Asked of Steve Meyer: If humans are so important to God, why did they take so long to develop?

@JVL "What if that being is lying to you? Would you be able to tell?" The being may be lying and there would be no way of knowing. But I have no reason to presume the being would be lying. conceptualinertia

JVL

What if that being is lying to you? Would you be able to tell?

Truth and lies are concepts our human intelligence discerns by measuring against reality. To the extent that our intelligence understands the truth or falsehood of things, then yes of course we could tell. The prophets of the past did this frequently. God said something and the prophets asked this to be validated in reality to determine if it was true. That's how they discovered the true God from false representations of gods. Silver Asiatic

Conceptualinertia: There is no way to answer any question about WHY the Deity would do anything without resorting to some kind of revelation. There is no basis to think that we would be able to understand the motivations, if any, of a Being capable of creating this universe and life other than that He (really It) told us that His motivations are intelligible to us. What if that being is lying to you? Would you be able to tell? JVL

@Severinsky, There is no way to answer any question about WHY the Deity would do anything without resorting to some kind of revelation. There is no basis to think that we would be able to understand the motivations, if any, of a Being capable of creating this universe and life other than that He (really It) told us that His motivations are intelligible to us. conceptualinertia

excellent interwiew, question and book. the answer is: is 6 days a long time? true it could've been done by The One designer/creator, aka G-d of Abraham in one day, but it was worth the extra 5 day wait. there's no proof the universe could be billions of years old, and things be as they are now, even if G-d of the Bible wanted to do it that, current deep-time dependent, consensus, un-parsimonious way. the mantle of science being w/in not just ID but creation science YeC. reference Pearlman YeC Pearlman

The only "ID farce" that I see comes from the opponents of ID. The farce is with you. :razz: ET

Does time exist outside the fabric of space-time? Does "eternity" have any meaning outside of space-time? Why do ID's objectors think that their straw man arguments mean something? ET

Viola Lee- "The Privileged Planet" has one of the Designer's specific goals was that our place in the universe was designed for scientific discovery. That would mean that living organisms capable of that was also a goal. ET

That's a pretty good parody. Viola Lee

Well, they'll troll you when their at their comment limit Then they'll troll you just like they said they didn't They'll troll you when you're trying to be polite And they'll troll you when they're trollin' just for spite But I shouldn't feel so badly rolled Everybody must get trolled -Barb Dillen asauber

@6 Really? Why do you bother posting here then? Like what’s the the purpose of your comments short of proving you are a fantastical dumbass. Because certainly none of those eye-opening remarks you made in the past have been anything other than insulting jabs saying ID is stupid U iS sMaRtS. Pretty much crap dribbling out of your mouth So is there a purpose to your comments or are you just a troll? Because if you’re just a troll you should be kicked AaronS1978

the Shroud image

I remarked in the past. I’m one of the few people here who have actually seen the Shroud. My wife and I and some friends went to Turin in 1998 when it was on display. The website is. https://shroud.com/ And maintained by a Jew named Barrie Schwortz. jerry

It seems much more likely to me that whatever creative power that created the universe as it is also has created life, in however many different configurations, throughout the universe,

Nothing in ID objects to this.

so that it could develop and change over time, without specific goals as to how that development takes place.

This seems absurd but assume what you like.

To think that human beings as we are now, at this particular time and place, are a specific goal of a universal creative power strikes me as extremely parochial.

Assume all you want. But it seems the more intelligent the creator the less likely there was intention. jerry

Silver Asiatic as to “he saw and believed”. Yes. Dr. Petrus Soons, who constructed 3-D holograms of the Shroud image, using the 3-Dimensional information gleaned from photographs of the Shroud,,,

Shroud of Turin Holograms https://shroudholograms.com

,,, Dr. Petrus Soons describes how he has witnessed several people literally break down and cry when they first witnessed the 3-Dimensional hologram of the Shroud image.

Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words "The Lamb" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ

Verse:

Isaiah 53:7-12 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

bornagain77

17 Jerry writes, "One would likely assume that the intelligence who created life also had goals". Yes, that is an assumption. One might as well assume, if there is a goal for life on Earth, that it is for organisms that will exist in a million years, and we are just a way station on that path. It seems much more likely to me that whatever creative power that created the universe as it is also has created life, in however many different configurations, throughout the universe, so that it could develop and change over time, without specific goals as to how that development takes place. That is, the goal has been to create such a universe, period. To think that human beings as we are now, at this particular time and place, are a specific goal of a universal creative power strikes me as extremely parochial. Viola Lee

those three things do not entail the specifics of human beings on Earth being a particular. specific goal of this creator

One would likely assume that the intelligence who created life also had goals when the specifics of life which are also unique and equally unlikely appeared. Where did the specific systems that are necessary for these life forms originate? Why would there not be goals here too? This contradicts your assumption. jerry

BA77 An Easter Monday, Shroud of Turin reflection:

He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. John ch 20

An interesting interpretation on this: Peter and John encountered the Shroud in the tomb. As John did, at that moment "he saw and believed". Silver Asiatic

VL Christian theology is built upon a foundation of both reason and revelation. Rom 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made ... Arguments from philosophy and logic support the empirical science. The big bang itself does not say that God exists. But the reasoning that goes with it - first cause and impossibility of infinite string of causes, points to a creator God. Silver Asiatic

Yet, regardless of how Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”

“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” Anton Zeilinger – Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437

As well, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:

Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm

And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.

Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403

Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, it is empirically demonstrated that “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.” As well, as should be needless to say, this is yet another VERY powerful line of empirical evidence that directly falsifies the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity since humans themselves are brought into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level, and therefore humans are empirically shown to have far, far, more significance, value, and dignity in this universe than atheists have presumed. As much as it may hurt atheists's feelings to know this, and as far as our best science can tell us, we are not merely “chemical scum” as Hawking, via the Copernican Principle, tried to imply that we were. Hopefully atheists will get over the sad fact that they are not merely chemical scum in short order. :)

Isaiah 45:18-19 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.”

One final note, although, as has been shown in this post, both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics combined, (in a rather dramatic fashion), to overturn the Copernican Principle, and return humanity back to centrality in the universe, (and in spite of that stunning correspondence between the two theories in overturning the Copernican Principle), General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics still simply refuse, mathematically, to be combined into a single overarching 'theory of everything. And yet, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here is a recent video where I make that case

Jesus Christ as the correct "Theory of Everything" - video https://youtu.be/Vpn2Vu8--eE

And here are a few more notes supporting that claim

(February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673178 The evidence for the Shroud’s authenticity keeps growing. (Timeline of facts) – November 08, 2019 What Is the Shroud of Turin? Facts & History Everyone Should Know – Myra Adams and Russ Breault https://www.christianity.com/wiki/jesus-christ/what-is-the-shroud-of-turin.html

To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”

Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html

Verse:

Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

bornagain77

And while that finding by Dr. Neil Turok is certainly very interesting, it just gives life in general a 'middle' position in the universe, and still does not give humanity in particular, a 'middle' position in the universe. Yet, Dr. William Demski, (and company), in the following graph, have refined the estimate with better data, and have given us a more precise figure of 8.8 x 10^26 M for the observable universe’s diameter, and 1.6 x 10^-35 for the Planck length which is the smallest length possible.

Magnifying the Universe https://academicinfluence.com/ie/mtu/

And that more precise figure does indeed give humanity in particular a 'middle' position in the universe. Dr. Dembski’s more precise interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as the size of a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center, and/or geometric mean, of all possible sizes of our physical reality. This is very interesting for the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions rather than directly in the exponential middle and/or the geometric mean. Needless to say, this empirical finding directly challenges, if not directly refutes, the assumption behind the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity. Now let’s get back to observers themselves being central in the universe. Whereas Einstein, when he first formulated both Special and General Relativity, gave a ‘hypothetical’ observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe, In Quantum Mechanics we find that it is the measurement itself that gives each observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe. As the following article states, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”,,,

Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness – May 27, 2015 Excerpt: Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. http://phys.org/news/2015-05-quantum-theory-weirdness.html

Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed ‘the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.’

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.” http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

Moreover, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.

