As we discussed yesterday, it is understandable why TV Producers look for controversial ideas like Sagan’s flawed “oscillating theory” but why do serious scientists indulge them? Why are so many tenured professors bent on overturning something as obvious as The Big Bang? As Lee Strobel points out in The Case for a Creator, Einstein was irritated by the idea of an expanding universe, Astronomer Athur Eddington called it “repugnant” and Phillip Morrison at MIT admitted he would, “like to reject it.”
Why?
Robert Jastrow wrote in his wonderful book God and the Astronomers, “There is a kind of religion in science . . . every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized.”
Journalist Jim Holt interviewed a number of the scientists and philosophers seeking to avoid the “trauma” of admitting the universe had a beginning in his best-selling book Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. One proposal Holt explores is the “multiverse theory,” where our universe is one of many universes birthed by an “inflationary cosmology.”
What this means in non-Geek terms is that “our universe is one of nearly infinite past universes, generated as another “bubble” among untold trillions of other bubble universes.”
In the end, these lines of argument assert that the universe created itself. But does that make sense? There is no evidence that something could come from nothing or that anything that exists that we can observe or test is eternal.
So, what some atheists and skeptics have tried to do is re-define the meaning of nothing. For example, in an episode of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (doesn’t anything sound smart when spoken by Morgan Freeman!), physicists assert that a vacuum created the universe. But a vacuum is something. It is energy governed by certain physical laws. It can’t just appear out of nothing either.
This is why the overwhelming majority of astronomers, physicists, etc. reluctantly admit that the evidence points to a “big bang.”
What exactly was “the big bang”? According to the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, “The Big Bang Theory is based on the observation that all the stars and galaxies of the universe are in motion and not stationary. The American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889–1953) discovered in 1929 that the light of all visible stars was redshifted. Hence the movement of the myriad of galaxies is not random but everything is moving further away. If all galaxies are now racing away from one another then at one point all matter must have been clustered together in an infinitely dense space and its present motion might best be explained by an original explosion of matter. Hence the term Big Bang. The 1965 discovery by Arno Penzias (b. 1933) and Robert Wilson (b. 1936) of the background radiation produced by the intense heat of this “explosion” served to further confirm the theory. The Big Bang Theory brought to an end the idea of a static universe and made respectable again discussions of the beginning and possible creation of the universe.”
Yet, many scientists continue to dismiss The Big Bang Theory out of hand and even some Christians are uncomfortable with it.
Why? To that we will turn tomorrow. Until then, grace and peace.
A note to my skeptic friends who are gracious enough to read these posts, I don’t allow any anonymous comments. Thanks!
The whole “something from nothing” concept is a straw man argument since physicist never talk about nothing. They have never seen or created a quanity of nothingness. It seems that nothing is something that doesn’t exist. The concept of nothing is very useful in the field of mathematics but in physics it doesn’t seem to exist. If you have been paying attention to some if the latest science news you may have seen the recent discovery of the temperature of absolute 0 degrees Kelvin is not the coldest temp. as previously thought. When you remove everything from a space you are still left with energy. So far we have found no way to remove all of the energy from a space. So if this holds to be true then it is unlikely that the universe came from nothing but instead came from the underlying energy of the vacuum. This is a weird way for it to have all come about, but no more weird than it being made by a deity that is outside of space and time. And if you ask where did all of the energy come from, then I can ask where did the deity come from. And I will answer that the energy has always existed.
John, there is no reason that energy should be eternal. There is an argument that for a divine designer. Read William Lane Craig’s arguments that I posted subsequently.
There is no reason energy can’t be eternal. (what ever eternal is!)
I know what eternity is as a concept but I have no proof that eternity actualy exist. But I do know that all of the matter and the energy that it is composed of have existed for approximatly 13.5 billion years. And scientist figure that the majority of this matter/energy will continue to exist for 40 to 200 billion more years. After that it will slowly wimper out of it’s matter state and spread itself out randomly through out space. This is a huge unit of time but it is not an eternity. But from our perspective it might as well be. As for a divine designer, it seems that the only thing that the universe seems to be designed for is making black holes. Because it seems to be making them at one a day. It has made more than 4900.5 billion of them so far and will make 36500 billion in the next 100 billion years.
