If God both created the Universe and cares about humans, why did he make it so large?

[buffalo]

Yes, but this is just like throwing mud at a wall in the hope that some of it sticks. If Ross was serious about this, he would have had a specific reference from each of his claims to one or more of those papers; when consulting those papers we should then be able to see why that particular factor is tightly constrained for the emergence of advanced life, just what the limits of the constraint are and his rationale for assigning a probability for the factor to fall within the limits. We would also be able to see why that factor carries an independent probability and is not contingent on prior factors that have already been factored in. As it is, the pages of “references” are as much junk as the rest of the paper (I’m not saying that the papers he references are junk but that the way he uses them are junk).

By the way, it seems to me that his modus operandi is to consider any variation from the actual conditions and history of the earth, however small, as being a barrier to advanced life. That is at best questionable and is yet another reason to reject his nonsense out of hand.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

This compendium is a supplement to hi book:

Why the Universe Is the Way It Is

RTB Design Compendium (2009)

***Why the Universe Is the Way It Is

and
More Than A Theory

---

As a supplement to material presented in Why the Universe Is the Way It Is (see Appendix C) and in his university lectures, Hugh Ross makes available a catalog of cosmic design evidences, along with a bibliography of the journal articles and books from which they are drawn. These unedited notes are offered in the hope that they will stimulate further study—more specifically, further testing of various creation and evolution models, including the Reasons To Believe creation model.

This compendium is divided into four major segments, available as one unit or in parts:
Part 1: Fine-Tuning for Life in the Universe — lists 140 features of the cosmos as a whole (including the laws of physics) that must fall within certain narrow ranges to allow for the possibility of physical life’s existence.
**Part 2: Fine-Tuning for Intelligent Physical Life—**describes 402 quantifiable characteristics of a planetary system and its galaxy that must fall within narrow ranges to allow for the possibility of advanced life’s existence. This list includes comment on how a slight increase or decrease in the value of each characteristic would impact that possibility.
**Part 3: Probability Estimates for Features Required by Various Life Forms—**identifies 922 characteristics of a galaxy and of a planetary system physical life depends on and offers conservative estimates of the probability that any galaxy or planetary system would manifest such characteristics. This list is divided into three parts, based on differing requirements for various life-forms and their duration.
**Part 4: Probability Estimates on Different Size Scales for the Features Required by Advanced Life—**presents a breakdown of the characteristics required by advanced life (from Part 3) as they must occur, separately, in the galaxy cluster, galaxy, star, planetary system, planet, moon, planetary surface, and ecosystem where advanced life exists.

 

[hecd2]

This compendium is a supplement to hi book:

Is that meant to be an apology for it? It’s still worthless for the reasons I’ve pointed out.

In the meantime, are you going to refer us to a credible physicist who supports the Privileged Planet idea?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[buffalo]

Is that meant to be an apology for it? It’s still worthless for the reasons I’ve pointed out.

In the meantime, are you going to refer us to a credible physicist who supports the Privileged Planet idea?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Alec, you could join these guys.

But of course you will no doubt respond by claiming none are worthy.

Scientists & Scholars

          ***The Privileged Planet ***includes interviews  with scientists and scholars who have studied the origin and physical  characteristics of the universe and the Earth.  Here you will find more  information about the experts featured in the film.

Guillermo Gonzalez

Guillermo Gonzalez is an Associate Professor of Physics at Grove City College. He received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1993 from the University of Washington. He has done post-doctoral work at the University of Texas/ Austin and at the University of Washington and has received fellowships, grants and awards from such institutions as NASA, the University of Washington, the Templeton Foundation, Sigma Xi (scientific research society) and the National Science Foundation.
Gonzalez has extensive experience in observing and analyzing data from ground-based observatories, including work at McDonald Observatory, Apache Point Observatory, and Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory. He is a world-class expert on the astrophysical requirements for habitability and habitable zones and a co-founder of the “Galactic Habitable Zone” concept, which captured the October 2001 cover story of Scientific American. Astronomers and astrobiologists around the world are pursuing research based on his work on exoplanet host stars, the Galactic Habitable Zone and red giants. In 2004 he co-authored The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery with Jay W. Richards.
Jay Richards

Jay Richards is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and a contributing editor of The American at the American Enterprise Institute. He has a B.A. with majors in Political Science and Religion, an M.Div. and a Th.M., and a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. Richards has written many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects. His most recent book is Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem. Richards is also executive producer of several documentaries, including The Privileged Planet, based on his book, The Privileged Planet, with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez.
Robin Collins

Robin Collins is a Professor of Philosophy at Messiah College. He received his Ph. D. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame under Alvin Plantinga. His undergraduate work was done at Washington State University where he studied philosophy, physics and applied mathematics. He has been interviewed for several documentaries and is currently writing a book on the anthropic principal–the idea that the universe is finely-tuned to sustain life.
Seth Shostak

Seth Shostak is a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. He received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology after having received his undergraduate degree in physics at Princeton. He is a leading figure in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Shostak hosts the radio program Are We Alone? He also hosts Skeptic Check, a radio program aimed at exposing pseudo-sciences such as astrology. In 2004, Shostak was awarded the Klumpke-Roberts Award for his “contribution to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy.”