More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger – March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html Experimental test of local observer-independence – 2019 Excerpt: ,,, If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.05080.pdf

Because of such consistent and repeatable experiments like the preceding from quantum mechanics, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, stated “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”

“It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe. And yet, have you ever before read a sentence having meaning similar to that of my preceding sentence? Likely you have not, and the reason you have not is, in my opinion, that physicists are in a state of denial, and have fears and agonies that are very similar to the fears and agonies that Copernicus and Galileo went through with their perturbations of society.” Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics – John Hopkins University http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/quantum.enigma.html

On top of all that, and completely contrary to the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, in quantum mechanics we find that humans, (via their free will), are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. As Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist himself, stated in the following article, In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,

The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.pdf

In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. bornagain77

And it is the large scale structures of the universe, combined on top of the CMBR anomalies, which severely question the belief that the earth should not be considered to have a ‘preferred’ position in the universe. As the following article, (with a illustration) explains,

“Of course to have an exact position, (or what we would call an ‘exact center’ in the universe), we would need an X axis, a Y axis, and a Z axis, since that will give us three dimensions in Euclidean space. The CMB dipole and quadrupole gives us the X axis and Y axis but not a Z axis. Hence, the X and Y axis of the CMB provide a direction, but only an approximate position. That is why we have continually said that the CMB puts Earth “at or near the center of the universe.” For the Z-axis we depend on other information, such as quasars and galaxy alignment that the CMB cannot provide. For example, it has been discovered that the anisotropies of extended quasars and radio galaxies are aligned with the Earth’s equator and the North celestial pole (NCP)4.,,, Ashok K. Singal describes his shocking discovery in those terms: “What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon.” – Ashok K. Singal4 “Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky,” Ashok K. Singal, Astronomy and Astrophysics Division, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, India, May 17, 2103,.. Signal states: “We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations.” - illustration https://i.postimg.cc/L8G3CbXN/DOUBLE-AXIS.png - article http://www.robertsungenis.com/gww/features/Welcome%20to%20Catholic%20Star%20Wars.pdf

Moreover, due to the ‘insane coincidence’ of the flatness of the universe being fine-tuned to within one part to the 10^57, we find that “These tiny temperature variations (in the CMBR) correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable universe.”

How do we know the universe is flat? Discovering the topology of the universe – by Fraser Cain – June 7, 2017 Excerpt: With the most sensitive space-based telescopes they have available, astronomers are able to detect tiny variations in the temperature of this background radiation. And here’s the part that blows my mind every time I think about it. These tiny temperature variations correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable universe. A region that was a fraction of a degree warmer become a vast galaxy cluster, hundreds of millions of light-years across. The cosmic microwave background radiation just gives and gives, and when it comes to figuring out the topology of the universe, it has the answer we need. If the universe was curved in any way, these temperature variations would appear distorted compared to the actual size that we see these structures today. But they’re not. To best of its ability, ESA’s Planck space telescope, can’t detect any distortion at all. The universe is flat.,,, Since the universe is flat now, it must have been flat in the past, when the universe was an incredibly dense singularity. And for it to maintain this level of flatness over 13.8 billion years of expansion, in kind of amazing. In fact, astronomers estimate that the universe must have been flat to 1 part within 1×10^57 parts. Which seems like an insane coincidence. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-universe-flat-topology.html

Thus, (besides the CMBR and the large scale structure of the universe combining to give the earth an ‘exact center’ in the universe, and due to the 'insane coincidence' of the flatness of the universe being fine-tuned to within one part to the 10^57 over the entire history of the universe), our best evidence from cosmology now reveals teleology, (i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan), that specifically included the earth from the beginning of creation. The earth, from what our best science can now tell us, is not some random cosmic fluctuation as atheists have erroneously presumed in their 'rapid inflation' models.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Job 38:4-5 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who fixed its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched a measuring line across it?

On top of all that, and the further support the claim that ‘the universe had humans in mind all along’, in the following paper, Robin Collins found that photons coming from the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) are ‘such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers.’

The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability – Robin Collins – March 22, 2014 Excerpt: Predictive and Explanatory Power of Discoverability – Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation ,,, The most dramatic confirmation of the discoverability/livability optimality thesis (DLO) is the dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) on the baryon to photon ratio.,,, ,,, The only livability effect this ratio has is on whether or not galaxies can form that have near – optimally livability zones. As long as this condition is met, the value of this ratio has no further effects on livability. Hence, the DLO predicts that within this range, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers. According to my calculations – which have been verified by three other physicists — to within the margin of error of the experimentally determined parameters (~20%), the value of the photon to baryon ratio is such that it maximizes the CMB. This is shown in Figure 1 below. (pg. 13) This is a case of a teleological thesis serving both a predictive and an ultimate explanatory role.,,, http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard%20Forum%20paper%20draft%20for%20posting.pdf

