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 ...
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.
That said, I am a firm believer in the Theory Of evolution(NOte I said theory as that is what it is.), yet there does seem to some order involved in the cosmos.
Yet I have read the post of BikerNYC and I tend to agree. How would we KNOW what is ordered and to exactly what purpose.
So in my limited perception, I would posit that the existance of the Universe itself proves SOME sort of design, whether natural, or divine. I also think that the divine can not easily be shed from the natural as they are indeed one and the same.
Natural selection may not be exactly the same as Darwin laid out but anyone that has bred animals or raised crops knows that there is some truth to the doctrine of NAtural Selection. I fail to see how this goes against Christian Theology.
IMHO, man is meant to know ALL that he can. There are certainly limits but they are inherant and I do not believe mankind itself should impose these limits. To do so is against reality itself and even God, for in Christian doctrine we are made in his image and should seek knowledge of what we can not perceive. I think God can take care of himself.
I don't think you meant this for me...
So in my limited perception, I would posit that the existance of the Universe itself proves SOME sort of design, whether natural, or divine. I also think that the divine can not easily be shed from the natural as they are indeed one and the same.
I tend to agree, although I would substitue "order" for "design." It would appear that you and I have far more in common than not.
Imagine that you are a cosmic explorer who has just stumbled into the control room of the whole universe. There you discover an elaborate "universe-creating-machine", with rows and rows of dials, each with many possible settings. As you investigate, you learn that each dial represents some particular parameter that has to be calibrated with a precise value in order to create a universe in which life can exist. One dial represents the possible settings for the strong nuclear force, one for the gravitationl constant, one for Planck's constant, one for the ratio of the neutron mass to the proton mass, one for the strength of electromagnetic attraction, and so on. As you, the cosmic explorer, examine the dials, you find that they could easily have been tuned to different settings. Moreover, you determine by careful calculations that if any of the dial settings were even slightly altered, life would cease to exist. Yet for some reason each dial is set at just the exact value necessary to keep the universe running. What do you infer about the origin of these finely tuned dial settings?
From: Stephen C. Meyer, "Evidence for Design in Physics and Biology.
Considering that you did not read anything but the preamble (as you admit in your previous post) I do not know how you can say that. Seems you are pretty fast in dismissing what you disagree with without giving it a fair hearing. Perhaps it is your atheist theology speaking and not your common sense? Perhaps it it your atheist theology speaking and not your critical faculties? The paragraph in the article is backed up by hundreds of years of scientific discoveries, clearly your opinion is in no way based on science but in a total disregard of it.
We know because there are scientific laws in the Universe which have been proven beyond doubt. If the Universe was a random one, such laws could not exist. If the Universe were random, there would be no Universal laws. So we know that the argument of randomness is a false one because science would be impossible in a random Universe.
Since you said you had not bothered to read the article in your post#5, I guess you are speaking of your ignorance. Aside from your bias, you have not given a single reason why anyone should favor your opinion.
Ha! Your blunders are proving devastating! Hvae you forgotten that cowboys have often been known to water their horses, after dusty trail rides, herding cattle and whatnot? And that it therefore can be logically deduced that little girls likewise MILK their CATS. Especially the cute, tiny, kitten-types. After playing with string, napping in sunbeams, and so forth.
You SMEGHEADs are so far behind the times that little girls with kittens are outpacing your highly-touted "research programs"! Ha! Perhaps you had "cat" confused with "High-Speed Belt Sander," and thus the necessity for skin grafts.
But I digress. Darwin Central: To The Limit!
Hey, buy a clue, little-boy-blue, I'm not an evangelist - let stupid people believe any fantasy they want. Oh, and:
I was agreeing with your comments. I just reviewed the thread and can see why I made a mess of it. You got my point though!
I had a few and it affected my judgement.
I can easily substitute order for divine. I am just sitting here looking at some HUbble photos of the new circular galaxy and I cant help but seem insignificant. Even if all is random, there has to be SOMETHING there?
Perhaps souls die... my atoms will still be in the cosmic soup and nothing can change that. :)
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