Goddidit Vs Naturedidit

[Drew_2017]

Hakurei Reimu,

Says the one who doesn't even bother to discover what is known about the universe before shooting his mouth off. You disparage cosmologists the world over and the consensus on cosmology, the field of study devoted to the evolution of the universe including its very beginning. If I have seen far, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of fucking giants.

I'm not disparaging them...just you.

What I have learned from the giants is unlike you, they clearly state they don't know what if anything caused the universe, what if anything happened prior to the universe, or whether time is the only medium through which events can occur. Word of advice get on their shoulders when they are in an upright position...you'll see further.

There are several competing ideas...

A Bouncing Universe

One idea is that our low entropy universe came out of another, collapsing universe. This notion, sometimes called the Big Bounce, predicts that another universe collapsed inwards, into a point of infinite gravity called a singularity, and then bounced back to produce our own universe. Such models have been around since the 1960s at the latest, with more consideration in the 80s and early 90s. It’s possible there have even been multiple bounces; an expand-and-contract cycle full of Big Bangs like a universe accordion.

A Hibernating Universe

Maybe before the Big Bang, the universe was a small, slowly evolving fixed space, as theorized by physicists like Kurt Hinterbichler, Austin Joyce and Justin Khoury and others. This pre-Bang universe would have been metastable, meaning it would have been stable only until it basically realized there was a more stable state. As an analogy, imagine a ball sitting in a depression vibrating at the side of the mountain. Any knock could send the ball rolling toward the bottomâ€"or, in the case of our universe, kicking off a Big Bang.

Apparently they're not aware that you have declared there is no before the big bang...

A Multiverse

Multiverse theory avoids the problems of decreasing entropy over time associated with the Big Bounce, and explains the low entropy universe we observe today, said Carroll. This theory stems from a fairly well-accepted but incomplete idea called “inflation.” Physicist Alan Guth, currently at MIT, coined the term inflation in 1980, which says that space in the universe expanded at incredible speeds right after the Big Bang, far faster than the speed of light. Quantum mechanics says that the space constantly experiences random, tiny fluctuations in energy, and during the inflationary period, those energy peaks and troughs could have magnified and turned into galaxies and voids, the large-scale, low-entropy structure we see in the universe today.


The best bet for atheists and naturalists is the notion this is one of a multitude or an infinitude of universes even though that creates all kinds of bizarre paradoxes. For instance you and I are having this conversation somewhere else only I'm pretending to be a know it all and arguing for naturalism while you're arguing in favor of theism.

The article below is a fair presentation of various arguments. You'll like it because ultimately the author agrees with you. Unlike you he doesn't state his beliefs as facts...

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/

Why this universe?

In recent years, a different aspect of our universe has been seized upon by natural theologians as evidence for God’s handiwork â€" the purported fine-tuning of the physical and cosmological parameters that specify our particular universe among all possible ones. These parameters are to be found in the laws of physics â€" the mass of the electron, the value of the vacuum energy â€" as well as in the history of the universe â€" the amount of dark matter, the smoothness of the initial state. There’s no question that the universe around us would look very different if some of these parameters were changed.[12] The controversial claims are two: that intelligent life can only exist for a very small range of parameters, in which our universe just happens to find itself; and that the best explanation for this happy circumstance is that God arranged it that way.

The clearest example of apparent fine-tuning is the vacuum energy.[13] As discussed above, vacuum energy is the leading candidate for the dark energy causing distant galaxies to accelerate; but even if the vacuum energy is exactly zero and the dark energy is something else, we can safely say that the value of the vacuum energy is not greater than that of the dark energy, about 10-8 ergs per cubic centimeter. Using techniques from quantum field theory, we can do a rough calculation of what we would expect the vacuum energy to be, if we hadn’t already measured it. The answer is quite a bit larger: about 10112 ergs per cubic centimeter. The fact that the actual value of the vacuum energy is at least 120 orders of magnitude smaller than its natural value is a fine-tuning by anyone’s estimation.

Cosmologists don’t have a compelling model for why the vacuum energy is so much smaller than it should be. But if it were anywhere near its “natural” value, we would not be here talking about it. Vacuum energy pulls objects away from each other, and a value much larger than what is observed would prohibit galaxies and stars from forming, presumably making it harder for life to exist.