John, I’m not clear on what you are saying but it would seem to contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Energy is actually dispersing throughout the universe but in an orderly fashion, which means it had a beginning and design. Thanks for stopping by.
In the laws of thermodynamics energy can not be created or distroyed. In what I have stated above no energy is distroyed. The universe will have as much energy at the begining as it will after 200 billion years. At some time there will not be any more matter because it will have been converted to energy. There will be no breaking of the second law, the energy of the universe will be come more and more evenly dispersed. Even the energy contained in all of the black holes will be released through the virtual particle pairs at their event horizons. So even the matter contained in the black holes will be converted to energy and redistributed.
My main point after all of this is that the universe was not made from nothing but made from energy. Science has never said that the universe came from nothing. As far as science is concerned there is no such thing as “nothing”. Science has been studying the sequences of events from now back to the earliest moment after the expansion started. At no point has science verified the state of the universe at the precise start of the expansion. Let alone the so called moment before. But there has been some recent speculation of bubble universes outside of our universe leaving imprints of their presence on the early universe that can now be seen in the cosmic background radiation. If this hold true then the multiverse will be a reality instead of just a wild idea. Just when you think you have the universe figured out it reveals itself to be stranger than you can imagine.
John, you misunderstand me. There is no evidence anywhere that energy can do anything without direction and the evidence is that energy even when directed will move toward disorder but that’s not what has happened. As Jim Holt pointed out in his book last year, there is NO purely naturalistic explanation for the beginning of the universe that has any evidence at all or has become widely accepted even as a theory. If you are truly interested take a look at this: http://carm.org/failure-atheism-account-existence
Blessings,
The original state of the universe was very orderly. There was just a few fractions of a degree difference from any given point to another. This can be seen in the cosmic background radiation. Now days the universe is less orderly. Areas such as the surface of a star are highly energetic while the surface of an asteroid can be quite sedate and sureen. As the universe ages it will become even more boring with less and less activity going on. The energy will spread itself out so thinly that the universe will appear to be empty. The universe at that time will have the same amount of energy in it and it will have the same amount of mass but it will be so thinly spread out that there won’t be any place to hang your hat.
You are correct that as of yet there has not been any scientifically varified hypothist that warrant being elevated to the level of theory. But there are a few that have sparked much debate. I await the day they find something that will weed out the wrong ones so we have a clearer idea of how it all started.
I am not jumping ship just because science has not nailed down the answer yet. Science has gotten so much right and it has self correcting mechanisms built in that my confidence in it is fairly solid. Science has brought us atom bombs and MRI machines, not to mention cool stuff like iPads and cell phones. If science is wrong about the age of the universe then your cell phone shouldn’t work. If the universe is constantly being modified by some outside source then the results of all experiments should be in doubt. Every time you use the gps in your car or cell phone you are confirming Relitivity. Every time you listen to the radio or get an MRI you are confirming Electromagntism. Every time you get a flu shot or break your hip bone you are confirming Evolution. (hip bones tend to break as we get older mainly because humans are poorly designed for walking upright and living past 30 years old. Various flaws in our design start showing up as we age.)
Just a side note: your use of the word theory indicates you are not aware of it’s scientific use. You seem to be using it in the laymans way. In the science world theories represent the description of a phenominon that is backed by a significant amount of evidence.
My spell check needs to be corrected to acount for relativity!
You admit the original order of the universe was orderly? And energy did that on its own? Moreover, it is a logical fallacy to equate success or failure in one area of science to another.
Order doesn’t nessesarly equate to intelegence. Case in point, my house is occupied by very Inteligent people but that doesn’t mean that the house is orderly!
Science has been successful in nearly every area it has venture into. Religion has failed more timed than you can count. Just try to count how many religions have been created by humans over the past 50 thousand years. All but one of those religions you consider to be wrong. I just consider one more religion to be wrong.
John, again, more logical fallacies than I can count. Also, there is a reason no physicist is willing to argue that uncaused energy managed to finely tune a universe–it is ridiculous on its face. All the best.
