Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 13, 2019 7:41:05 GMT -8
Hahahaha. That sounds a lot like my attempts to read science books (especially physics and cosmology) meant for the layman. But you can get the gist of it in a well-written book. And the gist of it is that the stupendous marvel of reality tends to get swept under the carpet in a deluge of numbers. We clearly ought to be trying to discover all we can about the universe. But to the armchair observer, such as myself, there is a clear imbalance as the stress is put on outer space at the complete expense of inner space. And we could define that “inner space” by what science had originally been called “Natural Philosophy.” But atheism (in the guise of materialism) has made that politically and socially verboten, even if that same internal aspect — inner space — remains. These scientists will eventually measure the age of the universe (or they think they will) to the nearest ten thousand years. But they have nothing to say about the mind, about the inherent immaterial aspects of reality, about meaning, and ultimate causes. Now, obviously, we don’t expect scientists to advance any particular religious view. That’s not their job. And yet they are stuck in advancing the religious view of atheism in the guise of materialism. The end result is that they keep telling us more and more about less and less. Yes, keep us posted on that book: The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? One reviewer writes: The multi-verse is a lazy cop-out. Truer words have never been spoken. As for the “mathematical odds” theory, if the work of Douglas Axe and others is reliable, the odds clearly don’t work out. For the layman such as myself, I can’t prove that. But I do highly suspect that “mathematical odds” is another cop-out, if not really a lazy one. The universe is so vast, it’s a common-sense idea. But if the math doesn’t work (and apparently it’s not even close), then it’s just another pseudo-answer. SETI spends all that time and money looking for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. But it should be clear looking at the cell that we have found that. These systems are amazingly complex, complete with little manufactured micro-machines that perform various functions. Everything I’ve said above is forbidden thought. That’s where we are today. And perhaps that’s why a book such as this would prove interesting. And notice that video didn’t once mention evolution. That word would haven’t explained anything and credit is due to the presenter for being honest. |
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Post by timothylane on Sept 13, 2019 17:14:47 GMT -8
Davies is now getting into the anthropic principle aka Goldilocks enigma. It was first noticed by Fred Hoyle over 60 years ago when he was studying the creation of carbon from helium in solar furnaces. He concluded that there would be little carbon due to the complexity (it involves 3 helium atoms hitting very close to each other in time and space). But he found a resonance effect that allowed unstable beryllium atoms to last long enough for another helium atom to strike, creating stable carbon-12. He realized that the parameters had to be just right for this to work.
Davies then looks at the various basic forces (electromagnetic, gravitational, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear). If any of these were a little stronger or a little weaker, life would be much less likely for various reasons (and intelligent life extremely unlikely). We could have ended up with too little helium, which was necessary to build up larger nuclei. But conversely we could have ended up with too much helium, and thus not enough hydrogen for stars to last long enough -- perhaps 100 million years instead of several billion.
Some stars primarily transfer heat to the surface by convection, which is believed to be essential for planetary formation. ("Believed" is the operative word. We still don't know how planets are created.) Others do so by radiation, and those can become supernovas, which are needed to create heavier elements (nothing heavier than iron can be created otherwise). So life as we know it requires both, which means gravity must have a very limited range of strength.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 13, 2019 18:10:53 GMT -8
So much mystery could be cleared up in an instant if we looked out into the night sky and saw a group of stars lined up that spelled out “I am that I am.” Or even “Eat at Joe’s” for that matter.
We seem to live in an impersonal universe that has the fingerprints of being personally designed. Deism may be scoffed at by the faithful, but it is a logical way of looking at things. Something magnificent has wound up the clock and it plays out — in new born babies, Auschwitz, love, murder, happiness, and madness. The seeds of theism and atheism are bound up in our day-to-day experiences and we choose shades of one or the other depending upon our disposition.
The Son of Man is said to have walked among us when “I am that I am” was indeed written for us to see. What he have today, however, are far too many sons of bitches. It makes faith difficult for many.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 14, 2019 16:20:01 GMT -8
Davies looks into a couple of other factors. One concerns the weight of two basic subatomic particles, the proton and neutron. The neutron weighs slightly more than a proton, an electron, and an anti-neutrino. This enables it to decay spontaneously rather than requiring energy. This affects the balance between the two. If instead the neutron were slightly smaller than a proton, a proton might spontaneously decay into a neutron, a positron, and a neutrino. It's hard to form elements without protons. By contrast, helium can be formed purely from hydrogen atoms without neutrons (initially): four protons plus four electrons combine into two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons.
The other factor involves that great fudge factor, dark energy. Computations of how much dark energy there is or should be (as I said, comprehensibility can be difficult with advanced physics) are high by a factor of 10 to the 120th power. Dark energy has an expansionary effect, so if there were a little more -- say, 10 to the 119th lower than the computations -- the universe would be rather empty.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 14, 2019 17:21:12 GMT -8
I’ll believe dark energy exists when I see it. I smell a rat. Same with inflationary theory and string theory, not to mention the multi-verse.
What we’re running into is mathematics getting ahead of reality. To some extent, the mathematics has worked in predicting the various particle discovered in The Standard Model.
But I smell a rat about this other stuff.
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Post by timothylane on Sept 14, 2019 18:40:30 GMT -8
It terms out the multiverse isn't quite what I was thinking of. My thought, no doubt reflecting my long-time fondness for alternate histories, was a series of different, unconnected universes. This can be very interesting to speculate about, but it has no scientific validity. (A friend of mine at Purdue once made this exact objection to tachyons -- if you can't detect them, they aren't scientific however interesting they may be as a speculation.)
But the desperate anti-theists are cleverer than that. Using the (unproven) theory of inflation, they theorize a multiverse of pocket universes physically separate from each other. These might have different parameters, or even different laws of physics perhaps. Of course, this is ultimately as scientific as the alternate histories, but they can write equations that support it. Never mind that there's no proof, probably no possibility of proof. But it allows them to escape the problem of the Goldilocks Enigma. Do the convenient laws and parameters indicate a Designer? Why, no, there are enough pocket universes that somewhere one of them could lead to us. Of course that's the one we're in, and the only one we can be directly aware of, so that explains the Goldilocks Enigma.
When you get right down to it, the multiverse is as scientific as God, but it sounds more scientific, which is enough for the anti-Designers.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Sept 14, 2019 21:17:25 GMT -8
I don’t know if there is Purgatory or not. I don’t know if angels watch over us. But the pining for the multiverse (via the mental gymnastics you wonderfully described) is just Peter Pan dressed up in fancy mathematics meant to bamboozle….if only themselves.
I think it’s much more logical and worthy to talk about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin then this multiverse stuff. Angels makes sense. Bubble universes to satisfy the egos of cranky atheists doesn't.
Exactly. That is the one and only reason for these highly speculative “theories” — which aren’t scientific theories, for sure, because (like “climate change”) you can’t disprove it….or prove it.
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Post by timothylane on Nov 27, 2019 14:46:29 GMT -8
The Babylon Bee has reported that a new study has found that the Apple iPhone evolved gradually over billions of years instead of being designed by a mythical being called "Steve Jobs". The link is:
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Nov 26, 2021 14:27:17 GMT -8
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