I encourage all of you to give Dr. Hugh Ross a listen. He is a top rate scientist.

Hee, hee. Sean’s judgment in “Reasons to believe creationists are crazy” and btw the basis for that claim: Ross is a crackpot.

“there is no reason whatsoever to invite such a person to speak at a conference that aspires to any degree of seriousness.”

As for philosophy going beyond what science can tell us, swell. I’ve got no objections, always provided you have some basis to speculate. In fact, what passes for philosophy in these discussions is simply theology. The God who is supposed to have fine tuned the universe is simply the God of the Bible or a somewhat etiolated version of the same. Absent faith, why would you think of invoking a God to explain anything? There are literally an infinite number of other possibilities, each equally plausible or rather implausible. Certain Hindus maintain that the Vedas are eternal objects that persist even though worlds and their gods come and go. Maybe the parameters are simply the Veda.

I’m pretty hard line about this, I know. I don’t think it makes much sense to talk about anything but animals or perhaps robots “acting” or “making” as in “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” So far as we know, even to have intentions requires a front end and back end, if not a mouth and a butt. Do you really think that God Highest and Best has HOX genes? And if not, why do you think it is legit to use categories like doing when speaking about anything but mobile organisms?

BTW Loki, it’s being “imaginable” that a wide range of parameters could give rise to life is just a hunch. Barrow and Tipler carefully picked over the subject, citing many authorities, and found fine tuning to be very narrow. Maybe they’re wrong, but you’d have to take their argument on and not just blow it off.

Sad, thanks about the Everything list – I will look. Here’s something like it I found: http://www.nabble.com/Which-mathematical-structure–is–the-universe-in-Physics–td16847937.html.

It’s quite imaginable that almost any set of parameters would allow some mechanism of increasing complexity leading to conscious observer of some form. E.g., when people say that some set would lead to quick collapse of the Universe back to singularity – what do they mean by “quick”? I recall science fiction abt life on the surface of a neutron star – that was “quick” for humans, but enough for local cheela.

Off course, Neil, your general ontological point is still valid. But while i keep reading your comments for years here and can’t sensibly object to some of them, i can’t get rid of the feeling that it’s all some linguistic trickstery

Fine tuning is a metaphor. It may or may not be the case that life is only possible because certain parameters have particular values,

The phrase “fine tuning” may well be a metaphor, however the improbability of our universe being propitious for life, rather than otherwise, is a very real fact that cries out for explanation.

Garth

I also get a kick out of the suggestion that the evidence for the big bang is evidence for a universe that had a beginning in time. The big bang might or might not be the earliest event we can know about, but that doesn’t imply it was either a unique event or the first event. Maybe somebody will come up with plausible physical arguments for the temporal finitude of the universe, but for the moment I’m sticking with Kantian skepticism about that question and the question of the infinity of the world as well.

Garth

1. Our universe seems to combine some basic logical concepts such as the variational principle, combined with arbitrary details such as the value of alpha, which is not “mathematically sensible” (i.e., not equal to one, etc.) since it is about 1/137 – it’s ugly, but just right for life.

2. The whole point (IMHO, and as put forth by Barrow and Tipler in TACP) of noticing anthropic design features of our universe is not e.g. the silly tautology that our being here must be consistent with those parameters being life-friendly. It is rather, the very fact that so many such parameters are life-friendly to begin with (originally argued as being within narrow margins, maybe or maybe not), and why should they be “picked” such as to be like that? The circular argument is dumb: if you’re a realist, then you can imagine the universe not having life-friendly features, and thus no life. So the question is, why are the laws and constants one way, versus another way, “to begin with” (not about time or initial moments per se, but that properties logically precede their effects) versus it having to be X-friendly if X comes about later (that’s Bee’s “so what” moment.)

3. As I have explained and argued before, there is no logical way to pick out some “possible worlds” (as in, sets of laws and constants) to “exist”, but not others. It’s like the number 23 being made in brass numerals alone among all the other numbers, those having none other than airy platonic existence. Indeed, modal realists cogently argue that “existence” can’t be logically defined in any way other than “as numbers” (it from bit), and ironically then all possible worlds must exist. That’s what Max Tegmark implies he believes, but I don’t think he appreciates that it involves accepting cartoon universes too – since they involve descriptions of things in space and time, etc.

I don’t agree with MR, for three main reasons. One is the strange nature of quantum reality, in which the wave function isn’t really representable (has to “collapse” all over the universe when particle is observed.) The second is, the nature of conscious experience, which I don’t think is mere computation. The third is (unexpectedly to most people), that “time” can’t be defined mathematically. Sure, you can draw the coordinates and the world-lines, but there’s no way to represent “flowing time” as we experience it. Really, dy/dx is the same as dy/dt in math. Time, real time, has to be put in by intuition. Some deny it’s existence, with the “block universe” idea, but what the hell are we experiencing? It ironically makes our minds even more magical, to construct a new form of reality.

Oddly, strong AI means there’s no way to think “I am real” in a non-platonic way, so all SAI believers must admit we can’t know if we have “real [material] brains” or are just the program representing our mental activity, in conceptual form (as in “possible chess games.”) It’s an odd expansion of the “brain in a vat” problem, here it’s the “brain in fact” problem.

So, either MR is true and there’s no point in asking “why is the world like this” because all of them “exist” somewhere, or: MR is not true, and some special “virtus” decides what is real and what isn’t. Whether “God” or some principle, there has to be some controlling authority to make some descriptions (“worlds”) real and not others. Logic by itself doesn’t allow a distinction, for such a basic non-predicate claim, to be made. (“Predicate” is like the difference between a circle and a square. However, the difference between a “real” circle (as in “material”), and one that is just “the math” is not accessible to logic.) Think about that “23″ example if you need to.

