The Universe: Designed?

[Jorge]

Most of the facts that are presented in this 6-minute clip have been know for some time now. I show it here only because it's a pretty neat presentation that brings many of these things together rather nicely.

The astonishingly remarkable thing to me -- and it's been that way for decades -- is that despite these facts (and they are facts) there remains a species of folks known as Materialists/Humanists/Atheists and related subspecies that utterly refuse to give in.

Then, as if that weren't enough, those same folks will yell at the top of their voice, "WE FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE TO WHERE IT LOGICALLY LEADS!!!" I mean, if that isn't the MOTHER of all ironies then I don't know what is.

The "EVIDENCE" points in one and only one direction - anyone with at least two connected neurons can see this. Of course - and needless to say - that "direction" is one that those aforementioned folks want no part of. The rub is ideological/spiritual, not scientific. The "scientific" label is nothing more than a ruse.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that those people abandon all reason and concoct things such as "multiverses" and "self-organization" (with ZERO evidence) in a desperate attempt to appear to the world as "sophisticated scientists" instead of as deluded, intellectually-dishonest buffoons.

It's actually too bad for them : they don't realize that the harder they work on their concoctions - the more that they allow their vain imaginations to rule their "science" - the further they venture into Buffoon Land. Slowly, more and more people are realizing this.

Errrr ... the above 'surely' doesn't apply to anyone at TWeb, right? Bwahahahaha

Hope y'all had a nice Christmas.
Watch out for 2015 - it'll be a lulu!

Oops, almost forgot, here's that 6-minute video clip: http://player.vimeo.com/video/111335043

Jorge

[HMS_Beagle]

Gee, another evidence free Creationist propaganda piece with the same old argument from personal incredulity. At least this one has pretty colors. Probably kept mesmerized for hours.

[rwatts]

Most of the facts that are presented in this 6-minute clip have been know for some time now. I show it here only because it's a pretty neat presentation that brings many of these things together rather nicely.

The astonishingly remarkable thing to me -- and it's been that way for decades -- is that despite these facts (and they are facts) there remains a species of folks known as Materialists/Humanists/Atheists and related subspecies that utterly refuse to give in.

Then, as if that weren't enough, those same folks will yell at the top of their voice, "WE FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE TO WHERE IT LOGICALLY LEADS!!!" I mean, if that isn't the MOTHER of all ironies then I don't know what is.

The "EVIDENCE" points in one and only one direction - anyone with at least two connected neurons can see this. Of course - and needless to say - that "direction" is one that those aforementioned folks want no part of. The rub is ideological/spiritual, not scientific. The "scientific" label is nothing more than a ruse.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that those people abandon all reason and concoct things such as "multiverses" and "self-organization" (with ZERO evidence) in a desperate attempt to appear to the world as "sophisticated scientists" instead of as deluded, intellectually-dishonest buffoons.

It's actually too bad for them : they don't realize that the harder they work on their concoctions - the more that they allow their vain imaginations to rule their "science" - the further they venture into Buffoon Land. Slowly, more and more people are realizing this.

Errrr ... the above 'surely' doesn't apply to anyone at TWeb, right? Bwahahahaha

Hope y'all had a nice Christmas.
Watch out for 2015 - it'll be a lulu!

Oops, almost forgot, here's that 6-minute video clip: http://player.vimeo.com/video/111335043

Jorge

So why would God want to design a flawed universe like this, when he had already had trouble in heaven with the angels? And how did he design it, then make it? These important questions you never answer in a logical, evidence based manner, Jorge.

[Kbertsche]

Oops, almost forgot, here's that 6-minute video clip: http://player.vimeo.com/video/111335043

Jorge

This is an excellent video! The science is solid. It briefly presents the fine-tuning of the universe. It does not push YEC; rather, it implicitly assumes an old universe and a Big Bang. I'm surprised that Jorge recommended it, but I recommend it as well.

[Roy]

Oops, almost forgot, here's that 6-minute video clip: http://player.vimeo.com/video/111335043

Anyone who falls for that pile of manure needs their head examined.

Apart from the attempt to appear factual by riping-off the Hitchhiker's Guide, their arguments are completely bogus.

Here's their first one:

Gravity is determined by the gravitational constant. If this constant varied by one in 10⁶⁰ parts, none of us would exist.

So what's the problem? Simple. We don't know the value of the gravitational constant that accurately.

One recent paper stated "
We obtain the value G = 6.67191(99) × 10⁻¹¹ m³ kg⁻¹s[sup]−2[s/up] with a relative uncertainty of 150 parts per million"

Feed that little fact into the 'argument', and it becomes
The gravitational constant is somewhere between
__0.000000000066704199
and
__0.000000000066734199.
It might be, for example,
__0.000000000066718776644820984623456213453739563222 01755298032186638214561.
But if it was
__0.000000000066718776644820984623456213453739563222 01755298032186638214562,
the world wouldn't exist.

