No good theology, you say? Oh yes there is!

_{Vincent Torley

July 16, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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Over on his Evolution Blog, Professor Jason Rosenhouse has written a post (which has been highly praised by Professor Jerry Coyne) entitled, Where can I find the really good theology? Part one. Apparently he really believes there isn’t any to be found:

We New Atheist types are often lectured about the need for studying theology. The idea is that if we tuned out the distressingly popular and highly vocal forms of religious extremism and pondered instead “the best religion has to offer,” then we would not be so hostile to religion.

…I have read a fair amount of highbrow theology. I have read my share of Augustine and Aquinas, Barth and Tillich, Kierkegaard and Kuhn, just to pick a few names. I have read quite a lot of Haught and Ward and Swinburne. I did not go into this expecting to be disappointed. Conversion seemed unlikely, but I expected at least to find a lot of food for thought. Instead, with each book and essay I read I found myself ever more horrified by the sheer vacuity of what these folks were doing. I came to despise their endlessly vague and convoluted arguments, their relentless smugness towards nonbelievers, and, most seriously, the complete lack of any solid reason for thinking they weren’t just making it up as they went along. I thought perhaps I was just reading the wrong writers, and that I would eventually come to the really good theology. But I never did.

Well, Professor Rosenhouse, I’ve been reading theology for over three decades myself, and I’ve compiled a collection of the “best of the best”: a dozen or so online articles which, when taken together, constitute a very strong philosophical case for belief in God. I’ve asterisked the ones which I think are the most important. I can assure you that the philosophers who wrote these articles are not just making it up as they go along: they’ve done a lot of hard thinking about their beliefs. If you think their arguments lack intellectual merit, I should very much like to know why.

I would also urge you to read Professor Edward Feser’s book, Aquinas. It’s about the best defense of Aristotelian Thomism that you are ever likely to read, it’s less than 200 pages long, and its arguments merit very serious consideration. You would be ill-advised to dismiss it out of hand.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s my list.

It’s your move, Professor Rosenhouse.

The modal cosmological argument

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Job Opening: Creator of the Universe — A Reply to Keith Parsons (2009) by Professor Paul Herrick. Argues that philosophical theism, far from being vulnerable to the continued progress of science, rests on a rationally satisfying and philosophically attractive logical basis that cannot, in principle, be overturned by the continued progress of natural science.

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Lecture notes and bibliography from Dr. Koons’ Western Theism course (Phil. 356). An excellent introduction to the modal cosmological argument, with a refutation of criticisms by Hume, Kant and Mackie. Also covers the design argument.

Koon’s paper, A New Look at the Cosmological Argument is more technical but definitely worth reading, especially for its rebuttals to common criticisms of the modal cosmological argument.

The cosmological fine-tuning argument: the case for the Universe having a Designer

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The Teleological Argument: An Exploration of the Fine-Tuning of the Universe by Dr. Robin Collins. In The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Edited by William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland. 2009. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-17657-6. The most up-to-date refinement of the fine-tuning argument. Comprehensive and very rigorously argued.

The Case for Cosmic Design (2008) by Dr. Robin Collins. With a reply by Dr. Paul Draper. Clarifying the Case for Cosmic Design (2008) by Dr. Robin Collins.

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The Fine-tuning of the Cosmos: A Fresh Look at its Implications by Dr. Robin Collins.

God’s simplicity

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Making Sense of Divine Simplicity (forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy) by Dr. Jeffrey Brower, of Purdue University. A number of contemporary philosophers have argued that divine simplicity is at least a coherent doctrine. For all their ingenuity, however, contemporary defenses of the doctrine continue to fall on deaf ears. Brower’s purpose in this paper is two-fold: to explain why this is case, and to mount a new defense, one that succeeds where the others have failed to resolve contemporary concerns about the doctrine’s coherence, once and for all.

God’s timelessness

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Eternity by Professor Paul Helm. Article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

God’s foreknowledge

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Foreknowledge and Free Will by Professor Norman Swartz. Article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
(See also Foreknowledge and Free Will by Professor Linda Zagzebski. Article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

God’s goodness

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God, obligation, and the Euthyphro dilemma by Professor Edward Feser. (October 26, 2010.)

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C. S. Lewis and the Euthyphro Dilemmaby Dr. Steve Lovell. Please scroll down to read the article.
The article addresses the question: are actions good because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good? According to what Lovell calls the Divine Nature Theory, morality is rooted not in God’s commands, but in God’s necessary and immutable nature, which is essentially good.

God as the Grounding of Moral Objectivity: Defending Against Euthyphro by Dr. Steve Lovell. Please scroll down to read the article.
Abstract: The Euthyphro Dilemma (is x good because God says it’s good, or does God say x is good because it is good?), has been used as an argument against Theistic Ethics for hundreds of years. Plato was the first to use it. Since then Bertrand Russell, Kai Nielsen and many others have sought to really push it home. My aim in this paper is to show that the dilemma (as posed by both Russell and Nielsen) is a false one. Theistic ethics does survive the Euthyphro dilemma. I take up and defend Aquinas’ position: that God himself (or his nature) is the standard of goodness, and not his commands. This position avoids the dilemma since God’s commands / morality will not be arbitrary (since they are/it is rooted in God’s nature), and Goodness will not be in any sense anterior to God either.

