David Coppedge writes:
Yesterday I considered the matter of timing as evidence of design. Michael Denton’s book The Miracle of Man pulls together an astounding collection of requirements for complex life that are fulfilled ideally on Earth. Some of these, like plate tectonics, have a timing component; one paper calculates the onset of plate tectonics at 700 million years ago out of the planet’s consensus lifetime of 4.5 billion years. Another temporal factor is a magnetic field, which according to measurements over 160 years, is decreasing in strength. Even if its polarity reverses from time to time and is generated by an internal dynamo as most geophysicists believe, the second law of thermodynamics guarantees that it must lose energy to heat and eventually weaken. Indeed, some of the other moons and planets (like Mars) appear to have lost their magnetic fields. Without the protection of a magnetic field, our atmosphere and life itself would be severely threatened.
All in the Timing
Some of the “coincidences” discussed by Denton, like the nature of water, rely on laws of nature and do not have temporal dimensions, but others might. Earth’s atmospheric density and composition, ozone layer, hydrologic cycle, and availability of key minerals at the surface are satisfactory now, but when did they first become optimal? How long can they persist? When was the Earth ready to open shop, and how long can life on Earth take these perfections for granted?
Dynamical perturbations to Earth’s orbit could also affect habitability. Some scientists calculate cyclical changes in eccentricity, obliquity, and precession that could have affected past climate (NASA). A sufficiently extreme perturbation could render Earth inhospitable, as apparently has affected some exoplanets observed to have wildly eccentric orbits, likely due to a gravitational disturbance from a nearby gas giant. Astrophysicists also tell us that many stars go through periods of extreme flare activity, which could destroy Earth’s atmosphere and life. And eventually, they say, our star will balloon outward as a red giant and burn up the Earth. They assure us that we have several billions of years before that happens, but it does point out that our “continuously habitable zone” is a temporary blessing.
Our Solar System
A bizarre twist on the moon’s origin appeared this month from NASA. According to computer simulations at the Ames Research Center, researchers posit that the moon could have formed by a collision in a matter of hours! The collision theory has been the leading contender for the moon’s origin for years, but to consider the moon forming that fast should raise eyebrows. They say the lucky collision occurred billions of years ago. It already seemed like special pleading to expect a lucky strike from just the right sized impactor, with just the right composition, coming in at just the right angle and velocity to create our unique moon. But to have it occur on one lucky day exactly long enough before human beings appeared on the Earth observing perfect solar eclipses — now there’s a screenplay that’s hard to swallow.
I remember in 2008 asking a well-known planetary scientist about his attempt to extend the lifetime of Saturn’s rings. He admitted to me that his motivation was philosophical. If the rings were as young as some other scientists were deducing from Cassini data, it would imply that humans live at a special time when the beautiful rings are visible. That conclusion made him feel uncomfortable and motivated his attempt to extend the lifetime of the rings by proposing that they were denser than believed at the time. Unfortunately, later measurements in 2016 disconfirmed his proposal (JPL). But even if his proposal had been confirmed, Cassini witnessed ephemeral rings such as the E-ring (formed by Enceladus) and the F and G rings, as well as other short-lived phenomena like ring rain, propellers, and shepherd moon perturbations that could not persist for billions of years. These temporary phenomena have given planetary scientists a wealth of opportunities to learn about the dynamics and composition of ring particles.
The Case of Enceladus
Enceladus is an especially fascinating case. Nearly 100 geysers of water ice are currently jetting out of its south pole at supersonic speed, creating the vast E-ring between Mimas and Titan. The particles are subjected to enormous forces from Saturn and its magnetic field. If the geysers stopped, the E-ring would dissipate within a few tens of years. So why do they exist now when scientists can watch the dynamic changes in the geysers and the E-ring? Enceladus is not alone in this regard. Jupiter has thin “gossamer” rings composed of smoke-size particles. Both Uranus and Neptune also have sparse rings. Planetary rings are temporary phenomena that humans are privileged to observe and learn from at a time they can use telescopes and launch spacecraft to observe them. While the temporal brevity of these phenomena does not in itself prove design, it adds to the number of solar system coincidences that seem to be fortuitously timed for scientific discovery.
Evolution News
Isn’t this just an extended version of Douglas Addams’s “puddle” metaphor?
Yes, we just happen to be around to witness the astronomical phenomena described above, which is great.
We weren’t around, however, to witness the giant impacts such as the The Chicxulub Event 65 million years ago, which is probably just as well as we wouldn’t be around to talk about it today. Living in a solar-system-sized shooting gallery doesn’t seem to be good evidence of something designed for the benefit of humanity.
Seversky at 1,
I think I’ll put a download of your comments in for the 2022 Repetitive Comments Award.
Do I get a plaque as well?