Some past event caused the laws of physics to lock in to their present state and all that we see around us is a result of that past event. That much we both agree on. Where we disagree is what was the past event. I am on the side of we don’t know yet but it may have been a natural event. I am basing this on the huge number of events that we have evidence of that have natural causes. You are of the position that a deity is the cause of this event. You are basing this on first and foremost on an old book that you seem to charish. If you didn’t have this book to go by you probably wouldn’t hold that opinion.
You made a comment about random events not being able to create order. And you know this how? The sub atomic world is teaming with random events. The atomic world obeys cause and effect. All of the order you see today is caused by sub atomic events that have contributed to the atomic worlds events. There is nothing rediculuse about it, that is just how things are.
Also, as William Lane Craig pointed out in his debate with Alex Rosenberg (which he won 4-2 in front of a panel of jurors at Purdue), actually there are at least 12 different possible explanations cutting against random events at the sub atomic level by various quantum theorists. Your statement is a theory, not a fact.
You still don’t understand the meaning of theory.
In science a theory is not a guess. A theory is the best model of reality that we have at this moment that discribes a various phenomi given the facts that we have at the present time. It is not a guess, it is a working model of nature. As more info comes available the model may need to be adjusted. (case in point Relativity made adjustments to Newton’s theories) But the key thing to remember is that a scientific theory is backed by a substantial amount of evidence. Not just the results of one experiment but the results of thousands and thousands of experiments. Every year graduate students all around the world attempt to break holes into various theories. Sometimes one of them are successful but usually they are not. When they do find a flaw in a theory, science has to study the new results and attempt to figure out what happened. But at no time do they throw their hands up in the air and say “God did it!”
Most physicist won’t argue one way or the other, mainly because that would be like calling the race before the finish line has been crossed by any of the contestants. There is no evidence that the universe was tuned by an outside force or if the tuning is just us looking at how it is and saying that it looks like it was made this way just for us. Or if the appearance of tuning is just the result of a process that we don’t fully grasp yet. I would suggest that you read Leonard Suskind book about the landscape of the universe. I forget the title.
John, read some of the critical reviews of Susskind (search Susskind at Reasonablefaith.org). Few buy his arguments.
Also, no evidence of a fine tuner? If you read my posts you see that Peter Steinhardt at Princeton rejects the Big Bang out of hand because to accept it would be to accept fine tuning! The earth itself required 20+ different factors to support complex life. If any of these factors were off even a degree = no life on earth. The odds of such an occurence have been calculated by one mathematician to be one one-thousandth of one trillionth. The fine tuning is what led atheist Atony Flew to accept the probability of God. The numbers are just in my favor. Thanks for the interesting conversation.
The odds for winning the lottery are real big too, but every few drawing somebody wins. Your understanding of probabilities is lacking. And who other than religious are saying the universe is not the product of natural causes? Look outside of your religious paradin.
1) The lottery is designed by an intelligent designer for someone to win. The odds re: the earth are like winning 20+ lotteries at once = so highly improbable = impossible. (2) my understanding of math is the same as yours. (3) Actually, I can give you names of those who are not religious but it doesn’t matter if they are for to accept worldview as a factor is to commit the genetic fallacy–it does not matter how one comes to truth. (4) I was an atheist for 10 years. Thus, I would challenge you to look outside your paradigm. All the best,
If only one person each week could purchase a single lottery ticket then the likelyhood would be slim to none that anyone would win. In a universe with hundreds of trillions of stars and tens of hundreds of trillions of planets then the odds of a habital planet are quite more likely. Right now we have verified 860 planets outside of our solar system. Over 2000 more are waiting to be verified. In a sampling of 3000 planets there are expected to be a few that are in the goldilocks zone. Once we have a sampling of some 10000 goldilocks zone planets we will have a better understanding of what the odds are of winning the habitable planet lottery. Until then go to planethunters.com and help with the search.
John, you need more than the Goldilocks zone. You need 20 different factors aside from location. None other than earth have been found it is becoming less and less likely that one will be found. The numbers hold and the explanation is a designer.
So according to your way of thinking we should call off the search and pat ourselves on our backs like a Monty Python sketch and just remain calm and carry on and all that, because the guys with the really old book got it all figured out.