Comments

dmullenix, Hi Dave. I'm back again. I'll address your various comments thematically. You write:
One of the reasons theology and much of philosophy is thought of as an intellectual backwater is because it really thinks questions about contingency vs. necessity are important. This is all part of trying to prove/disprove the existence of God through pure logic and that has never worked. Hasn't theology thought of anything new in the last two thousand years?
The modal cosmological argument isn't an appeal to pure logic. Experience is required to tell us that some things are contingent. And yes, I do think it's reasonable for scientists to investigate any contingent state of affairs they observe, and ask: why is it so? You couldn't get a more contingent cosmos than ours if you tried. As far as we can tell, there is absolutely nothing in it which has to be the way it is. Any explanation in terms of laws of Nature, or even meta-laws, just pushes the contingency back one level; it doesn't make it go away. A theistic explanation is appealing because it can do just that. Next, you write:
For anybody objecting to the multiverse eternally existing, I can only point out that God is also supposed to be eternal, but He's infinitely more complicated and hence less likely than any proposed multiverse... God ... is claimed to be "personal" or a "Being". Both words mean that God is claimed to have a mind, like yours and mine, but presumably much more complicated and that requires, literally, gigabits of information all carefully arranged to enable even the simplest thought. No theologian has ever even made a guess as to where that information comes from. They apparently don't even want to think about it and I can see why.
Your argument presupposes that God keeps an index so that He can access information that will enable Him to respond to every possible question from an interlocutor. But I'm not claiming that God knows the answer to every possible question. Indeed, I think there's probably something self-contradictory about that notion of God, anyway. It would entail that God knows the set of all truths. Cantor's proof, however, demonstrates that there is no such set. (By the way, are you aware that Godel put forward his own argument for the existence of God? For a discussion by Christopher Small, see http://sas.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/Godel.final.revision.PDF .) Getting back to omniscience: I would define an omniscient agent more modestly, as one who can respond satisfactorily to every actual question asked of Him, as well as every state of affairs in the universe that requires Him to respond in an intelligent fashion. In other words, God is perfectly responsive to His universe of creatures. That seems a good enough definition. Here's another definition of omniscience that's stronger than the one I've given, but a lot more sensible than the inflated and impossible version assumed by your argument: for any proposition p: if p is true and p is logically knowable, then God is capable of knowing that p is true. Notice that this definition says "any" proposition rather than "every" proposition. You ask where God's information comes from. If we're talking about God's knowledge of the cosmos, then I'd say it comes from the cosmos itself, which interacts with its Maker. You also write:
When investigating omniscient beings, watch out for the “knows the future” trap. If something knows the future, the future is fixed and free will goes “poof”.
My reply: please define "fixed". Do you mean "determined"? If so, then you are begging the question. And if not, what do you mean? Regarding CSI, you write:
Darwinian evolution is a factory for generating CSI. The initial information is generated by randomly mutating DNA. This new DNA pattern is new information, but odds are that it's useless information. Natural selection weeds the crap information out by the simple expedient of trying to manage an organism with it. If it works, that new information goes on to reproduce itself and it's added to the store of CSI. (The specification is "Capable of running an organism".) If it doesn't work, it's automatically discarded with the failed organism. The result: a slow but steady accumulation of new CSI.
On a philosophical level, I think you've succinctly made quite a good case that Darwinian evolution could generate a small amount of CSI. However, the empirical evidence suggests that Darwinian evolution is unable to generate more than 400 bits of CSI, even over billions of years. That's what Dr. Stephen Meyer has argued in his recent work, Signature in the Cell. You then continue:
First, why do you ID people insist that the first living thing was complex? 500 to 1000 bits of information? Try 50 to 100.
Actually, Kalinsky estimates this figure as 267,000 bits, given that 700 bits are required for the average protein, and a minimal cell contains 382 proteins. See his 2008 article, Intelligent Design required by biological life? I had to laugh when I read your proposal that a living thing could have 50 to 100 bits. Even a simple protein has more than that. A typical 300 amino-acid protein has 700 bits. But hey, if you want to build something simpler and show me that it's alive, then by all means do. Next you write:
You [Kairosfocus] and Dembski and most of the rest of the ID/Creationist crowd don't know how to do applied math.
This is a very serious charge. Kairosfocus is a qualified physicist and Professor Dembski has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. May I ask why you think you're better qualified to address problems in applied math? What's your academic background by the way, Dave? Concerning fine-tuning, you write:
99.9999999999999999999999999999999+ percent of this universe is utterly lethal for any kind of life.
Here's a challenge. Build me a universe where only 99 per cent of this universe is hostile to life. Or at least, demonstrate mathematically that nature could produce such a universe. Moreover, I'd like a demonstration that this alternative universe has the same amount of Kolmogorov complexity as our own. If its description is wordier than the description of ours is, then that in itself might be a reason for God not to build it. Finally, you write:
And think of our sun, dwarfing the earth in size and consuming 700 million tons of hydrogen every second and wasting almost every bit of it on uninhabited space and sterile planets. The sun is going to died in a few billion years and life on earth (and the earth!) with it, but if that energy was conserved and used wisely, it could support life for trillions of years.... Not a very intelligent design!
Again, build me a universe with a less wasteful sun - and the same amount of Kolmogorov complexity as our universe. Hope these answers help.vjtorley_{July 19, 2011
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dmullenix Thank you for your posts. Regarding the fine-tuning argument: I find it very strange that you cite Stenger, but show no sign of having read Robin Collins' devastating refutation of Stenger (see the paper by Collins that I cited in my opening post). You've stated that you don't like hyperlinks. Very well, then: here's my summary of Collins' reply to Stenger, in plain, jargon-free English. 1. Stenger can only eliminate the apparent fine-tuning of the cosmological constant by making three highly ad hoc assumptions, and even then, his elimination of fine-tuning only works if the universe has just the right set of laws - which begs the question again. 2. Stenger argues that universes with long-lived stars aren't all that rare, and he uses that as an argument against fine-tuning. But his argument is based on a very simple star model, which simply assumes that a star is made mostly of hydrogen (which wouldn't be the case if the strong force were even slightly stronger). Stenger also fails to take quantum degeneracy into account. This significantly limits the degree to which the strength of gravity can be increased without affecting the lifetimes of stars. 3. Stenger claims that one would be justi?ed in invoking God to explain a phenomenon only if "the phenomenon in question is not only currently scienti?cally inexplicable but can be shown to forever defy natural description" (2007, pp. 13-14). That's raising the bar unreasonably high: how on earth would you prove that? Also, Stenger has failed to show that an appeal to a theistic explanation of cosmic fine-tuning is necessarily a question-begging one in science, or that such an appeal is anti-scientific. How do you define science anyway? 4. The only really good response a skeptic could make to the many and various kinds of ?ne-tuning that have been found to occur in the universe is to ?nd an all-embracing explanation that would account for most or all of the different kinds of ?ne-tuning observed. Stenger hasn't done this. 5. Stenger complains that most studies of the anthropic coincidences involve varying only a single parameter while assuming all the others remain ?xed. He's wrong here; there are cases where the life-permitting value of one constant is completely independent of the calue of another constant, and in these cases we can vary both constants at the same time. For instance, we can vary the strength of the cosmological constant at the same time as we vary the strength of gravity. The life-permitting range of the former does not depend on the strength of the latter. 6. Finally, Stenger claims that the fine-tuning argument simply assumes that life has to be carbon-based. In the first place, it's pretty hard to imagine a complex life-form that can metabolize and reproduce itself being based on anything else but carbon. Second, Stenger is simply wrong in his assumption; in fact, many cases of fine-tuning observed to date have nothing to do with life being carbon-based. The fine-tuning of the cosmological constant is a good case in point. I hope that helps. I'll reply to your other points below.vjtorley_{July 19, 2011
