Design and the Anthropic Principle

Origin ^ | 2002 | Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

[STD]

Design and the Anthropic Principle Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D.

Hugh Ross launched his career at age seven when he went to the library to find out why stars are hot. Physics and astronomy captured his curiosity and never let go. At age seventeen he was the youngest person ever to serve as director of observations for Vancouver's Royal Astronomical Society. With the help of a provincial scholarship and a National Research Council (NRC) of Canada fellowship, he completed his undergraduate degree in physics (University of British Columbia) and graduate degrees in astronomy (University of Toronto). The NRC also sent him to the United States for postdoctoral studies. At Caltech he researched quasi-stellar objects, or "quasars," some of the most distant and ancient objects in the universe.

Not all of Hugh's discoveries had to do with astrophysics. He observed with amazement the impact of describing for people the process by which he came to personal faith in Jesus Christ. Some have expressed dismay but most have been overjoyed to meet someone who started at religious ground zero and through scientific and historical reality testing, became convinced that the Bible is truly the Word of God. He was stunned to discover how many individuals believed or disbelieved without checking evidence.

[hosepipe]

[ His term for Absolute Space is sensorium Dei -- it can be thought of as a sort of interfacing field between spirit and matter, and therefore of a direct participation of God with His creation. And God being infinite, Absolute Space can start out at Planck length or less (as with the singularity), and expand virtually without limit -- it is "bounded," but potentially infinite from a beginning. ]

Whoo Wee.. you do go on.. interfacing field between spirit and matter.. Have been going over dark matter and dark energy in my mind lately.. Could be there IS no space in space merely stuff we cannot measure yet between objects we can quantify.. Lovely way of putting it.. Dark energy and dark matter could be as "thingly" as other things.. There are things animals are unaware of in this Universe just so PRIMATES(if there is such a thing), maybe.. No, surely there are.. The spirit; a whole New different paradigm of reality..

[IronJack]

My unicorns feel the same way, but my Flying Spaghetti Monster disagrees with them.

If "unicorn" and "pasta monster" are the names you give to a power capable of creating the universe, then you have some kind of paradox going in that the two contradict each other. But I'm not sure what bearing that has on this discussion ...

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your outstanding essay-post, dear betty boop, which I unreservedly endorse!

I also strongly endorse your subsequent reply posts!

Now, if only our correspondents would take the time to digest what you've just said rather than getting all atwitter that we don't automatically dismiss the intelligent design hypothesis because of the behavior of some of its supporters...

[hosepipe]

"A'twitter".... LoL.....

[steve-b]

Dirac noted that the number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) in the universe is the square of the gravitational constant as well as the square of the age of the universe (both expressed as dimensionless numbers). Dicke discerned that with a slight change in either of these relationships life could not exist.

This is preposterous. Even setting aside the dubious notions that a)a time interval is expressible in "dimensionless numbers", and b)the number of baryons in the universe is known closely enough to make such number-juggling meaningfus, the quantity "the square of the age of the universe" is not a constant -- it changes as the universe gets older. Life on earth has existed for about a third of the universe's age (i.e. long enough that "the square of the age of the universe" was about half its present value). Thus, life is clearly not dependent on any such fine-tuned fit to that quantity.

[steve-b]

Now, nearly two dozen coincidences evincing design have been acknowledged

1. Both of my legs are exactly long enough to reach the ground. If they were shorter, I would be unable to touch the ground, would therefore have no traction to enable movement, and would therefore remain fixed in place until I starved to death. If they were longer, my feet would be rooted in the earth, I would be trapped in place, with the same unfortunate result.

2. My skull is precisely large enough to contain my brain, with just enough room in between for a few layers of cushioning. If it were smaller, I would suffer fatal brain damage from fluid overpressure. If it were larger, my brain would tear loose from the spinal cord at any mild impact to my head.

I could go on, but I trust that suffices to demonstrate the inanity of this line of "argument".

[betty boop]

Atwitter!!!

LOLOL! It's birds that twitter, right? :^)

But then, hey, I'm a bird -- in the Tegmarkian sense. :^)

Thank you so much for your kind words of encouragement, dear Alamo-Girl!

[YHAOS]

Thank you, betty, for a very illuminating essay.

”This is the seemingly intractable problem regarding Intelligent Design - there seem to be as many definitions of it as there are commentators on it.”

Is it the definitions which are the intractable problem? Or is the problem the commentators, who seek an advantage in how they sculpt their definitions (refine their descriptions? I suggest the latter, and if that understanding is the correct one, then the problem will remain intractable.

Definitions, and/or descriptions, are supposed to facilitate communication, by contributing to the clarification or perfection of one’s understanding of things and ideas. Instead they are too often used to denigrate; the intent not being clarification, but attack. We see this in attempts to tie Darwin’s theory of evolution to the failed social, economic and governmental theories of Marxism or, generally, Socialism at large. Those who see the connection have the burden of establishing the connection. The record would seem to indicate that Darwin neither intended nor saw any such connection, but that Marx & Engels did. Likewise, we see attempts to denigrate Christianity by describing, for instance, the sacrament of holy communion as ritualistic cannibalism. The motive in either of these two cases would not appear to be clarification.

