A finely tuned universe that points to a God.

[Smidlee]

Given what you've posted so far, it doesn't appear that you have a particularly good understanding of evolution.

What's that smell? Oh I know that smell , that's the smell of fear.

"Yet the mere mention of the EES often evokes an emotional, even hostile, reaction among evolutionary biologists. Too often, vital discussions descend into acrimony, with accusations of muddle or misrepresentation. Perhaps haunted by the spectre of intelligent design, evolutionary biologists wish to show a united front to those hostile to science. Some might fear that they will receive less funding and recognition if outsiders — such as physiologists or developmental biologists — flood into their field."
Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? : Nature News & Comment

 

[Archaeopteryx]

What's that smell? Oh I know that smell , that's the smell of fear.

Sometimes, when words fail, a GIF may convey the appropriate response:

 

[JimFit]

Yes, you asserted that life was more important to God, but you did so by assuming that conscious beings are only interested in other conscious beings. I showed you that this was not true. A conscious and intelligent designer may be interested in non-conscious entities, such as stars and galaxies. Such a designer may have created the universe solely for this purpose, not for life.

Your whole argument is destroyed by the fact that God could easily create a Universe full with black holes. If he did liked Black Holes why did he created planets as well? If the distribution of matter was higher it would have a Universe FILLED with black holes, nothing else in it.

You seem to confuse a lot of abstract things in this argument. Suppose that there is a human that cares ONLY about unconscious things, wouldn't this human had to be born? The fact that he was born it means that a mother cared to give birth to a conscious being and love it more than herself, the fact that we exist it proves that the first humans chose something conscious than something unconscious. Observation on something unconscious also doesn't mean that the observer thinks that it was not a creation, there are people that care more about art than human life but at the same time they know that they observe something that it was created by a conscious being therefor their deepest interest is not about the paint and the canvas but because of the inspiration this piece offers.

Another thing that you forget, if you imply that God exists and you say that He is conscious automatically you say that consciousness is immaterial, therefor our consciousness never dies and continues to the next life something that black holes couldn't do because they are finite.

So? They don't have to be conscious to be the source of the designer's fascination.

If they were in the source of the designer's fascination they would continue to the next life like our souls.

No, because you haven't argued for this point. You've merely asserted it. I've been asking you to elaborate on it further.

I don't have to, it is a scientific fact. Will you replace physical cosmology with your faith that we are not in God's interest? You seem very desperate.

No, I said that you had your work cut out for you in showing that God is conscious. But never-mind...

god

noun \ˈgäd also ˈgȯd\ God : the perfect and all-powerful being that is worshipped especially by Christians, Jews, and Muslims as the one who created and rules the universe



Since when a being is not conscious?

You've missed the forest for the trees. My point was simply that conscious beings can be interested by non-conscious entities. That's why your argument that God must have an intrinsic interest in conscious beings is flawed. He need not have any such interest. He could, for all we know, be a recluse.

What are you describing here is not an absolute interest for non conscious entities, someone that observes must first take care of himself in order to have the power to observe, the fact that he does it it means that he takes cares of himself which is a conscious being.

Most criminologists don't suspect ghosts as the perpetrators of crime.

Of course they suspect the ghost in the machine! That's the point!

Ghost in the machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I haven't locked him inside in anything. You've ruled him out as a cause. I'm just asking you to be consistent with your first premise.

God created the law like causes like effects because you can't have infinite causes.There is always a beginning even in to that scenario.

You don't be seem following. If the beginning of the universe is also the beginning of time, then there was no time in which the universe did not exist. It has always existed.

God had to create first time and space.

No, you've conjured yet another strawman, not a particularly good one either. I'm saying that we don't know if nothingness was ever a real state of affairs, which is quite different from saying that the universe popped out of nothingness.

Please prove me that the Physical Universe existed forever in any condition.

Incidentally, isn't that what you believe? That God magically conjured the universe out of nothing?