Other constants of nature, such as those that govern atomic and nuclear physics, seem natural by themselves, but would give rise to very different macroscopic phenomena if they were changed even slightly. For example, if the mass of the neutron were a bit larger (in comparison to the mass of the proton) than its actual value, hydrogen would not fuse into deuterium and conventional stars would be impossible; if the neutron mass were a bit smaller, all the hydrogen in the early universe would fuse into helium, and helium stars in the late universe would have much shorter lifetimes.[14] (On the other hand, Adams has argued that a wide range of physical parameters leads to stars sustained by nuclear fusion.[15])

In the face of these apparent fine-tunings, we have several possible options:

Life is extremely robust, and would be likely to arise even if the parameters were very different, whether or not we understand what form it would take.
There is only one universe, with randomly-chosen parameters, and we just got lucky that they are among the rare values that allow for the existence of life.
In different regions of the universe the parameters take on different values, and we are fooled by a selection effect: life will only arise in those regions compatible with the existence of life.
The parameters are not chosen randomly, but designed that way by a deity.
Generally, not nearly enough credence is given to option #1 in this list. We know very little about the conditions under which complexity, and intelligent life in particular, can possibly form. If, for example, we were handed the Standard Model of particle physics but had no actual knowledge of the real world, it would be very difficult to derive the periodic table of the elements, much less the atoms and molecules on which Earth-based life depends. Life may be very fragile, but for all we know it may be ubiquitous (in parameter space); we have a great deal of trouble even defining “life” or for that matter “complexity,” not to mention “intelligence.” At the least, the tentative nature of our current understanding of these issues should make us reluctant to draw grand conclusions about the nature of reality from the fact that our universe allows for the existence of life.

Nevertheless, for the sake of playing along, let’s imagine that intelligent life only arises under a very restrictive set of circumstances. Following Swinburne,[16] we can cast the remaining choices in terms of Bayesian probability. The basic idea is simple: we assign some prior probability â€" before we take into account what we actually know about the universe â€" to each of the three remaining scenarios. Then we multiply that prior probability by the probability that intelligent life would arise in that particular model. The result is proportional to the probability that the model is correct, given that intelligent life exists.[17] Thus, for option #2 (a single universe, no supernatural intervention), we might put the prior probability at a relatively high value by virtue of its simplicity, but the probability of life arising (we are imagining) is extremely small, so much so that this model could be considered unlikely in comparison with the other two.

We are left with option #3, a “multiverse” with different conditions in different regions (traditionally called “universes” even if they are spatially connected), and #4, a single universe with parameters chosen by God to allow for the eventual appearance of life. In either case we can make a plausible argument that the probability of life arising is considerable. All of the heavy lifting, therefore, comes down to our prior probabilities â€" our judgments about how a priori likely such a cosmological scenario is. Sadly, prior probabilities are notoriously contentious objects.

I will consider more carefully the status of the “God hypothesis,” and its corresponding prior probability, in the final section. For now, let’s take a look at the multiverse.

The Multiverse and Fine-Tuning

There are (at least) two popular mechanisms to obtain a multiverse. One is the many-worlds or Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics; I won’t discuss this idea here, because the various “branches of the wave function” describing different worlds all share the same basic laws of physics. The other kind of multiverse is in some sense more prosaic, in that it simply posits regions of spacetime outside our observable horizon, in which conditions are very different â€" including, in principle and often in practice, the parameters specifying the laws of physics, such as the mass of the neutron or the vacuum energy.

This latter scenario has garnered a great deal of attention in recent years, in part because it seems to be a natural outcome of two powerful ideas that were originally pursued for other reasons: inflationary cosmology, and superstring theory. Inflation uses the fact that dark energy makes the universe accelerate, but posits an initially small region of space filled with a temporary form of super-dark-energy at an enormously high density. This causes this small region to grow to fantastic size, before the dark energy ultimately decays. In many versions of the theory, the decay isn’t complete, and at least some region is always undergoing ultra-fast inflationary expansion.[18] From string theory we get the idea of a “landscape” of possible vacuum states. A “vacuum state” is simply a configuration of empty space with an associated set of physical laws. That is, what we think of as spacetime comes in a variety of phases, much like water can be in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms. In string theory there seems to be a mind-boggling number of possible phases (over 10500), each characterized by different physical constants, including the set of elementary particles and the number of macroscopic dimensions of space.[19]

The multiverse comes to life by combining inflation with string theory. Once inflation starts, it produces a limitless supply of different “pocket universes,” each in one of the possible phases in the landscape of vacuum states of string theory. Given the number of potential universes, it wouldn’t be surprising that one (or an infinite number) were compatible with the existence of intelligent life. Once this background is in place, the “anthropic principle” is simply the statement that our observable universe has no reason to be representative of the larger whole: we will inevitably find ourselves in a region that allows for us to exist.

