chance

[Coito ergo sum]

errant post.

[Coito ergo sum]

If the universe was designed for us, why wouldn't it just be a really gigantic, stable place for us to live in, without plate tectonics, a cooling mantle, asteroids and comets looming, a star that will go supernova, deadly volcanoes, fierce storms and tsunamis and quadrillions of parsecs of space surrounding us that is deathly cold, or deathly hot, filled with deadly radiation. Why create galaxies for us by the billions, that are bigger than our galaxy but we can only see as pinholes of light in the sky, and most of them we can't see at all?

Why wouldn't a universe created for us have the right temperature all over, and if the god thought the sky needed decoration, why wouldn't he just build little lights up there for us. Why create this strange multibillion year machine that operates for the most part without out us and with evidently no regard for us at all. The universe existed in its mish-mash state for billions of years before we ever came along and will likely do so for billions of years after we're gone - most of it is utterly devoid of life, and most of it, it seems, will never be visited by us or even seen by us.

Nobody would imagine a creator creating the universe like this. That's why back in the day, the universe was envisaged as much smaller than it really is - Babylonians viewed the world as flat and covered by a dome. That's how they thought the gods created the universe. And, that makes more sense. If you told a Babylonian that the gods really created Earth as a little blip of tiny planet, on the edge of big group of stars that is mostly lifeless for so far that humans can't even imagine the distances and if we went anywhere but this little tiny blip we would die a quick death....they'd think we were crazy. What sort of an "intelligent creator" would create this place?

It makes no sense - it's like if humans created cars, but for some reason all cars had skyscraper sized attachments that served no purpose in relation to us, and we couldn't enter or interact with in any way. Humans wouldn't be stupid enough to create such a monumental waste of a creation - I wonder why theists think their gods are that stupid.

First, these are reasonable questions. And I do admit that the shape of the universe appears a little strange. What you're doing is called selected attention. You're focusing on the chaos of the universe and ignoring all of the order.

No, I'm not ignoring all of the order, or any of the order. The order, likewise, makes no sense. Solar systems are orderly, and there are about 400 or so that have been confirmed outside of our solar system, and the expectation is that we will ultimately discover thousand, millions, billions and even trillions of solar systems. My point is not that it's chaos - my point is that the order makes no sense if one posits that it was created for us, or with us in mind. Now, that doesn't mean it wasn't created for some as yet unknown purpose - but, as of the present time, there is no evident purpose. It is. But, it's not for us.

It is also a different sort of order than that which man thought gods created before we used science to find things out. The early Christian Church, for example, had different concepts of what the Christian god created. There was the Earth, and the Earth was covered by the dome of the sky, and above the dome was more stuff - lots of water was supposedly up there, and the stars were attached to another dome. And, the domes were see-through because they were crystal (considered a perfect sort of substance). The domes were perfect. All the stars and the planets were fixed in some way to god's will and kept up there because he willed it. That's the only reason people could think of to explain how stuff could stay up there - since, everyone could see that most stuff fell to the ground.

That sort of universe makes much more sense from an intelligent design perspective. There isn't 99.99999999999999...string of 9's a mile long...percent of the universe unrelated to us. In the original concept of the universe, the Earth was the Earth, heavens were located above, and god was looking down on us through the crystal spheres. Hades or hell was actually below us, as evidenced by the fire. Everything, in that concept of the world, WAS created for us and with us in mind. What we've learned in the last several thousand years, however, is that things like thunder, lightening, earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis are not the work of gods - we learned how they work through natural processes. The Earth is spheroid, and the stars are huge and far away, and there aren't any spheres, and heaven isn't where we thought it was (just as the gods were not on Mt. Olympus after all, heaven is not literally "above" us, as people really believed long ago). Hell and Hades is not really below us - instead it's magma and it operates and behaves according to natural processes. Gods did not shape the winds, although people used to think gods did that. Gods did not bring droughts or rains or famines or pestilence. We know why all those things occur naturally.

The reality is, that everywhere we thought we'd find gods, we look and we find no gods. You're asking us to simply believe that there are phenomena that we can't now explain, like we used to not be able to explain volcanoes and storms and droughts and disease and famine and earthquakes and tsunamis and the rest, and we're supposed to presume that there "must" be a god at bottom. Frankly, I don't see why we ought to, given the track record. And, there doesn't appear to be any reason why we should, except the arbitrary belief that if people don't think to themselves that a certain deity exists there will be hell to pay. And, that, to me, seems an unworthy reason to believe in anything. I would believe in a god if there was evidence for the god. If there is a god, I hope one day to know it because I am genuinely interested in knowing the truth. If there is a god, and that's not enough to warrant salvation from oblivion or hellfire, well, I can't imagine that a dishonest repudiation of what I actually believe on the if-come that I have a reward awaiting me would be any more persuasive.

Let me ask you this, you're presenting me with evidence of astonishing chaos. Is there any evidence of astonishing order that I can present to you that will falsify your claim that the universe is more orderly than it is chaotic?