Severely writes @1:
“Living in a solar-system-sized shooting gallery doesn’t seem to be good evidence of something designed for the benefit of humanity.”
But living in the shooting gallery for millennia (don’t forget the constant bombardment of radiation – Mars no longer has a magnetic barrier) and surviving to write about this verdant planet might itself be seen as substantial evidence of design.
Seversky at 3,
Well, I think competition will be tight. You and Chuckdarwin. But the winners will appear in the November issue of the Journal for the Study of Repetitive Comments.
I always liked Lawrence Krauss’ comments regarding “fine tuning.” I’m paraphrasing, but he said that it’s no coincidence that our legs were designed just exactly long enough to reach the ground ……. 😉
Chuckdarwin @ 6
LOL Nice one!
CD & Sev, utterly unserious and strawmannish, and you know it. But then, all of this attempt at clever but actually only strawman tactic dismissiveness boils down to a backhanded admission you have no cogent answer on the merits. KF
O]PS, John Leslie put his finger on the matters:
PPS, oh how amazing our legs are just long enough to reach the ground fails in two distinct ways. First, human legs vary a LOT and still work, even before we get to animal legs. Then, this is similar to oh the puddle fits the hole, an appeal to undisclosed super laws that force circumstances to be as they are so the fine tuning is not fine tuned. But oops, if there is a forcing law that sets a raft of parameters, circumstances and laws to be just so, that is serious fine tuning at the next, cosmos “bakery” building level.
Oh jeesy creesy captain free lunch anthropic principle strikes again. Two good things about Krauss
1.) I no longer have to put up with him at ASU
2.) he admitted his atheistic beliefs were effectively religious.
Number 2 was the first time I respected him
You know, KF, one of my favorite Lou Reed songs is “Strawman.” Perhaps a coincidence, or perhaps just simply kismet. I suppose it’s anyone’s guess……….
It is amusing when ID proponents jump on the [mis]use of terms such as “fine tuned” and “code” and “design” by scientists as further proof of the intelligent design of the universe and life.
as to: “it’s no coincidence that our legs were designed just exactly long enough to reach the ground”
So I guess, just as the ‘science’ of atheists turns out to not really be science, the humor of atheists apparently turns out to not really be humorous.
CD’s humorless ‘humor’ is a play off of the atheist’s falsely assumed “principle of mediocrity”. i.e. “the idea that scientists should assume that nothing is special about humanity’s situation”
And, via their belief in the principle of mediocrity, there has been no shortage of atheist’s denigrating mankind.
For instance, the late Hawking referred to mankind as ‘chemical scum’.
And yet it turns out that man is not nearly as insignificant in this universe as atheists have falsely presupposed with their ‘principle of mediocrity’.
For instance, although the fine-tuning of the laws of physics to allow for life is amazing in and of itself,
,,, although the fine-tuning of the laws of physics to allow for life is amazing in and of itself, there is an additional level of fine-tuning on top of that that is of benefit to mankind in particular.
For instance, Robin Collins, building off the work of Gonzalez’s ‘privileged planet principle’, predicted and confirmed that the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) is such “as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers.”
Moreover, we ‘just so happen’ to “Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History to see the Cosmic Background Radiation”:
On top of the fine-tuning of the CMBR being such “as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers”, Dr. Michael Denton has a fairly recently published a book, (May 2022), in which he found an additional level of fine-tuning that is of benefit for mankind in particular. Specifically Denton found that “nature was also strikingly prearranged, as it were, for our unique technological journey from fire making, to metallurgy, to the advanced technology of our current civilization. Long before man made the first fire, long before the first metal was smelted from its ore, nature was already prepared and fit for our technological journey from the Stone Age to the present.”
On top of that, in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that we live in the middle, or at the geometric mean, between the largest scale in physics and the smallest scale in physics:
And here is a picture that gets his point across very clearly:
Moreover, Dr. William Demski (and company), in the following graph, give a more precise figure, (than Dr. Turok’s figure), of 8.8 x 10^26 M for the observable universe’s diameter, and 1.6 x 10^-35 for the Planck length which is the smallest length possible.
Dr. Dembski’s more precise interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as the size of a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center, and/or geometric mean, of all possible sizes of our physical reality. This is very interesting for the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions rather than directly in the exponential middle and/or the geometric mean. Needless to say, this empirical finding directly challenges, if not directly refutes, the assumption behind the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity.
On top of all that, another thing that directly challenges the atheist’s principle of mediocrity is the fact that both the universe and life are found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational essence,
And yet, out of millions of species on earth, only man, and man alone, uniquely has the capacity to understand and create information. In 2014, an impressive who’s who list of leading ‘Darwinian’ experts in the area of language research, authored a paper in which they specifically stated that they have “essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,,”
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are ‘made in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and have come to ‘master the planet’, not via brute force as is presupposed in Darwinian thought, but precisely because of our ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates
Of course, a more convincing proof that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead, and then defeated death itself on a cross.
