument. In any such system as the above (like our world) no component part or active element can be self-sufficient or self-explanatory. For any part presupposes all the other parts—the whole system already in place—to match its own relational properties. It can't act unless the others are there to interact reciprocally with it. Any one part could be self-sufficient only if it were the cause of the whole rest of the system—which is impossible, since no part can act except in collaboration with the others. Nor can the system as a whole explain its own existence, since it is made up of the component parts and is not a separate being, on its own, independent of them. So neither the parts nor the whole are self-sufficient; neither can explain the actual existence of this dynamically interactive system. Three Conclusions Since the parts make sense only within the whole, and neither the whole nor the parts can explain their own existence, then such a system as our world requires a unifying efficient cause to posit it in existence as a unified whole. Any such cause must be an intelligent cause, one that brings the system into being according to a unifying idea. For the unity of the whole—and of each one of the overarching, cosmic-wide, physical laws uniting elements under themselves—is what determines and correlates the parts. Hence it must be somehow actually present as an effective organizing factor. But the unity, the wholeness, of the whole transcends any one part, and therefore cannot be contained in any one part. To be actually present all at once as a whole this unity can only be the unity of an organizing unifying idea. For only an idea can hold together many different elements at once without destroying or fusing their distinctness. That is almost the definition of an idea. Since the actual parts are spread out over space and time, the only way they can be together at once as an intelligible unity is within an idea. Hence the system of the world as a whole must live first within the unity of an idea. Now a real idea cannot actually exist and be effectively operative save in a real mind, which has the creative power to bring such a system into real existence. Hence the sufficient reason for our ordered world-system must ultimately be a creative ordering Mind. A cosmic-wide order requires a cosmic-wide Orderer, which can only be a Mind. Such an ordering Mind must be independent of the system itself, that is, transcendent; not dependent on the system for its own existence and operation. For if it were dependent on—or part of—the system, it would have to presuppose the latter as already existing in order to operate, and would thus have to both precede and follow itself. But this is absurd. Hence it must exist and be able to operate prior to and independent of the system. Thus our material universe necessarily requires, as the sufficient reason for its actual existence as an operating whole, a Transcendent Creative Mind.

KF kairosfocus

DS, Perhaps, you need to start here and in the onward linked. The fine tuning issue does not lie in any one particular constraint but in the overall interactive pattern of laws, constants, quantities etc. i/l/o sensitivity analysis . . . a standard procedure in doing mathematically tinged analyses of systems. Not least, because one is interested in the robustness and stability of solutions; something very familiar from various fields of praxis. There is no known reason why such an interacting system is constrained to take the cluster of observed values, but it is calculable that slight changes -- and one does not need distribution functions to carry out such a sensitivity analysis -- would derange the system taking it away from the operating point our observed cosmos lies at per observation. And, given the sensitivity analysis, the fixation at such a sharply defined, locally isolated operating point by a super forcing law would push the fine tuning issue up one more level. No, the issue does not go away so easily, which is why it has haunted cosmology for a full generation. More broadly, the same physics has suggested multiple [sub-]cosmi to some, and in so suggesting, that raises the issue of radical contingency. Pulling back a step, the sensitivity analysis on the system of laws etc raises one of the longstanding issues of thought: the one and the many in a unified whole. KF kairosfocus

KF,

That is, a locally isolated system in laws and parameters that for all we can see are potentially variable ...

Ok, but I don't think you can you tell me the sample space and pdf for the fine-structure constant, or even if it is actually rather than just potentially variable. I'm not dismissing the fine-tuning argument altogether, I'm simply saying that given our current state of understanding, it rests on a lot of speculation about presumably nonexistent or at least nonobservable "alternate" universes. daveS

Mung,

Cells are fine-tuned.

Maybe so, but I'm referring to the fine-tuning of physical constants here. daveS

Folks: Thanks for thoughts, I think we need to discuss this one on fairly broad bases. (For instance, here is a 101 to think about: http://www.strangenotions.com/god-exists/ ) JS: That should give us pause indeed. DS: Fine tuning is not that easily removed. As John Leslie points out the issue is not whether at some remove there may be zones that are carpeted with flies on a wall, it is that in our vicinity, there is just one, and splat it is hit by a bullet. That is, a locally isolated system in laws and parameters that for all we can see are potentially variable -- and that is in fact a widely held view - gives us a locally isolated operating point should give us pause before dismissing fine tuning. But it does not stop there, if there are super laws that force the observed laws and parameters we see then that simply postpones the fine tuning to the next level. In effect a cosmos bakery has to have its machinery set right in order to produce well tempered "loaves" as opposed to half baked messes or blackened hockey pucks. beyond, as I will nte in a moment, Mung is right. Life forms are replete with finely balanced regulatory and control systems with communication sub systems. Notoriously, such have to be tuned to work right, and so biology based on C-Chemistry aqueous medium cells is fine tuned. And the cosmos that gets us to C, O,H, N etc and viable terrestrial planets in galactic habitable zones is also fine tuned from its core physics on up. But before we go into such, the point remains that we have to account for why a cosmos instead of nothing, where an utter non-being would -- once it exists -- forever obtain. That points to the issue of being, possible and contingent vs necessary being, with a necessary being at the root of reality. With our being under moral government pointing to a moral necessary being as reality's root. So, in the face of that do you know of a good reason to think that God is an impossible being even as a square circle is impossible? Mung: Cells are indeed fine tuned to work. Fine tuned, functionally specific, control system based, communication using, code using entities. Where do codes come from? Why? While by itself such points to design not designer or to God as specific designer, it does raise serious questions about the kind of world we live in, and about how such things as cells come to be. KF kairosfocus

daveS: I think I actually would find down to Earth scientific evidence of design more convincing (that involving the structure of cells, DNA, and so on) than fine-tuning arguments. Cells are fine-tuned. Mung

KF, I think I actually would find down to Earth scientific evidence of design more convincing (that involving the structure of cells, DNA, and so on) than fine-tuning arguments. Are the fundamental constants truly independent, and can this be tested? Does the creation of a universe involve randomly choosing a tuple of these constants? If so, what is the sample space and probability distribution? And again, how can we test this? daveS

Who should I believe, Dawkins, or these Nobel Prize winners and other great scientists who believed the evidence that the universe was designed?: http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-contents-evidence-for-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_cosmology

Many scientists believed the evidence that the universe was designed. These scientists include Nobel prize winners such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Guglielmo Marconi, Brian Josephson, William Phillips, Richard Smalley, Arno Penzias, Charles Townes Arthur Compton, Antony Hewish, Christian Anfinsen, Walter Kohn, Arthur Schawlow, and other scientists, Charles Darwin, Sir Fred Hoyle, John von Neumann, Wernher von Braun, and Louis Pasteur. http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers

That's right, Charles Darwin believed the universe was designed. Jim Smith

PS: One hint, God, by definition would be the inherently good creator of the cosmos, a necessary -- thus eternal and connected to the root of a cosmos existing -- and maximally great being; where were there ever an utter nothing, there would forever be the same as non-being has no powers of cause, i.e. as a first issue, if something now is, something independent always was. In short, the issue is whether God is the best candidate to be that root reality, and God is either real or impossible as a square circle is impossible. Do atheists have any good arguments that show that God is as impossible as say a square circle? If not, have they met their epistemic responsibilities before asserting their view -- including, the version on which they claim to be without belief in God [in a context where they suggest they have good reason for such] -- and what it implies? kairosfocus

Dawkins on arguments pointing to God. kairosfocus