Of related interest to that, we also find that, "We Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History to be able to observe the Cosmic Background Radiation"

We Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History to be able to observe the Cosmic Background Radiation - Hugh Ross – video (7:12 minute mark) https://youtu.be/MxOGeqVOsvc?t=431

To further solidify the fact that humans have far more significance in this universe than atheists have presupposed, (with their 'chemical scum' model :) ), in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that ““So we can go from 10 to the plus 25 to 10 to the minus 35. Now where are we? Well the size of a living cell is about 10 to the minus 5. Which is halfway between the two. In mathematical terms, we say it is the geometric mean. We live in the middle between the largest scale in physics,,, and the tiniest scale [in physics].”

“So we can go from 10 to the plus 25 to 10 to the minus 35. Now where are we? Well the size of a living cell is about 10 to the minus 5. Which is halfway between the two. In mathematical terms, we say it is the geometric mean. We live in the middle between the largest scale in physics,,, and the tiniest scale [in physics].” – Neil Turok as quoted at the 14:40 minute mark The Astonishing Simplicity of Everything – Neil Turok Public Lecture – video (12:00 minute mark, we live in the geometric mean, i.e. the middle, of the universe) https://youtu.be/f1x9lgX8GaE?t=715

The following interactive graph, gives very similar ‘rough ballpark’ figures, of 10 ^27 and 10-35, to Dr. Turok’s figures.

The Scale of the Universe https://htwins.net/scale2/

bornagain77

General Relativity itself, one of our most powerful theories in science, makes this point clear. As Stephen 'chemical scum' Hawking himself explained, ‘our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.,,, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.’

“So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. As in the case of our normal view versus that of the goldfish, one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest. Despite its role in philosophical debates over the nature of our universe, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.” Stephen Hawking – The Grand Design – pages 39 – 2010

And as George Ellis, (a former colleague of Hawking), stated, “I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds…”

“People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations… For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds… What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.” – George Ellis – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55

And as Fred Hoyle himself stated, “Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”

“The relation of the two pictures [geocentrism and geokineticism] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view…. Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.” - Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973.

And even as Einstein himself stated, The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”

“Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.” Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.);

There simply is no empirical reason to prefer the sun, or any other place in the universe, as being central in the universe over and above the earth being considered central in the universe, in any model that we may choose to make for the universe. As Einstein himself noted,

“One need not view the existence of such centrifugal forces as originating from the motion of K’ [the Earth]; one could just as well account for them as resulting from the average rotational effect of distant, detectable masses as evidenced in the vicinity of K’ [the Earth], whereby K’ [the Earth] is treated as being at rest.” –Albert Einstein, quoted in Hans Thirring, “On the Effect of Distant Rotating Masses in Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation”, Physikalische Zeitschrift 22, 29, 1921 “If one rotates the shell *relative to the fixed stars* about an axis going through its center, a Coriolis force arises in the interior of the shell, *that is, the plane of a Foucault pendulum is dragged around*” –Albert Einstein, cited in “Gravitation”, Misner Thorne and Wheeler pp. 544-545. “We can’t feel our motion through space, nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.,,, If all the objects in space were removed save one, then no one could say whether that one remaining object was at rest or hurtling through the void at 100,000 miles per second” Historian Lincoln Barnett – “The Universe and Dr. Einstein” – pg 73 (contains a foreword by Albert Einstein)

In fact, as far as empirical science itself is concerned, in the 4 dimensional spacetime of Einstein’s General Relativity, we find that each 3-Dimensional point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe,,,

Where is the centre of the universe?: Excerpt: There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a “Big Bang” about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html

,,, and since any 3-Dimensional point can be considered central in the expanding 4-Dimensional space time of General Relativity, then, as the following articles make clear, it is now left completely open to whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe,,,