God is not nothing. God is Everything because He is Eternal therefor he didn't create the Universe out of Nothing but out of Anything. Atheists use also this argument, anything can happen from an infinite nothingness but they forget that there is no determinism into randomness to determine an event (lottery machine).

I'm not a mind-body dualist. However, even if we take dualism for granted, how can a mind make a decision to create if it exists in a timeless state?

Discovery of quantum vibrations in 'microtubules' inside brain neurons supports controversial theory of consciousness -- ScienceDaily

[1407.2627] Super-intuition and correlations with the future in Quantum Consciousness

"Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them," says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and member of the team.

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory -- ScienceDaily

So every single model of cosmogony is wrong because unless it implies a beginning from nothing?

The simple answer is yes.
Vilenkin’s verdict: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

 

[Smidlee]

God is not nothing. God is Everything because He is Eternal therefor he didn't create the Universe out of Nothing but out of Anything. Atheists use also this argument, anything can happen from an infinite nothingness but they forget that there is no determinism into randomness to determine an event (lottery machine).

I would add God created the universe just like man created the mini-universe named "Frozen" . It was spoken into existence. It even mentions in Psalms 8:3 "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained." It just as simple for God to speak the universe into existence as it is for man to type on a keyboard with his fingers to create "Frozen".

I wonder if atheist considers the creation of "Frozen" as magic. It's as if "Frozen" just popped into existence.

 

[lasthero]

Some might fear that they will receive less funding and recognition if outsiders — such as physiologists or developmental biologists — flood into their field."

Can you provide any evidence that this is the case?

 

[JimFit]

It's the same thing. It's like saying that me walking across the room really happens, but I'm incapable of walking down the street.

If it is the same thing why there is no evidence? Why this world famous Chemist support the opposite?

I see it as an argument against a God who created the universe solely to be used by Humans.

The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability

http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard Forum paper draft for posting.pdf

Irrelevant to my point.

Its not irrelevant, please focus on my point.

If it is nothingness, then there is nothing which can hold the property of being random. Nothingness cannot be random!

No! Nothingness IS THE DEFINITION OF RANDOMNESS. Why? Because something truly random isn't bound by anything! Not even spacetime! If you support that there must be something for randomness to exist then you must present me something that behaves randomly in the Universe.

And there is plenty in the universe which is random. Brownian motion can't be predicted.

The answer to your questions depends on what you consider to be truly random. If you consider something that you can't predict truly random, then yes, Brownian motion can be considered truly random.
Having said that, most people, especially in science circles don't find the premise 'things one can't predict' sufficient to define something as truly random. I would argue that Brownian motion is not truly random, because if you were able to measure the initial positions and velocity vectors of all the particles involved, you could calculate the outcome of your Brownian movement. The problem is that you don't usually know all the initial conditions and therefore can only treat the problem as if it was truly random. Science today, by looking for correlations, is making the assumptions that things are not truly random. Otherwise, correlations would not be observable, and therefore the ability to predict things based on probable causes would not exist.

Life evolved to suit the conditions that was already here. You are making a logical fallacy if you claim that we must be designed just because we are able to survive in the universe.

And again these conditions were determined by the Laws of Physics and the Constants of the Universe, the Fine Tuning argument goes before the beginning of Evolution.
God didn't had to create each planet or each animal separate, He is Omniscience, he knew how things will go.

Evolution Is Deterministic, Not Random, Biologists Conclude From Multi-species Study -- ScienceDaily

No you couldn't.

I could create a robot that makes very specific movements to stir the oatmeal and raisins, and I could tell you exactly where I put the raisin and you could know exactly how the robot moves. You still wouldn't be able to predict the position of the raisin after five minutes.

That's pseudorandomness, we could predict everything if we knew everything around the phenomenon.

This sounds like technobabble to me. You're just stringing together a bunch of phrases like "M-theory" and "105000 different universes" in an attempt to sound impressive.

That's how many universes the string theory let to exist.