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To arrive at the 'it takes a infinite amount of specified information just to create a single photon' conclusion, the evidence is as such: Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (photon) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1)--- Concept 2. is used by Bennett, et al. Recall that they infer that since an infinite amount of information is required to specify a (photon) qubit, an infinite amount of information must be transferred to teleport. http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/faculty/duwell/DuwellPSA2K.pdf Researchers Succeed in Quantum Teleportation of Light Waves - April 2011 Excerpt: In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. This is a major advance, as previous teleportation experiments were either very slow or caused some information to be lost. http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-04/quantum-teleportation-breakthrough-could-lead-instantanous-computing How Teleportation Will Work - Excerpt: In 1993, the idea of teleportation moved out of the realm of science fiction and into the world of theoretical possibility. It was then that physicist Charles Bennett and a team of researchers at IBM confirmed that quantum teleportation was possible, but only if the original object being teleported was destroyed. --- As predicted, the original photon no longer existed once the replica was made. http://science.howstuffworks.com/teleportation1.htm Quantum Teleportation - IBM Research Page Excerpt: "it would destroy the original (photon) in the process,," http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/ moreover; Single photons to soak up data: Excerpt: the orbital angular momentum of a photon can take on an infinite number of values. Since a photon can also exist in a superposition of these states, it could – in principle – be encoded with an infinite amount of information. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/7201 Proof of principle of encoding massive amounts of information onto a single photon was achieved here (Only God is infinite in information/knowlege, thus only God can create a photon De Novo or encode infinite information onto a photon if He so desired): Ultra-Dense Optical Storage - on One Photon Excerpt: Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image's worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact. http://www.physorg.com/news88439430.html ,,,As well, 'Conservation of quantum information' is proved in this following way (as well as further showing that the quantum teleportation of the 'infinite information', needed to specify a photon, must be complete and instantaneous): Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html ,,, As well, Classical information is shown to be a subset of 'quantum information' by the following: This following research provides solid falsification for Rolf Landauer’s 'materialistic' contention that information encoded into a computer is merely physical (merely ‘emergent’ from a material basis) since he believed the classical information always required energy to erase it; Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 2011 Excerpt: No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm etc.. etc.. etc.. ================= John1 1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life,* and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Third Day - Trust in Jesus - music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEyB9XM4L94bornagain77_{July 19, 2011
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dmullenix; 'BA77 at 46: “For one thing it takes a infinite amount of specified information just to create a single photon:,,,” Nonsense. Please provide a citation for that claim.' Well I would but you said that my links mean nothing for you. But hey, what do you need links for anyway, you act as if you know it all already???bornagain77_{July 19, 2011
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Here you go kf: Bayesian considerations on the multiverse explanation of cosmic fine-tuning - V. Palonen Conclusions: The four most viable approaches for inference in a possible multiverse and in the presence of an observer selection effect were reviewed. Concerning the ‘assume the observation’ (AO) approach advocated by Sober, Ikeda, and Jefferys, it was shown that this kind of an observer selection effect is justified if and only if the observation is conditionally independent of the hypothesis. In the case of cosmic fine-tuning the observation would be a child of the hypothesis and the two are not independent. It follows that one should use the observation as data and not as a background condition. Hence, the AO approach for cosmic fine-tuning is incorrect. The self-sampling assumption approach by Bostrom was shown to be inconsistent with probability theory. Several reasons were then given for favoring the ‘this universe’ (TU) approach and main criticisms against TU were answered. A formal argument for TU was given based on our present knowledge. The main result is that even under a multiverse we should use the proposition “this universe is fine-tuned” as data, even if we do not know the ‘true index’ 14 of our universe. It follows that because multiverse hypotheses do not predict fine-tuning for this particular universe any better than a single universe hypothesis, multiverse hypotheses are not adequate explanations for fine-tuning. Conversely, our data on cosmic fine-tuning does not lend support to the multiverse hypotheses. For physics in general, irrespective of whether there really is a multiverse or not, the common-sense result of the above discussion is that we should prefer those theories which best predict (for this or any universe) the phenomena we observe in our universe. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0802/0802.4013.pdfbornagain77_{July 19, 2011
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DM: Sorry, from previous exchanges you have long since forfeited the privileges of us doing the work for you. You want to dance wrong but strong in the teeth of a pretty serious consensus view and related cluster of issues, so you need to justify your moves. And your latterday clips seem to have been largely dealt with already, cf the other thread for key excerpts. As far as I am concerned, you are very much on probation, regarding some pretty serious matters. Besides, above, you have seen the points that you need to attend to at first level summarised by me; which took a considerable slice of what is turning out to be a busy morning since a client woke me up at 5:30 am with urgent big issues on the plate for the day. My schedule for today has already been ripped up, I am not doing that again. You plainly have not even seriously read the post above at 53, or the cosmological design inference foundations post (and notice how you want to debate a thread in another thread so that those who look on cannot easily refer to the facts and issues in evidence -- telling) so I have no confidence that you will address anything else with greater seriousness. I suggest you start with epsilon and convergent design constraints focussed on water, as the other blog post highlights as issue no 1. Notice the pointed observation on epsilon that I highlighted. (And, BTW, in real world arguments, clipping or referring to credible sources -- starting with the dictionary -- is a reasonable move.) I take it that others will be able to monitor your progress if any. Good day GEM of TKI PS: BA, the item is listed with the other two posts in that series. For more serious issues, I suggest a reading of especially the Palonen paper. BA, do me the favour of clipping, cleaning up and posting its conclusion. Sorry, gotta go.kairosfocus_{July 19, 2011
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dmullenix: a wee correction: "I’ve proof of the latter every day; hell, I’ve proof of it in our dialogue." Should read: "I've proof of the FORMER every day...." thx.lpadron_{July 19, 2011
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dmullenix, Again, thanks for your reply and more importantly, the tone in which you gave it. I can’t argue whatever math may be involved in what you propose. These days I can barely figure out if I have enough money for both gas AND lunch. It seems to me we have the same problem. I find if far more likely that a conscious being with a mind holding a vast amount of information exists even though I cannot begin to explain how that being holds or acquired that information. I reason that said being, having the power to create all that I see about, is probably if not obviously quite different not only from me but from everything in my experience. What we know of information, the universe, other minds and reality would be vastly different than what that being knows. I understand if you don’t agree with any of it. You find it far more likely that a physical universe/multiverse exists with low information and vast amounts of material in it though you cannot (I think) explain how that universe/multiverse came to be. Given what we know of the universe is limited by our ability to see and travel very far and that often, what we thought was the case about our universe turned out to be incorrect and how we have no experience of things just popping into existence I think you’d understand why your view is odd to me. The existence of a mind infinitely smarter and more powerful than I seems far more likely than spontaneously existing low information. I’ve proof of the latter every day; hell, I’ve proof of it in our dialogue. I’ve no proof of low information matter simply coming into existence. A few questions: Do the laws of physics and all the rest count as information? If so, is it high or low order info? As for my sinner status, well, one of the problems is that I don’t sell myself short at all. Thanks again for indulging me.lpadron_{July 19, 2011
