Did Andrei Linde inadventantly destroy the argument from design?

[ribozyme]

I believe that earlier in this thread Ribozyme dismissed the views of Aquinas (among others) because of his limited vocabulary:

• “Gee, I do not think they ever used the word “nucleotide” or “enzyme” in their publications…”

Riobozyme would have made a good Gnositc

Lol, I also read sacred Gnostic books such as *Biology *(by Reece, Campbell, and Mitchell; 5th edition) and *Biochemistry * (By Lubert Stryer; 5th edition). Also PNAS, Science, and Nature are also Gnostic publications because it is filled with words only the elect would know like “nucleotide”, “catalysis”, “protein”, “enantiomer”, etc. or a person who actually looked up those words.

I only said that not because I thought Aquinas was inept because he did not use words that were coined centuries later after he died, but because his work is irrelevant to biochemistry and the origin of life.

 

[wildleafblower]

Lol, I also read sacred Gnostic books such as *Biology *(by Reece, Campbell, and Mitchell; 5th edition) and *Biochemistry * (By Lubert Stryer; 5th edition). Also PNAS, Science, and Nature are also Gnostic publications because it is filled with words only the elect would know like “nucleotide”, “catalysis”, “protein”, “enantiomer”, etc. or a person who actually looked up those words.

I only said that not because I thought Aquinas was inept because he did not use words that were coined centuries later after he died, but because his work is irrelevant to biochemistry and the origin of life.

ribozyme, please don’t imply that people who contribute to or read articles from PNAS, Science, or Nature are ‘the elect’ or that these publications are Gnostic. Gnosticism is not factual, intellectual, rational knowledge, such as is involved in mathematics and physics; that would have been more accurately represented by the Greek world “episteme.”

I’d like you to read this article which contains information about Andrei Linde and Alan Guth.

whyfiles.org/siegfried/story30/

I’ll try to respond during the week to your other posts.

Great weekend! Nothing beats hot air ballooning solo:thumbsup:

p.s. The link in your msg. 1 is no longer operational. Therefore, I’m not able to comment on part of the text that you presented since I would need to read the article in its entirety prior to doing so. THX
closertotruth.com/topics/…ranscript.html

 

[estesbob]

Lol, I also read sacred Gnostic books such as *Biology *(by Reece, Campbell, and Mitchell; 5th edition) and *Biochemistry *(By Lubert Stryer; 5th edition). Also PNAS, Science, and Nature are also Gnostic publications because it is filled with words only the elect would know like “nucleotide”, “catalysis”, “protein”, “enantiomer”, etc. or a person who actually looked up those words.

I only said that not because I thought Aquinas was inept because he did not use words that were coined centuries later after he died, but because his work is irrelevant to biochemistry and the origin of life.

Aquinas knew more about the origin of life than every one of your “elect” combined…

 

[ribozyme]

ribozyme, please don’t imply that people who contribute to or read articles from PNAS, Science, or Nature are ‘the elect’ or that these publications are Gnostic. Gnosticism is not factual, intellectual, rational knowledge, such as is involved in mathematics and physics; that would have been more accurately represented by the Greek world “episteme.”

I’d like you to read this article which contains information about Andrei Linde and Alan Guth.

whyfiles.org/siegfried/story30/

I’ll try to respond during the week to your other posts.

Great weekend! Nothing beats hot air ballooning solo:thumbsup:

p.s. The link in your msg. 1 is no longer operational. Therefore, I’m not able to comment on part of the text that you presented since I would need to read the article in its entirety prior to doing so. THX
closertotruth.com/topics/…ranscript.html

About Gnosticism, I was being sarcastic…

web.archive.org/web/20051210053550/http://www.closertotruth.com/topics/universemeaning/105/105transcript.html

Hopefully this should work.

 

[John_Taylor]

…just trying to get a basic understanding of the issues involved here…does Science (the knowledge and logical inferences we gain about our universe through measured observations and experiments) lead us to infer the existence of a Personal God more so than not?

Which is the more logical inference from the Science presently at our disposal? The existence of “The Creator”? or the existence of a universe governed solely by natural and mechanistic processes?

Keep the Faith
jmt

 

[Maranatha]

I only said that not because I thought Aquinas was inept because he did not use words that were coined centuries later after he died, but because his work is irrelevant to biochemistry and the origin of life.

