High School Student, Forbidden From Wearing Rosary For His Grandma

[Mav88]

I prefer the conclusions of scientists over trolls.

ok, first of all I am a scientist, secondly YOU brought up Weinberg who again says, in complete agreement with my original statement..

MR. WEINBERG: I don't see any clear evidence that the laws of nature or the constants of nature as we know them are fine tuned to allow life. I mean, certainly the laws of nature do allow life. But I don't see anything clearly in them that looks like a spectacular coincidence. I'm not convinced by any of those arguments.

There are some things that are quite mysterious in our understanding of nature as we know it now. There is a constant called the "cosmological constant", which if I didn't know anything I would make an estimate of what its magnitude would be just on the basis of guess work from what I know about the laws of nature. The correct value is less than that estimated value by something like 120 orders of magnitude. That looks like some kind of fine tuning. And we don't know. It may be that that number is simply zero, and it's zero for some fundamental reason that we will discover. And so it isn't fine tuned. It's also possible that the universe is bigger and more complicated than we had thought, and that what we call the universe, is just part of the universe, and that what we call the laws of nature differ from one part to another, and that we are living in a part of the universe where what we call the laws of nature, including the value of this constant, allow life to appear. In that case we wouldn't imagine that any supernatural agency fine tuned the laws and constants to make us possible, any more that we imagine that a supernatural agency arranged that the Earth had a temperature which allows life. Out there, there are doubtless millions of planets in the galaxy, and we live on one that allows life. That doesn't imply to me that it has been specially arranged to allow life.

Now don't try and 'tell me what it means', you know perfectly well what he means, and as you said yourself, don't interject your troll-like opinion on it.

 

[jem]

Quote from Mav88:

I prefer the conclusions of scientists over trolls.

ok, first of all I am a scientist, secondly YOU brought up Weinberg who again says, in complete agreement with my original statement..




Now don't try and 'tell me what it means', you know perfectly well what he means, and as you said yourself, don't interject your troll-like opinion on it.

that was a quote about stu... I took it out before I saw you reply.

 

[Mav88]

How do you respond to critics who see the anthropic approach as quasi-religious or unscientific?

I cannot put it better than Steven Weinberg did in a recent paper:
1. Susskind from your cite...

How do you respond to critics who see the anthropic approach as quasi-religious or unscientific?

Finally, I have heard the objection that, in trying to explain why the laws of nature are so well suited for the appearance and evolution of life, anthropic arguments take on some of the flavor of religion. I think that just the opposite is the case. Just as Darwin and Wallace explained how the wonderful adaptations of living forms could arise without supernatural intervention, so the string landscape may explain how the constants of nature that we observe can take values suitable for life without being fine-tuned by a benevolent creator. I found this parallel well understood in a surprising place, a New York Times op-ed article by Christoph Schönborn, Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna. His article concludes as follows:

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human nature by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.

susskind is DEFENDING his anthropic multiverse principle, are really that dense?

 

[jem]

"That looks like some kind of fine tuning. And we don't know. It may be that that number is simply zero, and it's zero for some fundamental reason that we will discover. And so it isn't fine tuned. It's also possible that the universe is bigger and more complicated than we had thought, and that what we call the universe, is just part of the universe, and that what we call the laws of nature differ from one part to another, and that we are living in a part of the universe where what we call the laws of nature, including the value of this constant, allow life to appear. In that case we wouldn't imagine that any supernatural agency fine tuned the laws and constants to make us possible, any more that we imagine that a supernatural agency arranged that the Earth had a temperature which allows life. Out there, there are doubtless millions of planets in the galaxy, and we live on one that allows life. That doesn't imply to me that it has been specially arranged to allow life"
--

you asked me to explain it... so here it is.

As of now we have no explanation for the incredibly appearance of tuning in the comological constant.

he is not sure how we are so lucky that the energies which repel an contract cancel each out. We could have expanded forever or crunched.... but it is amazing to see this balance.

It could be that dark energy is unwinding toward zero and we are just in a sweet spot right now. And that our universe cease to exist.

it could be that we have 10 to the 500 other regions or universe (depending on your nomelcature) where the constants are different... in which case we just happen to be living in the one that is tuned for life.

If the above are correct you would chalk our tuning to the Universal Anthropic Principal the same way we can chalk up the earth being just right to a plantary anthropic principal.


But if the above are not correct.... how would one explain such a tuning?

 

[Mav88]

jem, I am done anyway, this stuff just doesn't matter much to me anymore. There are more urgent political issues that have real impact on my life and that is where I want to focus this type of energy.

I don't dislike Christians, I mostly like them and get along, but once in a while...

 

[jem]

Quote from Mav88:

susskind is DEFENDING his anthropic multiverse principle, are really that dense?

If suskind has to defend a speculation about a multiverse which he made based on the fact there are 10 to the 500 solutions to string theory...


why must he do so...

because of the existence of fine tunings... get it.

the tunings are driving the need for the explanation.

 

[jem]

Quote from Mav88:

jem, I am done anyway, this stuff just doesn't matter much to me anymore. There are more urgent political issues that have real impact on my life and that is where I want to focus this type of energy.

I don't dislike Christians, I mostly like them and get along, but once in a while...

we are not having christian argument... this is about the state of cosmology. as a scientist you should understand that...

 

[Mav88]

we are not having christian argument... this is about the state of cosmology. as a scientist you should understand that...

Christians are the prime promoters of fine tuning = a creator argument, but ok, you win on that one.

No impact on my life really, I enjoy thinking about it, but in the end any disagreement has little influence on my life. There might be a tiff over high school books but I can live with that level of acrimony.

On the other hand if you are a leftist and are out to change my country, and it appears you are winning, I'll fight you over every scrap..

 

[stu]

Quote from jem:
Lol you were the troll who misrepresented the definition of agnostic.
I was the one who basically stated what you are now writing... Why the fuck did you argue with that and bullshit about the definition of agnostic?

Agnostic doesn't fit with science. So you're equally irascible when you concede. No surprise there.
Now you agree with what I wrote, which disagrees with what you were trying to 'claim by dictionary', so you think what I wrote - was what you said.
Lol. honestly, You couldn't make this up.
Only in creationism.

 

[stu]

Quote from jem:
Why lie about science Stu? Why turn conditional statements into absolute statements and mis represent Hawking? What is the purpose?

It's a dead beat cheap and unintelligent tactic trying to keep blaming me for the things you are doing.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,"
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

There is nothing conditional about those statements. I'm not the one turning them into anything but what they say.

Quote from jem:
Hawking says you may explain the fine tunings by coupling the speculation of a multiverse with his speculation of top down cosmology... within that speculation you could say Gravity selected your line of universes.

The Hawking-Hertog paper you jumped onto, along with a bunch of ill-formed conclusions all from some religious website no doubt; with which you keep making false claims, have mislead you into misrepresenting the whole picture. Infantile religious inferences for some imaginary tuner/designer/creator have no affinity to science.

You're the one using Hawking for authority, so you might do better understanding what he says..
Hawking does not state 'Gravity and not God' because of a multiverse or string theory. The top-down approach paper you keep pulling up is suggesting it can help string theory possibly become falsifiable. Top down is not relying on string theory and mutiverse itself.

Basically Stephen Hawking's proposal is the universe (not multiverse) in a "no boundary state" has all possible histories, resulting in the universe existing as it is - due to the laws of physics.

You should learn once and for all, religion into science won't go.