How Einstein Revealed the Universe’s Strange “Nonlocality” – George Musser | Oct 20, 2015 Excerpt: Under most circumstances, we can ignore this nonlocality. You can designate some available chunk of matter as a reference point and use it to anchor a coordinate grid. You can, to the chagrin of Santa Barbarans, take Los Angeles as the center of the universe and define every other place with respect to it. In this framework, you can go about your business in blissful ignorance of space’s fundamental inability to demarcate locations.,, In short, Einstein’s theory is nonlocal in a more subtle and insidious way than Newton’s theory of gravity was. Newtonian gravity acted at a distance, but at least it operated within a framework of absolute space. Einsteinian gravity has no such element of wizardry; its effects ripple through the universe at the speed of light. Yet it demolishes the framework, violating locality in what was, for Einstein, its most basic sense: the stipulation that all things have a location. General relativity confounds our intuitive picture of space as a kind of container in which material objects reside and forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-einstein-revealed-the-universe-s-strange-nonlocality// How Einstein Lost His Bearings, and With Them, General Relativity – March 2018 Excerpt: Einstein’s field equations — the equations of general relativity — describe how the shape of space-time evolves in response to the presence of matter and energy. To describe that evolution, you need to impose on space-time a coordinate system — like lines of latitude and longitude — that tells you which points are where. The most important thing to recognize about coordinate systems is that they’re human contrivances. Maybe in one coordinate system we label a point (0, 0, 0), and in another we label that same point (1, 1, 1). The physical properties haven’t changed — we’ve just tagged the point differently. “Those labels are something about us, not something about the world,” said James Weatherall, a philosopher of science at the University of California, Irvine.,,, The Einstein field equations we have today are generally covariant. They express the same physical truths about the universe — how space-time curves in the presence of energy and matter — regardless of what coordinates you use to label things.,,, as Einstein discovered,,, the universe doesn’t admit any one privileged choice of coordinates. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-einstein-lost-his-bearings-and-with-them-general-relativity-20180314/

In fact, according to the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity, even individual people can be considered central in the universe,,,

You Technically Are the Center of the Universe – May 2016 Excerpt: (due to the 1 in 10^120 finely tuned expansion of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity) no matter where you stand, it will appear that everything in the universe is expanding around you. So the center of the universe is technically — everywhere. The moment you pick a frame of reference, that point becomes the center of the universe. Here’s another way to think about it: The sphere of space we can see around us is the visible universe. We’re looking at the light from stars that’s traveled millions or billions of years to reach us. When we reach the 13.8 billion-light-year point, we’re seeing the universe just moments after the Big Bang happened. But someone standing on another planet, a few light-years to the right, would see a different sphere of the universe. It’s sort of like lighting a match in the middle of a dark room: Your observable universe is the sphere of the room that the light illuminates. But someone standing in a different spot in the room will be able to see a different sphere. So technically, we are all standing at the center of our own observable universes. https://mic.com/articles/144214/you-technically-are-the-center-of-the-universe-thanks-to-a-wacky-physics-quirk

And to support the claim that even individual people can be considered central in the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity, when Einstein first formulated both Special and General relativity, he gave a ‘hypothetical’ observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe.

Introduction to special relativity Excerpt: Einstein’s approach was based on thought experiments, calculations, and the principle of relativity, which is the notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers.,,, Each observer has a distinct “frame of reference” in which velocities are measured,,,, per wikipedia The happiest thought of my life. Excerpt: In 1920 Einstein commented that a thought came into his mind when writing the above-mentioned paper he called it “the happiest thought of my life”: “The gravitational field has only a relative existence… Because for an observer freely falling from the roof of a house – at least in his immediate surroundings – there exists no gravitational field.” http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node85.html

We will get back to observers being central in the universe in a little while, but before we do that, and to more firmly establish that the earth, (and solar system itself) should be given a ‘privileged’ position in the universe, it is first necessary to point out that anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR), (anomalies that were recently discovered by the WMAP and Planck telescopes), ‘strangely’ line up with the earth and solar system, Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” that explains these ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR, that ‘unexpectedly’ line up with the earth and solar system, in an easy to understand manner.