I’m going to stick with the planet hunters on this one.
John, I never even suggested such a thing and I would ask you to be more respectful. What I stated was a reasonable theory and that I believe the theory you put forward is unreasonable because it is so highly unlikely. May the search continue but to dismiss a design argument out of hand is clearly a blind loyalty to absolute naturalism, which is philosophically as narrow as it would be to dismiss all scientific quests as you incorrectly accuse me of doing. Again, thank you for the stimulating discussion. If I may say so without an attempt to be flippant–God bless.
The moment you bring a non natural explanation into the Discusion you can have anything happen. And we could never trust any of our results from any of our experiments. Each experiment we perform we would have to ask if the result we got was natural or a supernatural result. If we had to do this, then we would go crazy trying to find some way of determining if our results are even valid. That is why science proceeds under the assumption of natural causes. Science is not the study of the supernatural but the study of the natural. Scientist leave the study of the supernatural to the witch doctors and shaman.
Tell Francis Collins that. Also, to follow Pelley, if you found a complex mechanism in your yard, you would not have to prove the existence of a designer to rationally believe that there is one. All the best,
Collins is a smart guy but even a smart dude can ocasionaly be wrong. And as for Paley, his argument from design has been thoroughly discredited by Hume and Dawkins as well as many others. There is only emotional reasons for considering a designer.
Actually, the teleological argument is making a comeback. Dawkins is a joke among philosophers and just had his hat handed to him by Bishop Williams at Oxford. As for Hume, he admitted that the 2 things he admitted caused him to doubt his doubts was “the moral law within and the starry skies above.”
I have not noticed a comeback exept in few instances. Dawkins is not a philosopher he is an evolutionary biologist of some sort. As for the”moral law within” there are a bunch of folks studying the evolutionary roots of morality. There are certain aspects of morality that can be experimentally studied. This is a very interesting field of study.
I have noticed guys like William Lane Craig demolish atheists in debate after debate with both arguments and to quote Colin McGin there is no material reason for consciousness or morality.
Let’s just say that a designer created the universe. What does that tell us about anything. Like what is the purpose of creating a universe? Why make it so big? Is life part of the design or is it just a happy side effect. Is this universe just part of a bigger contraption or is it one of a kind? What is the designer made of? What is the designers strengths and weaknesses? What made the designer? Does the designer know the outcome of the universe? Does the designer even know we exist? Putting life on just one planet in just one galaxy seems like such a waist of space and effort so there must be other planets with life.
A huge number of questions come to mind when a designer is added to the mix. Where do you go to anwser any of those questions? Adding a designer does not really tell us anything important. And actually just waist a lot of our efforts chasing down blind allys.
You want a designer because you want your religion to be true, because your religion provides you comfort and gives you hope and you have so mush time and effort invested in it.
Just telling me that the universe was designed does not automatically lead to worshiping the designer.
For all I know the designer made all of this on a whim, and has lost interest in the whole endeavor.
For all I know the designer made it for evil purposes.
Bringing a designer into the mix opens up a whole can of worms that are not really all that helpful.
As Fox Mulder says ” The truth is out there!”
John, those are all good questions and there are reasonable answers to all if you are truly interested. Again, go to the Reasonable Faith link on my blog. I hope that you will and push beyond bumper sticker slogans.
“Reasonable Faith” is a oxymoron. The whole thing about faith is that it is unreasonable. If it was reasonable it would not require faith. William Lane Craig is only impressive to unthinking sheep. As for a material reason for consciousness – if it provides a benefit for survival that is reason enough.
Doesn’t provide an explanation and Craig is undefeated as a debater. He has beat Harris, Hitchens, etc and Dawkns refuses to debate him.
“If it was reasonable it would not require faith. William Lane Craig is only impressive to unthinking sheep.”
I may be off in pointing this out but… You could have been more direct and said “Nuh-Uh, you’re dumb.” instead of dressing up the phrase to insult the person (Matt) rather than addressing the topic of the debate.
Gloves above the belt man…
What does that childrens song say? “Words will never hurt me.”
Most christans love to be called sheep for some reason. Most religions don’t want members to think. They are discourage from questioning dogma. I was not atacking Matt personaly just his thinking process.