And that just so happens to be precisely the proof that is claimed within Christianity.
Of course there is a lot more scientific evidence that could be referenced that overturns the Copernican Principle, and/or the principle of mediocrity, but suffice it for now to say the the atheist’s falsely assumed principle of mediocrity has been directly challenged, if not directly falsified, by recent advances in empirical science. i.e. We are not nearly as insignificant as Hawking had falsely presupposed with his ‘the human race is just a chemical scum’ quote.
I find it amusing when people so repulsed by ID frequently use terms like designed, fine tuned, and code to describe the natural environment that they claim happened by chance, coincidence, and luck.
“I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
Isaac Asimov
It is a little puzzling that otherwise brilliant men either reject God or have not taken the time to understand Him. The harm caused to persons who are told that human beings, and even the Earth, are nothing special. Just byproducts of natural forces. Imagine telling your son or daughter that they are just the happenstance result of a process that never had them in mind. A cold, impersonal idea. Intelligent Design presents the exact opposite. And that is why it is feared.
https://www.nature.com/articles/28478
F/N: Pardon a need to cross thread a key insight on fine tuning, as there has been a multi thread exchange:
more on the anthropic principle from Lewis and Barnes https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/hitchhikers-guide-authors-puddle-argument-against-fine-tuning-and-a-response/#comment-729507
Notice, the islands in phase space issue.
KF
SG, it is highly significant that without soundly addressing what is the consensus of experts, you hope to use a dismissive talking point to push the coded algorithms in the cell off the table, as just one example. Of course there is a currently active thread that has a significant comparison by Lehninger and Heirs, but oh so conveniently, this is not that thread: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/lfp-62-the-systems-and-systems-engineering-perspective-a-first-step-to-understanding-design-in-of-our-world/ . It becomes obvious that you are driven by ideology threatened by the general and utterly uncontroversial, even obvious, architecture of cells observation that the genetic code is just that, a code and that we see in protein synthesis algorithms. In short, you are little more than a desperate, fringe ideologue trying to make the worse appear the better case by use of shoddy, repeatedly corrected fallacy driven arguments. KF
PS, here is a summary statement from Lehninger et al:
See https://uncommondescent.com/darwinist-debaterhetorical-tactics/protein-synthesis-what-frequent-objector-af-cannot-acknowledge/
F/N: Our latest crop of objectors would be well advised to heed some remarks by Nobel equivalent/comparable Prize holding astrophysicist (and life-long agnostic) Sir Fred Hoyle:
KF
PS, Leslie helps:
SG, I predict, you will not substantially, cogently address Walker, Davies, Leslie, Lehninger and heirs or Hoyle. Please, please, please, prove me wrong ____________ KF
OT: Just uploaded yesterday
Most claims about reality are non-disprovable. I challenge KF to prove me wrong.
AF/23
Not only are they not disprovable, no one can even agree on what constitutes “reality” in the first instance. It’s like eavesdropping on a bunch of college sophomores who are taking their first philosophy class thinking that they have hit on something profound………
Is the sun rising in the morning reality?
I know, I know, I know, it’s due to the Earth’s rotation. I’m writing this as the sun is in my eyes. It sure hurts when I stare at it. But that’s not real!
Will my hair be shorter after the haircut later today? I guess I will pay $25 for nothing. Is the $25 real?
Bridges going up, airplanes flying across country, Walmarts selling things to eat, ChuckDarwin making another stupid comment must just be a mirage.
Aside: how does ChuckDarwin know those sophomore philosophy students are real and what they say is real? Notice how he has to appeal to reality to show reality doesn’t exist.
Ironic comment of year contention or just plain stupid comment of the year. Another mirror for Chuck’s wall so he can see award winner.
Not true.
Nearly every claim anti ID people make can be shown to be not real. The only thing real is the stating of the claim, not the substance of the claim.
Jerry, you are the master of the non sequitur. 🙂
CD at 24,
You are another member of the ‘fly in the ointment team’ deployed here. Stupid comments. Non-sequitur comments. You are the foot that trips up others trying to say valuable things. Why is that? Could it be that you don’t want ID to become popular? Is that it?
Related/27
If it’s not too much of an imposition, I would prefer my assignation with the team to be “gadfly in the ointment.”
CD at 28,
Gadfly. Consider it done…
Perfect example of projection!!!
Does a non sequitur of a non sequitur give us a sequitur?
Jerry at 30,
I think it’s called a double sequitur 🙂
“Most claims about reality are non-disprovable.“
The world is flat…….