BioLogos: Fundamentalists Were Wrong About Galileo, So They’re Also Wrong About Darwin

_{Cornelius Hunter

August 18, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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It is one thing to point out particular conflicts between religion and science, it is quite another to characterize broadly the relationship between religion and science as one of conflict. The former is simply recognizing realities, the latter is the failed view known as the Conflict or Warfare Thesis. Certainly there are some genuine conflicts that arise from certain religious sects or traditions, but historically the relationship between religion and science is far more complicated than simply an on-going conflict. The BioLogos organization is very much concerned with this conflict, but they point out that they are careful to avoid the Warfare Thesis. Unfortunately this claim depends on a carefully crafted definition of the Warfare Thesis. Read more

Comments

C. Hunter: There are many proofs of evolution, but there is no scientific argument that supports the evolutionist’s claim that evolution is a fact. That is not my opinion, that is a fact of the literature.
Contradiction. "There are many proofs of evolution, but there is no scientific argument that supports the....claim that evolution is a fact." If "many proofs of evolution" exist then evolution is a fact. Two or more positives do not support a negative conclusion.
C. Hunter: So the Warfare Thesis is not an atheistic mission. Nor is it an attack on all things religious. Rather it is a religious view that seeks a harmonization which avoids the pitfalls of literalism and recognizes the advances of science. That may sound good, but in its attack on fundamentalism it fails to appreciate the complex relationship between religion and science. Religion, for example, can provide useful ideas to science and it can guiding restraints. The influence may or may not be cooperative, but it often is subtle and complicated. [boldfacing added]
What is written doesn't make sense. The boldface portion, in the original, is Hunter's view. So why does Hunter follow the statement with a negative statement about his own view as seen in "That may sound good, but...."? If the boldface portion is not Hunter's view then where is that indicated? justifying the negative statement? And what is meant by "literalism"? The connotation is negative, what is written in the Bible should not be understood literally. Since Hunter didn't tell us that he should be understood literally should we understand his argument, however convoluted, literally?Ray Martinez_{August 20, 2015
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@SA, I don't think we're on the same page. You wrote:
As above, you have no scientific evidence to support your claims here, obviously. It is just as easy to say (and more reasonable) that science’s metaphysic is theistic. Science has nothing to say about that.
Here, you're pointing out that what is or is not science is not a question of science, but philosophy. So, to say that science needs to do X is itself, a philosophical question, not a scientific question for which we can empirically prove. But, you then went on to write:
We’ve argued previously, and you’ve already admitted that a moral standard cannot be grounded logically in a materialist metaphysic.
However, in the same sense, what is or is not knowledge falls under the philosophical field of epistemology. Nor is the field of epistemology obvious or completely settled. So, to say that anything needs to be justified in the sense you are implying would be to commit the same sort of fallacy. (assuming that's even what Seversky did in the first place) Specifically, the idea that anything, let alone a "materialist" morally, needs to grounded is a specific philosophical view known as justiifcatinism. Nor is it clear why you would expect our common-sense idea of morality, our sense of touch or anything else, to be correct, except for some philosophical view about knowledge. Why would we get it right the first time? So, just as you said...
It can be argued that what you’re calling ‘science’ is not science at all.
...it can be argued that justificationism is irrational. And so is the demand that any anything, let alone morality, must be grounded in, well, anything. And the same can be said for the implied assumption that scientific theories must be reductionist in nature. Yet, when I point out how theism is itself a specific case of the philosophical view of justificationism, no one from your side seems to even acknowledge it. Again, doesn't this seem disingenuous?Popperian_{August 19, 2015
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eigenstate
This is a nice case for the warfare thesis in a nutshell, right here. As soon as science is viewed as ‘bad science’ that must be reconciled to religious intuitions and superstitions, there must be conflict, irreconilable conflict.
If truth is unified, then science properly done will be consistent with every other aspect of the truth, including religion. If you don't think there is any such thing as bad science, then you are being unrelistic in the extreme.