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KF at 53 (and BA77): "I and others have given you more than adequate links and summaries to see why Stenger et al are wrong, and in some respects OBVIOUSLY wrong." The most UNimpressive thing in the world is someone who "answers" by throwing a bunch of links into the conversation and that is all you've done. If you want to convince me that Stenger is wrong, tell me in your own words where he errors. If you want to quote Stenger, go ahead. Then explain his error in your own words. Argument by spamming with a thousand links doesn't impress me. If it impresses you, I'll give you a link to the Library of Congress and you can read it yourself and find where you have errored by yourself. Not a very attractive proposition, is it? Well, I assure you that a junkstorm of URLs is just as ugly. If you can't explain it in your own words, don't expect others to do your work for you.dmullenix_{July 19, 2011
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BA77 in 51: Ok, assuming a bacteria with one million basepairs in its genome and two base pairs change, what is the size of the search space? Please show your work. KF at 38: F/N: DM, multiverses have been found to be implied in every cosmological theory invented in the last 75 years First off, that includes the Steady State cosmology, which was not exactly a multiverse model. It also includes the possibility that a virtual particle pair could spontaneously come into existence whose total mass was large enough to form a black hole and start another universe. The multi-verse is older than the Steady State cosmology. In fact, Christianity posits a type of multi-verse called Heaven. KF at 39: The weak anthropic principle has nothing to do with my argument and if there are multiverses, there are probably either an infinite number of them or others have suggested such large numbers at 10^500. More than enough to negate any problems with the unlikelyhood of fine tuning. Bantay at 40: None of what you write negates the facts that A: Life is so rare in this universe as to not even being a respectable trace element and B: A universe what was actually designed for life wouldn’t squander its resources by having gazillions of stars radiating their energy into endless space. It would conserve that energy for life. Think of a mouse in a cathedral who snuggles into a pile of rags and munches some crumbs of communion wafers and thinks, “Yes sir, this was all designed for mice.” And then multiply the cathedral to – what? We don’t know how common intelligent life is in this universe. Many look at the four billion years it took to produce us and argue that we are the only intelligent beings in this galaxy, so you’d have to expand the cathedral to the size of the Milky Way to get the proportions right. And some people think we’re the only intelligent beings in the whole universe, in which case the galaxy sized cathedral is vanishingly small compared to what’s needed to show the proper relationship of us to the universe. I’d say the mouse in the normal sized cathedral was silly and the silliness would increase exponentially as the cathedral grew. Clue #2: If the universe WAS designed for life, it would have included the metals in its design. We wouldn’t have to wait around for super nova to make them. KF at 41: All of your cosmological arguments eventually run aground and have to posit a first cause. Calling it an “uncaused” first cause doesn’t change anything. And it’s just a simple fact that any intelligent first cause, any first cause that is a person, is going to be extraordinarily complex and hence extraordinarily less likely than a simple universe. Note that the multiverse is no more unobserved than your first cause. Mung at 43: You seem to be agreeing with me that if universes are “free” and there’s nothing to stop them from being produced, we should have a multiverse. Good job. Mung at 44: You’re wrong. Information IS created by changing bases in DNA. If you have CATGCATG, that pattern is information. If you change the last base pair to T, then you have CATGCATT. That pattern is also information and it’s new. You can also tack new bases onto one end, which gives you new information and also more information. Useless information is information that has no effect on the organism or screws the organism up. If you are born with a mutation that mangles the valves in your heart, that is useless information. Worse than that for you, since you’ll die young. By “initial store” I’m guessing you mean, “first living thing” and current beginning of life theory puts that information at a point low enough to be formed by chance. Say 50-100 bits. KF at 45 “Ask yourself — as we live in a world where conservation of energy is one of the strongest laws — where the notion of getting the energy of universes for “free” from has come, save the fertile speculative imagination.” “Physicists say that the positive energy latent in all the matter in the universe is offset by the negative potential energy of the gravitational field of the universe. The total energy of the universe is, therefore, exactly zero.” That’s from http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090914091044AAf9mTU which is the first place Google found it, but I’ve read it in plenty of books and articles from physicists. “Our observed universe began, is contingent and has a cause external to itself. Ultimately, per logic, that chain of cause terminates in a necessary being, one that is not contingent. You don’t need a necessary being, just something that can create a universe and a metaverse fills the bill and is a lot simpler and therefore more likely than any kind of a being. BA77 at 46: “For one thing it takes a infinite amount of specified information just to create a single photon:,,,” Nonsense. Please provide a citation for that claim.dmullenix_{July 19, 2011
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kf, I don't know if you referenced this,, but anyways: The Multiverse Gods, part 1 http://procrustes.blogtownhall.com/2011/06/23/the_multiverse_gods,_part_1.thtml The Multiverse Gods, final part Excerpt: In part two, we discussed the Widow's Mite fallacy where Stenger uses physical units for a metaphysical property, which like Jesus' disciples, mistakes a physical quantity for a metaphysical one. The most obvious difference between the two is that physical quantities have units, whereas metaphysical ones are unitless. But in addition, metaphysical quantities are percentages, integrals, they involve a comparison of areas or volumes, as in Bayesian hypothesis testing we are making a ratio of the range to the domain of a fit variable. Superficially, Stenger appears to be working in unitless numbers when he normalizes his "fine-tuning" variables with a Planck-scale "metaphysical reciprocal" so as to achieve unity, which prevents computer calculations from having hiccups on really big or really small numbers, but this is not the metaphysical integral as used by Jesus because the normalization is, as Stenger himself says, merely a change of the length scale into "theory units," but physical units nonetheless. Then Stenger claims without any proof that his unity is what theorists expect, as if he has carried out the metaphysical calculation, when in actuality Stenger's normalization is chosen purely to look reasonable. Now to his credit, many previous writers in the field of "fine-tuning" are still using physical units and are equally guilty of the Widow's Mite fallacy, but Stenger has not escaped by converting to "theory units", he needs to work in Bayesian units, in integrals over range and domain. http://procrustes.blogtownhall.com/2011/06/30/the_multiverse_gods,_final_part.thtmlbornagain77_{July 19, 2011
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DM: Evidently, you have decided that Stenger gives you the talking points that allow you to dismiss the cosmological fine tuning and beginning issues and evidence without serious consideration. I and others have given you more than adequate links and summaries to see why Stenger et al are wrong, and in some respects OBVIOUSLY wrong. For instance, playing games with measurement scales to move numbers to the near vicinity of 1 does not make the real issue go away. Similarly, the model star lifespan proxy for life facilitation is highly simplistic and dubious for multiple reasons, bot just at stellar physics and galaxy levels, but even on the task of getting to a privileged planet that can host life as we observe it. (Have you even considered the pattern of the orbits of roasters among exo-planets and what they imply for solar systems?) Next, in my experience of designing amplifiers, it was common to see that one could set up many operating points, but once one had to set up an op point, multiple constraints converged, and the notion that just because you could move this knob one way and that he other way to compensate so no given op point needs explanation, is nonsense: a noodle through the config space is just as much of a constrained matter as a dot in it. Moreover, notice, again, the observation made by noted thinker on this matter John Leslie in his 1998 paper, which therefore anticipated Stenger by some years, which I clip from the post; I find you are playing the game of criticising a case in its absence (it seems you have not read page 2 of the post . . . ):
One striking thing about the fine tuning is that a force strength or a particle mass often appears to require accurate tuning for several reasons at once. Look at electromagnetism. Electromagnetism seems to require tuning for there to be any clear-cut distinction between matter and radiation; for stars to burn neither too fast nor too slowly for life’s requirements; for protons to be stable; for complex chemistry to be possible; for chemical changes not to be extremely sluggish; and for carbon synthesis inside stars (carbon being quite probably crucial to life). Universes all obeying the same fundamental laws could still differ in the strengths of their physical forces, as was explained earlier, and random variations in electromagnetism from universe to universe might then ensure that it took on any particular strength sooner or later. Yet how could they possibly account for the fact that the same one strength satisfied many potentially conflicting requirements, each of them a requirement for impressively accurate tuning? [Our Place in the Cosmos, 1998]