Why would you accept the rational untestable theories of science but not the rational untestable theories of philosophy?

It seems to me that this argument

1. 
   *]postulates that the universe is infinite
   *]postulates that there are multiple universes where the “given physical parameters” are variable and allow for life.
   Point one is not new. It is the known alternative to a created universe.
   
   Point two admits that our current universe is hard wired to support life. If this universe is the only universe, the “evidence” for an intelligent creator is strong. To get around this obvious conclusion, perhaps because it’s not scientifically testable, the theoretician creates an alternative which at this point is much less probable then an intelligently created universe. But his theory has two problems, not only does it 1) rely on the fantastic idea that there are multiple universes but it also also needs to 2) theorize each universes has different rules for physical give parameters.
   
   He can “test” these theories using logic and reason but philosophers can also test their theories much the same way.

 

[Eschato]

The argument is nullified on the basis that andrei can’t create a universe, joyce can’t make a couch’s heart beat, and my computer can’t think.

“This fractal-like universe consists of many inflating balls that produce new balls, which in turn produce more new balls, ad infinitum. Therefore the evolution of the universe, as you mentioned in your introduction, has no end and may have had no beginning.”

I understand this to mean that the universe CANNOT have a beginning. If this theory is true, the “balls” keep producing more “balls,” therefore there could have been a beginning to the universes because the fractal balls keep creating. There would be nothing without the balls, and without the balls there would be no balls.

 

[Maranatha]

I did not claim in this thread that the origin of life was naturalistic, although I most certainly believe that it is.

You have reviewed the evidence and you can’t prove, via science, the naturalistic origin of life. Your belief is taken on faith. IMHO, your leap of faith is larger and therefore less probable then the leap of faith taken by someone who has reviewed the philosophical evidence for the supernatural and has concluded life has a creator.

 

[estesbob]

…just trying to get a basic understanding of the issues involved here…does Science (the knowledge and logical inferences we gain about our universe through measured observations and experiments) lead us to infer the existence of a Personal God more so than not?

Which is the more logical inference from the Science presently at our disposal? The existence of “The Creator”? or the existence of a universe governed solely by natural and mechanistic processes?

Keep the Faith
jmt

Einstein split the difference. he said science infers the existence of God but not a 'personal" God. One of the few things he was only half right on.

 

[Maranatha]

Einstein split the difference. he said science infers the existence of God but not a 'personal" God. One of the few things he was only half right on.

I agree with Einstein (and Stephen Hawking) that science infers the existence of God. Philosophy can, only, infer the existence of a personal God. History infers the existence of a man who rose from the dead. You need to have faith in what that man said in order to accept Christianity.

Since Einstein and Hawking were not philosophers or historians it is understandable they were stuck on Deism.

 

[John_Taylor]

Einstein split the difference. he said science infers the existence of God but not a 'personal" God. One of the few things he was only half right on.

Maranatha:

I agree with Einstein (and Stephen Hawking) that science infers the existence of God. Philosophy can, only, infer the existence of a personal God

I rather enjoyed William Craig’s article The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe - leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html - wherein he deals with the issue of deducing God’s Intellect and Will (personal attributes). The article presents the scientific evidence for our Universe having a beginning and from there infers how the God responsible for the cause of the Universe must be Personal in this way:

I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water’s being frozen is the temperature’s being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived. Thus, we are brought not merely to the first cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

It seems to me that the push to come up with justifications for assuming a universe “without beginning” is driven by the rather unscientific frame of mind to avoid the evidence that our universe had a beginning (as implied by the “Big Bang” Theory) because of the “theological implications” for such.

Ribozyme, is it your opinion that living organisms arose from non-living matter? and that the vast amount of coded information contained within living things came into being by purely random accidents of nature?

It just seems to me that given 1) we only observe living organisms arising from other living organisms (and never observe living things arising out of non-living matter) and 2) that meaningful coded information is only observed as arising from “a rational mind” - that, scientifically, the inference of an “Intelligent Designer” is better founded than to assume (without evidence) that 1) life may arise from non-living matter (which such is never observed) and that 2) meaningful coded information (eg., the DNA of living organisms) may arise by purely random accidents of natural processes.