Cosmic Microwave Background Proves Intelligent Design (disproves Copernican principle) (clip of “The Principle”) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htV8WTyo4rw

Moreover, as the following paper highlights, we find that Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe, "implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which the standard cosmological model is based upon",,,

A large anisotropy in the sky distribution of 3CRR quasars and other radio galaxies - Ashok K. Singal Astrophysics and Space Science volume 357, Article number: 152 (2015) Abstract We report the presence of large anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars as well as some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR survey, the most reliable and most intensively studied complete sample of strong steep-spectrum radio sources. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the equinoxes and the north celestial pole. Out of a total of 48 quasars in the sample, 33 of them lie in one half of the observed sky and the remaining 15 in the other half. The probability that in a random distribution of 3CRR quasars in the sky, statistical fluctuations could give rise to an asymmetry in observed numbers up to this level is only ?1 %. Also only about 1/4th of Fanaroff-Riley 1 (FR1) type of radio galaxies lie in the first half of the observed sky and the remainder in the second half. If we include all the observed asymmetries in the sky distributions of quasars and radio galaxies in the 3CRR sample, the probability of their occurrence by a chance combination reduces to ?2×10?5. Two pertinent but disturbing questions that could be raised here are—firstly why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the strongest and most distant discrete sources, implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? Secondly why should such anisotropies lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It seems yet more curious when we consider the other anisotropies, e.g., an alignment of the four normals to the quadrupole and octopole planes in the CMBR with the cosmological dipole and the equinoxes. Then there is the other recently reported large dipole anisotropy in the NVSS radio source distribution differing in magnitude from the CMBR dipole by a factor of four, and therefore not explained as due to the peculiar motion of the Solar system, yet aligned with the CMBR dipole which itself lies close to the line joining the equinoxes. Are these alignments a mere coincidence or do they imply that these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which the standard cosmological model is based upon? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-015-2388-2

bornagain77

As to the question, "If Humans Are So Important To God, Why Did They Take So Long To Develop?" Hmm, and the human conception of time is comparable to God's conception of time how exactly? After all, besides creating matter and energy, God created time and space.

Big Bang Theory - An Overview of the main evidence Excerpt: Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 Steven W. Hawking, George F.R. Ellis, "The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in our Universe," Astrophysical Journal, 152, (1968) pp. 25-36. Steven W. Hawking, Roger Penrose, "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, 314 (1970) pp. 529-548. http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

The finding that time and space themselves were created, should, at the very least, suggest that God has a radically different conception of time, (and space), than we mere humans have.

2 Peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Moreover, as Brandon Carter first pointed with the '"anthropic principle inequality", and further refined and corroborated by John Barrow and Frank Tipler, (and Hugh Ross), "15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of "just right" conditions reflect miraculous efficiency. Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth's rotation period lengthens, Earth's plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth's atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now."

Anthropic Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity - BY HUGH ROSS - DECEMBER 31, 2001 Excerpt: Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term "anthropic principle" (1974),13 noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years "preparing" for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).14 Carter formalized this enormous imbalance between the time required to produce the possibility for human life and the brevity of the species' (potential) survival as the "anthropic principle inequality."15 In response, some researchers speculated that the human species might represent an anomaly, an exception to the rule (e.g., a late bloomer or a more fragile species) among many possible intelligent life forms elsewhere in the cosmos. However, Carter and (later) astrophysicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for virtually any conceivable intelligent species under any conceivable life-support conditions.16 Roughly 15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of "just right" conditions reflect miraculous efficiency. Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth's rotation period lengthens, Earth's plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth's atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now.17 These figures demonstrate that the inequality is extreme. The survival time for advanced intelligent physical life is only a millionth as long as the time required to produce the conditions necessary for its survival. Another British mathematical physicist, Roger Penrose, was among the first to give voice to a philosophical conclusion: the extremely high level of fine-tuning astronomers and physicists discern powerfully suggests a purpose behind the universe.18 That the design is so focused on providing a home for humanity implies that a significant, even central, part of the purpose for the universe is anthropic. Specifically, the universe was created for the express benefit of humanity. Given the awesome capacities necessary to create and design the universe, the purpose for humanity must be significant indeed. Further, given that human survivability is cosmically brief means that humanity's purpose can and must be fulfilled quickly. The rapid fulfillment of a profoundly significant purpose for humanity—that's the message of the Bible. No other "revelation" makes such perfect sense of everything humanity observes and experiences. https://reasons.org/explore/publications/facts-for-faith/read/facts-for-faith/2001/12/31/anthropic-principle-a-precise-plan-for-humanity

And as David Waltham also noted in his book 'Lucky Planet', "So, how do we explain the remarkable coincidence that the timescale for the emergence of intelligence is almost the same as the timescale for habitability?" Researchers Carter and Watson have dubbed this idea the anthropic inequality and it seems surprising, if it is not for some purpose.,,,"