 

[buffalo]

Robert Jastrow

Robert Jastrow (1925-2008) was an American astronomer and physicist. He completed both his undergraduate and graduate work at Columbia University, receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1948. Jastrow joined NASA when it was founded and was the first chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee, a group established to determine the exploratory objectives for the Apollo moon landing crew. He was also Chief of the Theoretical Division at NASA. Dr. Jastrow went on to become a Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College, the founder of the George C. Marshall Institute, and Director Emeritus of Mt. Wilson Observatory. He authored the best-selling book, God and the Astronomers.
Bijan Nemati

Bijan Nemati is a Senior Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab (California Institute of Technology). He received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Colorado in Boulder and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Washington. Nemati is currently part of the Gemini Planet Imager team that is developing technology to image extrasolar planets orbiting nearby stars.
Donald Brownlee

Donald Brownlee is Professor of Astronomy at the University of Washington, where he received his doctorate in Astronomy. Brownlee’s research interests include investigations of interplanetary dust, comets, meteorites, and the origin of the solar system. He also conducted research as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute (University of Chicago). Asteroid 3259 Brownlee was named for him in 1991. Brownlee has received numerous awards and honors, including the J. Lawrence Smith Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, the Leonard Medal from the Meteoritical Society, and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. He was elected a Fellow of both the Meteoritical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Brownlee is the Associate Editor of Meteoritics and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Microbeam Analysis Journal. He is currently a principal investigator for the STARDUST Discovery mission, that collected comet samples and returned them to Earth.
Charles Beichman

Charles Beichman is Executive Director of Michelson Science Center, NASA’s premier institution for the search for planets and life beyond the solar system. He leads a team of researchers who will use the Space Interferometer Mission (SIM) to find planets orbiting newly formed stars and is the project scientist for the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. As Director of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC, 1991-1998) he worked on the IRAS and ISO missions and led the software development for the 2 Micron All Sky Survey. As Chief Scientist for Astronomy and Physics at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he helped to develop NASA’s Origins program, the goal of which is the search for planets beyond our solar system. Beichman received his undergraduate degree in Astronomy from Harvard in 1973 and his graduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy in 1979.
Kevin Grazier

Kevin Grazier is a planetary scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, specializing in large scale computational simulations of the solar system. He earned a B.S. in Geology and Computer Science from Purdue University and later added a B.S. in Physics from Oakland University. He also earned an M.S. in Physics from Purdue before earning his doctorate from UCLA. Upon arriving at the JPL, Grazier wrote a piece of multi-mission planning and analysis software which earned him numerous awards from both JPL and NASA. Grazier continues to work with JPL and is part of the Cassini Mission team. He also gives planetarium presentations at LA’s Griffith Observatory and has served as the scientific advisor for several SyFy channel shows including Eureka and Battlestar Gallactica.
Paul Davies

Paul Davies is a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, and best-selling author. He is Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative–both at Arizona State University. He received his BSc from University College London in Physics and went on to obtain his PhD in theoretical physics (also from UCL). Davies’s primary contributions have been in the area of quantum physics, specifically the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect and the Bunch-Davies vacuum state. He has been awarded numerous times for his proficiency in teaching science, having received the Faraday Prize in 2002, a Kelvin Medal, two Eureka Prizes and an Advance Australia Award. He is also a prolific writer, having written over twenty-five books as well as countless articles for The Guardian, The New Scientist, The New York Times, The Age and many others.

 

[StAnastasia]

IHugh is a creationist, with a creationist agenda, like the IDists and the YECers and what he has here is 59 pages of worthless junk. Basically, what he has done is to list every parameter that he can think of for the cosmological, astronomical, physical and biological conditions on earth. Then he claims that each one has to fall in a narrow band for intelligent life to be possible and he assigns a probability to each one. He then multiplies the probabilities together to get some ludicrously low probability for the emergence of intelligent life.

