Intelligent Design is not creationism

[jem]

Quote from futurecurrents:

So jem, I assume you think God fine-tuned the universe. Is that correct?

It's a fair assumption... but I am not injecting my assumptions into this conversation. I let the scientists and the science do the talking.

If scientists who do not believe in God have the scientific integrity to point out our universe appears finely tuned... I not going to then say therefore these guys are saying there is a Tuner. I am perfectly willing to accept they feel the multiverse is one of the potential explanations for the fine tuning. (although having once studied some physics I had always hoped these guys would produce a theory of everything. This speculation about almost infinite solutions seems a bit untidy to me.)

 

[jcl]

Quote from jem:

bravo... after 7 years you accept the universe is finely tuned.

now lets work on the explanations....

How would you calculate "highly plausible".... when the multiverse is pure speculation and string theory is just a collection of ideas.

Have we observed an alternate universe... have we been testing for one... have we found it.

Has string theory become a proven scientific theory?

A scientific theory can not be proven. It can only be falsified. Proof only exists in mathematics.

A scientific theory is considered valid, or "highly plausible" if you want, when it is consistent with all observations, and when it gives a better or simpler explanation than competing theories.

This is so far the case for string theory and multiple universes.

This does not mean that string theory is "proven", as anytime a new and better theory can come up. However string theory gives natural explanations for the big bang and for the fine tuning of our local universum.

 

[jem]

Quote from jcl:

A scientific theory can not be proven. It can only be falsified. Proof only exists in mathematics.

A scientific theory is considered valid, or "highly plausible" if you want, when it is consistent with all observations, and when it gives a better or simpler explanation than competing theories.

This is so far the case for string theory and multiple universes.

This does not mean that string theory is "proven", as anytime a new and better theory can come up. However string theory gives natural explanations for the big bang and for the fine tuning of our local universum.

penrose stated string theory is just a collection of ideas.

Scientific theories produce testible, falsifiable results. The idea of multiverse is pure conjecture.

String theory itself is probably not even a scientific theory.
The math suggests there could be 10 to the 500 solutions or ways a universe could form.

Its pure conjecture to say those solutions are actually real.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/b...w/15powell.html

Although string theory resists translation into ordinary language, its central conceit boils down to this: All the different particles and forces in the universe are composed of wriggling strands of energy whose properties depend solely on the mode of their vibration. Understand the properties of those strands, the thinking once went, and you will understand why the universe is the way it is. Recent work, most notably by Joseph Polchinski of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has dashed that hope. The latest version of string theory (now rechristened M-theory for reasons that even the founder of M-theory cannot explain) does not yield a single model of physics. Rather, it yields a gargantuan number of models: about 10(to the) 500, give or take a few trillion.

Not one to despair over lemons, Susskind finds lemonade in that insane-sounding result. He proposes that those 10500 possibilities represent not a flaw in string theory but a profound insight into the nature of reality. Each potential model, he suggests, corresponds to an actual place - another universe as real as our own. In the spirit of kooky science and good science fiction, he coins new names to go with these new possibilities. He calls the enormous range of environments governed by all the possible laws of physics the "Landscape." The near-infinite collection of pocket universes described by those various laws becomes the "megaverse."

Susskind eagerly embraces the megaverse interpretation because it offers a way to blow right through the intelligent design challenge...

 

[jem]

http://spritzophrenia.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/the-multiverse-returns-or-daddy-is-there-a-god/


Universe/multiverse. If you are an atheist, the multiverse hypothesis is a godsend. As cosmologist Bernard Carr told Discover magazine, “If there is only one universe you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.” Like the God hypothesis (or Linus’s Great Pumpkin hypothesis), the multiverse hypothesis is a tidy catch-all for getting out of every thorny dilemma of probability: Life’s beginning? “With God the multiverse all things are possible.” Consciousness? ”Ditto.” If you adopt belief in The Great Pumpkin the multiverse, it makes every implausibility inevitable. But how the multiverse multiplies itself, or ever arrived at its spectacular powers of creation, who knows? If atheists have a god in the closet, it’s Fortuna, their Great Pumpkin.

 

[jcl]

May I suggest that you come up with own responses, instead of just copying/pasting from other people's websites? Otherwise I feel like not discussing with a human person, but with a copy machine.

