Were we talking about Raymond Tallis on the fact that not only is philosophy not dead, but that science is in a pickle without it?
Almost as if the New Scientist editors were helping Tallis by illustrating the point, the mag reports that discredited string theory and multiverses for which there is no evidence will save us all from “the space brain threat”:
Physicists have dreamed up some bizarre ideas over the years, but a decade or so ago they outdid themselves with the concept of Boltzmann brains – fully formed, conscious entities that form spontaneously in outer space.
It may seem impossible for a brain to blink into existence, but the laws of physics don’t rule it out entirely. All it requires is a vast amount of time. Eventually, a random chunk of matter and energy will happen to come together in the form of a working mind. It’s the same logic that says a million monkeys working on a million typewriters will replicate the complete works of Shakespeare, if you leave them long enough.
There, there. Feel better now?
Darwinism works magic that over time will endanger us by filling the universe with disembodied brains. But string theory, which the Large Hadron Collider experiments did not support and multiverses for which exponents admit there is no evidence will somehow save us from the flying Darwinian brains.
Only believe.
On the other hand, you could start by disbelieving Darwinism* and the whole edifice collapses.
Yes, we wish it were a spoof too, and so do the commenters, it seems. But most seem stuck at Nonsense + Nonsense = Total Garbage, etc., which is true but misses the point:
This is what Darwinian materialist science becomes. There is nothing else for it to become.
Darwinism + Cosmology = Utter Nonsense
* Tallis, incidentally, is the author of Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis, and the Misrepresentation of Humanity
actually they stated the ‘Boltzmann brain’ argument wrong. Instead of the argument being
The argument is actually,,,
Michael Behe alluded to this problem in his book the “Edge of Evolution”. If there are infinite universes, then we couldn’t trust our senses, because it would be just as likely that our universe might only consist of a human brain that pops into existence which has the neurons configured just right to only give the appearance of past memories. It would also be just as likely that we are floating brains in a lab, with some scientist feeding us fake experiences. Those scenarios would be more likely as the one we appear to be in now (one universe with all of our experiences being “real”). Bottom line is, if there really are an infinite number of universes out there, then we can’t trust anything we perceive to be true, which means there is no point in seeking any truth whatsoever.
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-362912
Thus, contrary to way they portrayed the argument, the Boltzmann’s brain dilemma actually leads to the epistemological failure of materialism and nothing more.
Some have theorized that an infinite number of monkeys pecking away on an infinite number of typewriters would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare. So researchers at Plymouth University in England gave six monkeys one computer for a month. The monkeys “failed to produce a single word,” reports The New York Times. The six monkeys at Paignton Zoo in southwest England “produced only five pages of text,” primarily filled with a lot of s’s. At the end of the document, the monkeys typed a few j’s, a’s, l’s, and m’s. They also used the keyboard as their community toilet.
Funny you failed to mention the study where monkeys that were trained to type on a keyboard reproduced a line of shakespeare quite easily as long as the correct letters were kept. This is the simple analogy used in some science books to explain how evolution works by keeping beneficial traits in the ongoing processes of natural selection.
If this is what you’re referring to (http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/26/.....hakespeare), then my question is: where did the digital monkeys come from? A computer? Oh, and did that computer just evolve from raw materials?
CharlieD, small problem with your Monkeys typing Shakespeare scenario:
Yet Natural Selection would only favor a sequence of amino acids for a protein once functionality was achieved, but typical functional proteins are 200–300 amino acids long. Much longer sequences than our virtual monkeys can find through random search. Even shorter protein domains, because of their rarity, present insurmountable problems to a Darwinian search of blind monkeys:
i.e. Proteins are much like Dawkins’ infamous “Methinks it is like a weasel”,,,
,,,in that the phrase “Methinks it is like a weasel” only make sense in the overall context of where it is specifically positioned in the play of Hamlet. The phrase Methinks it is like a weasel would be totally senseless (functionless), even disruptive, practically anywhere else in the play.
Thus CharlieD, only top down design can really make any sense of how the phrases of Hamlet’s play are used or of how the proteins in life are used in a coordinated fashion to achieve higher and higher levels of functionality.
F/N: Wiki on Infinite Monkeys, is excellent, and remember this is testimony against known ideological interest. Pay particular attention to the random document generation exercises. KF
PS: When we insert Dawkins’ Weasel with “cumulative selection,” the problem is we have just inserted targetted, foresighted, designed, non-blind search. Cf. here.
“Funny you failed to mention the study where monkeys that were trained to type on a keyboard reproduced a line of shakespeare”
How many symbols? The 24 first symbols of “The two gentlemen of Verona”? Do you mean this?
“by keeping beneficial traits in the ongoing processes of natural selection.”
Except that this does not work in a majority of cases due to genetic drift.