Lucky Us: Turning the Copernican Principle on Its Head - Daniel Bakken - January 26, 2015 Excerpt: "Earth is a precious jewel possessing a rare combination of qualities that happen to make it almost perfect for sustaining life,"4 and, "In my view, imaginatively populating our small corner of one galaxy with hundreds of advanced civilizations is just wishful thinking. The scientifically conservative position should be that life is rare and intelligence even more so."5,,, What if intelligence and technology hadn't arisen in Earth's habitability time window? Waltham in Lucky Planet asks "So, how do we explain the remarkable coincidence that the timescale for the emergence of intelligence is almost the same as the timescale for habitability?" Researchers Carter and Watson have dubbed this idea the anthropic inequality and it seems surprising, if it is not for some purpose.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/lucky_us_turnin093011.html

And here is an excellent, fairly recent, video by Dr. Hugh Ross, that further highlights this point.

Life and Earth History Reveal God's Miraculous Preparation for Humans - Hugh Ross, PhD - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Y496NYnm8

As is obvious, the "anthropic principle inequality" flies in the face of the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, which holds that there is nothing particularly special about the Earth in general, of Humanity in particular, in this universe, The Copernican Principle, and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, is an outgrowth of Nicolaus Copernicus's discovery that the Earth is not the center of the solar system.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was a mathematician and astronomer who proposed that the sun was stationary in the center of the universe and the earth revolved around it. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/

And the Copernican principle, (and/or the principle of mediocrity), is one of the two main ‘supposed’ scientific evidences, (the false narrative of human evolution being the other ‘supposed’ scientific evidence), that atheists have appealed to try to claim that man has no reason to believe that his life may have any higher purpose, meaning, value, or significance, in this universe, (much less that there may be any significance to our lives beyond our life in this temporal universe) .

Copernican principle Excerpt: In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle, is an alternative name of the mediocrity principle,,, stating that humans (the Earth, or the Solar system) are not privileged observers of the universe.[1] Named for Copernican heliocentrism, it is a working assumption that arises from a modified cosmological extension of Copernicus’s argument of a moving Earth.[2] In some sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle. – per wikipedia Carl Sagan coined the term ‘principle of mediocrity’ to refer to the idea that scientists should assume that nothing is special about humanity’s situation https://books.google.com/books?id=rR5BCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA187#v=onepage&q&f=false Mediocrity principle Excerpt: The (Mediocrity) principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of the Solar System, Earth’s history, the evolution of biological complexity, human evolution, or any one nation. It is a heuristic in the vein of the Copernican principle, and is sometimes used as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity. The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged, exceptional, or even superior.[2][3] – per wikipedia

Atheists have used the Copernican Principle to great effect to try to argue that man is completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. For one instance out of many instances, in 1995 the late Stephen Hawking, (a fairly famous atheist), bluntly stated “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,”

“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,” – Stephen Hawking – 1995 TV show, Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken,

So there you go, according to atheists, and via the Copernican principle, your life has no more significance than chemical scum. And yet, despite the fact that virtually everyone, including the vast majority of Christians, hold that the Copernican Principle is unquestionably true, (and therefore concede the necessary premise to Hawking's argument that we are just chemical scum), the fact of the matter is that the Copernican Principal is now shown, via our most powerful theories in science, to be a false assumption. First off, in establishing this fact, and directly contrary to what is widely believed, Copernicus never actually did experimentally prove that the geocentric model was a incorrect description of the universe, and that the heliocentric model was a 'more correct' description of the universe.

The Tyranny of Simple Explanations – Philip Ball – AUG 11, 2016 Excerpt: Take the debate between the ancient geocentric view of the universe—in which the sun and planets move around a central Earth—and Nicolaus Copernicus’s heliocentric theory, with the Sun at the center and the Earth and other planets moving around it.,,, It is often claimed that, by the 16th century, this Ptolemaic model of the universe had become so laden with these epicycles that it was on the point of falling apart. Then along came the Polish astronomer with his heliocentric universe, and no more epicycles were needed. The two theories explained the same astronomical observations, but Copernicus’s was simpler, and so Occam’s razor tells us to prefer it. This is wrong for many reasons. First, Copernicus didn’t do away with epicycles.,,, In an introductory tract called the Commentariolus, published around 1514, he said he could explain the motions of the heavens with “just” 34 epicycles. Many later commentators took this to mean that the geocentric model must have needed many more than 34, but there’s no actual evidence for that. And the historian of astronomy Owen Gingerich has dismissed the common assumption that the Ptolemaic model was so epicycle-heavy that it was close to collapse. He argues that a relatively simple design was probably still in use in Copernicus’s time.,,, http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/occams-razor/495332/

