Numbers added to your quote below are for convenience correlating my response.
Quote from jem:
KJ I just listened to your first nyas presentation.
1. Did you hear Susskind's analogy to the world of the big brained fish. do you hear is little joke about the phyisfish who could not accept the Ikthropic Principle because they would lose their funding.
he was telling your there are goups of scientists supporting the conclusion of design.
And but for the fact his big brained fish saved he day by bringing in string theory-- and polchensky finding that there could be a billion parallel universes. You might have to admit design. Remember he said a million universes were not enough. To what do you think he was referring?
2. Your conclusion regarding the significance of what Weinberg predicted is exactly opposite of what Susskind said Weinbergs findings meant according to Weinberg.
You wrote "I realize that the availability of a cosmological constant as a rationale for suggesting universal design is compelling to theological thinkers. "
3. You seem to complete disregard the fact that I gave you a quote from susskind where he noted 5 well regarded Physicsts (two nobel prize winners) who say the Anthropic Principle should be taken seriously.
4. You also seem to disregard the fact that I have given you quotes from Susskind in which he states the universe looks spectacularly designed.
You disregarded the fact that the author of one of the articles is a professor of physics who told you that the universe looks designed if you do not believe their billions of universes.
Your conclusion that the Cosmological constant is an artifact of our existence not a cause shows that you are willing to completely ignore the whole point of the debate.
The constant goes out to 121 places. and it has to so that we may exist. Now what is the likelyhood that after a big bang a universe would end up being just so perfectly fine tuned for our existence.
Susskind and I have told you that over and over. Your universe would be impossibly lucky. And science understands the that impossible luck equals design.
5. However, string theory comes to save the day by saying there are bilions of others landscapes or universes that might exist. consequently your universe is not lucky, it is just the random one that is destined to work.
6. Now I have explained to you the significance of the constant perhaps you would like to explain your theory of multiple trials of universe creation to confirm significance of cosmological constant.
7. I can tell you right now as you prove more universes the constant becomes an "artifact of our existence" and as you prove fewer universe the constant becomes a bar code for a designer.
1. Susskind was making a joke with the "phish."
2. Weinberg's postulate is, that in order for the universe to become less homogeneous so that stars could form but not be torn apart by repulsive forces, that the vacuum density would have to be 2x10-122, which happens to be the amount of between those two states of matter. Weinberg was suggesting that the cosmological constant is simply an artifact, because he deduced its value from other observations of the universe, rather than by directly measuring it.
That's all that Susskind says. His presentation was created as an introduction to Susskind's book, "String Theory and the 'Illusion of Intelligent Design.'" That doesn't seem like a ringing endorsement of intelligent design to me.
The cosmological constant can be either a cause or a result -- but either way, it's not proof of any predicate condition -- chance or design. It has no weight as a causal factor, any more than the closing value of the NASDAQ is a cause of market direction -- it's just a number of the state of the market (or the universe, in this instance).
3. At the end of the lecture, Susskind discusses the positions of the most important modern physicists, including Stephen Hawking, and his comment was that Hawking takes the anthropic principle seriously in the same way as Susskind -- because it suggests an inflationary universe with multiple pockets of space -- some livable -- some not. Hawking does not support intelligent design.
4. Those quotes were taken out of context and were meant by Susskind as a prelude to his explanation of why the appearance of a spectacularly designed universe is just an "illusion." Furthermore, you are now disregarding the fact that I previously provided you with an audio interview with Susskind where he expressly states that he expects creationists to use these very quotes out of context to misrepresent his position -- which is exactly what you are doing now.
5. String theory is not the only solution to multiple universes, and there are still a good number of cosmologists who reject this solution. They seek a unified field theory for a unique universe, but they do not impute design into the existence of this universe, merely because the cosmological constant is what it is. Instead, these physicists also view the constant as merely an artifact -- nothing more nor less than a market indicator of the state of the universe at the close of the big bang.
6. There's little point in my repeating simple probability examples, because you'll just reject them as you have previously.
7. You can tell me all you want about universe creation, but the fundamental reality is that unless you can pull the trigger on the big bang more than once, you cannot predict whether or not the cosmological constant is more or less likely to be any particular number, because probability theory does not permit an outcome where there is only one trial.
The probability of a particular outcome of a trial which has already occurred and which cannot be repeated is 100%. Ask anyone who teaches a probability course. Thus, the cosmological constant is 100% likely to be exactly as it is currently measured by chance, because you cannot perform the test a second time, and you know the outcome of the test which you already have conducted.
You simply have no means of knowing, if you were to start the big bang again, whether the universe would coalesce into existence as we know it, or whether it would do coalesce into something different.
Einstein's tensor equations (from which most of cosmological theory descends) depend on the speed of light in a vacuum being as currently measured. If that speed is different when you restart the universe, then everything which follows will be different. Furthermore, Einstein's General Relativity equations produce a certain gravitational space-time distortion, which might also be measured differently when you restart the universe.
Given a difference in either one of these two factors, the conditions required to produce galaxies and stars would be different, and that would mean a different cosmological constant would be necessary to produce conditions favorable to human life.
OK, I've just demonstrated that string theory is not required to disprove a fine-tuned universe. So, we don't need to argue that anymore.
