Absolute chance vs. architect

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim_Baur
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Spock; “What you quoted is sheer nonense, empty speculation. I especially “like” (sarcatic remark) the ironclad assurance that if any of those alleged constants would be just a little bit different, then life would not be possible. What a ridiculous assertion! How would anyone know that? As if a different type of life would be impossible. Sheesh. I wonder who was the first idiot who came up with this?”

I know it’s easy to think this if you haven’t read the literature, but there are numerous books by respected physicists pointing this out, I’ve read more than a few. Please check out Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies amazon.com/gp/product/0618592261?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1 , Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen Barr amazon.com/Modern-Physics-Ancient-Faith-Stephen/dp/0268021988/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298838357&sr=1-1 , Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees amazon.com/Just-Six-Numbers-Forces-Universe/dp/0465036732/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298838498&sr=1-1 , of those three books only Barr is what you’d call religious, but even he is a highly respected physicist and not an Intelligent Design type. Even in The Emperor’s New Mind Penrose calculates the odds against our universe having started out in the “low entropy state” that it did and which allowed it to evolve to include stars, planets, and a variety of elements, and the number he comes up with has so many zeros in it you couldn’t even write it down.
 
tonyrey said:
So no – the likelihood or unlikelihood of our universe existing as it does has absolutely no bearing on whether or not some supernatural intelligence made it so.
Click to expand...
  1. To attempt to derive purposeful activity from purposeless activity is futile because inanimate objects have no goal.
  2. How could inanimate objects possibly acquire the ability to have the future in mind when they are mindless?
  3. Scientific explanation is restricted to efficient causes and does not make allowance for final causes. It is concerned with **how - **and ignores why - events occur.
  4. An adequate explanation takes into account not only the origin but also the **outcome **of a process.
  5. It is absurd not to take the future into account when we are interpreting the nature of reality. Why should what has happened be more significant than what will happen?
    No reasonable person lives in the past! To spend all your time looking backwards is a very backward approach. No wonder materialists can find no meaning or purpose in life… 🙂
Click to expand...
 
ronnie_bonigli said:
I know it’s easy to think this if you haven’t read the literature, but there are numerous books by respected physicists pointing this out, I’ve read more than a few. Please check out Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies amazon.com/gp/product/0618592261?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1 , Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen Barr amazon.com/Modern-Physics-Ancient-Faith-Stephen/dp/0268021988/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298838357&sr=1-1 , Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees amazon.com/Just-Six-Numbers-Forces-Universe/dp/0465036732/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298838498&sr=1-1 , of those three books only Barr is what you’d call religious, but even he is a highly respected physicist and not an Intelligent Design type. Even in The Emperor’s New Mind Penrose calculates the odds against our universe having started out in the “low entropy state” that it did and which allowed it to evolve to include stars, planets, and a variety of elements, and the number he comes up with has so many zeros in it you couldn’t even write it down.
Click to expand...
Here is a very short excerpt from the editorial review, which say it all: “Had any of the universe’s physical laws or constants been just a bit different, life as we know it would have been impossible”. Now what the heck does this mean? What is “life as we know it”? Such extremely vague speculations are of no value whatsoever. And what kind of corollary can be drawn from this? Sorry, my friend, an empty speculation is still an empty speculation even if otherwise highly regarded physicists engage in it.

No one can make a guess about some other possible forms of life, what they might or might not be.

As for the “many zeros” part. Here is something to consider. The game of roulette has been around since the 18th century. No one knows how many spins of the wheel have been played since then, but we can be pretty certain that the number of games was at least one million, and probably much more. So let’s be conservative and say that it was 1 million games. In each game the outcome is one number from 0 to 36. Therefore in the one million games we get one million numbers, so the total possible outcome is 37^1000000 → 37 to the power of one million, which is about 10^1568201. This number has over 1.5 million digits in it. It is incomprehensibly large. Imagine, if just once (!) a different number would have come out, the result would be different! Yet, no one in a sound mind would argue that this particular sequence must have been “designed” just because it is so very “unlikely”.

I cannot emphasize enough: from the fact that a very unlikely event happened to occur, one cannot make any inferences about this event.
 
Spock said:
Here is a very short excerpt from the editorial review, which say it all: “Had any of the universe’s physical laws or constants been just a bit different, life as we know it would have been impossible”. Now what the heck does this mean? What is “life as we know it”? Such extremely vague speculations are of no value whatsoever. And what kind of corollary can be drawn from this? Sorry, my friend, an empty speculation is still an empty speculation even if otherwise highly regarded physicists engage in it.