No-one with any scientific background or who did the most trivial research into the subject would believe this video for a moment. But as Paul Simon wrote, "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest".

Roy

[klaus54]

"Design" by whom or what? And if the "design" is not anthropomorphic, how can we tell?

K54

[Roy]

They also give "the number of seconds that have ticked by since time began" as 10²⁰. Unless my ability with a calculator is failing,* that doesn't work out to 6000 years, so I don't see why a YEC is promoting this rubbish. Nor does it work out to 14 billion years - that would be approximately 10¹⁷ seconds. Their time period is about 3 trillion years. So either they know something the rest of the world does not, or they can't cope with high-school arithmetic. And if they can't cope with high-school arithmetic, why should anyone think they understand the mathematics of astrophysics?

Roy

*Note for Jorge and other morons: this is not a get out clause, it's typical British understatement.

[37818]

Nice video. I have some issues though. The only constant we know exactly is the speed of light. And that is by definition as to its exact value. The gravitation constant to an accuracy of 10^-60. I find that hard to possibly know. The current value is only known to about 6.67384 x 10^-11. And not exactly.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

The Fine Tuning argument is even worse than a God of the Gaps argument. At least the God of the Gaps is usually formulated as "not A, therefore God." Fallacious, to be sure, but at least we are actually eliminating the other option in that scenario. The Fine Tuning argument is formulated as "possibly A, but A is improbable, therefore God."

[Roy]

The Fine Tuning argument is even worse than a God of the Gaps argument. At least the God of the Gaps is usually formulated as "not A, therefore God." Fallacious, to be sure, but at least we are actually eliminating the other option in that scenario. The Fine Tuning argument is formulated as "possibly A, but A is improbable, therefore God."

Did you notice that their reasons for rejecting a multiverse scenario apply equally well to their designer scenario?

[Boxing Pythagoras]

Did you notice that their reasons for rejecting a multiverse scenario apply equally well to their designer scenario?

Not to mention the fact that the cosmologists who are developing multiverse models will be the first to tell you that there is no empirical data which yet supports the model, and that it is speculation based upon predictions from other physical theories.

When was the last time a theist admitted that there is no empirical data to support the idea of divine Creation, when presenting the Fine Tuning argument?

[37818]

And the multiverse argument actually supports there being some kind of God, at least in one them. And given infinite past even now all of them.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

And the multiverse argument actually supports there being some kind of God, at least in one them. And given infinite past even now all of them.

How do you figure?

[Kbertsche]

Anyone who falls for that pile of manure needs their head examined.

Apart from the attempt to appear factual by riping-off the Hitchhiker's Guide, their arguments are completely bogus.

Here's their first one:

Gravity is determined by the gravitational constant. If this constant varied by one in 1060 parts, none of us would exist.

So what's the problem? Simple. We don't know the value of the gravitational constant that accurately.

...
Roy

We don't need to actually KNOW a value to one part in 10^60 in order to calculate that the SENSITIVITY of the value is one part in 10^60. You are, in essence, confusing accuracy and precision.

The more normal way to express this sensitivity is to say that the mass density of the early universe had to be fine-tuned to one part in 10^60. This is how Hugh Ross and others generally express it. But if the mass density were assumed to be fixed, then the gravitational constant would have to be fine-tuned to one part in 10^60, as the video says. In this, the video follows Robin Collins, who explains:

Source: Robin Collins

The Teleological Argument, p. 215
... There is, however, a fine-tuning of gravity relative to other parameters. One of these is the fine-tuning of gravity relative to the density of mass-energy in the early universe and other factors determining the expansion rate of the Big Bang – such as the value of the Hubble constant and the value of the cosmological constant. Holding these other parameters constant, if the strength of gravity were smaller or larger by an estimated one part in 1060 of its current value, the universe would have either exploded too quickly for galaxies and stars to form, or collapsed back on itself too quickly for life to evolve.10

10. This latter fine-tuning of the strength of gravity is typically expressed as the claim that the density of matter at the Plank time (the time at which we have any confidence in the theory of Big Bang dynamics) must have been tuned to one part in 1060 of the so-called critical density (e.g. Davies 1982, p. 89). Since the critical density is inversely proportional to the strength of gravity (Davies 1982, p. 88, eqn. 4.15), the fine-tuning of the matter density can easily be shown to be equivalent to the aforementioned claim about the tuning of the strength of gravity. Of course, if one cites this fine-tuning of gravity, one cannot then treat the fine-tuning of the force of the Big Bang or matter density of the Big Bang as an independent fine-tuning. (See Section 5.1.1 for how to combine cases of fine-tuning.)

© Copyright Original Source

[phank]

Here we go again. Imagine all the puddles waking to discover that, despite their wide varieties of shapes and sizes, every one of their containers is a precise fit. This CANNOT be coincidence. Therefore it must be design. What else could it be?