Keep the Faith
jmt

 

[ribozyme]

You have reviewed the evidence and you can’t prove, via science, the naturalistic origin of life. Your belief is taken on faith. IMHO, your leap of faith is larger and therefore less probable then the leap of faith taken by someone who has reviewed the philosophical evidence for the supernatural and has concluded life has a creator.

Yeah, your right, I cannot prove the naturalistic origin of life with science. I also I cannot ever prove ANYTHING with scientific observation.

Why would you accept the rational untestable theories of science but not the rational untestable theories of philosophy?

It seems to me that this argument
postulates that the universe is infinite
postulates that there are multiple universes where the “given physical parameters” are variable and allow for life.
Point one is not new. It is the known alternative to a created universe.

Point two admits that our current universe is hard wired to support life. If this universe is the only universe, the “evidence” for an intelligent creator is strong. To get around this obvious conclusion, perhaps because it’s not scientifically testable, the theoretician creates an alternative which at this point is much less probable then an intelligently created universe. But his theory has two problems, not only does it 1) rely on the fantastic idea that there are multiple universes but it also also needs to 2) theorize each universes has different rules for physical give parameters.

He can “test” these theories using logic and reason but philosophers can also test their theories much the same way.

Yes, all arguments for design can be destroyed if the 1st premise is true. I will admit that it can be proven (using reasonable assumptions) that the inflationary universe requires a beginning, but once it starts, the inflationary universe never stops.

John Taylor, I am curious to hear your definition on “coded information”.

 

[hecd2]

No, the more scientists delve, they propose hypotheses like eternal inflation that eliminate the need for God. I must also add the original purpose of this thread was to show that. With the exception of that Stephen Hawking talk, it seems that the evidence for eternal inflation is strong, but conclusive.

It seems that you ignored what I had to say in a dying thread and brought it here. Well, I am quite happy to repeat what I said there and defend it here:

Proving the non-existence of anything at all is quite difficult. Using scientific hypotheses or even well supported scientific theories to disprove the existence of God is a fool’s errand. One will never do it. The concept of a theistic God is not like some mathematical conjecture that we can prove or disprove in ten or a dozen pages of pure logic. It is too subtle and too big a concept for that. (I am as sceptical about claimed proofs FOR God’s existence as I am about proofs AGAINST His existence.)

It is extremely likely that there was an epoch of inflation in the early universe, and I say this because there is strong evidence for it, such as the gaussian, adiabatic and scale invariant nature of the anisotropies in the CMB.

1. 
   *]Although, on balance, I think the evidence for inflation having occurred within the observable universe is strong, and, as you say, it solves some problems of standard Big Bang cosmology, it is nowhere near being an undisputed fact, and it leaves as many knotty problems as it solves, including the astonishingly low entropy in the Big Bang. Who says so? Well, amongst others, Roger Penrose does in his monumental ‘The Road to Reality’.
   *]If we can’t get our physics untangled enough to explain the 120 orders of magnitude discrepancy in the current vacuum energy, how can we rely on a theory that posits an unobservable change of state in a scalar field unrelated to any other physical field that we know in the universe?
   *]You say that any inflation infers eternal inflation - well, Andrei Linde says that, but again there are respectable voices of dissent. Stephen Hawking for example points out that eternal inflation is not gauge invariant (ie the high energy regionds do not necessarily predominate over time); it is not consistent (as the basic equation describes an intgral of motion that cannot fluctuate because of energy conservation) and it is not covariant because it dimensionally splits as 3+1 and eternal inflation would occur in a deSitter space which cannot be supported beyond the Planck scale (astro-ph/0305562)
   *]Eternal inflation is future-eternal. It probably does not on its own support a past-eternal universe. Who says this - well Guth himself does (astro-ph/0101507). So we are still left with the problem of an original cause.
   But from a philosophical point of view we haven’t touched the question of why anything is. Eternal inflation does not give us an unassailable necessary reason for anything to exist, so, it gets us no closer to disproving God’s existence. I think that a personal God is unlikely for many reasons (as do you), but this is no proof of that. With or without a Judaeo-Christian God, our personal existence is fantastically improbable.
   