What prior likelihood should we assign to such a scenario? One popular objection to the multiverse is that it is highly non-parsimonious; is it really worth invoking an enormous number of universes just to account for a few physical parameters? As Swinburne says:

To postulate a trillion trillion other universes, rather than one God in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality.[20]

That might be true, even with the hyperbole, if what one was postulating were simply “a trillion trillion other universes.” But that is a mischaracterization of what is involved. What one postulates are not universes, but laws of physics. Given inflation and the string theory landscape (or other equivalent dynamical mechanisms), a multiverse happens, whether you like it or not.

This is an important point that bears emphasizing. All else being equal, a simpler scientific theory is preferred over a more complicated one. But how do we judge simplicity? It certainly doesn’t mean “the sets involved in the mathematical description of the theory contain the smallest possible number of elements.” In the Newtonian clockwork universe, every cubic centimeter contains an infinite number of points, and space contains an infinite number of cubic centimeters, all of which persist for an infinite number of separate moments each second, over an infinite number of seconds. Nobody ever claimed that all these infinities were a strike against the theory. Indeed, in an open universe described by general relativity, space extends infinitely far, and lasts infinitely long into the future; again, these features are not typically seen as fatal flaws. It is only when space extends without limit and conditions change from place to place, representing separate “universes,” that people grow uncomfortable. In quantum mechanics, any particular system is potentially described by an infinite number of distinct wave functions; again, it is only when different branches of such a wave function are labeled as “universes” that one starts to hear objections, even if the mathematical description of the wave function itself hasn’t grown any more complicated.

[Baruch]

Debating about things we don't know, or maybe can't know.  I think Drew likes debating ... which means theistically, you are doing this egotistically, which is sinful.

[Drew_2017]

Debating about things we don't know, or maybe can't know.  I think Drew likes debating ... which means theistically, you are doing this egotistically, which is sinful.

No just for fun...

[Baruch]

No just for fun...

Yes, sin is fun ... check out the babes Mephistopheles hangs with ... whoo-whoo!

[Drew_2017]

A lot of this discussion about Goddidit VS Naturedidit is a huge disagreement about scientific evidence for and against respective views. Though no one disputed or took umbrage with my case for naturalism, the case for theism has been attacked at every point. I get it I think by definition to be an atheist is to deny one single fact comports with theism just on principal.

There is another belief or scientific fact depending on who you speak to known as global warming or more generically climate change. Lets define it as global change that will result in significant weather change and melting of caps in 20 years if things aren't changed.

Lets define a global climate change denier as someone who doesn't believe the current trajectory will lead to a significant weather change or melting of caps in the next 20 years. 

Who's a denier? Who's a believer?

I'm a denier (good I get to be on the negative side of a claim for a change). I heard just today the world wide temp average has changed only .8 increase in the past 100 years. Some attribute that to sub-urbanization. The dire predictions of 20 years ago have failed to materialize.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Hakurei Reimu,

I'm not disparaging them...just you.

What I have learned from the giants is unlike you, they clearly state they don't know what if anything caused the universe, what if anything happened prior to the universe, or whether time is the only medium through which events can occur. Word of advice get on their shoulders when they are in an upright position...you'll see further.

So again you have failed to exercise basic reading comprehention, because I have never claimed to know how the universe came into being, or even IF the universe came into being. However, you seem to equate that statement (which you also attribute to scientists) to saying that they don't know anything about the origin of the universe. Yes, we do know something about the origin of the universe:

We know that it is completely possible that the universe exists in and of itself, without any cause or creator or even an "outside." This is because the spacetime of the universe forms a differentiable manifold, which can be completely characterized by an interior description. There are no externalities needed. You must destroy this possibility to proceed with your Goddidit claim.

We know that even if the universe is embedded in a higher-order space, it is completely possible that there exists no structure of temporality. Without that structure, saying that the universe has a cause is completely unfounded. You must destroy the possibility that the venue the universe exists in is a timeless realm to proceed with your Goddidit claim.

