An invitation for Al Moritz to explain fine tuning

[ManRay]

Quite the contrary. Scientists say all the time that everything, time & space included, started with the big bang, the singularity. They have elaborate theories of exactly what happened at 1 femtosecond, 1 millisecond, etc. How long inflation lasted, background microwave radiation, and all the rest. All this is predicated on the value of these constants that you say have no foundation. Scientists constantly remind us that the “latest finding” verifies the basics of the big bang theory and that it must be believed because it is science (or at least the science-du-jour).

So according to you, scientists have been misleading the public using smoke and mirrors with no foundation. Thank you for that clarification.

This is what theists do every single time. It’s called the big bang theory - just like evolution is a theory. They are completely open to evidence, and alterable. They can be argued against intelligibly etc…etc… Are there scientists that claim it to be fact? Sure…that has no bearing on the actual concept though. Theists know for a FACT that god exists (even though this is impossible, and intellectually dishonest) there is no changing it. There is no evidence allowed that may cast dispersions. Nothing. Nada. God is what the Catholic Church says it is…period. Scientific, biological theory or whatever is not analogous to religion in that sense. No way…No how. How a theist can’t come to grips with that is beyond me. Besides - even if that were some how analogous AT LEAST we are dealing with particulars, and characteristics that are part of reality…of time…of space. Matter, Light, Star dust etc…When you put a theist on the spot…it’s always ’ oh well - god exists outside of time and space…god is beyond logic. yada yada yada - It’s ridiculous - like there is any sense in any of that. THAT IS HAND WAVING… for you are asking us to believe that you can make sense out of something that exists outside of any of the known parameters that we use to in fact make sense of something…ABSURD.

 

[buffalo]

This is what theists do every single time. It’s called the big bang theory - just like evolution is a theory. They are completely open to evidence, and alterable. They can be argued against intelligibly etc…etc… Are there scientists that claim it to be fact? Sure…that has no bearing on the actual concept though. Theists know for a FACT that god exists (even though this is impossible, and intellectually dishonest) there is no changing it. There is no evidence allowed that may cast dispersions. Nothing. Nada. God is what the Catholic Church says it is…period. Scientific, biological theory or whatever is not analogous to religion in that sense. No way…No how. How a theist can’t come to grips with that is beyond me. Besides - even if that were some how analogous AT LEAST we are dealing with particulars, and characteristics that are part of reality…of time…of space. Matter, Light, Star dust etc…When you put a theist on the spot…it’s always ’ oh well - god exists outside of time and space…god is beyond logic. yada yada yada - It’s ridiculous - like there is any sense in any of that. THAT IS HAND WAVING… for you are asking us to believe that you can make sense out of something that exists outside of any of the known parameters that we use to in fact make sense of something…ABSURD.

We have met God. You deny it and put your faith in the god of BUC. (blind unguided chance)

We come up looking smarter…

 

[ManRay]

We have met God. You deny it and put your faith in the god of BUC. (blind unguided chance)

We come up looking smarter…

While I don’t go as far as Bill Maher, and call theists stupid - I do believe that theists, and a good proportion of society in general exists in a state of cognitive dissonance. Nothing you said makes sense anyway. I rode a Unicorn --so --there…

 

[Trurl]

You appear to believe that classical metaphysics and the Catholic Church espouse occasionalism, the idea that God not just is responsible for sustaining the existence of everything at every moment, but that God also shapes the character of every being at every moment.

No, I do not think so all, and it does not follow from what I said. There are several contradictory De Fide teachings:

1. God is a necessary being and thus: not contingent,
2. God actively participates in every action of the created beings. (Sustaining cause argument). Of those beings some (humans) have free will, so their actions are not casued by God.

This means that God’s actions are contingent upon those actions. And that is a clear contradiction. (I hope you are not going to join the crowd of nincompoops, who try to redefine these contradictions into “mysteries”).

As a matter of fact, the same problem happens when God’s omniscience is being discussed. The argument is that God knows our acts becuse we do them (our actions cause God’s knowledge). As such God’s knowledge is also contingent on our actions.

Add to that the third De Fide teaching, namely that God is “simple”, God’s attributes are inseparable from God’s existence, and the result is: “God’s existence is contingent”.

And now I would like to ask again: are you surprised that non-catholics discard the church’s teachings, the catechism included? The teachings simply contradict each other. Now, since you claim to be a scientist yourself, I hope you share my disdain for those who peddle self-contradictory nonsense.

 

[JDaniel]

Right on. It is the official teaching. Now the funny thing is that God was either unable or unwilling to create a universe which would sustain itself without constant “sustenance”. In other words, the “apparent” laws of the universe, those constants are not really contants; without God’s perpetual sustaining attention, the all the universe would just disappear into nothingness.