No one can make a guess about some other possible forms of life, what they might or might not be.

As for the “many zeros” part. Here is something to consider. The game of roulette has been around since the 18th century. No one knows how many spins of the wheel have been played since then, but we can be pretty certain that the number of games was at least one million, and probably much more. So let’s be conservative and say that it was 1 million games. In each game the outcome is one number from 0 to 36. Therefore in the one million games we get one million numbers, so the total possible outcome is 37^1000000 → 37 to the power of one million, which is about 10^1568201. This number has over 1.5 million digits in it. It is incomprehensibly large. Imagine, if just once (!) a different number would have come out, the result would be different! Yet, no one in a sound mind would argue that this particular sequence must have been “designed” just because it is so very “unlikely”.

I cannot emphasize enough: from the fact that a very unlikely event happened to occur, one cannot make any inferences about this event.
Click to expand...
Well there you go, a “short excerpt from an editorial review”, I guess you don’t need to actually READ any of those books now because you have a single sentence written by someone other than actual authors.

By the way, the “excerpt” isn’t even accurate to the gist of those books, most of the parameters they discuss, if they were off by a little, then there’d be no conceivable possibility of life in the universe, i.e. if the universe was nothing more than a collection of giant blackholes with no stars or planets, or if the universe was nothing more than a thinly spread out field of hydrogen and no other elements, if stars couldn’t form, those kinds of deal breakers for the possibility of a universe with life.

Oh, and I just thumbed through The Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose’s calculation for the odds against the universe having started out in the low entropy state (which allowed it to become more complex over time instead of settling into a mass of giant blackholes) is 1 part in 10^10^123. That would be 1 part in (10 raised to the 10th power, with that first exponent itself raised to the 123rd power), so your talking a 1 followed by 10^123 zeros, again not 123 zeros but 10^123 zeros.

I don’t even like to argue these “anthropic coincidences” as they’re sometimes called, I merely find them compelling, not proof of anything, but you’re being so dismissive here that I’ve sort of got sucked in.
 
AntiTheist said:
No. The “pattern” is entirely in your mind: your decision to regard the perfect bridge hand as “special” or the Bob license plate as “special” doesn’t make it any more likely that those situations were the result of conscious intelligence.

Your argument here suggests that any and every coincidence can be considered an act of conscious intelligence, which is not a sensible way to approach existence.
Click to expand...
In case anybody wanted to know, the above is an example of question begging. You did not even read the example, AT. Well, you only read the words and not the meaning of it. Danserr clearly showed pattern from the fact that the license plate had Bob and his birthday written on it. Will this transfer to life? That is what the discussion is about. The pattern was clearly intelligent. Anyway, enough about showing you how wrong you were here…

What is the “sensible way to approach existence”? We all approach existence in the same manner. To be fair to your side, the manner we all approach existence is that we exist. Somewhere along the lines, some atheists think Christians do not even start with that. Why? I have no clue. Anyway, we exist. This is the only sensible way to approach existence. Now, when considering philosophical arguments, then we have a battle of arguments here. It is not a “concept of intelligent design” versus “concept of unintelligent happening” (notice no use of chance or non-chance). It is a matter of discussing existence itself. So, to attack based on the premise that we are not sensible is bias and completely superficial.

Anyway, the “coincidence of life” is completely different than arguing against the coincidences IN life. You see the difference? Danserr was just using a parallel example to show purpose of life from situations in life. Design and purpose are not the same thing but they do go hand in hand. That is what Danserr was trying to show. You clearly missed that point.

But, tell me, what is your sensible way of approach existence? Clearly, it is better than ours.
 
ronnie_bonigli said:
Well there you go, a “short excerpt from an editorial review”, I guess you don’t need to actually READ any of those books now because you have a single sentence written by someone other than actual authors.