Any experienced designer of technological systems can understand very well the implications of a single design having to meet multiple constraints. In particular, look at the post you have studiously avoided addressing directly. Notice, how I LEAD with the question, what goes into water, and the multiple constraints that are implied in that process, from the physical foundations of the cosmos forward. There is a reason why I emphasised this apparently simple molecule, and why Sir Fred Hoyle -- no mean astrophysicist -- drew some striking conclusions on observing the resonances responsible for the abundance of C and O in the cosmos, H and He being already seen as the two most abundant elements (which is not without some need for fine tuning, notice the discussion of epsilon in the footnote linked reply to Stenger: moving from 0.007 by just 1 or a bit more in the last place, would RADICALLY alter the distribution of basic elements in the cosmos, thence its dynamics, and the behaviour of stars, as well as the possibility of life itself . . . ). Let us clip Barnes, just to underscore my point on simplistic strawman claims by Stenger; nb the highlighted sting in the tail:
When Martin Rees [i.e. the UK's Astronomer Royal] chooses “Just Six Numbers” as the best examples of fine-tuned physical parameters, epsilon [fraction to energy on 1_H fusion] is one of them. In particular, epsilon is the parameter that Rees uses to illustrate the fine-tuning needed to produce life-permitting stars. If epsilon were 0.006, deuterium would be unstable, meaning that stars would be unable to produce larger elements. Only hydrogen, no chemistry, no planets, no complex structures. If epsilon were 0.008, no hydrogen would have survived the big bang. Stars that aren’t fuelled by hydrogen have their lifetimes reduced by a factor of at least 30. [And we add, no H, would make for a big challenge with organic chemistry, and no basis for H2O] Stenger simply leaves this out.
As in, in the indirectness of academic language, BANG, you're dead. Here's Hoyle:
From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? . . . I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has “monkeyed” with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. [F. Hoyle, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982): 16.]
Likewise (on I & J), if I am put in front of a firing squad and the procedures go on as usual, but at the end, I am still here to talk about it, the matter is in need of significant explanation, whatever I & J or Sobers may have to say on misconstrued renderings of Bayesian reasoning. I suggest you work your way through the readings linked in the footnote to p. 1 of the ID Foundations post; by way of putting the matter together in a convenient cluster. If you want to debate those points, I suggest you do so there. Good day. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 19, 2011
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dmullenix, My math?,,, oh yes the creative math,,, How very,,, imaginative,,, of you guys,,, This creative accounting practice of neo-Darwinists is really a bit much,,,, Perhaps something anchored in reality by experimental evidence would help me think you guys are not stark raving mad??? I really would like to give you guys the benefit of a doubt!!! Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies (35 years of trying to force fruit flies to evolve in the laboratory fails, spectacularly) - October 2010 Excerpt: "Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.,,, "This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve," said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Anthony Long, the primary investigator. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/10/07/experimental_evolution_in_fruit_flies Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681 The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds – Douglas Axe – 2010 Excerpt Pg. 11: “Based on analysis of the genomes of 447 bacterial species, the projected number of different domain structures per species averages 991. Comparing this to the number of pathways by which metabolic processes are carried out, which is around 263 for E. coli, provides a rough figure of three or four new domain folds being needed, on average, for every new metabolic pathway. In order to accomplish this successfully, an evolutionary search would need to be capable of locating sequences that amount to anything from one in 10^159 to one in 10^308 possibilities, something the neo-Darwinian model falls short of by a very wide margin.” http://bio-complexity.org/?ojs/index.php/main/article?/view/BIO-C.2010.1 When Theory and Experiment Collide — April 16th, 2011 by Douglas Axe Excerpt: Based on our experimental observations and on calculations we made using a published population model [3], we estimated that Darwin’s mechanism would need a truly staggering amount of time—a trillion trillion years or more—to accomplish the seemingly subtle change in enzyme function that we studied. http://biologicinstitute.o?rg/2011/04/16/when-theory-?and-experiment-collide/ “The likelihood of developing two binding sites in a protein complex would be the square of the probability of developing one: a double CCC (chloroquine complexity cluster), 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. There have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the entire world in the past 4 billion years, so the odds are against a single event of this variety (just 2 binding sites being generated by accident) in the history of life. It is biologically unreasonable.” Michael J. Behe PhD. (from page 146 of his book “Edge of Evolution”) Nature Paper,, Finds Darwinian Processes Lacking – Michael Behe – Oct. 2009 Excerpt: Now, thanks to the work of Bridgham et al (2009), even such apparently minor switches in structure and function (of a protein to its supposed ancestral form) are shown to be quite problematic. It seems Darwinian processes can’t manage to do even as much as I had thought. (which was 1 in 10^40 for just 2 binding sites) http://www.evolutionnews.o?rg/2009/10/nature_paper_fi?nally_reaches_t026281.htmlbornagain77_{July 19, 2011
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BA77 at 49: Support what? My math?dmullenix_{July 19, 2011
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KF at 36: I asked if you had read “The Fallacy of Fine Tuning” and evidently you haven’t: “Stenger is simply wrong. (He deliberately picked a simplistic model, and set up a co-tuning situation that allows the operating point to in effect wander around in a config space.” Simplistic? Now I KNOW you haven’t read it. And one of his main points is that if all the parameters are allowed to vary, you don’t have a single combination which can make a universe capable of life, you have “a config space” – MANY different combinations that will allow life. Since you recommend The Procrustean’s “The Multiverse Gods” on the other thread, perhaps you can tell me where in “Fallacy” he gets this from: “Few other proponents of multiverses are quite as forthcoming with their logic, but clearly something besides data must motivate the science of multiverses, because by definition multiverses are not observable. Stenger makes the connection explicit, whereas Hawking or Susskind is a little more coy with their metaphysics. Multiverse-theory is designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is to defend atheism.” Or are you recommending the “Letters to Nature” column, “What Changes Me? A Fine Tuned Critique of Victor Stenger (Part 1) which seems to have been written before the book was published. I recommend everybody re-read Denyse O’Leary’s recent post on reviewing books you haven’t read.dmullenix_{July 19, 2011
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well golly gee whiz dmullenix, I guess you schooled us old dumb hicks; :) You don't mind producing some actual empirical support for your position to ease my doubts that you may not be as smart as you think you are???bornagain77_{July 19, 2011
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Ipadron at 37: Regarding the multiverse, there comes a time when you just have to say, “It’s always been there.” Theists have the same problem with God. “Where did God come from?” “He’s always existed.” The problem for theists is that the multiverse is probably pretty simple and low information – not too different from our universe. Most of the wonders we see in the sky are the kind of details you’d get from spilling a bucket of sand. Our simple universe started to expand and then gravity started to make parts of it contract and we wound up with the galaxies, stars, planets, etc. No complex information went into making them. The multiverse is probably the same – very low informational content. (Under the "everlasting inflation" theory, our universe may even sprout new universes, making us one of many multiverses.) God, on the other hand, is claimed to be “personal” or a “Being”. Both words mean that God is claimed to have a mind, like yours and mind, but presumably much more complicated and that requires, literally, gigabits of information all carefully arranged to enable even the simplest thought. No theologian has ever even made a guess as to where that information comes from. They apparently don’t even want to think about it and I can see why. So we have two proposals for where our universe came from: a relatively simple multiverse or an incredibly complicated personal Being. The Being is astronomically less likely than the multiverse. I’d advise you not to sell yourself short re: your sinner status. I’ve run into a lot of young Christians who bemoaned their fallen, depraved state, yet when I asked them what kinds of sins they were guilty of, I’ve gotten pretty trivial answers like, “Didn’t truly believe” hard enough or “took drugs once” or “coveted my neighbor” or something else mundane like that. If you haven’t actually hijacked an airliner and flown it into a skyscraper, you have a long way to go as a sinner. KF going back to 28: I missed something in #28 that really needs to be addressed: “The notion that complex enough islands of function to count (more than 500 – 1,00[0] bits worth of functionally specific and complex info) can be found by darwinian random walks rewarded by differential trial and error success can explain the information in life forms from the first cell [100+ k bits] to the dozens of body plans [10 - 100 mn+ bits] , simply fails to understand the magnitude of search challenge…” First, why do you ID people insist that the first living thing was complex? 