In addition to his work being being scientifically worthless, Hugh Ross is also bereft of human sympathy on the personal level. At a conference at Caltech last year, a Jewish audience member asked whether his recently deceased father – who had been the sole survivor of his family in Auschwitz – would be accepted into heaven, Ross candidly replied, “No, your father will end up in hell unless he accepts Jesus as his personal lord and savior.” The audience gasped at the vast reach of Ross’ arrogance.

 

[buffalo]

In addition to his work being being scientifically worthless, Hugh Ross is also bereft of human sympathy on the personal level. At a conference at Caltech last year, a Jewish audience member asked whether his recently deceased father – who had been the sole survivor of his family in Auschwitz – would be accepted into heaven, Ross candidly replied, “No, your father will end up in hell unless he accepts Jesus as his personal lord and savior.” The audience gasped at the vast reach of Ross’ arrogance.

Attack attack attack. Your posts are shameful.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

In addition to his work being being scientifically worthless, Hugh Ross is also bereft of human sympathy on the personal level.

Btw, I apologize for my earlier mistake in the discussion with you. I had not read carefully and assumed buffalo was simply referring to Barr and Davies writings on the “Anthopic Coincidences”. Then when you were saying you had a problem the idea that it’s amazing that our planet is so specially fit for life, I didn’t realize you were still taking issue with buffalo’s initial statement. I guess it happens when I read carelessly through a thread without paying attention to each post

 

[StAnastasia]

Attack attack attack. Your posts are shameful.

Buffalo, are you saying that my defense of a faithful Jew against Ross’ scurrilous comment is somehow an attack?

 

[buffalo]

Buffalo, are you saying that my defense of a faithful Jew against Ross’ scurrilous comment is somehow an attack?

Whatever he said there is not relevant to this discussion. Yet when you are on your heels your standard mo is to attack the person. That is shameful and wrong. It weakens any position you think you may have. Your credibility goes way down. Sad.

 

[StAnastasia]

Btw, I apologize for my earlier mistake in the discussion with you. I had not read carefully and assumed buffalo was simply referring to Barr and Davies writings on the “Anthopic Coincidences”. Then when you were saying you had a problem the idea that it’s amazing that our planet is so specially fit for life, I didn’t realize you were still taking issue with buffalo’s initial statement. I guess it happens when I read carelessly through a thread without paying attention to each post

Thanks, Ronnie Bonigli. I am very interested in anthropic coincidences, but I believe it’s important to bear two things in mind.

(1) In itself the anthropic principle – however interesting the coincidence of physical constants may be – is not a proof for the existence of an intelligent designer.

(2) It is unlikely that if the universe appears designed to support life on earth, ours is the only star out of a hundred billion stars in each of three hundred billion galaxies that has a planet of the the appropriate life-facilitating chemistry, temperature, and gravity lying within the star’s habitable zone.

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

Whatever he said there is not relevant to this discussion. Yet when you are on your heels your standard mo is to attack the person. That is shameful and wrong. It weakens any position you think you may have. Your credibility goes way down. Sad.

Oh yes, it’s very relevant. The God Hugh Ross worships – a God who would send a faithful Jew to hell merely for failing to acknowledge the Christian way – is not a God worth worshiping. And if his God is not worth worshiping, why should we pay attention to his suppositions about the implications of anthropic coincidences?

 

[buffalo]

Oh yes, it’s very relevant. The God Hugh Ross worships – a God who would send a faithful Jew to hell merely for failing to acknowledge the Christian way – is not a God worth worshiping. And if his God is not worth worshiping, why should we pay attention to his suppositions about the implications of anthropic coincidences?

:banghead:

Now you have opened the door to distrusting any atheist scientist or even a sinning scientist. Are you sure you want to go there?

 

[StAnastasia]

Now you have opened the door to distrusting any atheist scientist or even a sinning scientist. Are you sure you want to go there?

Happy Advent, Buffalo!

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Attack attack attack. Your posts are shameful.

I wouldn’t discount Hugh Ross because of some mean things he’s said. I do discount him because he seems to be an real oddball and another of those protestant fundies who believe God put dinosaur bones in the earth to test our Faith. Really, it depresses me that some Catholics are buying the “Science proves God” not to mention the “Science proves a 6000 year old earth” nonsense of the evangelical fundies.

These Catholics should understand that the reason these fundies use all these intellectual gymnastics and smoke and mirrors where they pay attention to one scientific fact but ignore the dozen other ones that are inconvenient is because all they have is the bible, every sentence in the bible for them has to be literally true, because they have nothing else, they have no supernatural Church. And they don’t accept the many miracles that Catholics have recorded over the centuries with saints from Teresa of Avila to Parde Pio, so they need “scientific proofs” to buttress their wobbly Faith. Really, when you come across the books of a Hugh Ross or the rest of that fundie crowd, run in the other direction, in the long term they with diminish or destroy your Faith

 

[buffalo]

I do discount him because he seems to be an real oddball and another of those protestant fundies who believe God put dinosaur bones in the earth to test our Faith.