The only way StephenB’s unity is achieved is for science to be terminated as a practice, everywhere and forever.
I am sorry, but you are very confused. Unity of truth is not something to be "attained." It is a necessary condition of an ordered reality. Truths that contradict each other are a logical impossibility.StephenB_{August 19, 2015
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Pop
Again, the idea that morality must be “grounded” in the sense you’re implying is a specific philosophical view about knowledge.
Right. As I said (and Seversky agreed) the term was "logically grounded" or "grounded logically". Materialist morality is illogical. Beyond that, for the same reason, any sort of arguments for rational thinking are also illogical from a materialist view. Logic is unnecessary and meaningless. Physical events drive outcomes, and that's all there is to it.
Yet, when I point how justificationism or reductionistic explanations are also specific philosophical views, no one from your side acknowledges it.
The materialist view cannot make those sorts of distinctions so I'll guess that nobody acknowledges it for that reason.
Doesn’t this seem the least bit disingenuous?
It could be - I don't know the specifics. But at the same time, if a person adopts a nihilist metaphysic, for example, and then goes on to demand some attention for his evaluation of various qualities and values of existence, then it's impossible to carry on a philosophical discussion. I will guess that most IDists simply encounter that logical contradiction (as I did here with Seversky) and find no reason to take any steps farther. It's like the atheists (we see so often) who claim that they don't believe God exists as if they have no interest in theological evidence, and then go on to ridicule their own notion of God. If a person asserts that all thoughts are determined by physical/evolutionary events, then questions about moral choice and philosophical values and constructs are contradictory and pointless.Silver Asiatic_{August 19, 2015
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SA:
As above, you have no scientific evidence to support your claims here, obviously. It is just as easy to say (and more reasonable) that science’s metaphysic is theistic. Science has nothing to say about that. We’ve argued previously, and you’ve already admitted that a moral standard cannot be grounded logically in a materialist metaphysic.
Again, the idea that morality must be "grounded" in the sense you're implying is a specific philosophical view about knowledge. Apparently, you're aware of the role philosophy plays in fields, such as science, because you've just used it in the above argument. Yet, when I point how justificationism or reductionistic explanations are also specific philosophical views, no one from your side acknowledges it. Doesn't this seem the least bit disingenuous?Popperian_{August 19, 2015
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Seversky This topic is about making subtle distinctions - so it's good to be as accurate as one can be (otherwise distinctions are lost).
...as science is practiced, it is “against all gods”, or at least against all goods that do not participate in working models of the world that perform empiricially.
I'll start with this and repeat it again later ... the above is not a scientific statement. You're making an assertion about science using some kind of non-scientific authority.
Which is just to say science’s metaphysic is naturalist. It’s epistemology can’t accommodate the supernatural even if it wanted to. To do so would convert it to religion.
As above, you have no scientific evidence to support your claims here, obviously. It is just as easy to say (and more reasonable) that science's metaphysic is theistic. Science has nothing to say about that. We've argued previously, and you've already admitted that a moral standard cannot be grounded logically in a materialist metaphysic. That was good. But your reasoning needs to go a few steps further. A materialist metaphysic in itself is a contradiction. It cannot be grounded logically. A reductionist view that establishes science as the only means to the truth of things is self-refuting. Science depends on metaphysics -- and metaphysics is a study of purpose or meaning. A nihilist metaphysic eliminates the meaning, purpose and value of science. So, your concerns are misplaced. Under materialism, science is an evolutionary output, just like religion.
That doesn’t mean that religious frameworks cannot be compatible with science. But religion conforms to and accommodates science, not the other way around. It can’t be otherwise, or it isn’t science being practiced.
Science does conform to religion though. In moral terms, we set limits about what science should explore and how science should treat human life, for example. The sacredness of human life is a theistic concept that science is bounded by.
Thus the “warfare thesis” can be resolved by religion’s surrendering, but as long as religion arrogates to knowledge about anything, and yet denies any accountability or testability or liability that scientific epistemology begins with and requires, there cannot be any accord that isn’t just coincidental agreement or surrender by religion.