BTW, if there really are that many different universes, each with its own different values, then it would seem obvious that some would be better suited for life than others. Life, of course, is only going to evolve in those universes where the fundamentals of nature are such that life is capable of evolving. And therefore, any life forms that are intelligent enough to ask, "Why are the fundamentals fine tuned for us" are only going to exist in the universes that have suitable conditions! Your own argument damages your point that there is some fine tuning entity.

Ahhhh....
This is the fallacy from possibility. It’s not rational to believe:

1. x is more probable than y
2. y is possible
3. therefore I believe y


What you have is an argument from ignorance:

1. I don’t know what other universes are like
2. Therefore, we are here by chance
It doesn’t follow.


We Theists have an argument from analogy:

1. like causes spawn like effects
2. intelligence is the only thing that can fine-tune
3. the universe is fine-tuned
4. therefore the universe is the result of intelligence


The only argument the atheists have is a mere wish:

1. like causes spawn like effects
2. intelligence is the only thing that can fine-tune
3. the universe is fine-tuned
4. I wish like causes did not spawn like effects or I wish fine-tuning were the result of chance.
5. therefore, we are here by chance.

Oh, please? The first cause argument? Are you serious? Go and learn some actual arguments!

You imply a cause instead of creation, you can't have infinite causes.

 

[Kylie]

I do know before evolution can affect population it has to effect individuals first. This is as dumb as saying cancer doesn't effect individual cells but the body. Cancer doesn't have an effect on the body until the cancer grows so large.

You are betraying your ignorance.

INDIVIDUALS DON'T EVOLVE.

 

[Kylie]

If it is the same thing why there is no evidence? Why this world famous Chemist support the opposite?

There's plenty of evidence that evolution is the same from one generation to the next compared to the evolution of a new species from an ancestral one.

The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability

http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard Forum paper draft for posting.pdf

The fine tuning argument is garbage.

Fine-tuning argument - Iron Chariots Wiki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP-dWQsdZ4U

Addressing and Refuting the Cosmological Fine Tuning Argument for Design ~ ExChristian.Net

Its not irrelevant, please focus on my point.

Yes it is irrelevant. You never said that whatever the universe was made for had to be conscious. You are now trying to change your argument. My point is that the vast majority of the universe is in fact HOSTILE and IMMEDIATELY DEADLY to our life. If the universe was made for us, why would so much of it be deadly to us? That's like me building a house for you, installing deadly traps in each room except for one, and then saying that the whole house was built for you.

No! Nothingness IS THE DEFINITION OF RANDOMNESS. Why? Because something truly random isn't bound by anything! Not even spacetime! If you support that there must be something for randomness to exist then you must present me something that behaves randomly in the Universe.

From Google:

Randomness
Randomness means lack of pattern or predictability in events. Randomness suggests a non-order or non-coherence in a sequence of symbols or steps, such that there is no intelligible pattern or combination.​

How exactly do you arrange NOTHING in a way to leave it disordered? How do you take NOTHING and make it messy?

The answer to your questions depends on what you consider to be truly random. If you consider something that you can't predict truly random, then yes, Brownian motion can be considered truly random.
Having said that, most people, especially in science circles don't find the premise 'things one can't predict' sufficient to define something as truly random. I would argue that Brownian motion is not truly random, because if you were able to measure the initial positions and velocity vectors of all the particles involved, you could calculate the outcome of your Brownian movement. The problem is that you don't usually know all the initial conditions and therefore can only treat the problem as if it was truly random. Science today, by looking for correlations, is making the assumptions that things are not truly random. Otherwise, correlations would not be observable, and therefore the ability to predict things based on probable causes would not exist.

Yeah, you are wrong.

First of all, you claim that in science, "randomness" is NOT defined as "unable to be predicted." But you don't give any source for this claim.

Secondly, brownian motion IS completely random, as it depends on quantum mechanical causes, and these are not predictable at all. Even if you knew the exact positions of each particle, you could not predict the quantum events that cause brownian motion, and thus you could never predict the movements of the particles.

