Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Dave Coppedge: The only forbidden assumption is that evidence for fine-tuning is not an illusion

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Did this vid cost a guy his job?

Recently, we reported that the Dave Coppedge – JPL case has been sent to jury trial. Cassini (Saturn) mission specialist Coppedge was apparently fired for handing out ID vids like Privileged Planet (on fine-tuning) to fellow employees. There doesn’t appear to have been a house rule in the matter, and when asked to desist, we are told that he did. We aren’t aware that employees complained. But no doubt the evidence in these and other matters will be set before the jury, now that there will be one.

The heart of the matter, in the UD News desk’s view, is JPL’s description of its Origins program:

How did we get here? How did stars and galaxies form? Are there other planets like the Earth? Do other planets have conditions suitable for the development of life? Might there be planets around nearby stars where some form of life has taken hold? These questions have intrigued humanity for thousands of years. Astronomers approach these fundamental questions by looking far into the Universe, back toward the beginning of time, to see galaxies forming, or by looking very close to home, searching for planetary systems like our own around nearby stars.

NASA’s Origins Program will launch a series of missions to help us answer these age-old astronomical questions. .

So Coppedge’s interests aligned with corporate goals. Ah, but … and this is a too-familiar situation: Tax-supported science gets taken over by new atheist viewpoints, according which any explanation is acceptable except fine-tuning or design. No matter how ridiculous. Anyone who looks at current cosmology, as accurately represented by New Scientist, will soon see that.

Why is that rule in place? Because the new approach has been productive? If you go by the hunt for ET, origin of life, and the long-running, conflicting episodes in the soap opera of human evolution, the new approach has not been productive at all.

It does not need to be productive, just entrenched. As long as one’s research is not out of kilter with the ideology, it needn’t be very good at all. That’s safe because serious challenges are rarely allowed.

Some will respond by citing statistics to show that new atheists are rare in the population. That’s true, but misses the point: If the “moderate majority” accommodates a value system, and its adherents want power, they may find it easy to get. This repeatedly enacted scenario has been called the myth of the moderate majority, the idea that, somehow, if the majority doesn’t approve of something – like new atheism as the default position of cosmology – it won’t happen.

Sorry: A determined minority in power can impose its views and values – however destructive – and only the most concerted effort on the part of citizens disarms and disables them. One would have thought that Stalin and Hitler demonstrated that well enough, but people constantly need reminding.

Occasionally, someone objects, “But so-and-so, a devout Methodist who attends church, supports the no-discussion rule. And he is held up as a role model by ‘Scientists for Jesus’!” Clearly, the objector is unfamiliar with the well-documented role of the fifth column in these situations – the people who, in every practical way, assist the goal while claiming to disapprove of it.

Dave Coppedge is a Christian too, as it happens, and unless we miss our guess, “Scientists for Jesus” members would dump on him – privately or even publicly – for riling the tax-supported atheist consensus. Their goal hope to win the right for Christians to believe evidence-based claims about the universe in private while going along with the nonsense in public. A paltry goal but their own.

You can get more information here, including the particulars of people you can write to if you think the matter of interest.