4. Is it OK to conjecture about a “God” or not? To me, it’s neither probable nor disprovable, and asking for “evidence” is a red herring since this is a matter of “logical argument” at a high level of abstraction, like the argument over modal realism (will skeptics pester Tegmark about that too?) I think it’s a choice to be either philosophically adventurous, or not. It’s just, do you accept our being able to speculate and come to tentative conclusions about what we cannot actually know, or not?

(PS: As you can imagine, I studied and got into “philosophy” a lot – well it isn’t just “metaphysics” because it gets to the heart of what you are *saying* when you try to make a point about *anything*.)

Nick,
You make a very good point here. I agree with you that most people’s discussions of a creator are intrinsically tied to some religious belief. My point is, why can we put those beliefs to a rigorous scientific test?

For example, the Christian faith proclaims that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Other faiths teach that the universe had no beginning – with science, we can rule out those other faiths by demonstrating that the universe indeed did have a beginning – the Big Bang theory confirms that, without much doubt (in fact it takes more faith to believe otherwise), the universe did begin about 13.7 billion years ago.

Not only did the universe have a beginning, but it was also fine tuned to such a degree a natural explanation of this fine tuning requires one to abandon all rationality. For instance, the universe has been expanding ever since it was created 13.7 billion years ago – AND, the rate of expansion, scientists have discovered, must be so precise that (CATCH THIS NOW) if you could change the expansion rate of the universe by as much as 1 part in 10 to the 120th power, no life would be possible ANYWHERE in the entire universe. That is an amazing amount of precision. Not only is the expansion rate fine tuned, but the mass density of the universe is fine tuned such that if you were to change the mass density of the universe by 1 part in 10 to the 60th power, you’d also have no life anywhere and at anytime in the entire universe. There are dozens of other fine tuning characteristics that I could mention in addition to these -such as the strong and weak nuclear force constants – such that if you were to change them ever so slightly, you’d get the same result – NO LIFE. In addition, there is order in the universe – the laws of physics are fixed. If you were to change the speed of light, for example, no life would be possible (we would all be burned up by the increased energy of the sun (E=mc squared – if you increase the c (speed of light) the energy of the sun would increase and destroy us)

So this leads me to a question. Isn’t it rational to inquire about a creator? After all, how does fine tuning occur by chance, without a designer?

Don’t you agree with me that the world of science suddenly becomes orders of magnitude more fascinating to ponder these things? Doesn’t it make science a worth while endeavor? We don’t have to argue about any of these things anymore – we can put everything to the scientific test and throw out faiths that fail.

That’s why I encourage all of you to give Dr. Ross a hearing and to put his testable creation model to the scientific test. If it fails the test, then it can be discarded. But if it doesn’t fail, then it should be allowed to the high table of scientific study and debate.

I wish I could be there at the conference. I am not a scientist, but I do find the fine tuning characteristics of the universe compelling evidence for a divine creator – the God of the Bible.

Thanks for your reply

Respectfully,
Tom Salamone

Many atheists justify their atheism by saying that science can explain naturally everything, which again is a beleif. This beleif is based on a very simple philosophy, i.e. that there are finitely many types of basic constituents and a finite set of laws and if we wait sufficiently long time intelligent beings will appear in the universe. The problem with this simple picture is to explain/understand the natural laws. One has two possibilities: the natural laws are entities separate from spacetime and elementary constituents, or they are just random patterns in the universe evolution. The second possibility implies that everything is a random manifestation, which is not an attractive option.
The first one implies that the natural laws as abstract ideas have an existence separate from spacetime and matter, and hence this leads to a Platonic worldview that the observable universe is not the only thing that exists.

As to which ‘side’ I chose, I chose the one with some evidence and in which god/s are superfluous.

I am also quite happy in saying that there are things I don’t know and might never know, even if I lived forever. Thus I don’t feel the need to posit something for which there is no evidence. However, give me some genuine empirical evidence for god/s, beyond humanity’s need for answers right now, and I will happily consider it.

Now if you wanted a debate on why humanity has this apparent need for creating gods, then I could be interested, if only because of what I consider the cost has been. However, the debate would then be about us and our psychological needs rather than about the existence or not of gods.

Huh? All I did was ask a question, and then I suggested that the answer should be arrived at by scientific means. I’ll repeat the question. Is there, or is there not a creator of the Universe? “Yes there is” and/or “No there isn’t” are the only possible answers. One is right, and one is wrong. Which one? Do you have some reliable method other than a scientific method to arrive at a guaranteed correct answer?

If you decide to take one side instead of the other, your side will always seem like the correct side (even though it’s an illusion) because that is the side you chose. What “smidgen” of evidence did you use to decide your choice?

What I am saying is, why not keep both sides open until you get overwhelming evidence of one side or the other? It’s a “yes or no” question. You can build two models, one for “yes” and one for “no.” You can build them side-by-side favoring neither, until one overwhelms the other, which will happen, because only one answer can be true.

And if you ever get a chance, tell us what causes synchronicity.

The word “synchronicity” was coined by CG Jung. I didn’t even read the Wiki article I linked because I studied this long before computers transmitting wikis were ever invented. You asked for a “smidgen” of evidence, well there it is. How do you scientifically explaing synchronicity?

BTW, what is this reported observation of an aspect of reality you talk about. Fine, if you call belief without evidence, i.e. faith, reality, go for it. Though again I ask, which god or gods should I consider this possible creator when there is no evidence for one. Then again, if we have to consider a creator, who created the creator, i.e. turtles all the way down. Still doesn’t compute.