[Alamo-Girl]

I'm glad you got a chuckle from it!

[Alamo-Girl]

LOL! Indeed, I'm a bird in the Tegmarkian sense also!

[Alamo-Girl]

Definitions, and/or descriptions, are supposed to facilitate communication, by contributing to the clarification or perfection of one’s understanding of things and ideas. Instead they are too often used to denigrate; the intent not being clarification, but attack.

Sad but true. Thank you for your insights!

[betty boop]

The motive in either of these two cases would not appear to be clarification.

Indeed, YHAOS. You write: "Definitions, and/or descriptions, are supposed to facilitate communication, by contributing to the clarification or perfection of one’s understanding of things and ideas. Instead they are too often used to denigrate; the intent not being clarification, but attack."

Jeepers, but I think it's even much worse than that. The intended "final cause" here -- the goal or purpose -- is to destroy language itself as a conveyer of meaning authenticated by actual human living experience over long time frames within given traditional historical cultures.

To "kill" language in this sense, together with its ability to support a private culture at all, all you have to do is "dissolve" the presently-existing cultural consensus.

The Marxists figured this out a long time ago. And it is a matter of fact that they chose to include Darwinism (at least such Darwinism as such benighted lame-brains could understand) as a key component of their "public pedagogy."

And that's a big part of the reason why we have to put up with "definition contests" any time a "controversial" issue is raised in the public square.

I just wish we had more persons of discernment now living capable of mounting a counterattack to such pernicious ideas as the gutting of language and meaning as a simple matter of operational tactics: "The End justifies the Means."

But Truth is Truth, and finally outs. You can't go against it forever....

Thank you so much, dear YHAOS, for your penetrating analysis.

[hosepipe]

[ To "kill" language in this sense, together with its ability to support a private culture at all, all you have to do is "dissolve" the presently-existing cultural consensus. ]

Quite true.. Words are what we use to think with.. Change the words and you change what people think.. even how they think about what they think.. It seems peoples abilty to think is affected by the words they know.. A small vocabulary produces a small mindset.. But a small mindset that dwells on the truth is broader than a larger mindset that dwells on other than the truth.. Because some get confused by options..

Controlling the meaning of words can herd people as surely as a corral does.. The herd fails to recognize the corral as negative.. Human language is powerful...

Is a baby a baby or a fetus?.. Are "progressives" promoteing slavery by government or promoteing progress.?.. Are democrats for a voice for the common man or for MOB RULE their Mob?... Words are important when someone changes the meaning of a word, his agenda should be considered..

[balrog666]

[apologist]

All these things are observed to be in critical balance for two reasons:

If they were imbalanced they wouldn't be here.

If they weren't here there would be no observer to see them.

Those two reasons may explain why the critical balance is observed... but not how it came to be...

[Alamo-Girl]

I just wish we had more persons of discernment now living capable of mounting a counterattack to such pernicious ideas as the gutting of language and meaning as a simple matter of operational tactics: "The End justifies the Means."

Indeed. Thank you so much for your excellent essay-post!

[TXnMA]

Are you implying that "Morton's Demon" is a synonym for "Thick-skulled Young-Earth Creationists"?

[TXnMA]

Thank you, Ladies! As usual, I am enriched, enlightened, uplifted, and blessed by your thoughtful comments!

[caffe]

I suppose if time were infinite, evolutionists would claim life always existed. But the limited time allows probabibility to make powerful scientific arguments against evolution. Even Shapiro and Wilson state "although the idea was entertained at one time, it is now considered highly unlikely that a chance assemblage of prebiotic molecules could have been the source of the first bacteriumlike organisms.
The odds are overwhelmingly against it. Even these simplest of organisms are amazingly COMPLEX BIOLOGICAL MACHINES (sound familiar? and yet this term was first used by an evolutionist) that must be immensely more sophisticated than transitional forms that are thought to have bridged the gap between nonliving and living matter.
But how do evolutionists answer this question of How did the first one-celled creatures arise? Since they are too complex to form by spontaneous generation, they must be the products of evolution from even simpler beings.

This answer is absurd on it's face. A straight forward reading by any mildly honest and intelligent reader must bring hysterical laughter as evolutionists continue to be backed into the corner . They have lived by naturalism and they will die by it.

[js1138]

But the limited time allows probability to make powerful scientific arguments against evolution.

No it doesn't. You can only calculate probabilities when you understand the processes. If you are attempting to calculate the probability of a chain of events you must know what each event is and what the probability is of each event.

Since no one knows the chain of events leading to life, no one can calculate the probability.

If you attempted to calculate the probability of your own birth, using the methods employed by ID advocates, you would find your own existence impossibly improbable. And yet, there you are. It's kind of foolish to bet against something that has already happened.

It make more sense to assume it happened and to research the chain of events, attempting to replicate each element.