Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Granville Sewell’s emerging book

William Dembski
January 17, 2007
Intelligent Design
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Our friend Granville Sewell keeps reworking and expanding his essay that touches on ID. Here is the latest version of it: math.utep.edu/…/sewell/…essays.pdf.

Comments
PS I didn't mean to capitalize "scientists" but I guess it adds to the effect of "Every True Scientist™ accepts an infinitely aged universe (and NDE)..."Atom
January 18, 2007
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The German chemist Walter Nernst wrote 'To deny the infinite duration of time would be to betray the very foundation of science.' Hmmm, who makes similarly dire statements today? (This is quoted by Sewell in reference to the reluctance of Scientists to initially accept a finite aged universe.)Atom
January 18, 2007
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The biggest problem with multiverse speculation is that it's woefully unscientific. It assumes all the benefits of an infinite number of universes without any evidence whatsoever that the number of universes is greater than 1. As George Gilder wrote in his essay "Evolution and Me" (National Review, 17 July 2006 issue), "The effort to explain the miracles of our incumbent universe by postulating an infinite array of other universes is perhaps the silliest stratagem in the history of science."TerryL
January 18, 2007
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But IMHO the best question for the multiverse believers is: well, you are scientists; you are also strict naturalists who only believe what you can test and measure, BUT why do you think multiverse can actually exists provided thta you cannot have now nor in the future any information about? aboutkairos
January 18, 2007
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Fred Heeren [Heeren 1995] illustrates the silliness of the idea that, given enough universes, everything will eventually happen. If there are an in-finite number of universes, he says, one of them would be just like ours except that in that one Elvis Presley kicked his drug habit, got involved in Tennessee politics, and became president of the United States. It seems much simpler to believe that there is only one universe, and it appears to be cleverly designed because it is cleverly designed.
David Heddle a while back tried the infinite universes theory on me and I gave a similar example of what such a goofy concept leads to. He got quite angry and accused me of being too ignorant to discuss it with. He must feel Sewell and Heeren are too ignorant too. A theory that lead to ludicrous ends is affectionately called a theory that doesn't pass "The Giggle Test". Cosmological ID is a proverbial "no-brainer" (an idea which doesn't require much critical thinking to validate). The problem with cosmological ID is it isn't very interesting for a scientist. There's no way to investigate past the moment when nature first appeared. Biological ID on the other hand does hold out some promise because as far as we know right now the history of the universe is much longer than the history of life on earth so we get some basic questions that may in principle be answerable like "did life exist in the universe prior to life on earth".DaveScot
January 17, 2007
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From my brief look at it, it looks good. And I like much of the way he thinks.JGuy
January 17, 2007
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Nice. Now I just need to sit down and read it all !Jason Rennie
January 17, 2007
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