Trurl:

You seem to lack the ability to think, Trurl. You sit there content in your affirmation that we are all beings, and more so, physical beings, with our very own self-caused mass. Physics, however, has a problem with that picture of things. Physics, considering the particles that constitute mass, view mass far less possessively. In fact, just a few months ago, certain physicists endeavored to tell the world that what we see is holographic. But then, they decided it was not time for the world to get that information.

There are a number of presuppositions that must be included in any thesis of material existence. It is argued that matter is nothing but space when we consider that the atom is made up of electrons (“point” particles) and a nucleus. The nucleus consists of protons and neutrons; and, protons and neutrons are made up of quarks, which are also “point particles”. Consequently, matter is made up of nothing but “points” However, we certainly don’t look like we’re made up of “points!” To all of our senses, we (and all other material things) have mass and distension into space, rather than being products of space.

Here we have a contradiction. The components of things tell us one thing, yet our senses tell us something entirely different. How are we to reconcile these differences?

There is another corollary to this. When a human wishes to perform a violent act, like shooting someone, God is either a willing or unwilling participant in the act. He maintains the bullet’s atoms in one piece, guides it on its trajectory, and finally makes sure that it will penetrate the victim’s body and kills him.

Your hypothetical scenario conflates two different exigencies. The bullet leaving the gun, its trajectory and ultimate stopping point are one thing, and its purely physical. Your intention to take a life is another. God participates in the first thing. Only you participate in the second. Oh, and you can’t reasonably ascribe morality to the purely physical.

Now, if God is a willing participant, then he is equally guilty of the act.

God is a willing participant in the physical act. But, as I said, He is an unwilling participant in your intention.

And this is an “official”, de-fide teaching. Now remind me, pelase, why do the non-cathoilcs reject these teachings?

No problem: see above!

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

Well, considering that you claim to be a scientist, you sure seem to be unable to think “outside the box”. (What can one expect from the majority of the posters, if even the scientists display such an appaling lack imagination?)

Do trees feel pain? Having no pain receptors, they obviously do not. Is the ability to perform discursive thinking depend somehow on the pain receptors? Obviously not. They are performed in different parts of the brain. So it is perfectly rational to postulate a world where there are thinking agents who do not feel pain, and yet they have a very long life-span. The sequioya trees can easily live many thousands of years, and they are resilient to diseases, bugs, fire… their unnatural demise can only come from human hands. The trees also have a pretty decent regenerative abilities, losing a bew branches is not fatally detrimental to them. And they do not “fight” with each other, either. Yep, such a world would be definitely preferable to our “red in the tooth and claw” type of arrangement.

Maybe such a world would not be “exciting”, there would be no “burnt offerings, which are so pleasing to the nostrils of the Lord”, but there would be no pain. The Lord would just have to imagine the the stench of the burning flesh when he needs to feel it…

Trurl:

Sooner or later, all things pass away. It appears you forgot that part of it.

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

Several examples are given in the paper, including tolerances.

From your comment that I just replied to it seems you haven’t read it, but just quickly glanced over it.

Perhaps you want to have a discussion with alll the atheist cosmologists who dismiss the chance proposal as fully inadequate and instead opt for a multiverse.

Al:

I don’t know. You can lead a horse to water, but, etc. Perhaps you could dumb it down, a little bit, for the scientifically challenged! :banghead:

God bless,
jd

 

[Trurl]

Your hypothetical scenario conflates two different exigencies. The bullet leaving the gun, its trajectory and ultimate stopping point are one thing, and its purely physical. Your intention to take a life is another. God participates in the first thing. Only you participate in the second.

Obviously you did not read what I wrote. The point is that according to this scenario God’s action is contingent upon our action, and since God is “simple”, therefore God’s very essence is contingent, which is denied by yet another “offiical” doctrine. (It is rather amusing to collect the contradictory teachings and see you guys try to redefine the contradictions into “mysteries”.)

Oh, and you can’t reasonably ascribe morality to the purely physical.

Only according to your opinion.

God is a willing participant in the physical act. But, as I said, He is an unwilling participant in your intention.

Willing or not - God is forced to participte in executing my intent. Or maybe he is willing and happy to serve my “whim”. But he is my servant in either case.

[Sooner or later, all things pass away. It appears you forgot that part of it.

You know, it is perfectly fine and welcome that you “butt in”, but at least you should have read what the conversation was all about. Al contended that having “pain” is a necessary part of existence, it cannot be removed. I simply pointed out his error (showing that vegetation does not have pain receptors), whereupon his “non-answer” was that “trees do not move”, and now “trumped” that nonsense by mumbling that everything expires eventually - which has NOTHING to do with the subject. How boring!