Source?

I have listed his compendium and his calculations. (for the record I normally do not use Ross in my posts) Take issue with that and debate the specific points.

 

[hecd2]

Take issue with that and debate the specific points.

I have. I have pointed out in some detail why Hugh Ross’s silly list is junk. I haven’t seen you attempt to refute any of the points I made. Here they are again in the forlorn hope that we might get some content into this discussion, instead of the current level which consists mainly of uncritically regurgitating his work on the one hand and offering ad hominems against him on the other.:

*Basically, what he has done is to list every parameter that he can think of for the cosmological, astronomical, physical and biological conditions on earth. Then he claims that each one has to fall in a narrow band for intelligent life to be possible and he assigns a probability to each one. He then multiplies the probabilities together to get some ludicrously low probability for the emergence of intelligent life.

It’s complete and utter garbage for the following reasons. He doesn’t begin to justify why any one of his hundreds of parameters need to be tuned for life, and in fact few of them are. And of course he doesn’t justify the probability that any one parameter falls within whatever bounds he has arbitrarily chosen. He ignores the problem that we cannot assign a probability to a factor, unless we know over what range and with what statistics the factor can vary, and he utterly ignores the fact that many of his factors are not randomly chosen in the universe but are contingent on other more fundamental factors (in fact nearly all of them are) so that he is double, triple and quadruple counting. He ignores the fact that it is meaningless to talk about the probability of the emergence of a deterministic contingent factor, and he commits the cardinal statistical sin of multiplying the probabilities of dependent variables to get an overall probability.

Let’s take his first three factors in the list, just for example:

relative abundances of different exotic mass particles .01
density of quasars in the local volume of the universe during
early cosmic history .1
density of giant galaxies in the local volume of the universe
during early cosmic history .03

So - how do these things affect the emergence of life? What are the ranges that they must have to allow the emergence of advanced life? But most of all - how on earth can he say that the chance that, say, the density of giant galaxies in the universe early in cosmic history falling within whatever unspecified range he has chosen, is 1 in 33 - how on earth can anyone say that? It’s pure nonsense.

This is illustrated by looking at his summary for our galaxy - he concludes that the chance that the conditions for life within our galaxy emerging without miracle are one in 10^135. Hang on a minute - we live in an unexceptional Pop I spiral galaxy of which there are hundreds of millions if not billions in the observable universe. It’s breathtakingly silly. Perhaps buffalo is impressed by the 59 pages, but 59 pages of junk is just a lot of junk.*

If you want to debate the specific points, then debate those.

As an aside, I agree that his beliefs about the conditions for salvation sincerely expressed, whether we agree with them or not, and whether or not they cause personal distress, are completely irrelevant to this question. If he is a sincere believer in EENS what is he supposed to say if directly challenged about it? But whatever he believes about that has nothing to do with this.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

I wouldn’t discount Hugh Ross because of some mean things he’s said. I do discount him because he seems to be an real oddball and another of those protestant fundies who believe God put dinosaur bones in the earth to test our Faith. Really, it depresses me that some Catholics are buying the “Science proves God” not to mention the “Science proves a 6000 year old earth” nonsense of the evangelical fundies.

Are you sure about that and secure in this criticism of Ross? See below

These Catholics should understand that the reason these fundies use all these intellectual gymnastics and smoke and mirrors where they pay attention to one scientific fact but ignore the dozen other ones that are inconvenient is because all they have is the bible, every sentence in the bible for them has to be literally true, because they have nothing else, they have no supernatural Church. And they don’t accept the many miracles that Catholics have recorded over the centuries with saints from Teresa of Avila to Parde Pio, so they need “scientific proofs” to buttress their wobbly Faith. Really, when you come across the books of a Hugh Ross or the rest of that fundie crowd, run in the other direction, in the long term they with diminish or destroy your Faith

As I understand it, Hugh is one of those rare beasts - an old earth creationist. AFAIK, he accepts the standard cosmology of the universe, the BB, a universe 13.7 billion years old, an earth 4.5 billion years old and so on. He also accepts that fossils are genuine records of creatures that lived in the past, and he has no problem with dating methods, so accepts the origin of life 3 billion years ago, the Cambrian 700 million years ago, the age of the dinosaurs 200 - 65 million years ago etc etc. What he does not accept is the proposition that natural phenomena account for the emergence and development of life on earth - he rejects biological macro evolution (believing in a number of episodes of special creation through the ages - progressive creation), and the miraculous organisation of conditions in the universe, the galaxy and the earth to support life.