   As for the fine tuning, it is a knotty problem given that physics is stuck with two incompatible theories, with discrepancies between them as large as factors of 120 orders of magnitude (!) and not the slightest idea why many of the basic building blocks of physics have the properties that they do. We can explain that by the weak anthropic principle and multiverses; by a designer; or by reconciling our physics and finding a fundamental rationale for why it as it is. I prefer to continue searching for natural explanations for the fine-tuning, but I don’t know whether that will be found in multiverses and the weak anthropic principle or in some as yet unknown physics or at all.
   
   (BTW - I don’t *believe *in inflation - it’s not a matter of faith. I think that there is strong evidence for inflation in the early universe so its existence is highly probable - but I don’t *believe *in it)
   
   Finally, contrary to what you say, it is possible to be a practising Catholic and an excellent physicist. They might be in a minority of theoretical physicists, but they exist (we can prove they exist), and they are quite likely to understand both inflationary physics and Catholic theology better than either of us. I give you, for a start, Stephen Barr and Michael Heller.
   
   Alec
   evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

I rather enjoyed William Craig’s article The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe - leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html - wherein he deals with the issue of deducing God’s Intellect and Will (personal attributes). The article presents the scientific evidence for our Universe having a beginning and from there infers how the God responsible for the cause of the Universe must be Personal in this way:

I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water’s being frozen is the temperature’s being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived. Thus, we are brought not merely to the first cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator.

Craig’s argument seems to me to be astonishingly weak and adolescent. In order to explain the existence of a temporal effect, he calls on an eternal agent. The existence of the eternal personal agent is far more difficult to explain than the existence of atemporal conditions that lead to temporal and contingent universes. We already know that time is not absolute in our universe but depends on the local laws of physics. His example of water/ice is amazingly naive given the fact that matter is a consequence of the physics and water certainly is not a eternal component of this or any universe.

Craig’s personal agent is a magical and inexplicable cause for, say the Big Bang, which might well need no such explanation. But what is worse, neither Craig nor any other theologian can explain how a personal eternal agent can be more likely than an impersonal eternal set of physical conditions. Personal agents in our experience are all contingent so there is no justification, other than magical thiking, to posit an eternal non-contingent one.

It seems to me that the push to come up with justifications for assuming a universe “without beginning” is driven by the rather unscientific frame of mind to avoid the evidence that our universe had a beginning (as implied by the “Big Bang” Theory) because of the “theological implications” for such.

jmt

Actually, physicists follow the logic where it leads. The vast majority of cosmologists and astro-physicists accept the Big Bang. The question is: what preceded the Big Bang and what caused it? That is the question that Linde’s work seeks to answer. I don’t for a moment think that eternal inflation or any other scientific theory disproves God, but I find Craig’s argument for the existence of a personal God even limper. It’s terrible.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[ribozyme]

Oh, sorry Alec, I did not forget what you have said as I mentioned here: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=122563

Also, I thank you for clearing this up… I wanted to edit that post, but it was over twenty minutes.

I meant to say that future-eternal inflation has not been disproven mathematically (I mean if you use plausible assumption as we cannot prove anything in science).

I also hoped to emphasize that “eternal inflation” is not conclusive, but if it is correct, it is strong evidence against the Judeo-Christian deity.

 

[Maranatha]

Yeah, your right, I cannot prove the naturalistic origin of life with science. I also I cannot ever prove ANYTHING with scientific observation.

I’m not sure if you being sarcastic or serious here. I find it obvious that we can prove things with scientific observation. I believe you can’t prove the natural development of self-conscious existence without the guiding or preplanning force of a greater intelligence.

If you can’t prove that life evolved without a guiding intelligence and you believe it did then you must have made a leap of faith.

 

[ribozyme]

I was being serious… for example, you cannot prove casuality using empiricism. All we can sense is corelation, not causation.

 

[Nullasalus]

Actually, physicists follow the logic where it leads. The vast majority of cosmologists and astro-physicists accept the Big Bang. The question is: what preceded the Big Bang and what caused it? That is the question that Linde’s work seeks to answer. I don’t for a moment think that eternal inflation or any other scientific theory disproves God, but I find Craig’s argument for the existence of a personal God even limper. It’s terrible.

