Category: Fine tuning
Fine-tuning of the universe: Why David Hume’s objections fail
| June 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Joseph R. Miller at More than Cake: Fine Tuning has certainly advanced over the centuries, but still it is worth noting that one of the early and oft quoted critics was philosopher David Hume. However, his reasoning was fatally flawed and in a previous post I give four reasons to reject Hume’s criticism: First, […]
Christian philosopher Robin Collins vs. atheist philosopher Peter Millican on the fine-tuning of the universe for life
| June 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design |
Yes (Robin Collins) or no ( Peter Millican)? Wintery Knight recalls the 2016 debate and offers a summary: Science has revealed that the fundamental constants and forces of the cosmos appear to be exquisitely fine-tuned to allow a universe in which life can develop. Is God the best explanation of the incredibly improbable odds of […]
Water can exist in two different liquid phases
| June 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design |
We are learning more about water, which may shed light on its unusual, life-enabling properties. From Stockholm University at Phys.org: Most of us know that water is essential for our existence on planet Earth. It is less well-known that water has many strange or anomalous properties and behaves very differently from all other liquids. Some […]
Fine-tuning?: Earth slows the deadly solar wind to a gentle breeze
| June 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Physics |
One reason why life can exist here. From ScienceDaily: A new study describes the first observations of the process of electron heating in Earth’s bow shock. The researchers found that when the electrons in the solar wind encounter the bow shock, they momentarily accelerate to such a high speed that the electron stream becomes unstable […]
Design Disquisitions: Quote of the Month-Robin Collins on Why ID isn’t Science
| May 28, 2018 | Posted by Joshua G under Back to Basics of ID, Fine tuning, Food for thought, ID, Philosophy, Science |
It’s been a while sorry, but here’s my latest: Quote of the Month: Robin Collins on why ID isn’t a part of science
Are recent dark energy findings a blow for multiverse theory?
| May 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Multiverse, Physics |
Dark energy. From Andrew Masterson at Cosmos: The question of dark energy in one universe does not require others to provide an answer. A hypothetical multiverse seems less likely after modelling by researchers in Australia and the UK threw one of its key assumptions into doubt. Dark energy is supposed to be responsible for the […]
Stephen Hawking’s final theory scales back multiverse
| May 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Multiverse |
From ScienceDaily: The theory of eternal inflation that Hawking and Hertog put forward is based on string theory: a branch of theoretical physics that attempts to reconcile gravity and general relativity with quantum physics, in part by describing the fundamental constituents of the universe as tiny vibrating strings. Their approach uses the string theory concept […]
At Nature: How gravitational waves might help explain fundamental cosmology. But do they exist?
| April 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Physics |
Gravitational waves are thought to be ripples in the fabric of space-time, caused by violent processes. From Davide Castelvecchi at Nature: With a handful of discoveries already under their belts, gravitational-wave scientists have a long list of what they expect more data to bring, including insight into the origins of the Universe’s black holes; the […]
The unthinkable universe strangely points where materialists dare not boldly go
| April 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From retired nuclear engineer Regis Nicoll at Salvo 44: We know from experience that when an object, like a car, absorbs energy by crashing into another object, it suffers damage. If I want my car repaired, I don’t just let it sit and expect it to return to its original condition by itself. Rather, I […]
A classic: ID and Millennials
| April 8, 2018 | Posted by News under Design inference, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Religion |
From RJS at Patheos: Ten years ago, when I first started writing on science and faith, Intelligent Design was a hot topic. It was in the news and high on the agenda for many in my local church. Today it has slid into the background, occasionally mentioned, but there are often other fish to fry. […]
Did the universe never have a chance?
| March 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
From C. D. McCoy: Abstract: Demarest asserts that we have good evidence for the existence and nature of an initial chance event for the universe. I claim that we have no such evidence and no knowledge of its supposed nature. Against relevant comparison classes her initial chance account is no better, and in some ways […]
Claim: The multiverse is a logical outcome of the existence of empty space
| March 28, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Multiverse, Physics |
From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta: The controversial idea that our universe is just a random bubble in an endless, frothing multiverse arises logically from nature’s most innocuous-seeming feature: empty space. Specifically, the seed of the multiverse hypothesis is the inexplicably tiny amount of energy infused in empty space — energy known as the vacuum energy, […]
Astronomer: The Star Wars we grew up with are over. The real universe is lonelier
| March 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Culture, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design |
Christopher Graney at the Vatican Observatory Foundation Blog offers some thoughtful comments on the relationship between the Star Wars we all grew up with and the actual universe we are learning about now: Star Wars: On the Wrong Side of History & Science – Episode One: Star Wars is set in a wonderfully imaginative universe […]
Is there something about quantum theory that we are missing?
| March 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Physics |
From Natalie Wolchover, reviewing Philip Ball’s Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Quantum Physics Is Different at Nature: Along with the historic discoveries, Ball brings readers up to speed on today’s “quantum renaissance”. This active intellectual period is fuelled by quantum-computing research and the rise of quantum information theory, pioneered by researchers […]
Was Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) right to object to the Kalam cosmological argument?
| March 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Kalam cosmological argument: The cosmological argument is less a particular argument than an argument type. It uses a general pattern of argumentation (logos) that makes an inference from particular alleged facts about the universe (cosmos) to the existence of a unique being, generally identified with or referred to as God. Among these initial facts are […]
What’s the worst thing that would happen if fine-tuning of our universe were acknowledged as real?
| March 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Multiverse |
A reader writes to ask, quoting Sabine Hossenfelder at her blog Back(Re)Action: What the particle physicists got wrong was an argument based on a mathematical criterion called “naturalness”. If the laws of nature were “natural” according to this definition, then the LHC should have seen something besides the Higgs. The data analysis isn’t yet completed, […]
New Scientist popularizes a new term: Uglyverse
| March 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Daniel Cossins at New Scientist: An almost religious devotion to beauty remains commonplace among theorists of fundamental physics, even if the standards of attractiveness have changed over time. One vision of elegance in particular has surged to the fore: the principle of naturalness. Broadly speaking, it is the belief that the laws of nature […]
At Aeon: Fine-tuning is easy to explain: The universe itself is conscious, and somewhat like a human
| February 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
That’s “cosmopanpsychism.” An earlier version is rocks have minds. From Philip Goff at Aeon: In the past 40 or so years, a strange fact about our Universe gradually made itself known to scientists: the laws of physics, and the initial conditions of our Universe, are fine-tuned for the possibility of life. It turns out that, […]
Theoretical physicist: The Higgs mass is not “natural”
| February 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Design inference, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Physics |
In “contrast to all the other particle masses in the standard model” From theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (June, 2018), at Back(Re)Action: Yes, I know the headlines said the LHC would probe string theory, and the LHC would probe supersymmetry. The headlines were wrong. I am sorry they […]
Did medieval theologians believe in a multiverse?
| February 4, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
A friend writes to say, “Some noted medieval theologians were quite wiling to consider that God had created other inhabited worlds. They saw no logical or scientific difficulty in assuming that such worlds might indeed exist.” Our friend cites in evidence: – When Tempier [d. 1279] declared that the omnipotent God could create a vacuum […]