I was referring to the logical fallacy of attacking the individual rather than the discussion. I’m sure Matt isn’t that thin skinned that I should worry about his feelings on a blog after all. Now that you mention it I though think I remember signing the mindless drone clause when I decided to honor God… Thats wrong however. If that were the case I wouldn’t have the ability to honor your opinions while and maintaining that they are flawed. I would just have to follow along mindlessly since your certain of your self. Perhaps someday you can reflect on old self and smile. No sense debating this anymore it won’t benefit either of us from here. Maybe later. Be good.
The real question at hand is weather or not the universe is self created and self directed? I myself have no problem with it being self directed. I think that makes it an even more of a special event. That makes life an even more precious commodity. And us being self aware becomes the icing on the cake. The biggest bummer of the whole thing is that we don’t live long enough to explore the whole place. Thankfully we have found ways of sharing what one generation has learned with the next. I raise my cup to the self created universe and am greatful for all of the cool gifts that have been placed in our laps.
I just thought of some other stuff that bums me out about the universe. For starters the earth is only going to last about another 4.5 billion years. At that time the sun will have expanded so much to engulf the earth. But what is even more worrisome is that a little later the Andromeda galaxy will be starting it’s first pass through the Milkyway galaxy and that will surely mess things up for us even if we get ourselves away from the exploding sun. If the universe was intelegently designed it wasn’t designed for our survival. What a bummer.
Or it wasn’t designed to remain as it was forever, without a designer interacting with the forces at work. The Bible has this idea that sin isn’t something that just affects humanity, but corrupts everything in all of creation – planets, stars, galaxies, and possibly such things as physics. Paul says that “the creation was subjected to futility…” and “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
If this is true, then those forces of destruction, of our sun expanding until it either engulfs us or burns Earth into a crisp; and of galaxies striking against our own destroying the perfect balance that keeps us all alive, may not have been what always what was. And upon the return of Christ, there is no guarantee that those rules will remain as they are.
I strongly suggest you consider thinking deeply about a drastically different world view. You and I can talk about the same forces of the Universe, the same Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, etc and come to vastly different conclusions.
And if I’m sniffing Pixi Dust the purple unicorn will make everything magically delicious. How does sin affect inanimate objects. Which subatomic force is transferring evil waves? I never said that the universe will stay the same way it is, I actualy am quite aware that the universe is evolving. I am also aware that our life sustaning sweet spot is a moving target, we just seem to be dancing around it’s bull’s eye at this moment. A big rock with our name on it could kick us out of the center at any moment.
Ok, if you guys are right and heaven exist and you for some reason or other happen to end up there, what will you be doing in heaven a billion years from now? Or a trillion years from now? And if you say that heaven exist outside of time then you have basicly admited that nothing happens in heaven. Because time is the distance between to events. If more than one event happens then time exist. For god and heaven to be outside of time then nothing can happen there, god could not do anything because to do anything would create time.
John, first you commit a categorical mistake by asking how sin can affect anything physical when this clearly a theological and philosophical question. Your objection is the equivalent of stating, “there is no such thing as beauty because I can’t weigh it.” Also, who said heaven is a series of events? The Bible indicates that it is a spiritual realm where believers are with the presence of God. However, Scripture teaches that heaven is not where Christians will stay but that God will end this universe as it is (the only ancient cosmology that challenged the Greek idea that the universe is simply eternal) and will remake it. This will be a physical realm with time. Finally, by asserting unsupported cosmological theories, you have actually left the realm of science and entered the realm of philosophy but then want to arbitrarily limit what can be considered, which is logically incoherent and one of the reasons why the people you cite lose debates to guys like William Lane Craig and Paul Copan. With all due respect, such an approach is truly narrow. Again, I’ve enjoyed the conversation (despite the low blows) but it is unfortunately going nowhere because you will not recognize any counter narrative as reasonable. So, I think it is simply time to wish you the best and, perhaps to your chagrin, will be praying for you. God has given you a fine mind. Grace and peace,
My reply was in regards to Alex’s comment about sin corrupting things like planets, stars, and galaxies. So I was not the originator of the categorical error. I was just throwing more rediculuse ideas on the bandwagon.