And again these conditions were determined by the Laws of Physics and the Constants of the Universe, the Fine Tuning argument goes before the beginning of Evolution.

But in that case, fine tuning ISN'T REQUIRED. I don't need to fine tune the shape of a container for water to make sure it will fit if I know that the water will take on whatever shape the container is.

God didn't had to create each planet or each animal separate, He is Omniscience, he knew how things will go.

Evolution Is Deterministic, Not Random, Biologists Conclude From Multi-species Study -- ScienceDaily

Well, that throws the common creationist argument of "common design" out the window if the design works differently in each case, doesn't it?

And evolution is not random. Things like the vulva development, as described in the article, are not taking place in a vacuum. There are all sorts of other genes acting in the body. And a single trait can be controlled by many genes, and a single gene can play a part in many traits. So a trait controlled by a gene in one species might occur in a different way in another species with different genes.

That's pseudorandomness, we could predict everything if we knew everything around the phenomenon.

As I said before, quantum mechanics shows this idea to be wrong.

That's how many universes the string theory let to exist.

So what? It's still just a bunch of stuff strung together randomly.

Ahhhh....
This is the fallacy from possibility. It’s not rational to believe:

1. x is more probable than y
2. y is possible
3. therefore I believe y

How do you get this? You have claimed X is more probable, but you have not shown it.

What you have is an argument from ignorance:

1. I don’t know what other universes are like
2. Therefore, we are here by chance
It doesn’t follow.

I never said any such thing.

If you want me to phrase it this way, here goes.

P1: many universes may exist.
P2: each universe will have different fundamental constants, some of which allow life of some description to arise and others which do not permit life.
P3: life will arise in some number of universes with life-permitting fundamentals.
P4: life will never arise in a universe that has life prohibiting fundamentals.
P5: Life arose in this universe.
Cnclusion: This universe is one of the universes that has life-permitting fundamentals.

Now, if every single possible combination of fundamentals exists in one of these universes, then sooner or later, a universe with fundamentals that permit life is going to exist. And since any life that develops MUST BY NECESSITY find itself in such a universe, is it going to be surprising that any life is going to find that the fundamentals of the universe that life is in allow life?

Of course not.

Let me use an analogy. I have a house with many rooms. Some rooms are boobytrapped and others are not. I place a person in each room, assigning people to rooms randomly. The people in the rooms with boobytraps are killed by the traps, and the people in the rooms without boobytraps survive. The survivors are then surprised to find that they are still alive and conclude that they must have been put in rooms for the purpose of surviving.

Of course, they weren't. They just got lucky.

We Theists have an argument from analogy:

1. like causes spawn like effects
2. intelligence is the only thing that can fine-tune
3. the universe is fine-tuned
4. therefore the universe is the result of intelligence

Premise 1 is unclear.

Premise 3 is unsupported and wrong anyway.

Premise 3 is begging the question (assuming to be true the same thing it wants to prove).

So your conclusion is not a valid one.

The only argument the atheists have is a mere wish:

1. like causes spawn like effects
2. intelligence is the only thing that can fine-tune
3. the universe is fine-tuned
4. I wish like causes did not spawn like effects or I wish fine-tuning were the result of chance.
5. therefore, we are here by chance.

Yeah, you're just wrong here. I suspect you have been getting this information from creationist propaganda mills, not actual scientists.

You imply a cause instead of creation, you can't have infinite causes.

Where did I imply that?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Your whole argument is destroyed by the fact that God could easily create a Universe full with black holes. If he did liked Black Holes why did he created planets as well? If the distribution of matter was higher it would have a Universe FILLED with black holes, nothing else in it.

I've asked you repeatedly to substantiate this claim, that God could create a universe full of black holes but devoid of life. You've yet to make a single keystroke supporting this assertion.