500 to 1000 bits of information? Try 50 to 100. Think of a single polymer whose only capability is reproducing its self, and which is possibly imbedded in the kind of droplets that form naturally. Rabbi M.Averick has the same problem: He outright admits that bacteria to man is accounted for by evolution, then he damns science because he thinks we claim bacteria to be the first life and starts spewing statistics like yours above. I see this mistake all the time on UD and other anti-science sites. “At just 1,000 bits, W has in it 1.07*10^301 possibilities, where our observed cosmos has in it a capacity to scan through just 10^150 Planck time quantum states [PTQS's], or less than 1 in 10^150 of the space.” You and Dembski and most of the rest of the ID/Creationist crowd don’t know how to do applied math. Living things don’t search through any “1.07*10^301 possibilities”. To do that, they’d have to construct the next generation’s DNA randomly, from scratch, every time they reproduced. READ THIS CAREFULLY BECAUSE THERE WILL BE A TEST: If a bacteria with a million base pairs in its genome has a single base pair mutate, it explores exactly FOUR possibilities. NOT 10^300, just 4. The original 999,999 base pairs plus one new basepair which may be C, A, T or G. (And one of them will be identical to the original.) DON’T use numbers like 10^300 when you’re talking about evolution, it just marks you as a chechako, a beginner, someone who has no clue to what he’s talking about, a Rabbi M.Averick. OKAY, DID EVERYBODY READ THAT? I HOPE SO BECAUSE HERE COMES THE TEST: If a bacteria with 1 million base pairs in its genome gets TWO (2) basepairs mutated, what is the size of the “search space” that it will explore? Answer: SIXTEEN (16). NOT 10^300! 16! The original 999,998 basepairs plus the two mutated ones that can be CC, CA, CT, CG, AC, AA, AT, AG, TC, TA, TT, TG, GC, GA, GT or GG. Sixteen possibilities, NOT 10^300! Homework assignment: Explain why the above answer is correct. If you can’t explain it or your explanation comes to any answer but sixteen, then please don’t comment until you’ve found your error. You will only embarrass ID. Extra credit: Read the charges of “SPECULATIVE METAPHYSICS” in msg 28 and be embarrassed for ID. KF at 29: “F/N: I have clipped choice parts of the exchange here over at the cosmological ID thread, here.” Perhaps I should do the same.dmullenix_{July 19, 2011
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F/N: I have added an update at the ID Founds 6 post on cosmological fine tuning, addressing backgrounder info on astrophysics and on the anthropic principles, as well as critiques, by providing a cluster of links. Responses to Stenger and to Ikeda-Jeffreys (thence Sober) are there.kairosfocus_{July 18, 2011
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as to this claim; 'The small amount of information that this universe contained at the Big Bang probably came from noise in the multiverse that produced this universe.' I have no idea where one would get such a erroneous idea from,, save from a-priori, and unwarranted, materialistic beliefs,, for the evidence certainly DOES NOT support such a statement. For one thing it takes a infinite amount of specified information just to create a single photon:,,, Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (photon) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1) --- Concept 2. is used by Bennett, et al. Recall that they infer that since an infinite amount of information is required to specify a (photon) qubit, an infinite amount of information must be transferred to teleport. http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/faculty/duwell/DuwellPSA2K.pdf Quantum Teleportation - IBM Research Page Excerpt: "it would destroy the original (photon) in the process,," http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/ Researchers Succeed in Quantum Teleportation of Light Waves - April 2011 Excerpt: In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. This is a major advance, as previous teleportation experiments were either very slow or caused some information to be lost. http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-04/quantum-teleportation-breakthrough-could-lead-instantanous-computing etc.. etc.. Furthermore,,, Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1 in 10^10(123), an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1 in 10^10(60), a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 1 in 10^10(123). (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison [The Road to Reality (Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5]). Or again, if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those strange worlds are simply much more plenteous in the ensemble of universes than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us if the universe were but a random member of a multiverse of worlds. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On naturalism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no multiverse. — Penrose puts it bluntly “these world ensemble hypothesis are worse than useless in explaining the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe”. http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/astronomy-cosmology-and-god-f15/multiverse-a-valid-hypotheses-t20.htm The Physics of the Small and Large: What is the Bridge Between Them? Roger Penrose Excerpt: "The time-asymmetry is fundamentally connected to with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: indeed, the extraordinarily special nature (to a greater precision than about 1 in 10^10^123, in terms of phase-space volume) can be identified as the "source" of the Second Law (Entropy)." http://www.pul.it/irafs/CD%20IRAFS%2702/texts/Penrose.pdf How special was the big bang? - Roger Penrose Excerpt: This now tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123. (from the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 - 1989) http://www.ws5.com/Penrose/ As well, contrary to speculation of 'budding universes' arising from Black Holes, Black Hole singularities are completely opposite the singularity of the Big Bang in terms of the ordered physics of entropic thermodynamics. In other words, Black Holes are singularities of destruction and disorder rather than singularities of creation and order. Roger Penrose - How Special Was The Big Bang? “But why was the big bang so precisely organized, whereas the big crunch (or the singularities in black holes) would be expected to be totally chaotic? It would appear that this question can be phrased in terms of the behaviour of the WEYL part of the space-time curvature at space-time singularities. What we appear to find is that there is a constraint WEYL = 0 (or something very like this) at initial space-time singularities-but not at final singularities-and this seems to be what confines the Creator’s choice to this very tiny region of phase space.” "The Big Bang represents an immensely powerful, yet carefully planned and controlled release of matter, energy, space and time. All this is accomplished within the strict confines of very carefully fine-tuned physical constants and laws. The power and care this explosion reveals exceeds human mental capacity by multiple orders of magnitude." Prof. Henry F. Schaefer - closing statement of part 5 of preceding video This 1 in 10^10^123 number, for the time-asymmetry of the initial state of the 'ordered entropy' for the universe, also lends strong support for 'highly specified infinite information' creating the universe since; "Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more." Gilbert Newton Lewis - Eminent Chemist "Is there a real connection between entropy in physics and the entropy of information? ....The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental..." Tom Siegfried, Dallas Morning News, 5/14/90 - Quotes attributed to Robert W. Lucky, Ex. Director of Research, AT&T, Bell Laboratories & John A. Wheeler, of Princeton & Univ. of TX, Austin in the article ,,, 'And if your curious about how Genesis 1, in particular, fairs. Hey, we look at the Days in Genesis as being long time periods, which is what they must be if you read the Bible consistently, and the Bible scores 4 for 4 in Initial Conditions and 10 for 10 on the Creation Events' Hugh Ross - Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere; videobornagain77_{July 18, 2011
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Mung: Ask yourself -- as we live in a world where conservation of energy is one of the strongest laws -- where the notion of getting the energy of universes for "free" from has come, save the fertile speculative imagination. In addition, that which begins to exist has a cause, and it has circumstances under which it may not exist. That is a simple logical consequence of contingency. Our observed universe began, is contingent and has a cause external to itself. Ultimately, per logic, that chain of cause terminates in a necessary being, one that is not contingent. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 18, 2011
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dmullenix:
The small amount of information that this universe contained at the Big Bang probably came from noise in the multiverse that produced this universe.
For me, the very idea of noise as a source of information is incoherent.