Again, you're offering non-scientific opinions here that you believe are true based on some other authority than science. If you're using philosophy, then that needs to be grounded in some non-scientific realism. That then directly relates to theism. Thus, the argument you give for the authority of science is a theistic viewpoint.
The only way StephenB’s unity is achieved is for science to be terminated as a practice, everywhere and forever.
It can be argued that what you're calling 'science' is not science at all. Science itself has nothing to say about it.Silver Asiatic_{August 19, 2015
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It was leaders etc in the Roman Catholic church who attacked Galilee. They also attacked Luther and the protestant reformation. Today creationists are the modern Luthers and Galileo's. We are insulted and censored and banned and generally said to the public there must be organized opposition to our ideas. even from state and law. It short its just a old equation. Establishment etc etc fighting the ideas that threaten it. They lost in the past and will , Lord willing, in the present. Its fun , cool, manly, historic, great heritage to be the outlaws in issues of important truths. We are interesting and they are dull and backward and unprogressive in advancing human smartness and accuracy about the universe.Robert Byers_{August 18, 2015
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as to: "Which is just to say science’s metaphysic is naturalist." Actually, science was born out of Christian metaphysics not naturalistic metaphysics.
The truth about science and religion By Terry Scambray - August 14, 2014 Excerpt: In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th century. Whitehead pointed out that science arose from “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher”, from which it follows that human minds created in that image are capable of understanding nature. The audience, assuming that science and Christianity are enemies, was astonished. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/08/the_truth_about_science_and_religion.html The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview (which holds, among other things, that a personal, rational God designed a rational universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image) and the Biblical ethic (which holds, among other things, that we are obligated to tell the truth even when it inconveniences us) that science is collapsing. As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed, and as I pointed out in two of my talks at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson. Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf The Genius and Faith of Faraday and Maxwell - Ian H. Hutchinson - 2014 Conclusion: Lawfulness was not, in their thinking, inert, abstract, logical necessity, or complete reducibility to Cartesian mechanism; rather, it was an expectation they attributed to the existence of a divine lawgiver. These men’s insights into physics were made possible by their religious commitments. For them, the coherence of nature resulted from its origin in the mind of its Creator. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-genius-and-faith-of-faraday-and-maxwell
Moreover, presupposing naturalism as THE metaphysics for science leads to the epistemological failure of science not to its furtherance.
Why No One (Can) Believe Atheism/Naturalism to be True (Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism) - video Excerpt: "Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life." Richard Dawkins - quoted from "The God Delusion" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QFsKevTXs Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga - video https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL80CAECC36901BCEE Why Most Atheists Believe in Pink Unicorns - May 2014 Excerpt: Given an infinite amount of time, anything that is logically possible(11) will eventually happen. So, given an infinite number of universes being created in (presumably) an infinite amount of time, you are not only guaranteed to get your universe but every other possible universe. This means that every conceivable universe exists, from ones that consist of nothing but a giant black hole, to ones that are just like ours and where someone just like you is reading a blog post just like this, except it’s titled: “Why most atheists believe in blue unicorns.” By now I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, but I’ll say it anyway. Since we know that horses are possible, and that pink animals are possible, and that horned animals are possible, then there is no logical reason why pink unicorns are not possible entities. Ergo, if infinite universes exist, then pink unicorns must necessarily exist. For an atheist to appeal to multiverse theory to deny the need of a designer infers that he believes in that theory more than a theistically suggestive single universe. And to believe in the multiverse means that one is saddled with everything that goes with it, like pink unicorns. In fact, they not only believe in pink unicorns, but that someone just like them is riding on one at this very moment, and who believes that elephants, giraffes, and zebra are merely childish fairytales. Postscript While it may be amusing