We know that even if the universe is embedded in a temporal space, that space's temporality may not have anything to do the time axis of the universe itself. Not only is this completely possible, but it's also likely. The universe may evolve in our perspective, but in this external space's time axis, the universe may be eternal and unchanging â€" our time axis is in many ways no different from our space axes. You must destroy this possibility to proceed with your Goddidit claim.

And that's even before you get around to proving that there was a God to do it. Given the complete lack of effort you have spent in demolishing any of the above possibilities, why do you expect to be taken seriously in believing that Goddidit is a viable contender?

There are several competing ideas...

And none of them are Goddidit.

Just sayin'.

A Bouncing Universe

<snip>

A Hibernating Universe

<snip>



Apparently they're not aware that you have declared there is no before the big bang...

Reading comprehention fail. Let's take a look at one of my previous comments in this very thread...

Again, you betray your ignorance of what you talk about. The Big Bang doesn't mean that the universe had a beginning in the way you think of it. It is in fact quite possible that there is no first event in time, although there is a limit event that bounds how far universal time can be extended into the past. This notion is consistent with the Big Bang theory, as the theory only takes us to the first Plank time of the universe. Even if that limit point does exist, it doesn't mean that the universe popped into existence any more than the Earth pops into existence at the North pole. (Indeed, the North pole is a quite apt analogy to what is happening at the Big Bang â€" there is a coordinate singularity at the North pole, just as there's a physical singularity at event 0.) Furthermore, the Big Bang theory is consistent with the notion that the universe shrinks to nearly a point and then rebounds in an infinite series of Big Bangs through eternity, again, because the theory only takes us back to the Plank time of the current expansion and no further. The final contender is the infinite inflation hypothesis, which states that the current Big Bang is only one in many that has frozen out of a more primeval state that has persisted for all of eternity, and effectively makes it a multiuniverse hypothesis.

(Underlines added)

Oh, look at that: "It is in fact quite possible that there is no first event in time." Yeah, 'quite possible' absolutely means 'I have declared that this is absolute truth!' Oh, wait! That's just a strawman you have constructed.

And look: "the Big Bang theory is consistent with the notion that the universe shrinks to nearly a point and then rebounds in an infinite series of Big Bangs through eternity," Guess which discription that is consistent with â€" "A Bouncing Universe".

So, yes, I am quite aware that there are many competing theories. But none of them are your Goddidit. The only people who propose such are either (a) not cosmologists (like you), or... well, there's no real (b).

A Multiverse

<snip>

And, yes, I cover that too: "The final contender [note: I should have said, "that I'll cover"] is the infinite inflation hypothesis, which states that the current Big Bang is only one in many that has frozen out of a more primeval state that has persisted for all of eternity, and effectively makes it a multiuniverse hypothesis."

Also, none of the above require the existence of anything other than the already exant manifold of the universe. Not even "A Hibernating Universe" requires this. Therefore, in none of the above hypotheses is your god, or even an "outside", in evidence.

The best bet for atheists and naturalists is the notion this is one of a multitude or an infinitude of universes even though that creates all kinds of bizarre paradoxes. For instance you and I are having this conversation somewhere else only I'm pretending to be a know it all and arguing for naturalism while you're arguing in favor of theism.

I don't see how that's a paradox.

The article below is a fair presentation of various arguments. You'll like it because ultimately the author agrees with you. Unlike you he doesn't state his beliefs as facts...

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/

Yes, yes, please do labor under the mistaken belief that my strong statements on the matter constitute my arrogance that I must be making pronouncements from on high. Only you believe that, and I've already made my opinion of your beliefs quite well known.

Now, I'm going to note down some interesting phrases:

Why this universe?

In recent years, a different aspect of our universe has been seized upon by natural theologians as evidence for God’s handiwork â€" the purported fine-tuning of the physical and cosmological parameters that specify our particular universe among all possible ones.

<snip>

The clearest example of apparent fine-tuning is the vacuum energy.[13] As discussed above, vacuum energy is the leading candidate for the dark energy causing distant galaxies to accelerate;

<snip>

In the face of these apparent fine-tunings, we have several possible options:

Notice what he's doing here. He is admitting that the "fine-tunings" are apparent. It's not a given. The apparent fine tunings cannot be taken as prima facie proof that the universe was purposefully created for life, planets, stars, etc. dispite your past crowings otherwise.