I think it’s really important to address what our opponents say - not what we imagine they say.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Alec, you could join these guys.

Aw shucks

But of course you will no doubt respond by claiming none are worthy.

No, there are some good physicists there. That’s not the problem. I discount Gonzalez because he is a fanboy for the Design Institute, and because he failed to get tenure not having done any research for seven years (three years later, he’s still not doing any research). I discount Richards because he’s not a physicist. Same for Collins.

So let’s look at the next guy. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at SETI, alumnus of Princeton and Caltech - that’s a pretty good guy to have on your list of supporters under Scientists and Scholars with the implication that they support your idea. Not quite. This from an article Shostak wrote for a UK paper, here:

“Last year, ID adherents released a one-hour film, Privileged Planet, that caused a minor brouhaha when plans were announced to screen it at Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, a few blocks from the Capitol. To my chagrin, I appear in the film, though I say nothing about design, intelligent or otherwise; I simply describe my own research - spliced in, presumably, for the modicum of credibility I bring.”

So this is a Scientist and Scholar who is sympathetic to the thesis of the film? Not a bit of it - this guy couldn’t be more contemptuous of the basic idea of Privileged Planet, but he appears in the list on the website of the film for the same reason that he apperas in the film - to lend credibility.

I haven’t the energy to go through the next and the next guy. Some are well known and well respected physicists like Paul Davies. I’m not saying that one or two of them might not have some sympathy with the idea (perhaps most prominently, Brownlee), but to imply,as the Privileged Planet website does, that this is a list of well-credentialled guys who support the idea is plain misleading. It would be like Richard Dawkins listing the Bishop of Oxford and some evangelist pastor in Alabama on his campaigning God Delusion website as Philosophers and Theologians with the implication that they support his atheism just because they are interviewed in his film. That’s not the way things should be done.

This is normal ID modus operandi though - lacking any credibility themselves, they’ll do anything to borrow some from others, even from those who disagree with them, even to the extent of economy with the truth.

The correct thing to do if they want to list the people they interview to promote the film is to make it clear that some of these people are interviewed purely for their technical knowledge and that they don’t necessarily support the thesis of the film.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[inocente]

I have listed his compendium and his calculations. (for the record I normally do not use Ross in my posts) Take issue with that and debate the specific points.

As a non-specialist, I can’t really give any credence to the Ross work either. There’s no explanation of why particular factors are included or excluded, there are no error bars, he uses a dependency factor apparently plucked from thin air, and some of the factors are just plain weird – 149 is the availability of petroleum, as if fine-tuning is needed so that all advanced civilizations can buy a Ford pickup.

His book is for non-scientists so the right thing to do would have been to have his hypothesis peer reviewed and published for specialist comment first. Do you know whether he did? If not, I could only conclude that he’s using fancy footwork in an attempt to pull the wool over non-specialists’ eyes.

 

[cassini]

In addition to his work being being scientifically worthless, Hugh Ross is also bereft of human sympathy on the personal level. At a conference at Caltech last year, a Jewish audience member asked whether his recently deceased father – who had been the sole survivor of his family in Auschwitz – would be accepted into heaven, Ross candidly replied, “No, your father will end up in hell unless he accepts Jesus as his personal lord and savior.” The audience gasped at the vast reach of Ross’ arrogance.

Now hold on here St A, I cannot let this pass without comment. I haven’t a clue who Mr Ross is, but is he not here stating the teaching of the Catholic Church, if in a very very blunt manner? Had you spotted as a modernist a long time ago St A, but your universal salvation ‘charity’ confirms this, and I do not care if the modern popes share your false belief. Certainly inculpable ignorance on the part of a man or woman does not prevent them from entering heaven if they have lived just lives, but what men of other religions or none has not heard of Catholicism and its teachings today?
For you and others now. merely being a Jew is suffice for salvation. The Jews reject the divinity of Christ and that according to the Church prevents them from entering the Kingdom of heaven. True CHRISTIAN CHARITY, as I was taught it, is to ADVISE jews etc, that they do risk salvation by denying the divinity of Christ. Thus Mr Ross was practicing CHRISTIAN CHARITY by advising those there in the hall that they risk salvation by denying Christ. Maybe, just maybe, one or two might be ‘shocked’ enough to consider their position and convert to Catholicism and thus improve their chances of salvation by 99%. That is the teaching of the Church before the universal salvationists took over.