Darwinian evolution is a factory for generating CSI. The initial information is generated by randomly mutating DNA. This new DNA pattern is new information, but odds are that it’s useless information. Natural selection weeds the crap information out by the simple expedient of trying to manage an organism with it. If it works, that new information goes on to reproduce itself and it’s added to the store of CSI. (The specification is “Capable of running an organism”.) If it doesn’t work, it’s automatically discarded with the failed organism. The result: a slow but steady accumulation of new CSI.
Information is not created by randomly changing bases in DNA. And your argument of course presupposes the existence of DNA and the purpose of DNA, which itself requires an explanation. What is useless information? The very idea seems incoherent. How much CSI is in the initial store and where did it come from?Mung_{July 18, 2011
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dmullenix:
Since universes seem to be “free” with respect to energy/matter and their information content at their beginning is meager, what do you think stops other universes from also being created?
I think that is the wrong question. I think the correct question is what causes a universe to begin to exist, to come into being. For there to be an "anti-universe" force that stops universes from being created would, it seems to me, require that univereses exist and is therefore incoherent.Mung_{July 18, 2011
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dmullenix:
KF: Have you read, “The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us” by Victor J. Stenger yet?
See: The Multiverse Gods Pt. 1 The Multiverse Gods Pt. 2 The Multiverse Gods Pt. 3Mung_{July 18, 2011
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F/N: DM, you are also putting up a strawman, the issue is not supernaturalism vs naturalism, but credible signs of design. The credible inference to beginning on cosmological expansion, reasonably requires a begin-ner. The many ways in which our cosmos is at a credibly finely tuned operating point that facilitates life (start with the issue of nuclear resonances and element abundances, as well as the properties of water then go on from there to the key cosmological laws and parameters that have to be just right to get that), points to design, as in purposeful arrangement of parts to achieve a goal. BTW, Sobers' mathematicisation does not materially add to the issue we see on Peirce's abductive inference to best explanation; where we are addressing such large fields of possibilities that the usual suggested alternative is a quasi-infinite multiverse. That is it is seen that on what we ACTUALLY see, ther4 eis something special, so the attempt made is to dismiss it by suggesting that if we posit an -- UNOBSERVED -- quasi-infinite sea of varied sub cosmi, then anything can happen and we should not be surprised. What is the observational evidence for this quasi infinite sea? NIL, maybe NECESSARILY nil, depending on the relevant model. In short, speculative metaphysics to prop up an a priori commitment to materialism, is being resorted to in an attempt to dismiss the serious question of what best explains what we DO see. And the "well we survived the firing squad needs no explanation" argument is utterly astonishing. Sorry, while I am thankful to be alive, when I see that the cosmos that enables this looks suspiciously set up, I want to know why, and why in a context of real evidence not conveniently unobserved or unobservable speculations and models. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 18, 2011
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Mr Mullenix Good day to you there. Part of your comments above included these two statements. "But there’s something even more important: this universe is NOT designed for life! 99.9999999999999999999999999999999+ percent of this universe is utterly lethal for any kind of life. " I hope this is not too difficult to accept, but the fact that 99.9999xxxxx percent of the universe is lethal for life (simple or advanced) most everywhere else is NOT positive evidence that it was not designed for our benefit here on earth. Rather, the fact that there is so much life on earth, that the earth is literally brimming over with such an abundance and diversity of complex life such a should be clue #1 that there is an exceptional situation going on. Clue #2 should be that if wasn't for 10.x billions of years of the cosmos, there would not have been sufficient super novae to provide sufficient metals that life requires. "The age of the universe governs what kinds of stars exist. It takes about three? billion years for the first stars to form. It takes another ten or twelve billion years? for supernovae to spew out enough heavy elements to make possible stars like our sun,? stars capable of spawning rocky planets. Yet another few billion years is necessary for? solar-type stars to stabilize sufficiently to support advanced life on any of its planets.? Hence, if the universe were just a couple of billion years younger, no environment? suitable for life would exist. However, if the universe were about ten (or more) billion? years older than it is, there would be no solar-type stars in a stable burning phase in? the right part of a galaxy. In other words, the window of time during which life is? possible in the universe is relatively narrow." http://www.evidenceforchristianity.org/index.php?option=com_custom_content&task=view&id=3622Bantay_{July 18, 2011
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PS: Re 35: You are led out, bound, and tied to a post in front of a wall, then offered the traditional blindfold. Before you have the bland fold put on your eyes, you observe that the squad is much larger than usual, fifty marksmen from your unit. Duly blindfolded, you hear the command, ready, and the slap as fifty rifles rise to shoulders. AIM! And only a rustle as the marksmen take aim at the target pinned over your heart. FIRE! ROAR!!! Wait, you HEARD the roar. Then, the steps of the officer can be heard, walking up and you hear the snick as a pistol is pulled from its holster. You feel the muzzle next to your temple. It is pulled back and you hear a deafeningly close roar, and the sting of powder particles hitting your skin. Then, the blindfold is removed, and you are led away, trembling. Next day, you are taken form your cell and set free. In the unit pub, you are expressing your amazement that you are alive. The bartender tells you: NONSENSE, it is only the fact that you are alive that means you are in a world that is compatible with being alive. The firing squad issue is nothing to be amazed over. Do you see the fatal flaw in the weak anthropic principle argument used as a dismissal of design on fine tuning of many circumstances that mutually support the outcome we observe? (DM, in short the arguments you linked share a fatal flaw.)kairosfocus_{July 18, 2011
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F/N: DM, multiverses have been found to be implied in every cosmological theory invented in the last 75 years First off, that includes the Steady State cosmology, which was not exactly a multiverse model. What you mean in the first instance is that it is possible to conjure up separate mathematical domains which would be fitted under the model frameworks, but which would by and large be -- conveniently -- unobservable. Not so conveniently, the absence of ability to carry out empirical tests means that we are looking at phil not sci. Even if done at the chalk board by someone wearing a lab coat. (Which last is sensible if you have ever had to deal with chalk dust in industrial quantities.) In the case of various models that do suggest quantum fluctuations, budding sub universes, oscillating universes and the like, these models tend to run into fairly serious difficulties, and are, again, as a rule without empirically observed supportive test points. What is plainly emerging is that the real alternative to taking the observed evidence pointing to fine tuning seriously, is to quietly slip across the border from science into speculative philosophy, insulating the speculations from comparative difficulties analysis by wearing a lab coat. Then, act as though speculation is fact. Doesn't work. Phil is phil, regardless of what you are wearing at the time. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 18, 2011
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dmullenix, Thanks for taking the time to reply. The question remains, at least for me, how the multiverse that produced this one came to be. It may also be fair to ask how the information in that multiverse came about, too. I agree with you on this: I AM a no good sinner that falls short every day. And worse than you could ever hope to be I'm afraid.lpadron_{July 18, 2011
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DM: Stenger is simply wrong. (He deliberately picked a simplistic model, and set up a co-tuning situation that allows the operating point to in effect wander around in a config space. Do you think that the shaft and the sleeve you cite just happen to preserve their matching by sheer accident, without foresight based planing? In short, the very fact that we are looking at a known engineered case is pointing to the real fallacy at work: substituting an example that actually shows how FSCI comes from intelligence and then brushing aside that inconveient littel fact on teh pretence that nature can scan so many possibilites -- oops, not enough nature observed so far -- let's speculate that nature is actually quasi-infinite, so we can then say that any and every thing can happen. But this is without a shred of observational support, it is an unannounced slipping over the border into a priori-riddled question-begging philosophical speculation. And such ill-advised philosophising remains philosophy even when done by one wearing the holy lab coat.) Did you take time to see that we are in aggregate dealing with dozens to hundreds of parameters that have to match to get a viable operating point? Do you not realise how hard it is to mutually adjust or specify dozens to diverse things to get to such an operating point? (Ever designed a complex electronic circuit or wrote a complex software program?) A good analogy to this "getting he wiring diagram to work" problem is the generic design of a car engine. The parts are fairly standard and it is easy to draw pretty illustrations in books, but to actually work on the ground, the parts must be specified and made to match in the particular case, across hundreds of parts, at any point in the config space. Does that ability to set up diverse car engines with similar but distinct parts mean that a car engine is not credibly designed on being set up to work at a specific operating point? That's an "even if . . ." argument. But in fact the key point you are overlooking in your dismissive cite from Stenger is something that Leslie highlighted [and which appears on p 2 of my post -- noticed the jump line that leads off from a teaser on the multiverse?] Namely,