And when I said that all fine-tuning arguments are wrong, I also do not speak soley of my own authority. Here's the source for that particular claim:

http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/anthropic.html

Particularly the following passage:

Having understood the previous discussion, and with our notation in hand, it is now easy to prove that the WAP does not support supernaturalism (which we take to be the negation ~N of N). Recall that the WAP can be written as P(F|N&L)=1. Then, by Bayes' theorem [see footnote 2] we have

    P(N|F&L) =  P(F|N&L)P(N|L)/P(F|L)

             =  P(N|L)/P(F|L)

             >= P(N|L)

where '>=' means "greater than or equal to." The second line follows because P(F|N&L)=1, and the inequality of the third line follows because P(F|L) is a positive quantity less than or equal to 1. (The above demonstration is inspired by a recent article on talk.origins by Michael Ikeda <mmikeda@erols.com>; we have simplified the proof in his article. The message ID for the cited article is <5j6dq8$bvj@winter.erols.com> for those who wish to search for it on dejanews.)

The inequality P(N|F&L)>=P(N|L) shows that the WAP supports (or at least does not undermine) the hypothesis that the universe is governed by naturalistic law. This result is, as we have emphasized, independent of how large or small P(F|N) is. The observation F cannot decrease the probability that N is true (given the known background information that life exists in our universe), and may well increase it.

Corollary: Since P(~N|F&L)=1-P(N|F&L) and similarly for P(~N|L), it follows that P(~N|F&L)<=P(~N|L). In other words, the observation F does not support supernaturalism (~N), and may well undermine it.

And there you have it, in black and white. The observation that the universe is life-friendly (Ie, the WAP) cannot undermine naturalism and may serve to support it, and cannot support supernaturalism and may serve to undermine it. This assertion does not depend on the prior probility of the universe being fine-tuned (a stronger form of P(F|N) above, which would necessarily include fine-tuning). Thus, any argument from fine-tuning is wrong.

Further:

We suggest that any reasonable version of supernaturalism with such a deity would result in a value of P(F|~N&L) that is, in fact, very small (assuming that only a small set of possible universes are F). The reason is that a sufficiently powerful deity could arrange things so that a universe with laws that are not "life-friendly" can sustain life. Since we do not know the purposes of such a deity, we must assign a significant amount of the likelihood function to that possibility. Furthermore, if such a deity creates universes and if the "fine-tuning" claims are correct, then most life-containing universes will be of this type (i.e., containing life despite not being "life-friendly"). Thus, all other things being equal, and if this is the sort of deity we are dealing with, we would expect to live in a universe that is ~F.

To assert that such a deity could only create universes containing life if the laws are life-friendly is to restrict the power of such a deity. And to assert that such a deity would only create universes with life if the laws are life-friendly is to assert knowledge of that deity's purposes that many religions seem reluctant to claim. Indeed, any such assertion would tend to undermine the claim, made by many religions, that their deity can and does perform miracles that are contrary to naturalistic law, and recognizably so.

Our conclusion, therefore, is that not only does the observation F support N, but it supports it overwhelmingly against its negation ~N, if ~N means creation by a sufficiently powerful and inscrutable deity. This latter conclusion is, by the way, a consequence of the Bayesian Ockham's Razor [Jefferys, W.H. and Berger, J.O., "Ockham's Razor and Bayesian Analysis," American Scientist 80, 64-72 (1992)]. The point is that N predicts outcomes much more sharply and narrowly than does ~N; it is, in Popperian language, more easily falsifiable than is ~N. (We do not wish to get into a discussion of the Demarcation Problem here since that is out of the scope of this FAQ, though we do not regard it as a difficulty for our argument. For our purposes, we are simply making a statement about the consequences of the likelihood function having significant support on only a relatively small subset of possible outcomes.) Under these circumstances, the Bayesian Ockham's Razor shows that observing an outcome allowed by both N and ~N is likely to favor N over ~N. We refer the reader to the cited paper for a more detailed discussion of this point.