As for leaving the realm of science, I’m sure the folks in the Intelegent Designer camp have left the realm of reality as well. There is no use complaining about my demeaning coments when nearly all of your coments are an assult on all of human inteligence. Go back and read all of your comments. You slip in a bunch of condescending passive agresive statements. You probably do it so often to those who disagree with that you don’t even realize it. I especially laugh at your repeated comments to encourage me to leave this forum. And of course the icing on the cake is the smug ” I’ll pray for you” . That is like nails on a chalkboard. First of I know you won’t actually pray for me because you see yourself as superior to me and as such you won’t waste your time thinking of me. I know this to be true because of your repeated attempts to get me to quit posting on your forum. But most of all I don’t want your prayers because they are a major waste of time. (proven by some extreemly well done experiments) Also I don’t need your prayers in any way because I will do just fine without you performing your mental masterbation. Chill out folks!
I’m calm as can be! Don’t drag me into this…
Chill out John…
Folks, that’s hilarious. Thanks for spreading some joy my way.
John, if I wanted to I could just ban you from the forum. It’s mine. I pay for it. I’m sorry if you feel I have insulted you. I wish you well and I am praying for you this morning. Grace and peace.
I’m not bothered in any way. I know that it is hard to judge people’s temperament though the Internet.
But what I really want to know is why other than for religious reasons does anyone go for the intelegent design hypothesis?
If I am an indiginous person walking on the beach and I find a pocket watch I would not think firstly of it being a designed object. I would think that it was a by product of a natural process like a pearl or a fruit. An apple or a pineapple is a lot more complicated than a pocket watch, but we all agree that fruit is produced by a natural process. Why jump to Inteligent design without more information?
Another way of looking at it goes like this: Imagin for a moment that you are an alien from another planet and some nice humans are showing you around. They give you a tour of an office building to show you what we do everyday. And during your visit to this office one of the employees starts chokeing on something they were eating. As your standing there observing the other office workers attempting to help their coworker you see someone grab a bic pen and disassemble it and use it to hold the person’s wind pipe open after performing an emergency tracheotomy. Now you having limited knowledge of earth you assume that bic pens were designed to save lives and that humans have placed them all over the place so they are always available in an emergency.
So a lack of knowledge could cause someone to jump to the wrong conclusion. The question we all have to ask is are we jumping to wrong conclusions due to lack of information. Most reputable scientist will not conclude the ID position because there is no information available about the supposed designer. If information about the designer becomes available they will take that into consideration. Scientist always approach things from the naturalistic position because naturalistic causes is part of the definition of what science is. If science was to start approaching things from a supernatural position then it would have to change it’s name to voodoo or spiritualism. But since science is the study of natural processes then the supernatural is out of the question. And anyone that thinks that science can be used to prove any aspect of the supernatural doesn’t understand science.
A pocket watch is complicated but a leaf on a tree is thousand of more times more complicated but plants create leafs all of the time through purely natural means. No designer is nessesary, just chemical process that proceed from DNA that has modified over time by random mutations and natural selection. Jumping to the ID conclusion is unwarranted.
But John you are assuming that those examples are purely naturalistic in their origin and what I am stating is that the math is against you. Many adherents to ID were atheist, Darwinists who came to believe in an intelligent design via their study. I was an atheist. I was a Darwinist. I’m not anymore because I found the evidene compelling.
Regarding – “But since science is the study of natural processes then the supernatural is out of the question.”
I would like to disagree with that statement. Science doesn’t only study the natural or tangible. Science is the systematic analysis of our observations(which could lead you to any possible/probable conclusion). It is quite possible in a general sense to observe, measure, or study something that would allow one to come to a conclusion about something they cannot see directly or touch.
Some examples could be psycology or sociology. We have observations we could measure in these fields but we can’t measure or pinpoint everything going on within those fields of study. So I’ll have to say that there is some science that goes beyond the physical/natural already.
Both Matt and Josh make good points. Matt, mathematical systems can be created that do not mirror reality. So I’m not swayed by a math argument on this one. I have heard several of the math arguments in the past and they reminded me of how the data was massaged to make cigarettes not so bad for you, (thanks big tobacco). Mathematical systems can be internally consistent but still be wrong.