One striking thing about the fine tuning is that a force strength or a particle mass often appears to require accurate tuning for several reasons at once. Look at electromagnetism. Electromagnetism seems to require tuning for there to be any clear-cut distinction between matter and radiation; for stars to burn neither too fast nor too slowly for life’s requirements; for protons to be stable; for complex chemistry to be possible; for chemical changes not to be extremely sluggish; and for carbon synthesis inside stars (carbon being quite probably crucial to life). Universes all obeying the same fundamental laws could still differ in the strengths of their physical forces, as was explained earlier, and random variations in electromagnetism from universe to universe might then ensure that it took on any particular strength sooner or later. Yet how could they possibly account for the fact that the same one strength satisfied many potentially conflicting requirements, each of them a requirement for impressively accurate tuning? [Our Place in the Cosmos, 1998 (courtesy Wayback Machine)]
And, yep, that means Stenger was refuted before he even got around to his argument. He failed to do his homework. Next, the oh most of the cosmos is not immediately habitable for life point fails, too, as the scale of the cosmos is itself part of what sets it up for life, have a look at the degree to which for instance cosmic inflation is fine tuned to facilitate what we see, and the cosmological constant -- which governs the expansion -- is similarly very tightly specified indeed. (Did you look at the table of five key parameters?) The attempt to turn about the concept of a galactic or a circumstellar habitable zone into an argument against fine tuning, is a case of desperation. Some fairly serious parameters have to be set up to get to this, and lead to ours being a privileged planet. You must know that this points to something special going on here, and that points to a habitat depending on multiply co-tuned parameters being set up. That such a privileging of the local zone is needed does not undermine the point that the cosmos as a whole going back to its founding, required precise setting up as well. The attempt to cast the one against the other is a mark of making desperate talking points, not serious argument. And, your example of a cosmos in which another element than carbon is the universal connector -- per observations -- is? And, the observational data point on nucleosynthesis in star cores that sets up the relevant cluster of life elements of that new cosmos is? Next, as Leslie's fly on the wall swatted by a bullet point shows, it matters not that there were possibly swathes of the field of possible sub cosmi that would be habitable to some form of life. What matters, decisively, is that the one spot we see with life is at a plainly finely tuned local operating point. The rhetorical flourishes you add to this simply add to the distractions, so they do not need specific answers. What is material is that you are resorting to a multiverse speculation, for which you have not a shred of empirical data, in a question-begging attempt to impose evolutionary materialism as the "only" viable answer. In so doing, you have opened the door to the issues of comparative difficulties in philosophy. So, here is difficulty no 1 for evolutionary materialism:
a: Evolutionary materialism argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature; from hydrogen to humans by undirected chance and necessity. b: Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws of chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of happenstance initial circumstances. (This is physicalism. This view covers both the forms where (a) the mind and the brain are seen as one and the same thing, and those where (b) somehow mind emerges from and/or "supervenes" on brain, perhaps as a result of sophisticated and complex software looping. The key point, though is as already noted: physical causal closure -- the phenomena that play out across time, without residue, are in principle deducible or at least explainable up to various random statistical distributions and/or mechanical laws, from prior physical states. [[There is also some evidence from simulation exercises, that accuracy of even sensory perceptions may lose out to utilitarian but inaccurate ones in an evolutionary competition. "It works" does not warrant the inference to "it is true."] ) c: But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this picture. So, we rapidly arrive at Crick's claim in his The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994): what we subjectively experience as "thoughts," "reasoning" and "conclusions" can only be understood materialistically as the unintended by-products of the blind natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains. d: These forces are viewed as being ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance shaped by forces of selection [["nature"] and psycho-social conditioning [["nurture"], within the framework of human culture [[i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism]. e: For instance, Marxists commonly derided opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismissed qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? Should we not ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is little more than yet another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? And -- as we saw above -- would the writings of a Crick be any more than the firing of neurons in networks in his own brain? f: For further instance, we may take the favourite whipping-boy of materialists: religion. Notoriously, they often hold that belief in God is not merely error, but delusion. But, if such a patent "delusion" is so utterly widespread, even among the highly educated, then it "must" -- by the principles of evolution -- somehow be adaptive to survival, whether in nature or in society. And so, this would be an illustration of the unreliability of our reasoning ability, on the assumption of evolutionary materialism. g: Turning the materialist dismissal of theism around, evolutionary materialism itself would be in the same leaky boat. For, the sauce for the goose is notoriously just as good a sauce for the gander, too. h: That is, on its own premises [[and following Dawkins in A Devil's Chaplain, 2004, p. 46], the cause of the belief system of evolutionary materialism, "must" also be reducible to forces of blind chance and mechanical necessity that are sufficiently adaptive to spread this "meme" in populations of jumped- up apes from the savannahs of East Africa scrambling for survival in a Malthusian world of struggle for existence. i: The famous evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane made much the same point in a famous 1932 remark:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." [["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (Highlight and emphases added.)]
j: Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then (i) our consciousness, (ii) the "thoughts" we have, (iii) the beliefs we hold, (iv) the reasonings we attempt and (v) the "conclusions" we reach -- without residue -- must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that are irrelevant to purpose, truth, or logical validity . . .
Difficulty no 2 is like unto it, courtesy Will Hawthorne:
Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces]. (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action . . . [[We see] therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time. Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from [[a material] 'is'.
I hold that these are both reductions to absurdity, and that the second shows -- as Plato long ago pointed out -- that evolutionary materialism, in addition, harbours menaces to our civilisation, by way of ruthlessly amoral factions who swallow the agenda and resort to thuggery and abuses. On these two alone, I further hold, evo mat is not only absurd but irretrievably morally bankrupt. So, it is no longer time for the advocates of such to assert an unjustified claim to their brand of atheism being a default posititon, it is time to come up with a pretty serious response that is cogent. One that grounds the reality and reliability of mind, and grounds morality especially rights. Absent that, we have excellent reason to reject such out of hand, and to demand clear evidence that advocates are not falling into the ruthless factionism that is historically such a serious issue. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 18, 2011
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For your reading pleasure, here's a paper by Michael Ikeda and Bill Jeffereys on why "The Anthropic Principle Does Not Support Supernaturalism": http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/anthropic.html They also mention a paper by Elliot Sober, "The Design Argument", which also covers fine tuning. Search for fine tuning. http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/design%20argument%2011%202004.pdfdmullenix_{July 18, 2011
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