The point I always find confusing with discussions is the focus on ‘personal God’. I know that it’s meant to differentiate primarily between a God that is directly concerned with humanity (God of the Abrahamic religions) and one which may have created the universe, yet is utterly detached from it (Deist). But why the distinction has any bearing in the cosmological or evolutionary realms is something I’ve never figured out - at what point does the deity in question switch from looking like the Christian God to the deist god? If it intended to create just a universe, and nothing else? If it intended to create a universe that may be hospitable to life, but nothing else? To life that could give rise to human levels of sentience and complexity, but nothing else? You can go on and on, until you end up with a deistic god that is utterly identical to the Christian God, save for the fact that the intervention is almost entirely passive but necessitated by the rules said deity formed the universe with. In which case we can potentially expect a general resurrection and eternal life, and still have people arguing about whether it was due to big-G personal God, small-g deist god, or an unbelievably lucky dice roll on the Wheel of Cosmological Fortune. So personally, I find Craig’s central claim - that you can look at the universe and at least to a point see intention in its creation, operation, and progression - to at least be reasonable. It doesn’t prove anything, of course - but the logic does leave a lot of room for a reasonable theistic consideration.

As for ‘physicists follow the logic where it leads’, I’d agree - but only to a point. They have flaws, personal preferences, philosophies, etc like anyone else. Take a look at Linde - he’s informing people what the philosophical ramifications are if his view of the universe is correct, and doing a sloppy job of it besides. Personally, I’d love to write a book arguing that MWI, if true, is fantastic evidence of a divine creator. The content wouldn’t matter - the claim alone would make some heads explode.

 

[tdgesq]

I was being serious… for example, you cannot prove casuality using empiricism. All we can sense is corelation, not causation.

That’s right, so better stop believing in casuality. But wait, is that really what science has been doing all this time - establishing correlations? So really, no casual connection can be established between any set of data and an observed outcome. Not in the area of evolution, cosmology, medicine . . . .nowhere. Science is dead. Or maybe not. Instead of destroying causality (and the extremely valuable discipline of science along with it) with one stroke of the skeptical pen, maybe you should look at what philosophy has to offer on this issue.

 

[ribozyme]

As for ‘physicists follow the logic where it leads’, I’d agree - but only to a point. They have flaws, personal preferences, philosophies, etc like anyone else. Take a look at Linde - he’s informing people what the philosophical ramifications are if his view of the universe is correct, and doing a sloppy job of it besides. Personally, I’d love to write a book arguing that MWI, if true, is fantastic evidence of a divine creator. The content wouldn’t matter - the claim alone would make some heads explode.

From this: stanford.edu/%7Ealinde/SpirQuest.doc
Andrei Linde:

The new cosmological theory has changed in an irreversible way our understanding of the structure and the fate of our universe. Simultaneously, it is changing our ideas about our own place in the world. It would be interesting to see whether the new picture of the world is compatible with common religious beliefs.

With the expansion of science it becomes more and more complicated to talk about God in simplistic terms. Apparently, the laws of the universe work so precisely that we do not need any hypothesis of a divine intervention in order to describe the behavior of the universe as we know it. There remained one point which was hidden from us and which remained unexplained: the moment of creation of the universe as a whole. The mystery of creation of everything from nothing could seem to be too great to be considered scientifically.

With the development of inflationary cosmology the situation somewhat changed. The possibility that the universe eternally re-creates itself in all its possible forms does not necessarily resolves the problem of creation, but pushes it back to indefinite past. By doing so, the properties of our world become totally disentangled from the properties of the universe at the time when it was born (if there was such time at all). In other words, one may argue that the properties of our world do not represent the original design and cannot carry any message from the Creator.

Moreover, one may argue that the picture of the self-reproducing multiverse is much closer to polytheism or to atheism than the picture of a uniform universe created at a single moment and governed by a single law in all of its parts, which had much more in common with monotheism.

Is it true? Is it the final word of science? It is too early to say anything definite about it. In such a situation one may try to say something allegorical, which may be simply a joke, or may contain something more in it. Thus I would like to finish this discussion by considering two puzzling possibilities.

Before I read about cosmic inflation, I thought science has established that time and space came into existence when the big bang singularity expanded. Nope, some cosmologists argue that there is something before that… Cosmology is not as simple as it superfically seems. As Alec pointed out, there are some reasons to doubt eternal inflation.

I would be happy to say “good riddence” to eternal inflation. Actually, if I had to pick a multiverse hypothesis, I would prefer the cyclic model or Smolin black hole reproduction model.