Posted on 10/21/2002 10:37:59 AM PDT by traditio
Cosmologists have a problem. The universe provides manifold evidence of design. Since design implies a designer and since cosmologists have ruled out a priori any consideration of God as contrary to the scientific method, the universe must not have a design. Therefore, the evidence of design in the universe must be illusory. Since the odds against the design that our universe reveals happening by chance are infinite, there must be an infinity of other universes, each with different laws and different initial conditions, to make the chance occurrence of our apparently designed universe plausible.
(Excerpt) Read more at makehasteslowly.com ...
Are you sure? Perhaps that guy is onto something. Chemistry also seems to "rule out" a deity who holds together all those hydrogen and oxygen atoms that combine to make water. Down with Godless chemistry!
Everyone has a bias - I repeat - EVERYONE, including yourself. To say otherwise is like saying everyone speaks with an accent except yourself.
That being said, the article's argument has one thing on it's side - mathmathics. So, do you actually have a counter-argument, or does your modus operandi only call for a vain attempt to embarrass the Universe into being a cosmic accident?
That article is perhaps the most uninspired, unimaginitive, anti-knowledge, anti-investigational, projectionist collection of throw-our-hands-up-in-the-air and quiticisms I've ever seen.
Thanks - that really clarifies the whole argument right there for me. And the BIG FONT thing really makes for such an incredbily strong argument that I couldn't ever hope to counter it. I can't possibly think of any rebuttal whatsoever. You have me completely stymied. You've hands-down won this debate, and sent the Universe spinning haplessly into the Cosmos towards a cold extinction, one without purpose or reason or direction. Touche'.
Oh, except for one thing. Allow me quote you again.
That article is perhaps the most uninspired, unimaginitive, anti-knowledge, anti-investigational, projectionist collection of throw-our-hands-up-in-the-air and quiticisms I've ever seen.
You said "perhaps". Does that mean "perhaps not"?
Dakmar...
I took a few minutes to decipher that post, and I must say I agree with a lot of what you said.
fC...
These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values(private/personal) GROWTH(limited NON-intrusive PC Govt/religion---schools)!
Dakmar...
Where you and I diverge is on the Evolution/Communism thing. You seem to view Darwin and evolution as the beginning of the end for enlighted, moral civilization, while I think Marx, class struggle, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" are the true dangers.
God bless you, I think we both have a common enemy in the BRAVE-NWO.
452 posted on 9/7/02 8:54 PM Pacific by Dakmar
Of course. It may be only the 41st worst I ever seen. I don't go out of my way to memorize every ridiculous creationist screed that gets posted.
Many posters, even many on this site, have vehmently expressed the view that Christianity held back the advancement of human progress,
The charge that Christianity has held back scientific progress is utterly ridiculous. Perhaps the best example of pagan materialistm is atomism. The fortuitous and mindless joining of atoms holds absolutely no prospects for scientific inquiry and neither does the fortuitous and mindless mutations held by present day materialists.
Only theories which deny mindlessness and propose order can be the source of scientific inquiry. It is this belief in order, in natural laws which as stated in our Declaration come from God that has proven to be the source of the scientific spirit and scientific progress in the Christian West.
12 posted on 9/15/02 6:07 AM Pacific by gore3000
You mean like using H. G. Wells as a counterargument for a faulty understanding of Kip Thorne?
Originally the word liberal meant social conservatives(no govt religion--none) who advocated growth and progress---mostly technological(knowledge being absolute/unchanging)based on law--reality... UNDER GOD---the nature of GOD/man/govt. does not change. These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values(private/personal) GROWTH(limited NON-intrusive PC Govt/religion---schools)!
Evolution...Atheism-dehumanism---TYRANNY(pc-religion/rhetoric)...
Then came the SPLIT SCHIZOPHRENIA/ZOMBIE/BRAVE-NWO1984 LIBERAL NEO-Soviet Darwin America---the post-modern age
My guess is better than yours daht com
In an open-infinite universe, 3-d space has ALWAYS been infinite, even at the 'birth' of the universe at the Big Bang. This model is favored by Inflationary Cosmology, in which our universe is just one of an infinite number of 'patches' of 3-d space that exist in some larger arena. The expansion of out particular patch, however, does not happen at the expense of the compaction of the space surrounding it. Again, this is an intuitive paradox that humans cannot resolve because it seems contradictory...though mathematically it derives from a higher logic than we are commonly familiar with in our limited world.
Don't make me ask how many "ridiculous creationist screeds" you actually do go out of your way to memorize.
None. It's not necessary as their messages tend to cluster around the same old tone-deaf arguments: ignorance, threats, or faith. Guess which perspective this article is written from?
As opposed to honest and open discourse, such as you're offering up here? LOL!
Exactly backwards.
The cosmic microwave background tells us that the early universe had very low thermodynamic entropy. However, its logical entropy, the inverse measure of order, was very high. That is, it was a hot gas of a few simple elements and thus had almost no information content whatever.
Since then, the useable energy content of the observable universe had done nothing but go down, as expected, raising the thermodynamic entropy. Gravitational collapse, nuclear fusion, that sort of thing. But the order/information content of the universe has steadily risen in trade-off.
"no competition too"....PH!
My comment was very simple. That it was a biased article written from a position of ignorance. Others observed the same content, reached essentially the same conclusion, and commented on it in different, and sometimes better, words.