You seem to confuse a lot of abstract things in this argument. Suppose that there is a human that cares ONLY about unconscious things, wouldn't this human had to be born? The fact that he was born it means that a mother cared to give birth to a conscious being and love it more than herself, the fact that we exist it proves that the first humans chose something conscious than something unconscious. Observation on something unconscious also doesn't mean that the observer thinks that it was not a creation, there are people that care more about art than human life but at the same time they know that they observe something that it was created by a conscious being therefor their deepest interest is not about the paint and the canvas but because of the inspiration this piece offers.

You seem to be missing the point. A lone designer deity need not have an intrinsic interest in other conscious beings. You are suggesting that being conscious somehow makes other conscious beings extremely interesting. Perhaps this is true for human beings, who are naturally social creatures, but why presume that the same applies to a designer god? He may have no interest whatsoever in living things. He may be an astronomer entranced by the stars.

Another thing that you forget, if you imply that God exists and you say that He is conscious automatically you say that consciousness is immaterial, therefor our consciousness never dies and continues to the next life something that black holes couldn't do because they are finite.

No, I did not imply that.

If they were in the source of the designer's fascination they would continue to the next life like our souls.

Why? As soon as all the black holes in the universe disappear the designer could simply recreate the universe anew to continue his eternal fascination with black holes. There is no need to render each individual black hole eternal or to impart it with a soul.

I don't have to, it is a scientific fact. Will you replace physical cosmology with your faith that we are not in God's interest? You seem very desperate.

Show me that it is a fact. I've been asking you to elaborate on this point for several posts now.

god

noun \ˈgäd also ˈgȯd\ God : the perfect and all-powerful being that is worshipped especially by Christians, Jews, and Muslims as the one who created and rules the universe



Since when a being is not conscious?

That's one conception of God; the one shared by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Not all theists conceive of God as a person.

What are you describing here is not an absolute interest for non conscious entities, someone that observes must first take care of himself in order to have the power to observe, the fact that he does it it means that he takes cares of himself which is a conscious being.

Yes, that would be true of human beings, who are limited by their nature and not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. I fail to see how such limitations would apply to a deity however.

Of course they suspect the ghost in the machine! That's the point!

Ghost in the machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No, they suspect that a person committed the crime, not a disembodied spirit.

God created the law like causes like effects because you can't have infinite causes.There is always a beginning even in to that scenario.

You keep shifting the posts back and back. Yet if you accept the truth of the first premise then you cannot posit a supernatural cause for anything except a supernatural effect.

Please prove me that the Physical Universe existed forever in any condition.

I've noticed that you often try to shift the burden of proof. How do you know that nothingness ever a real state of affairs?

God is not nothing. God is Everything because He is Eternal therefor he didn't create the Universe out of Nothing but out of Anything. Atheists use also this argument, anything can happen from an infinite nothingness but they forget that there is no determinism into randomness to determine an event (lottery machine).

I didn't suggest that God was nothing. I was referring to creatio ex nihilo.

Discovery of quantum vibrations in 'microtubules' inside brain neurons supports controversial theory of consciousness -- ScienceDaily

[1407.2627] Super-intuition and correlations with the future in Quantum Consciousness

"Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them," says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and member of the team.

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory -- ScienceDaily

The first link doesn't mention 'time' at all, nor does it describe how minds can exist in a timeless state. The second and third link don't appear to address the question either. You seem to be stringing together disparate threads in the hope that some connection between them materialises. I suggest arguing for the position, and making the connections explicit, rather than pointing in several directions at once.

To repeat, my question was: how can a mind make a decision to create, or any decision at all, if it exists in a state of timelessness?

The simple answer is yes.
Vilenkin’s verdict: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

In that quote Vilenkin did not say "a beginning from nothing." I don't dispute the notion that the universe began. The issue here is whether it began from nothing. You have suggested that any cosmological model that does not include a beginning from nothing is invalid. I think you need to do more to show why this is the case.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I would add God created the universe just like man created the mini-universe named "Frozen" . It was spoken into existence.

Except man didn't conjure Frozen into existence out of nothing.

It even mentions in Psalms 8:3 "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained." It just as simple for God to speak the universe into existence as it is for man to type on a keyboard with his fingers to create "Frozen".