to imagine atheists riding pink unicorns, it should be noted that the belief in them does not logically invalidate atheism. There theoretically could be multiple universes and there theoretically could be pink unicorns. However, there is a more substantial problem for the atheist if he wants to believe in them and he wants to remain an atheist. Since, as I said, anything can happen in the realm of infinities, one of those possibilities is the production of a being of vast intelligence and power. Such a being would be as a god to those like us, and could perhaps breach the boundaries of the multiverse to, in fact, be a “god” to this universe. This being might even have the means to create its own universe and embody the very description of the God of Christianity (or any other religion that the atheist otherwise rejects). It seems the atheist, in affirming the multiverse in order to avoid the problem of fine-tuning, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. The further irony is that somewhere, in the great wide world of infinities, the atheist’s doppelganger is going to war against an army of theists riding on the horns of a great pink beast known to his tribesman as “The Saddlehorn Dilemma.” https://pspruett.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/why-most-atheists-believe-in-pink-unicorns/ Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows - music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xWhG4UU_Y
Verse and Music:
1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. Words (Official Music Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=26&v=Bf_H7Lwl0FI
bornagain77_{August 18, 2015
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I agree with Dr. Hunter’s thesis. For my part, the solution lies in recognizing the key principle: “Unity of truth.” There is only one truth, not many, but there are many aspects of that same truth. The problem is in juxtaposing bad science with good religion, or vice versa. If we understood the word of God perfectly, and if our scientific reasoning was sound, there would be no conflict.
This is a nice case for the warfare thesis in a nutshell, right here. As soon as science is viewed as 'bad science' that must be reconciled to religious intuitions and superstitions, there must be conflict, irreconilable conflict. Science can perish from the earth, I suppose (not likely!), but so long as science is practiced, it is "against all gods", or at least against all goods that do not participate in working models of the world that perform empiricially. Which is just to say science's metaphysic is naturalist. It's epistemology can't accommodate the supernatural even if it wanted to. To do so would convert it to religion. That doesn't mean that religious frameworks cannot be compatible with science. But religion conforms to and accommodates science, not the other way around. It can't be otherwise, or it isn't science being practiced. Thus the "warfare thesis" can be resolved by religion's surrendering, but as long as religion arrogates to knowledge about anything, and yet denies any accountability or testability or liability that scientific epistemology begins with and requires, there cannot be any accord that isn't just coincidental agreement or surrender by religion. The only way StephenB's unity is achieved is for science to be terminated as a practice, everywhere and forever.eigenstate_{August 18, 2015
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Here is an important reference I, in my haste, forgot to include Moreover, besides the solar system, the earth's rotation also seems to uniquely line up with "anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies". Particularly as they relate to a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole.
Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky? - Ashok K. Singal - May 17, 2013 Abstract: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies (directionally dependent observations), which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic\cite {20,16,15}. The latest data from the Planck satellite have confirmed the presence of these anisotropies\cite {17}. Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR catalogue, one of the oldest and most intensively studies sample of strong radio sources\cite{21,22,3}. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. Further, even the distribution of observed radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. Two pertinent questions then arise. First, why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? 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. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4134.pdf