Aside from sharply limiting the likely actions of the deity (either by making it less powerful or asserting more human knowledge of the deity's intentions), we can think of only one way to avoid this conclusion. One might assert that any universe with life would appear to be "life-friendly" from the vantage point of the creatures living within it, regardless of the physical constants that such a universe were equipped with. In such a case, observing F cannot change our opinion about the nature of the universe. This is certainly a possible way out for the supernaturalist, but this solution is not available to Ross because it contradicts his assertions that the values of certain physical constants do allow us to distinguish between universes that are "life-friendly" and those that are not. And, such an assumption does not come without cost; whether others would find it satisfactory is problematic. For example, what about miracles? If every universe with life looks "life-friendly" from the inside, might this not lead one to wonder if everything that happens therein would also look to its inhabitants like the result of the simple operation of naturalistic law? And then there is Ockham's Razor: What would be the point of postulating a supernatural entity if the predictions we get are indistinguishable from those of naturalistic law?

And there you have it: the observation that the universe observes natural law not only supports naturalism but overwhelmingly so. Not only that, the reason why is exactly as I've claimed earlier â€" under fine-tuning, naturalism is a much sharper prediction than supernaturalism of any stripe. And, yes, it does tend to support multiple universes over a single universe, but even if multiple universes isn't a thing, observing that natural laws are followed still doesn't support a Goddidit hypothesis. Indeed, there's no point to the Goddidit hypothesis unless it proposes a difference between it and the operation of natural law.

And no, I don't see how proposing an infinity of universes is all that much of a stretch over just one universe. After all, you're not adding a new type of entity to the list of exant objects, just its multiplicity.

No just for fun...

Well, mastochism is a thing...

Edit: Got some quote attributions kakked up. Dammit.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Lets define it as global change that will result in significant weather change and melting of caps in 20 years if things aren't changed.

Yes, let's ignore the fact that it's actually defined as the intensification of the already confirmed greenhouse effect, which is caused by the presence of certain gasses in the atmosphere, but let's not let the real definition get in the way of your rhetoric.

Lets define a global climate change denier as someone who doesn't believe the current trajectory will lead to a significant weather change or melting of caps in the next 20 years. 

Who's a denier? Who's a believer?

I'm a denier (good I get to be on the negative side of a claim for a change). I heard just today the world wide temp average has changed only .8 increase in the past 100 years.

Let's ignore the fact that the atmosphere is 5.1480×10¹⁸ kg and its specific heat is ~1 kJ/K·kg, which means that .8 °C/K increase in temperature represents ~5.14×10¹⁸ kJ, which is equal to ~1 teratonne of TNT. In comparison, the world nuclear arsenal is about 7 gigatonnes. That's just the atmosphere.

Hmmm... I don't know about you, but that worries me.

Some attribute that to sub-urbanization. The dire predictions of 20 years ago have failed to materialize.

Source?

[fencerider]

sounds like Drew is one of those people that believes God won't let us destroy the earth. guess what, even if we find out that God is real, it's already obvious that God isn't going to lift a finger to keep us from destroying this place.

By the way Drew if your belief in God is based on this long diatribe on the creation of the universe you've given us, it's really weak. It's almost like you've tried to convince yourself of the existence of God by conducting this humongous logical argument with yourself...I think if God is real we should all just be able to go outside and say "oh there he is"

[Baruch]

sounds like Drew is one of those people that believes God won't let us destroy the earth. guess what, even if we find out that God is real, it's already obvious that God isn't going to lift a finger to keep us from destroying this place.

By the way Drew if your belief in God is based on this long diatribe on the creation of the universe you've given us, it's really weak. It's almost like you've tried to convince yourself of the existence of God by conducting this humongous logical argument with yourself...I think if God is real we should all just be able to go outside and say "oh there he is"

I think if God is (so) real we should all just be able to go outside and say "oh there he is".  But not the god of any religion.  In nature (non-human) or in humanity (even more so) the existence of anything at all, is an existential challenge.  Religionists falsify the challenge, atheists nullify it.  And both camps are capable of inhumanity to man, and anti-nature destruction.

[trdsf]

sounds like Drew is one of those people that believes God won't let us destroy the earth. guess what, even if we find out that God is real, it's already obvious that God isn't going to lift a finger to keep us from destroying this place.

By the way Drew if your belief in God is based on this long diatribe on the creation of the universe you've given us, it's really weak. It's almost like you've tried to convince yourself of the existence of God by conducting this humongous logical argument with yourself...I think if God is real we should all just be able to go outside and say "oh there he is"

I recall the last time there was a close pass by an asteroid, I was talking about it with one of the security guards, and he genuinely delivered himself of the opinion that we don't have to do anything about planetary defense because "god wouldn't let that happen".