I think that one reply to your pretty rude post is sufficient, and I will simply put you into my ignore bucket.
[/quote]

 

[inocente]

This objection is essentially dealt with in section 1.3.2. of my article.

I appreciate that you tried to anticipate all objections in your article, but it doesn’t seem to deal with mine. I’ll give them more clearly:

1. If God wanted to leave His signature in physical evidence then it would surely stand out so clearly that His existence would be scientifically indisputable, more so than (say) the second law of thermodynamics. Yet despite the huge number of observations made by science, we find the exact opposite, which (leaving aside the atheist conclusion) strongly implies that God wants to remain hidden, He does not want to be found that way. Fine-tuning needs to give an explanation of why this conclusion, which is effectively supported by the entire body of scientific evidence, should be overturned by its technique of interpreting a rather smaller set of selected data. (This argument for a hidden God is based on the writing of Georges Lemaitre, see also CCC 206.)
2. The simplest explanation of the physical constants, that they represent underlying relationships (just as pi represents a ratio), appears to rule out any possibility that their values could be dialed-in as parameters, because that would seem to rely on the constants continuing to lead some kind of independent existence for ever more, leading to absurdities (for instance how would each value propagate without error across space and time to be known by phenomena). I don’t think fine-tuning can stand up as an argument without an explanation of how this is all supposed to work. Even then of course, it would need a falsifiable prediction to be scientific.

 

[JDaniel]

Obviously you did not read what I wrote. The point is that according to this scenario God’s action is contingent upon our action, and since God is “simple”, therefore God’s very essence is contingent, which is denied by yet another “offiical” doctrine. (It is rather amusing to collect the contradictory teachings and see you guys try to redefine the contradictions into “mysteries”.)

Trurl:

But, you see, if you had just read and had our dogmas, doctrines and beliefs properly explained - instead of only going to some atheist website and/or cursorily browsing this one - you would not have made such a dumb statement. There is no scenario in which God can be seen or understood to be contingent. Also, I was responding to Al’s post and had not seen your post dealing with this subject. When it time, I’ll respond to it.

Willing or not - God is forced to participte in executing my intent.

Not so. God moves our bodies and all things around us. Intentions are not physical. You’re still conflating physical occurrences with intentions. That my action is colored by my intent is only participated in, by God, in the most remote of human juxtapositions of ideas. You might just as well say that, since apples are eaten by apple eaters, apple eaters are responsible for the red-ness of apples. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

Or maybe he is willing and happy to serve my “whim”. But he is my servant in either case.

If it your intention to do harm to another, God’s mere participation in the illusion of motion and consequence is mere correlation.

You know, it is perfectly fine and welcome that you “butt in”, but at least you should have read what the conversation was all about. Al contended that having “pain” is a necessary part of existence, it cannot be removed. I simply pointed out his error (showing that vegetation does not have pain receptors), whereupon his “non-answer” was that “trees do not move”, and now “trumped” that nonsense by mumbling that everything expires eventually - which has NOTHING to do with the subject.

It appears that you need to re-read the posts. I do not recall any statement(s) you may have made, regarding contingency, prior to Al’s post that I responded to. I could be wrong, but go back and re-look at the time-line. (As I will do, whenever I’m finished with this response.)

How boring!

Well, just as you insist that God directly causes/participates in all of our intentions, I suppose we can say that you are the cause/facilitator of all “boring posts.”

I think that one reply to your pretty rude post is sufficient, and I will simply put you into my ignore bucket.

Good. Since I was posting to Al anyway, you might not find yourself forced to answer for him, in the future.

God bless,
jd

 

[inocente]

Quite the contrary. Scientists say all the time that everything, time & space included, started with the big bang, the singularity. They have elaborate theories of exactly what happened at 1 femtosecond, 1 millisecond, etc. How long inflation lasted, background microwave radiation, and all the rest. All this is predicated on the value of these constants that you say have no foundation. Scientists constantly remind us that the “latest finding” verifies the basics of the big bang theory and that it must be believed because it is science (or at least the science-du-jour).

Thinking of Georges Lemaitre (my post #69), he was a priest and scientist, highly thought of by his pope, the real originator of the big bang theory (and not Hubble as many suppose). I’m fairly sure his words below are still true - the universe could have existed a long while before the big bang, there’s no way we can tell from the evidence:

We may speak of this event as of a beginning. I do not say a creation. Physically it is a beginning in the sense that if something happened before, it has no observable influence on the behavior of our universe, as any feature of matter before this beginning has been completely lost by the extreme contraction at the theoretical zero. Any preexistence of the universe has a metaphysical character. Physically, everything happens as if the theoretical zero was really a beginning. The question if it was really a beginning or rather a creation, something started from nothing, is a philosophical question which cannot be settled by physical or astronomical considerations.