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Privileged Species - How the cosmos is designed for human life - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoI2ms5UHWg Dr. Michael Denton Interview Excerpt Question 14: 14. Q: ,,,you also detail that nature isn’t fine-tuned for just any kind of life, but life specifically like human life. Would you expound on this for our readers? A: there are certain elements of the fine-tuning which are clearly for advanced being like ourselves. We are warm-blooded, terrestrial aerobes; we use oxidation to get energy, we’re warm-blooded and we breathe air. We get our oxygen from the air. First of all, a warm-blooded organism needs to maintain a constant temperature. To do that we are massively assisted by the high specific heat of water, which buffers our body against rapid changes in temperature. In getting rid of excess heat, we utilize the evaporative cooling of water. That’s why dog’s pant, we sweat, etc. Warm-blooded organisms have to get rid of excess heat, and the evaporative cooling of water is the only way you’ve really got to get rid of heat when the temperature reaches close to body temperature. When it’s hot you can’t radiate off body heat to the environment. These critical thermal properties are obviously of great utility to air breathing, warm-blooded organisms like our self. But what relevance do they have to an extremophile living in the deep ocean, or a cold-blooded fish living in the sea? It’s obvious that these are elements of fitness in nature which seem to be of great and specific utility to beings like us, and very little utility to a lot of other organisms. Of course it is the case that they are playing a role in maintaining the constancy of global climate, the physical and chemical constancy of the hydrosphere and so forth. No doubt the evaporative cooling of water plays a big role in climatic amelioration; it transfers heat from the tropics to the higher latitudes and this is of utility for all life on earth. But definitely water’s thermal properties seem particularly fit for advanced organisms of biology close to our own.,,, etc.. http://successfulstudent.org/dr-michael-denton-interview/
The following site is also very interesting to the topic of the centrality of humans in the universe;
The Scale of The Universe - Part 2 - interactive graph (recently updated in 2012 with cool features) http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white
The preceding interactive graph and video points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which 'just so happens' to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality. As far as the exponential graph itself is concerned, 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of 'observable' length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle. Although there is much more that could be referenced to back up this line of thought underming the Copernican/Mediocrity principle, let's just say that if any principle has been completely undermined by advances in modern science it is none other than the Copernican/Medicrity principle itself. Verse and Video
Psalm 33:13-15 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works. Turin Shroud Quantum Hologram Reveals The Words "The Lamb" On a Solid Oval Object In The Neck Area - Petrus Soons - video http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=J21MECNU
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Moreover according to Einstein, choosing the reference frame that you decide to measure from is completely up to you. i.e. According to Einstein's theories of relativity, there is no reason to give one frame of reference more consideration over another frame of reference: In regards to the Copernican Principle and how it relates to relativity, Einstein weighs in here:
“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.);
Fred Hoyle, discoverer of stellar nucleosynthesis, weighs in here:
“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.
In fact, contrary to the generalized form of the Copernican principle which holds that 'humans are not privileged observers of the universe', the 'observer' is, in fact, given a special frame of reference in Einstein's relativity equations (given a special frame of reference in both special and general relativity):
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,,,, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_special_relativity Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity (privileged frame of reference for the observer) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev9zrt__lec
In fact, both of Einstein's breakthough insights for Special Relativity and for General Relativity came from Einstein giving the 'observer' a distinct frame of reference. In fact, Einstein's 'happiest thought' of his life was when he envisioned 'an observer freely falling from the roof of a house'. Which is the thought experiment which gave Einsteinn his breakthrough insight into General Relativity:
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
And in special relativity, moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into e=mc2, (i.e. into special relativity).
Albert Einstein – Special Relativity – Insight into Eternity – ‘thought experiment’ – video (6:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jHnRqhnkyGs?t=364
Of related interest: When the observer, instead of looking backwards at the face of a clock as he accelerates to the speed of light, instead looks in his direction of travel as he accelerates towards the speed of light, something very interesting happens. Please note, at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light,
Approaching The Speed Of Light - Optical Effects – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQnHTKZBTI4 Of note: The preceding video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.
Also of related interest: In Quantum Mechanics the observer has a privileged position.
Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice) quantum experiment confirms - Mind = blown. - FIONA MACDONALD - 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms
Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, puts the situation between quantum mechanics and the Copernican principle as such:
Quantum Enigma:Physics Encounters Consciousness - Richard Conn Henry - Professor of Physics - John Hopkins University Excerpt: 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… https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-quantum-enigma-of-consciousness-and-the-identity-of-the-designer/
As well, besides both Quantum Mechanics and Relativity both 'having no need for the Mediocrity hypothesis', the Privileged Planet and Privileged Species principles also conspire to turn the Copernican/Mediocrity Principle on its head:
The Privileged Planet (refutation of mediocrity principle) - video playlist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnWyPIzTOTw The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole. - Jay Richards The Privileged Planet - The Correlation Of Habitability and Observability - book “The same narrow circumstances that allow us to exist also provide us with the best over all conditions for making scientific discoveries.” “The one place that has observers is the one place that also has perfect solar eclipses.” “There is a final, even more bizarre twist. Because of Moon-induced tides, the Moon is gradually receding from Earth at 3.82 centimeters per year. In ten million years will seem noticeably smaller. At the same time, the Sun’s apparent girth has been swelling by six centimeters per year for ages, as is normal in stellar evolution. These two processes, working together, should end total solar eclipses in about 250 million years, a mere 5 percent of the age of the Earth. This relatively small window of opportunity also happens to coincide with the existence of intelligent life. Put another way, the most habitable place in the Solar System yields the best view of solar eclipses just when observers can best appreciate them.” - Guillermo Gonzalez - Astronomer http://books.google.com/books?id=lMdwFWZ00GQC&pg=PT28#v=onepage&q&f=false
bornagain77_{August 18, 2015
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as to this quote from your article Dr. Hunter:
"Is it not obvious that Christians were right to alter their interpretation of biblical verses suggesting geocentrism, such as Psalm 104:5, Joshua 10:12-13 and Ecclesiastes 1:5. The answer, of course, is “yes.” And for most such a modification was not difficult since it was doctrinally inconsequential. "
Actually Dr. Hunter, the answer, due to advances in science is NOT obviously “yes.” Here are the specific verses in question that you cited Dr. Hunter:
Psalm 104:5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. Joshua 10:12-13 Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, “O sun, stand still at Gibeon, And O moon in the valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. Ecclesiastes 1:5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
Supposedly the Copernican Principle rendered such verses in the Bible as now being merely nice little poetic verses instead of factual verses. Those verses banishment to poetic netherland is greatly exagerated. The Copernican Principle is stated as such:
Copernican principle Excerpt: In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, is a working assumption that arises from a modified cosmological extension of Copernicus' sun-centered heliocentric universe. The Copernican principle assumes that neither the Sun nor the Earth are in a central, specially favored position in the universe.[1] More recently, the principle has been generalized to the relativistic concept that humans are not privileged observers of the universe.[2] In this sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle, with important implications for the philosophy of science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_principle
In direct contradiction to the Copernican/Mediocrity Principle, there have now been recent discoveries in science, specifically concerning the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), which directly challenges the Copernicans principle's conclusion of 'mediocrity' for the earth, and for humans in particular:
The Known Universe by AMNH – video - (please note the 'centrality' of the Earth in the universe at the 3:36 minute mark in the video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U
Here is a still shot of the image at the 3:36 minute mark of the preceding video which highlights the centrality of the earth in the universe:
Picture of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) http://new-universe.org/zenphoto/albums/Chapter4/Illustrations/Abrams47.jpg
The following video, which shows the mapping of the CMBR by the Planck satellite, is also very good for getting this 'centrality' in the universe' across:
Planck Cruise to L2 (mapping CMBR) - video https://youtu.be/piYn0nbbJcs?t=16
Ross Andersen puts the implication of the preceding finding for the CMBR like this:
In The Beginning - Ross Andersen - 12 May 2015 Excerpt: As I walked out of Steinhardt’s office for the last time, it occurred to me that our cosmos is once again a sphere. Our Earth has been demoted in recent centuries. It no longer enjoys its former status as the still centre of all that is. But it does sit in the middle of our observable cosmos, the sphere of light that we can detect with our telescopes. Gaze into this sphere’s reaches from any point on Earth’s surface, and you can see light coming toward you in layers, from stars and the planets that circle them, from the billions of galaxies beyond, and the final layer of light, the afterglow of the Big Bang. http://aeon.co/magazine/science/has-cosmology-run-into-a-creative-crisis/
George Ellis weighs in here:
“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
George Smoot, Nobel laureate in 2006 for his work on COBE, was a bit more blunt as to the implications of the CMBR:
"If you're religious, it's like seeing God," George Smoot - Nobel laureate in 2006 for his work on COBE - stated at 1992 News conference announcing the finding and mapping of tiny temperature fluctuations in the CMB Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, co-discoverers of the Cosmic Background Radiation, were even more blunt than Smoot was:
“Certainly there was something that set it all off,,, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match Genesis” Robert Wilson – Nobel laureate – co-discover Cosmic Background Radiation The best data we have [concerning the Big Bang] are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the bible as a whole. Dr. Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate in Physics - co-discoverer of the Cosmic Background Radiation - as stated to the New York Times on March 12, 1978
Here are a couple of Bible verses that back up Smoot, Wilson and Penzias's contention:
Proverbs 8:26-27 While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, or the primeval dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, Job 26:10 He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.