I've not suggested any level of chaos, nor have I asserted that the universe is more or less orderly than it is chaotic. Re-read what I wrote. The comets and asteroids and deadly radiation and huge vast distances and deadly heat and deadly cold and unseen multitudes of stars and galaxies, etc., are not "chaos." Comets, and asteroids, for example are perfectly "orderly" in the sense that they are moving around exactly as universal gravitation would have them behave. They revolve around larger bodies, and if they hit something and the result of such collisions operate according to mathematically precise physical equations. Like - pool balls - I hit the cue ball into the 9. Physics describes the resulting motion - it's not chaos at all.

Is there any number or any fact that will make you say: you're right, the evidence of order outweighs the evidence of chaos?

Sure, I guess. Order, however, does not in any way imply a creator. A creator may have created an orderly universe, or may have created a completely chaotic universe, or may have created some relative combination of order and chaos. A naturally operating universe, too, may have order in it, as ours does. I've not said anywhere that our universe lacks order. Our solar system, for example, operates in what could be described as an orderly fashion to a large degree.

I also never raised any argument - to be clear - about order vs. chaos. That is something that, for some reason unknown to me, you thought had something to do with what I wrote and to which you responded.

You have said that fine-tuning does not necessarily imply design.

Correct. I also, for the record, do not admit that the universe is in fact "tuned" at all. This is unfortunate, anthropomorphic language. It's purposefully used so that we bury an assumed "tuner" into the question. To fine tune a radio dial, you have to have someone doing the tuning. So, the ID-ers like to say that the forces in the universe are "tuned" instead of just saying that the forces of the universe ARE the way they ARE. You and I both can agree that the Strong and Weak nuclear force, electromagnetism and universal gravitation ARE the way they ARE. You, however, say that because they ARE the way they ARE, that they must have been "tuned" that way (and therefore, like a radio, there must have been a tune-er) - I do not make that leap, because that leap is purely rhetorical, and begs the question of whether there is a tune-er. That's the question we're seeking to answer.

But you have to admit, that fine-tuning is more likely to be the result of design then the result of chance, right?

No, because fine-tuning, as a term, is loaded with assumption - that the universe had a tune-er (because otherwise, it would not be "tuned" it would just "be." A universe with universal forces is not, as far as anyone can tell, more likely to be the result of design than the result of EITHER chance OR non-chance-based, undirected, natural processes. Again - stop it with the false dilemma. It is not "design or chance." So, stop it. It's design, chance, or other non-chance-based, undirected, natural processes (or words to that effect).

I admit only that the universal forces in the universe ARE as they ARE. A is A. Right? Were they "tuned" that way? Or, are they that way because they came about purely by an ultimate random occurrence? Or, are they that way because of a series of natural, not wholly chance based, phenomena that were not directed by any entity? That's the question - to rephrase the question as you have to "Is it more likely that fine tuning is the result of design than the result of chance?" is classic question-begging. First we have to know if the thing we are talking about - the universe - was tuned by some entity at all, or did the universal laws come about by some undirected process?

We used to think that lightning and thunder and pestilence were "fine tuned" by gods - after all, was it more likely that all of a sudden we were sick, or that all of a sudden a storm came up on us out of nowhere "by chance" or was it more likely that these things were "designed" for us by a god? See that? It's the same myth-thinking that you are using. What we learned over the centuries has been that lightning and thunder and pestilence and drought and tsunamis are NOT the result of gods, and NOT the result of "pure chance." What ARE they the result of, you ask? Undirected - not wholly chance-based - natural processes.....

Sound familiar? That's what the "big bang" is, my friend - it's another event we are trying to explain. I no more expect it to be a god-driven event, or a random event, than I expect thunder and lightening and a tsunami in Japan to be either god based or random. I expect it to be what everything else we've previously thought were god-driven - an undirected natural process.

No one believes that fine-tuning is never the result of intelligence, otherwise SETI would not exist, nor would patent fraud, nor detective work.

That's right, nobody believes that tuning is NEVER the result of intelligence. But, you've got the SETI analogy backwards. The thought process behind SETI is that humans tune things, like radios and radio signals, and humans do this for a purpose - and that human tuning and purpose is identifiably different than what the universe does on its own, in accordance with the natural, universal laws. I.e. stars often emit radio and other waves and radiation - but, that sort of "natural" radiation is easily distinguishable from channel 9 news or WKRP In Cincinnati's radio shows.

What you're trying to do is to say that the radio waves emitted by stars are "fine tuned" because they operate in accordance with the laws of nature. That's the REVERSE of what SETI does. SETI says that all the radio waves emitted by stars are part of that "background noise" that ISN'T the result of any intelligence, but rather is the result of natural processes that are undirected. They aren't "tuned" at all - they only ARE what they ARE.

So, is there any amount of fine-tuning that would cause you to change your mind?