There are certainly some justified critics of string theory, but it's of course a scientific theory, and scientists agree that it's a very likely candidate for a general theory of all physical forces. There are other competing theories, but I can assure you that none of them is based on godly miracles.

And what does this matter anyway? Do you really want to say that God exists because string theory is wrong?

 

[good ole boy]

Quote from jem:

http://spritzophrenia.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/the-multiverse-returns-or-daddy-is-there-a-god/


Universe/multiverse. If you are an atheist, the multiverse hypothesis is a godsend. As cosmologist Bernard Carr told Discover magazine, “If there is only one universe you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.” Like the God hypothesis (or Linus’s Great Pumpkin hypothesis), the multiverse hypothesis is a tidy catch-all for getting out of every thorny dilemma of probability: Life’s beginning? “With God the multiverse all things are possible.” Consciousness? ”Ditto.” If you adopt belief in The Great Pumpkin the multiverse, it makes every implausibility inevitable. But how the multiverse multiplies itself, or ever arrived at its spectacular powers of creation, who knows? If atheists have a god in the closet, it’s Fortuna, their Great Pumpkin.

The notion that the universe is fine-tuned - by design - for carbon based life is eternally speculative and naive at best. Had the constants of matter been different and a wildly different universe existed, one cannot say that intelligent life as we don't know it could not exist. To say that because science has not answered why the universe is the way it is is no more evidence of a Supernatural creator as an unsolved crime is of evidence that a ghost committed it.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from good ole boy:

The notion that the universe is fine-tuned - by design - for carbon based life is eternally speculative ...

Naw, we're on the verge of a definitive answer here. Only another 4k posts at most will be required.

 

[jem]

Quote from jcl:

May I suggest that you come up with own responses, instead of just copying/pasting from other people's websites? Otherwise I feel like not discussing with a human person, but with a copy machine.

There are certainly some justified critics of string theory, but it's of course a scientific theory, and scientists agree that it's a very likely candidate for a general theory of all physical forces. There are other competing theories, but I can assure you that none of them is based on godly miracles.

And what does this matter anyway? Do you really want to say that God exists because string theory is wrong?

Look I have been put through the drill. I have answered questions and I have explained this stuff many times.

But, I am not an authority.
I cut and paste... Hawking, Susskind, Weinberg, Carr and Nobel prize winners because they are the experts.

You know Prof Penrose... Stu said you did not understand density functions.

And Prof Susskind these guys said you did not really understand what you were writing when you stated that the universe appears finely tuned....

Or Prof emeritus Hawking, those smart guys at et did not think you know what you were writing when you said that in the traditional bottom up approach to physics... you have a choice.. either a fine tuning as if tuned by an Agency or eternal inflation which predicts nothing.

I would say... can you believe people stroll into a thread, in an area of physics and know nothing about and presume you guys did not apply 10 grade stats to your cosmology.

 

[jem]

Let me be clear, these guys state there is incredible fine tuning (penrose) or the appearance of fine tuning... I am not saying these guys are saying therefore there is Tuner...

Hawking and Susskind suggest a multiverse could if proven explain the fine Tuning.

Penrose is tough I have to study him more. He states the tuning is so precise... the multiverse can not even explain it.

Just a background on Penrose...




<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WhGdVMBk6Zo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[jcl]

At first, Penrose is not talking at all about the same fine tuning that you mean. He's talking about his new model of Big Bang cycles, and with "fine tuning" he refers to the entropy curve. If the entropy increased since the Big Bang, it must have been at a minimum back then, and this minimum would correspond to a highly ordered state that he considers extremely unlikely.

Going into details of his model would be far off topic here, but it has nothing to do with godly miracles. He assumes that singularities change the global entropy, and thus solve his entropy problem. Most scientist's don't agree with this solution for various reasons, and also don't agree that an entropy problem exists at all. His model is therefore one of the many outsider theories and not convincing to mainstream cosmology.

The fine tuning that you mean, which allowed that complex structures such as life can evolve in the universe, has not a probability of 1/10 ^ 10 ^ 123. It has a far higher probability of about 1/10 ^ 15. Admittedly this probability is hard to estimate from physical constants, but it does not matter anyway, as when multiple universes exist, their number is infinite. Therefore, the probability of life evolution is one hundred percent, and there are even infinite many universes in which forms of life must exist.