There are times I think an asteroid strike might be a good idea and let another species develop intelligence in the hopes they'd do better than we have.

[Hydra009]

I see Drew isn't content to just spout nonsense about theology/abiogenesis/cosmology, now he's up to climate change denialism, too.  What a brain trust. 

His rationale?  There's only been a .8 [degree C] change in the past 100 years.  This is akin to saying a massive forest fire isn't a problem because less than 1% of all trees are currently on fire.  It's a stupidly misleading way to minimize the problem and I feel bad for whoever's actually dumb enough to buy into that sort of argument, which fortunately seems to be just Drew at the moment.

For anyone interested in information beyond what Drew "heard", NASA has a pretty good write up about how seemingly small differences in global temperatures can have a massive impact on ecosystems and the state of the world in general.

[trdsf]

I see Drew isn't content to just spout nonsense about theology/abiogenesis/cosmology, now he's up to climate change denialism, too.  What a brain trust. 

His rationale?  There's only been a .8 [degree C] change in the past 100 years.  This is akin to saying a massive forest fire isn't a problem because less than 1% of all trees are currently on fire.  It's a stupidly misleading way to minimize the problem and I feel bad for whoever's actually dumb enough to buy into that sort of argument, which fortunately seems to be just Drew at the moment.

For anyone interested in information beyond what Drew "heard", NASA has a pretty good write up about how seemingly small differences in global temperatures can have a massive impact on ecosystems and the state of the world in general.

For now, there's a link.  The NOAA's site climate.gov provides a link to an experiment in the thermal expansion of water hosted at the EPA's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement website.  And guess what?  It's 404 science not found.  One wonders how long until Asshole's head-in-the-sand attitude is enforced further down the Executive Branch line...

[Drew_2017]

Hakurei Reimu,

Says the one who doesn't even bother to discover what is known about the universe before shooting his mouth off. You disparage cosmologists the world over and the consensus on cosmology, the field of study devoted to the evolution of the universe including its very beginning.

I do bother to do my homework. I have responded by citing links and articles from regular scientists. I've disparaged no one except your propensity to state your beliefs as irrefutable facts.

So again you have failed to exercise basic reading comprehention, because I have never claimed to know how the universe came into being, or even IF the universe came into being. However, you seem to equate that statement (which you also attribute to scientists) to saying that they don't know anything about the origin of the universe. Yes, we do know something about the origin of the universe:

FYI its comprehension...

In spite of your admission as to lack of knowledge of how or if the universe came into existence you maintain with a certainty no sentient being was involved. I would think you'd need more knowledge to make that declaration. Imagine if I said to you laptops were caused by natural forces but I don't actually know how they came into existence or even if they did...perhaps they always existed.

We know that it is completely possible that the universe exists in and of itself, without any cause or creator or even an "outside." This is because the spacetime of the universe forms a differentiable manifold, which can be completely characterized by an interior description. There are no externalities needed. You must destroy this possibility to proceed with your Goddidit claim.

Do you see how you mix your belief with fact? I don't deny its possible the universe exists of itself but you go from a possibility to declaring it a certainty that no external source needed. What if I said its possible we owe the existence of the universe to a Creator then the next sentence I declare a Creator did cause the universe to exist. By the way...do you deny its possible we owe our existence to a Creator? 

We know that even if the universe is embedded in a higher-order space, it is completely possible that there exists no structure of temporality. Without that structure, saying that the universe has a cause is completely unfounded. You must destroy the possibility that the venue the universe exists in is a timeless realm to proceed with your Goddidit claim.

I don't have to destroy mere possibilities. Who cares what's possible I don't know that anything isn't 'possible'. Mere possibilities offer no probative value since its possible we owe the cause and existence of the universe to a creator. Do you believe the universe came into existence uncaused or you just seeing what mud you throw might stick to the wall?

the universe may be eternal and unchanging â€" our time axis is in many ways no different from our space axes. You must destroy this possibility to proceed with your Goddidit claim.

In other words the universe itself may have divine properties of eternally existing and never changing... and again I don't have to destroy your self-serving imagination.

The point of me listing these other possibilities is because some of them allude action taking place prior to the big bang which does call into question some of your possibilities.