My mind would already have been changed, because if I admitted that something was "fine tuned" I must have already admitted that it was tuned by a tune-er.

But, yes, if you could show me even one feature of the universe, not devised by humans, that can be demonstrated to have been tuned at all - I'll even make it easier for you - I won't even require FINE tuning. I'll say that it can be fuzzily tuned - you just have to demonstrate that some feature of the universe was "tuned" (i.e. purposefully set a certain way), then I will have to seriously consider my position.

So - yes - I don't even need to see a lot of tuning, and that tuning doesn't even need to be all that "fine." I just need to some reason to conclude that some featuer of the universe was "tuned."

You simply cannot be immune to evidence.

I'm not. And, I've explained very clearly what I would need evidence of.

There has be to some evidence that will cause you to change your mind. For example, I have already pointed out that Lambda has to be tuned to 120 orders of magnitude. What if there were a much larger number out there. Is there any number so large that it will cause you to change your mind?

I do not understand your question. You "already pointed out that Lambda has to be tuned to 120 orders of magnitude?" "Has to?" Has to for what? I reject your assumption that Lambda "has to" be tuned to any particular order of magnitude. If you mean, "has to be at a certain level or a universe like ours would not exist," well - that's just saying that if, say, we had no strong nuclear force, we'd not have a universe anything like ours. So what? That tells us nothing about whether there is or is not a designer or tune-er. What we know is that the universe is like it is - we do not know that any universal forces, or the cosmological constant (if indeed there even is one), were tuned. We know that they are what they are, and we are still trying to figure out exactly what they are.

Moreover, I reject the foundational assumption you make that Lambda is tuned to 120 "orders of magnitude." An order of magnitude is the class of scale of an amount - each class contains values of a fixed ratio to the class preceding it. Usually the scaled amount is 10 and the scale is the exponent applied to this amount. That is, something is an "order of magnitude" greater when it is 10 times an amount. So, when you say that "Lambda has to be tuned to 120 orders of magnitude," that doesn't have any meaning because an order of magnitude is either greater or less than some other figure. 120 orders of magnitude greater than what, or less than what? There is a lot of physics over the last century over the validity and existence of the cosmological constant, so I'll have to leave it to you to explain to me what you're referring to, exactly.

[Coito ergo sum]

What's your evidence that your god is unordered or immaterial? What's the proof for your claim? It's just an assumption that fits your believe.

Order applies to material objects, not immaterial. You can't order immaterial because there is nothing to order.

LOL - "nothing" - key word.

That immaterial beings exist is logically necessary because it is logically impossible for material to order itself. Material obeys physical laws, it has no choice. For order to arise, you need choice. Since material cannot choose, the source of choice must lie in the immaterial.

"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart." - Thomas Jefferson.

Clearly, it is not impossible for material to order itself. We see it every day. Crystals, for example. Snowflakes, for another. Solar systems, for a third. Choice is not needed in order to have order, that is patently, undeniably obvious from reality. If choice was needed to have order, we would have no snowflakes.

Your logic is fine - it's the premise that is wrong. You start with the incorrect assumption that material cannot be ordered except via a choice made, and you add to that the false statement that it is impossible for material to order itself. You then proceed perfectly logically from these incorrect assumptions and reach a conclusion that, while logical, is simply wrong.

[Coito ergo sum]

Actually, it does. Agnosticism is about admitting we don't have knowlege and concluding that believe based on non knowledge is useless.
We just keep avenues more open than some atheists is all.

Not really. Agnosticism refers not to a lack of knowledge, but the impossibility of having knowledge. In the case of gods, it is the idea that we can never have knowledge of god. That's as distinct from Gnostics, who believe that we can have that knowledge. In more modern usage, an alternative definition of a "doubter" or one who is not completely sure, has crept into the lexicon.

However, agnosticism is not, technically, about admitting that we don't have knowledge. If it was, then we'd all be big bang agnostics, because we don't have knowledge of the causes and state of affairs at and in the first Planck's unit of time "after" (for lack of a better term) the big bang. That's not how the word is used, though. We lack knowledge, but that doesn't make us agnostics.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

well, the problem with the possibility of outright knowledge is that denying it outright is a leap of faith equal to that of the hardcore atheist declaring "there are no gods"... while it's reasonable to assume that if such knowledge was at all possible, we have spent so much time looking for it that we'd have it by now, predicating that state as an absolute truth is pushing the envelope beyond tolerances.

Now, living like there are no gods or like the truth about the diving is effectively unknowable, that's perfectly sensible.

And I like semantics.

Which is the leap of faith: Not accepting, based on experience, that the human brain is capable of absolute knowledge, or believing, without evidence, that it is?

[Mr P]

Agnostics, the only people more irritating than bisexuals.

[Coito ergo sum]

Agnostics, the only people more irritating than bisexuals.

Agnostics: atheists with no balls.

[Svartalf]

I have solid knowledge that you're giving me headaches