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Comments
moreover, our solar system is not nearly as haphazard as some materialists would have us believe:
Thank God for Jupiter - July 2010 Excerpt: The July 16, 1994 and July 19, 2009 collision events on Jupiter demonstrate just how crucial a role the planet plays in protecting life on Earth. Without Jupiter’s gravitational shield our planet would be pummeled by frequent life-exterminating events. Yet Jupiter by itself is not an adequate shield. The best protection is achieved via a specific arrangement of several gas giant planets. The most massive gas giant must be nearest to the life support planet and the second most massive gas giant the next nearest, followed by smaller, more distant gas giants. Together Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune provide Earth with this ideal shield. http://www.reasons.org/thank-god-jupiter Of Gaps, Fine-Tuning and Newton’s Solar System - Cornelius Hunter - July 2011 Excerpt: The new results indicate that the solar system could become unstable if diminutive Mercury, the inner most planet, enters into a dance with Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest of all. The resulting upheaval could leave several planets in rubble, including our own. Using Newton’s model of gravity, the chances of such a catastrophe were estimated to be greater than 50/50 over the next 5 billion years. But interestingly, accounting for Albert Einstein’s minor adjustments (according to his theory of relativity), reduces the chances to just 1%. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2011/07/of-gaps-fine-tuning-and-newtons-solar.html Milankovitch Cycle Design - Hugh Ross - August 2011 Excerpt: In all three cases, Waltham proved that the actual Earth/Moon/solar system manifests unusually low Milankovitch levels and frequencies compared to similar alternative systems. ,,, Waltham concluded, “It therefore appears that there has been anthropic selection for slow Milankovitch cycles.” That is, it appears Earth was purposely designed with slow, low-level Milankovitch cycles so as to allow humans to exist and thrive. http://www.reasons.org/milankovitch-cycle-design Astrobiology research is revealing the high specificity and interdependence of the local parameters required for a habitable environment. These two features of the universe make it unlikely that environments significantly different from ours will be as habitable. At the same time, physicists and cosmologists have discovered that a change in a global parameter can have multiple local effects. Therefore, the high specificity and interdependence of local tuning and the multiple effects of global tuning together make it unlikely that our tiny island of habitability is part of an archipelago. Our universe is a small target indeed. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez - P. 625, The Nature of Nature
Music and inspirational video:
Carrie Underwood with Vince Gill How Great thou Art – 720P HD – Standing Ovation! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLLMzr3PFgk The Mountain - Inspirational video http://video.yahoo.com/editorspicks-12135647/featured-24306389/the-mountain-24960678.html
bornagain77
November 25, 2011
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notes:
Privileged Planet - Observability Correlation - Gonzalez and Richards - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5424431 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 We Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History - Hugh Ross - video http://vimeo.com/31940671 Does the Probability for ETI = 1? Excerpt; On the Reasons To Believe website we document that the probability a randomly selected planet would possess all the characteristics intelligent life requires is less than 10^-304. A recent update that will be published with my next book, Hidden Purposes: Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, puts that probability at 10^-1054. http://www.reasons.org/does-probability-eti-1 Linked from "Appendix C" in Why the Universe Is the Way It Is Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters ? 10^-1333 dependency factors estimate ? 10^324 longevity requirements estimate ? 10^45 Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters ? 10^-1054 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe ? 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles. http://www.reasons.org/files/compendium/compendium_part3.pdf Hugh Ross - Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere (10^-1054) - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4347236 Isaiah 40:28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. Hugh Ross - Four Main Research Papers https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Sl5SCBtcO6xMjwgrkKysBYIOJzjZEcXX68qZ9rwh85s "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. … This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called “Lord God” [pantokratòr], or “Universal Ruler”… The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect." Sir Isaac Newton - Quoted from what many consider the greatest science masterpiece of all time, "Principia" Compositions of Extrasolar Planets - July 2010 Excerpt: ,,,the presumption that extrasolar terrestrial planets will consistently manifest Earth-like chemical compositions is incorrect. Instead, the simulations revealed “a wide variety of resulting planetary compositions. http://www.reasons.org/compositions-extrasolar-planets Chances of Exoplanet Life ‘Impossible’? Or ’100 percent’? - February 2011 Excerpt: Howard Smith, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, made the headlines earlier this year when he announced, rather pessimistically, that aliens will unlikely exist on the extrasolar planets we are currently detecting. “We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own. They are very hostile to life as we know it,” “Extrasolar systems are far more diverse than we expected, and that means very few are likely to support life,” he said. http://news.discovery.com/space/exoplanet-life-impossible-or-100-percent-what.html
bornagain77
November 25, 2011
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NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab Goes to Trial in Anti-ID Discrimination Case - podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2011-11-25T07_00_00-08_00
bornagain77
November 25, 2011
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