By the way, the “excerpt” isn’t even accurate to the gist of those books, most of the parameters they discuss, if they were off by a little, then there’d be no conceivable possibility of life in the universe, i.e. if the universe was nothing more than a collection of giant blackholes with no stars or planets, or if the universe was nothing more than a thinly spread out field of hydrogen and no other elements, if stars couldn’t form, those kinds of deal breakers for the possibility of a universe with life.
Click to expand...
Again, how would anyone know that? It is conjectures piled upon conjectures. Life is the attempt of homeostasis of itself in a changing environment. Life is not necessarily DNA based.
ronnie_bonigli said:
Oh, and I just thumbed through The Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose’s calculation for the odds against the universe having started out in the low entropy state (which allowed it to become more complex over time instead of settling into a mass of giant blackholes) is 1 part in 10^10^123. That would be 1 part in (10 raised to the 10th power, with that first exponent itself raised to the 123rd power), so your talking a 1 followed by 10^123 zeros, again not 123 zeros but 10^123 zeros.
Click to expand...
I will have to read it again. Last time I read it many years ago, but it is still on the shelf. But I am very skeptical about these numbers. We don’t know enough about black holes either. For all we know they can be understood as universes of their own - speculation here, too… Of course Penrose is a great mathematician, I especially admire his method of Penrose tiling, but that does not elevate him to become an expert on cosmogony. There are no “experts” there. The conditions are simply not known well enough.
 
Spock said:
Again, how would anyone know that? It is conjectures piled upon conjectures. Life is the attempt of homeostasis of itself in a changing environment. Life is not necessarily DNA based.
Click to expand...
Most scientists are willing to concede that life would at least require; time to evolve on a planet warmed by a star and a variety of elements to construct the life out of, a universe of nothing but hydrogen wouldn’t have any type of life. Those are the implications that are pointed out in the books I listed. If you have some spare reading time, I might suggest Davies’ book, he’s a non-religious physicist and it’s an enjoyable read.
 
Spock said:
Here is a very short excerpt from the editorial review, which say it all: “Had any of the universe’s physical laws or constants been just a bit different, life as we know it would have been impossible”. Now what the heck does this mean? What is “life as we know it”? Such extremely vague speculations are of no value whatsoever. And what kind of corollary can be drawn from this? Sorry, my friend, an empty speculation is still an empty speculation even if otherwise highly regarded physicists engage in it.

No one can make a guess about some other possible forms of life, what they might or might not be.

As for the “many zeros” part. Here is something to consider. The game of roulette has been around since the 18th century. No one knows how many spins of the wheel have been played since then, but we can be pretty certain that the number of games was at least one million, and probably much more. So let’s be conservative and say that it was 1 million games. In each game the outcome is one number from 0 to 36. Therefore in the one million games we get one million numbers, so the total possible outcome is 37^1000000 → 37 to the power of one million, which is about 10^1568201. This number has over 1.5 million digits in it. It is incomprehensibly large. Imagine, if just once (!) a different number would have come out, the result would be different! Yet, no one in a sound mind would argue that this particular sequence must have been “designed” just because it is so very “unlikely”.

I cannot emphasize enough: from the fact that a very unlikely event happened to occur, one cannot make any inferences about this event.
Click to expand...
Yet, you want to make an inference about what we can NOT infer from it. That is, you will infer that design had nothing to with life itself.

Your example proves my case I made with AntiTheist. Admittedly, it is not a case for anything pertinent to design. The only case I made was to correct the false notion that we can assume that freak accidents in life can be transferred to the existence OF life because as opposed to those accidents, we (as the “accidents” of nature, so to speak) can actually discern these things.

Now, one may accuse me of the same by defending danserr’s example in the design of Bob’s license plate with his name and birthday on it because I am doing the same thing, which is transferring something we created IN life to the existence OF life. From a technical standpoint of grammar and syntax, that person may be right. But, semantically, this accusation is ill-founded. Why? Here is why:

In your example and the bridge example of AT, you have provided randomness from things WE make to be complete random for the fun of the game, gambling and what not. Its purpose WAS to be completely random. In danserr’s example, the license plate was clearly something seen as designed from somebody observing it. Bob was clearly the designer of it.

Why should creation, or non-creation rather, later evolve those who CAN create? That is, if there was no design at all, why would this world contain those who can create?
 