Moreover, an 'anamoly' in the CMBR data lines up with the solar system:
Why is the solar system cosmically aligned? BY Dragan Huterer – 2007 The solar system seems to line up with the largest cosmic features. Is this mere coincidence or a signpost to deeper insights? Caption under figure on page 43: ODD ALIGNMENTS hide within the multipoles of the cosmic microwave background. In this combination of the quadrupole and octopole, a plane bisects the sphere between the largest warm and cool lobes. The ecliptic — the plane of Earth’s orbit projected onto the celestial sphere — is aligned parallel to the plane between the lobes. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf Here is the actual graph of the solar system's alignment with the CMBR from Huterer's 2007 paper. As they say, the picture is worth a thousand words: http://i44.servimg.com/u/f44/16/14/18/96/axis_o10.jpg
Of note: The preceding article by Huterer was written before the Planck data (it was written with WMPA & COBE data), but the multipoles observed were actually verified by the more robust Planck data in 2013.
Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe (Disconfirms inflationary models) – video Quote at 2:00 minute mark: "What's surprising in Planck's latest findings and is inconsistent with prevailing theories, is the presence of unexpected large scale anomalies in the sky. Including a large cold region. Stronger fluctuations in one half of the sky than the other. And less light signals than expected across the entire sky." Planck spokesman: "When we look at only the large features on this (CMBR) map you find that our find that our best fitting theory (inflation) has a problem fitting the data." "Planck launched in 2009,, is the 3rd mission to study the Cosmic Microwave Background to date. While these unusual features in the sky were hinted at the two previous US missions, COBE and WMAP, Planck's ability to measure the tiniest of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background has made these so called anomalies impossible to ignore." Planck spokesman: "Because of these features that we are finding in the sky, people really are in a situation now where they cannot ignore them any more. ,,, We've established them (the anomalies) as fact!". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2CWaLU6eMI
Not only does the Cosmic Background Radiation appear to align with the solar system, and with Earth's rotational periodicity, but the CMBR also appears to be set up for intelligent life like human life to discover it:
The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability - Robin Collins - March 22, 2014 Excerpt: Examples of fine - tuning for discoverability. 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 intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio, (??b), which is the ratio of the average number of photons per unit volume of space to the average number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) per unit volume. At present this ratio is approximately a billion to one (10^9) , but it could be anywhere from one to infinity; it traces back to the degree of asymmetry in matter and anti - matter right after the beginning of the universe – for approximately every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particles of matter.,,, 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) It is easy to see that this prediction could have been disconfirmed. In fact, when I first made the calculations in the fall of 2011, I made a mistake and thought I had refuted this thesis since those calculations showed the intensity of the CMB maximizes at a value different than the photon - baryon ratio in our universe. So, not only does the DLO lead us to expect this ratio, but it provides an ultimate explanation for why it has this value,,, 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
bornagain77_{August 18, 2015
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I agree with Dr. Hunter's thesis. For my part, the solution lies in recognizing the key principle: "Unity of truth." There is only one truth, not many, but there are many aspects of that same truth. The problem is in juxtaposing bad science with good religion, or vice versa. If we understood the word of God perfectly, and if our scientific reasoning was sound, there would be no conflict.StephenB_{August 18, 2015
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