The analogy falls apart when one considers that you are drawing a parallel between ex nihilo and ex materia creation. To maintain the analogy you would have to say that God created the universe from some pre-existing stuff, which I presume is contrary to your doctrinal commitments.

I wonder if atheist considers the creation of "Frozen" as magic. It's as if "Frozen" just popped into existence.

But it wasn't conjured into existence from nothing. If it was that would indeed be magical, or incredibly perplexing at very least.

 

[Mainframes]

There are many arguments for intelligent design but none of them can adequately explain why many of the 'designs' found in nature are full of issues, problems and faults, that can be perfectly be explained by natural selection and evolution. Just a few examples:

Laryngeal Nerve loops below Aorta - think giraffes
Whales and Dolphins that have to breath air
Human appendix
Pandas - only eat calarie poor bamboo and breed very rarely
Cats cannot synthesise taurine
Etc
Etc

 

[Smidlee]

There are many arguments for intelligent design but none of them can adequately explain why many of the 'designs' found in nature are full of issues, problems and faults, that can be perfectly be explained by natural selection and evolution. Just a few examples:

Laryngeal Nerve loops below Aorta - think giraffes
Whales and Dolphins that have to breath air
Human appendix
Pandas - only eat calarie poor bamboo and breed very rarely
Cats cannot synthesise taurine
Etc
Etc

Here the bad design argument again. I noticed you didn't mention the inverted retina since that's been proven to increase both daytime and nighttime vision. Also you may want to remove human appendix since it does have a function which happen to be not required in large populations.
The human race is slowly dying which leads to two theories:
1) This was the result of the Fall of man in Genesis
2) or we have hindered natural selection for doing it job of wiping out the weak like making antibiotics ,feed the poor,etc. We need to allow NS to do it's job of killing people off so man can continue evolving.

This is the "evolution of the gaps" argument. We don't know why living things are the way they are so evolution did it. When we learn the purpose behind these "designs" evolution is push back into smaller gaps.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Here the bad design argument again. I noticed you didn't mention the inverted retina since that's been proven to increase both daytime and nighttime vision. Also you may want to remove human appendix since it does have a function which happen to be not required in large populations.
The human race is slowly dying which leads to two theories:
1) This was the result of the Fall of man in Genesis
2) or we have hindered natural selection for doing it job of wiping out the weak like making antibiotics ,feed the poor,etc. We need to allow NS to do it's job of killing people off so man can continue evolving.

What leads you to believe that the human species is slowly dying? How would you test (1)?

 

[Smidlee]

What leads you to believe that the human species is slowly dying? How would you test (1)?

From what I've read no geneticist denies this. As one comment "We are less fit than a caveman".
Of course they could be wrong since our understand of genetics is in a limited window of time.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

From what I've read no geneticist denies this. As one comment "We are less fit than a caveman".
Of course they could be wrong since our understand of genetics is in a limited window of time.

Okay, you haven't substantiated this, and you've also ignored my other question.

 

[Smidlee]

Okay, you haven't substantiated this, and you've also ignored my other question.

It's not like it hasn't been mention here so many times before. John Sanford's Genetic Entropy.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

It's not like it hasn't been mention here so many times before. John Sanford's Genetic Entropy.

Right, right, of course... And now to the second question...

 

[Smidlee]

Right, right, of course... And now to the second question...

They tested this by measuring the rate which each generation is accumulating neutral, near-neutral mutations. The same way your cells in your body is accumulating more of this mutations as you age. I think the numbers is between 70 -100 mutations per generation.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

They tested this by measuring the rate which each generation is accumulating neutral, near-neutral mutations. The same way your cells in your body is accumulating more of this mutations as you age.

That's not the second question. I asked you how you would test the first theory (that this is the result of the Fall of Man).

 

[Smidlee]

That's not the second question. I asked you how you would test the first theory (that this is the result of the Fall of Man).

That's John Sanford's theory while evolutionist believe natural selection could somehow removes those mutations.