Spock said:
I will have to read it again. Last time I read it many years ago, but it is still on the shelf. But I am very skeptical about these numbers. We don’t know enough about black holes either. For all we know they can be understood as universes of their own - speculation here, too… Of course Penrose is a great mathematician, I especially admire his method of Penrose tiling, but that does not elevate him to become an expert on cosmogony. There are no “experts” there. The conditions are simply not known well enough.
Click to expand...
here you go, Google books only gives a snap shot, it’s on page 344 of the Hardback;

books.google.com/books?id=GKkdAQAAIAAJ&q=%22this+is+an+extraordinary+figure%22&dq=%22this+is+an+extraordinary+figure%22&hl=en&ei=ludqTZ-WLoK8lQfRkrmKAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAg

btw, someone put that whole section on the web;

ws5.com/Penrose/
 
Spock said:
Of course Penrose is a great mathematician, I especially admire his method of Penrose tiling, but that does not elevate him to become an expert on cosmology. There are no “experts” there. The conditions are simply not known well enough.
Click to expand...
Sorry to respond to this post yet again (things keep popping into my mind late) but I ***would call ***Penrose an expert on cosmology, if you didn’t know it, both Penrose and Hawking came up with the “Singularity theorems” that the Standard Big Bang model is based on.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose%E2%80%93Hawking_singularity_theorems
 
What you quoted is sheer nonense, empty speculation. I especially “like” (sarcatic remark) the ironclad assurance that if any of those alleged constants would be just a little bit different, then life would not be possible. What a ridiculous assertion! How would anyone know that? As if a different type of life would be impossible. Sheesh. I wonder who was the first idiot who came up with this?
Click to expand...
This is the most dissapointing part of your response, to simply dismiss it without any serious consideration, arguments, or sources from reputable astronomers. And then to just accuse those astronomers who do admit these qualities and constants (the overwhelming majority and perhaps even more) of ignorance. I really don’t know what to say to this besides seconding the view of others that you actually look at the numbers.
This is where the whole argument collapses. How do you know what is “probable” and what is not? This is where the proponents of this so-called argument display their total ignorance of what probability means.
Click to expand...
Stop accusing everyone who disagrees with you of ignorance; it’s unbecoming and more, you are calling ignorant a great deal of very intelligent people (Hawking, Penrose, Davies etc.)

By probable, we mean, obviously, that if any of those qualities and constants were a hair off, then life could not occur, but there is no reason for those constants taking the values they do, and they could take a while range of values.

It is not a question of “other forms of life” being able to occur if the values were different. If the values were different no life could occur. By life we mean organisms that take in food, extract energy from it, adapt to the environment, grow, and reproduce. Without these qualities and constants being so carefully fine-tuned, then not even atomic matter or chemistry would exist, let alone planets.
I am going to explain with a simple and correct analogy
Click to expand...
I cannot emphasize enough: from the fact that a very unlikely event happened to occur, one cannot make any inferences about this event.
Click to expand...
I have said repeatedly, it is not only the improbability that makes us think that something is up, but the combination improbability with an independently given pattern. Your analogy is not correct because you only take into account improbability.

And you admitted above, that the example of BOB and his birthday would make you think that something is up; so you really recognize this improbability plus pattern demands explanation.
 
Ranklyfrank said:
What I’m suggesting, Tonyrey, is that the thread title necessarily is an appeal to ignorance.
Click to expand...
Frank, it is only an appeal to ignorance if there is any doubt as to whether there is a third explanation. The argument that there **may be **another explanation is itself an appeal to ignorance! How can you justify it?
 
tonyrey said:
Frank, it is only an appeal to ignorance if there is any doubt as to whether there is a third explanation. The argument that there **may be **another explanation is itself an appeal to ignorance! How can you justify it?
Click to expand...
The doubt is that either the chance or the architect are actual or sufficient as an either/or. It is an appeal to ignorance as it stands. Those have existence in imagination, but neither is Reality.
 
Ranklyfrank said:
The doubt is that either the chance or the architect are actual or sufficient as an either/or. It is an appeal to ignorance as it stands. Those have existence in imagination, but neither is Reality.
Click to expand...
Do you believe chance and design are fictions?
 
tonyrey said:
Frank, it is only an appeal to ignorance if there is any doubt as to whether there is a third explanation. The argument that there **may be **another explanation is itself an appeal to ignorance! How can you justify it?
Click to expand...
No. In science there is always “we don’t know” available as a possibility. That is not an appeal to ignorance. It is an acknowledgement that we do not yet know everything.

rossum
 
rossum said:
No. In science there is always “we don’t know” available as a possibility. That is not an appeal to ignorance. It is an acknowledgement that we do not yet know everything.
rossum
Click to expand...
Science progresses on the basis of what is probable rather than what is possible. You could spend your entire life entertaining possibilities but it won’t get you anywhere!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top