I have no interest in tearing it down word-or-word or idea-by-idea, it simply isn't worth the time to me. Given the posts to this thread so far, it isn't worth anybody else's time either. If it had been properly posted in the Religion Forum to begin with, instead of News/Activism, nobody would have dumped even that little bit of derisive comment on it.
The original "rejectionism" made more sense in there, IMHO.
It can only qualify for the top ten if it involves the Earth oribiting Jupiter at some point.
So because, in your opinion, we are unable to fully understand the universe, we should not try to understand it at all? If that were the case we'd still be sacrificing virgins to rain gods.
I do not recall a FR thread regarding your appointment to the position of Guardian of the Limits of Human Knowledge, and unless you have the authoritative list of "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know," it is an insult to our intelligence not to push the limits of that intelligence as far as we are able.
Or Saturn. Or Uranus. ;^)
Okay, make that the 41st this month.
It was there. I was post #24. The entire thread got deleted because some nutcase insisted on arguing that cows had evolved from pine trees.
...and unless you have the authoritative list of "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know"
He indeed has The List; he just left it home in his sock drawer so he can't address your complaints at this time. I believe it's cited in the corresponding Darwinian Origins list titled "Evolution vol. 3: How the Hind End of The Horse Sprang into Being"
I'm glad Professor Retro has pointed out that what you said was backwards. Otherwise we might conclude that "our universe was born with incredibly low entropy (very high order)" was exactly the same as "tells us that the early universe had very low thermodynamic entropy. However, its logical entropy, the inverse measure of order, was very high". In any case, the logic conclusion from a law that states "in closed systems the total entropy increases with time" and the definition of a universe as a closed system would be that the entropy was lower at the beginning of the system than the entropy later in time.(that is unless perpetual motion machines are possible)
Foolish, foolish, foolish! We at Darwin Central maintain that cow origin is deciduous in nature. It's amazing how evolutionary theory gets twisted, sometimes; no wonder the thread got pulled.
He indeed has The List; he just left it home in his sock drawer so he can't address your complaints at this time.
Excellent! I shall prepare a clandestine "information liberation" exercise immediately. If I can somehow find a way to learn how many licks it REALLY takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop my life's work will be complete!
Another misrepresentation from a self-imagined master of illusion. Drip! Drip! Drip!
Using H. G. Wells to refute Kip Thorne is at best an opinion borne of ignorance. I have no patience with the "Nothing is Knowable" position.
R.A. Heinlein, "If This Goes On..."
Curses - I knew one of you scum-evolving DCers had to be part of this thread! How stupid do you take us for? We of the Society (for the Measurement of Evolutionary Gradualism, Heuristic Education And Dissemination) have long ago disproved your absurd theories. Had the cow evolved from a decidous tree, as you foolishly continue to claim, the beast would certainly molt on a semiannual basis. The Peruvian half-breed notwithstanding, this behavior simply has never been recorded in any serious scientific journal (contrary to you DCers, we of the Society etc have long rejected the periodical Maxim to be a serious scientific journal for biological study. We could easily find common ground in the biological findings in the mutually recognized four-color publication FHM, but you DCers refuse to concede to our obviously superior intellects on this point. Damn you and your charter Maxim subscriptions!).
If I can somehow find a way to learn how many licks it REALLY takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop my life's work will be complete!
We of the Society cannot allow you to gain access to this knowledge first. It is for THAT reason that, decades ago, we politically backed the California and Oregon States' Departments of Forestry efforts to harvest timber in the Sierra Nevadas. And STILL it's didn't stop you from conducting your field research! Just how far have you progressed, anyway? Stupid owls. If it were my planet (and it soon will be, once I get this obfusccelerator working, and then all you DCers will bow to ME! - but more on that later) they'd never have evolved beyond pinecones with candy-corn beaks.
Aha! Cows are known relatives of cats, all domestic varieties of which shed prodigiously, especially on dark-colored clothing.
Aha! Another charlatain! We at the Society have several cows that we use for study, and know full well that no bovine has ever been domesticated to the point of getting up in one's lap. You, sir, have been found out! Probably one of those foul DCers, I'll imagine!
Besides, we at the Society have already studied the cow/cat connection, and despite admittedly superficial similarities I can personally attest that you cannot milk a domesticated cat - and I can proudly display the skin grafts on both hands to prove it.
And I trust Feynman----"So we now have to talk about what we mean by disorder and what we mean by order. ... Suppose we divide the space into little volume elements. If we have black and white molecules, how many ways could we distribute them among the volume elements so that white is on one side and black is on the other? On the other hand, how many ways could we distribute them with no restriction on which goes where? Clearly, there are many more ways to arrange them in the latter case. We measure "disorder" by the number of ways that the insides can be arranged, so that from the outside it looks the same. The logarithm of that number of ways is the entropy. The number of ways in the separated case is less, so the entropy is less, or the "disorder" is less."
Plus we are evidently talking of themodynamic objects with COBE and not information--again from your link
This sort of entropy is clearly different. Physical units do not pertain to it, and (except in the case of digital information) an arbitrary convention must be imposed before it can be quantified. To distinguish this kind of entropy from thermodynamic entropy, let's call it logical entropy.
In spite of the important distinction between the two meanings of entropy, the rule as stated above for thermodynamic entropy seems to apply nonetheless to the logical kind: entropy in a closed system can never decrease. And really, there would be nothing mysterious about this law either. It's similar to saying things never organize themselves. (The original meaning of organize is "to furnish with organs.") Only this rule has little to do with thermodynamics.
Little do you know! One researcher at our prestigious Institut für Phyzik und Krackenpotten is already on his third lap transplant.
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