Notice what he's doing here. He is admitting that the "fine-tunings" are apparent. It's not a given. The apparent fine tunings cannot be taken as prima facie proof that the universe was purposefully created for life, planets, stars, etc. dispite your past crowings otherwise.

No because like you he can conjure other possibilities and as a scientist he has to propose naturalistic theories. The fact of fine-tuned constants is a reality. The explanation of it (either naturalistic or intentional) isn't a given.

From the article you posted regarding the fine-tuning argument.

As we have pointed out above, others have responded to the claim of "fine-tuning" in several ways. One way has been to point out that this claim is not corroborated by any theoretical understanding about what forms of life might arise in universes with different physical conditions than our own, or even any theoretical understanding about what kinds of universes are possible at all; it is basically a claim founded upon our own ignorance of physics. To those that make this point, the argument is about whether P(F|N) is really small (as Ross claims), or is in fact large. The point (against Ross) is essentially that Ross' crucial assumption is completely without support.

I don't claim the observation of constants in an extremely narrow range is the smoking gun evidence that seals the deal because we can always imagine possible naturalistic solutions. For example without any evidence we can imagine that a completely different configuration may support sentient life. We can imagine this is one of an infinitude of universes with variable conditions which would account for us living in a universe that supports our existence. By this way of reckoning naturalism is non-falsifiable because we can explain away any condition by conjuring some alternative scenario based only on wishful thinking.  Nonetheless if we found ourselves in a universe where a wide range of constants and properties would result in planets, stars, galaxies and subsequently life you'd be pounding the desk with that fact. Instead the opposite is true so we have to explain it away by invoking alternate explanations (minus evidence). This is where tunnel vision comes in handy. Since we know naturalism is true any possibility that comports with naturalism is valid and has merit because even if that alternate explanation proves to be false we still 'know' that naturalism is true.

[SGOS]

Drew, now he's up to climate change denialism, too.  What a brain trust.  His rationale?  There's only been a .8 [degree C] change in the past 100 years.

That's a worrisome change, especially on a planet in a universe that is perfectly balanced by a designer to support the culmination of billions of years of evolution.  Nor is it a slow change, considering 100 years ago we were in the early stages of blowing CO2 into the atmosphere.  I'll guess that a disproportionate percent of that .8 degrees has occurred in the last 10 years, and the next 100 years that number will triple, but then Drew would say 2.4 degrees isn't cause for concern.  Instead of being 50 degrees, it will only be 52.4, and that's so small, you would have to have a thermometer to even detect it. 

Personally, I'm not worried, because Jesus is sure to come in the next 50 years, and he will save us all.  Furthermore, I'm planning to cash in on the whole rapture thing.  I'm planning on a death bed conversion where I turn the last two minutes of my life over to Jesus, and I'm going to sell the rights to my story to the Christian film industry. 

It will be a real white knuckle plot.  Will I actually convert at the last minute or not?  Will some pestering loved one be demanding my attention at the last minute wanting to know if she was included in my will, and would I give her my car?   But Gory be!  In my last breath, with tears in my eyes, I will joyfully cry out, "I BELIEVE!" 

[Drew_2017]

sounds like Drew is one of those people that believes God won't let us destroy the earth. guess what, even if we find out that God is real, it's already obvious that God isn't going to lift a finger to keep us from destroying this place.

Are folks so desperate you need to make up things I believe or say? I've made no theological statements about God. Its really weak when atheists resort to theological arguments (which assume the existence of God) and say God doesn't exist because if God did exist God would do things more like how I would do them. That would be like proving football doesn't exist based on terrible play by a quarterback. If football really existed that QB would play much better.

By the way Drew if your belief in God is based on this long diatribe on the creation of the universe you've given us, it's really weak. It's almost like you've tried to convince yourself of the existence of God by conducting this humongous logical argument with yourself...I think if God is real we should all just be able to go outside and say "oh there he is"

I've tried to convince myself we owe our existence to mindless unguided naturalistic forces that didn't care about their own existence, didn't care if life existed, didn't care or plan for planets, stars or galaxies to exist, didn't care if the universe is knowable and amenable to scientific research and unquestionably didn't care if sentient beings arose to discuss this issue. Apparently I have personal incredulity (which means I lack faith). Yet few here (except myself) have bothered to make a case for naturalism from established facts.