Simply put, just because the earth is not to be considered central in the solar system itself, that does not automatically mean that the Earth cannot be considered central in the universe as a whole. The sun itself, contrary to what Nicolaus Copernicus held in his heliocentric model, is certainly not to be considered central in the universe. Nor can any other place in the universe be designated as the 'stationary center' of the universe. bornagain77

But Jerry, those three things do not entail the specifics of human beings on Earth being a particular. specific goal of this creator. That is, the jump from a pervasive creative force behind a universe in which life occurs to specific Christian theology is a jump of faith, not reason. Viola Lee

Meyer specifies the three major science discoveries that point to a creator or god. 1) Big Bang 2) Fine tuning of universe 3) Information basis for biology and life. The first two point to a creator. He uses the term “master programmer” for the third. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/asked-of-steve-meyer-if-humans-are-so-important-to-god-why-did-they-take-so-long-to-develop/#comment-727594 Some people will always ignore the obvious and focus on the irrelevant to undermine ID. The more interesting question is why such dishonesty is so widespread and accepted. It’s almost like hypocrisy is a virtue. jerry

The ID farce continues. To appropriate and paraphrase a line from Apocalypse Now, in the world of ID the b***sh** piles up so fast and so deep you need wings to stay above it.... chuckdarwin

@2 god created us in the blink of an eye It is outside of our universal time which God created We cannot impose our perception of time on God This is even mentioned in the Bible in psalms and Peter What’s not mentioned in the Bible is that we are the first of all of gods creations We are the one that he like I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say where the first thing God has ever made When you make the comment 13 billion years went by before God made anything I can definitely say how do you know because you don’t That’s why this question is just innately stupid it’s strawman But atheists that makes the stupid claim that God was sitting there playing with his belly button before he suddenly went “oh wow I want to create something” Are a bunch of hairsplitting assholes. They only point like this out because they think it makes the other side look stupid and the other side is stupid if they actually entertain that dumb question For all we know God has made an infinite number of universes and decided to Etch-a-Sketch everyone of them until now or he might just Etch-a-Sketch this one who knows you certainly don’t AaronS1978

Another answer might be that there is no good answer. Trying to invent rationalizations for an implausible theology weakens the religion in the eyes of those who do not have faith in the story. This, in my opinion, is the problem with all apologetics, no matter what the religion. Viola Lee

I'd be inclined to draw an analogy to the history of human invention. All of the big ideas were present in our minds from the start. Some of them have been attempted repeatedly, until the moment when MATERIALS AND MANUFACTURING METHODS had advanced enough to make the real invention possible. Similarly, all genes were present in the initial invention of life. Some of the implementations had to wait until the materials and methods (oxygen, CO2, water, soil, other animals and plants) had advanced enough to make this particular invention possible. polistra

If God is the creator, Keating wants to know, why was He so patient as to wait billions of years, during which not much that was very interesting happened, for the fulfillment of His purpose in initiating the universe to begin with? Meyer admits that some Young Earth Creationist friends ask the same question, and his answer is to point to the “extravagance” of the Deity in the activity of creation. In other words, I think, why 13 billion years? Because why NOT 13 billion years?

In other words, Meyer has no idea. He could have just said, "I don't know." and we would not have thought any the less of him. More, in fact, for being honest.

Of course, God is eternal so it’s not clear that time, as such, is much of an issue for Him

If God is eternal then He must have existed for an eternity without the need to create anything. Then, at a certain point according to Christianity, He created this Universe in which we emerged after 13 billion years or so. Why? What changed? Why the sudden need to create something after an eternity of not needing to do anything? Hint: "I have no idea" is probably a good answer. Seversky

BY SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there, And warmly debated the matter; The Orthodox said that it came from the air, And the Heretics said from the platter. They argued it long and they argued it strong, And I hear they are arguing now; But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese, Not one of them thought of a cow. Belfast