Josh, psychology and sociology are the studies of natural systems that involve people. People are biological systems. The mind is a biological system that can be studied and quantified. True not all parts of those fields is pin pointable, but at no time do the researchers in those fields suggest that what ever is controling psychology or sociology or even the mind is outside of nature.
But John there is no evidence that the math is poor here. Again, I think you are dismissing any counter evidence a priori.
The real question at hand is weather or not the universe is self created and self directed? I myself have no problem with it being self directed. I think that makes it an even more of a special event. That makes life an even more precious commodity. And us being self aware becomes the icing on the cake. The biggest bummer of the whole thing is that we don’t live long enough to explore the whole place. Thankfully we have found ways of sharing what one generation has learned with the next. I raise my cup to the self created universe and am greatful for all of the cool gifts that have been placed in our laps.
Your blog will not alow me to add links to my replys but if you google “math of intelegent design” you will get about half of the links will be against. I especialy like the one about Wolfram’s math proving ID math wrong. Also i liked the one about a major math journal retracting a paper on ID math. I have heard both sides of this argument and I don’t think the ID side cuts the mustard. I hope you will actualy read the articles that point out ID’s flaws. It is a bit telling that ID doesn’t get muvh play in the peer reviewed journals. And no Maxwell or Nobel awards have been handed out for any ID related work. Probably because the math is not there yet.
John, I’ve already many of them. I have heard the arguments and found them to be straw men. I have been studying this for more than 10 years now. It isn’t my first time on this merry-go-round. I read the criticism of The Privileged Planet when it dropped and found the criticism to be lacking because many of them assume a conclusion then work to it.
As to the self-creation and self-direction of the universe, there is simply no evidence–mere possibility doesn’t plausibility imply.
The same can be said about ID. Why is ID such a fringe subject and not being studied at evey university in the world? Don`t tell me there is a left wing conspearosy. You know that there are plenty of graduate students that would love to knock their professors off of their high horses. A Nobel prize is waiting for anyone who can provide experimental proof of ID.
ID has the same flaws as creation science. I’m glad that judge in PA could see through the smoke screen of ID.
Actually many of the proponents of ID were atheists or agnostics (David Berlinksi is still an agnostic who refuses to speculate on the origin of the universe but rejects all current naturalistic explanations) who followed the evidence to ID not vice-versa.
Can you name anyone who is not a member of the discovery institute that is actively researching and experimenting aspects of Id. The reason I ask is that the Discovery institute is a little more than biased towards ID.
But bias still does not deal with the truth or falsity of the claim. To assert such to commit a logical fallacy. The Discovery Institute is the result of scientists from Columbia, Princeton, University of Chicago, UC-Berkley, etc. who came together thanks to law professor Phillip Johnson to express growing doubts about Darwinism. It should be noted that even the late Stephen Jay Gould, certainly a committed naturalist, shared many of the criticisms leveled by adherents to ID.
Where bias comes in to play is the pushing of an adgenda that that requires ID to be true. It shades the judgement of the researcher. This causes the researcher to ignore or gloss over or hide or misrepresent evidedence that would falsify their chosen position. Check and see where these guys are getting their money. Is it coming with no strings attached. At most universities wealth benifactors give money to general research without a care of what is the outcome. They don’t want their money wasted but to how it is used is up to the researcher and the school. When people give the Discovery Institute money they do so with the knowledge that it will be used to prove ID to be true, not any other hypothist. If an ID researcher where to come to any conclusion other than ID he would find himself on the streets.
John, again, even if that was true, it has nothing to deal with the truth or falsity of their claims. And, again, the overwhelming majority came to their conclusions BEFORE there was a Discovery Institute. It was their work that produced the idea for the Discovery Institute by non-profits such as The Templeton Foundation.
If your a pastor and you came to any other conclusion other than a theistic on. You would find yourself out of a job.
And I would gladly leave the job. I have left others. So be it. Whether I am a hypocrite or not still has NOTHING to do with whether by arguments are valid or not..NOTHING. To argue otherwise is to commit the genetic fallacy.