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Ms. boop, Alamo-Girl, I thought you might enjoy this as we have discussed the topic before.

Some of my comments.

1. Generally an excellent article. Not as strong a finish, but the beginning was excellent. In particular, I like the fact that he finds the big bang model fully consistent with, and indeed, supportive of Christianity. Many of us have long argued that. Young earth creationists, take note.

2. We need to make sure of our definitions (as we often get them wrong around here, to wit:
* Design of the Universe is NOT "Intelligent Design". Design of the Universe is the idea that the Universe was designed by a Creator.
* "Intelligent Design" is the very specific notion that the Creator, having designed the Universe 15 billion years ago, got it wrong and had to tinker with it multiple times subsequently to get life to work.

3. The article above is a summary; it was not written by the referenced author. However, the summary appears reasonable.

4. The initial arguments made by the article are better; it gets weaker as it continues. In particular, the argument that Earth is the only possible planet to have intelligent life is both stupid and dangerous. The numbers quoted in the table are assumed to be statistically independent. They are clearly not, and the covariance will drastically reduce the probabilities. Moreover, the numbers themselves are estimates.

Finally, and most importantly, it is dangerous philosophy to base your Christian faith on a particular, poorly supported "science". What happens if your "science" is proven wrong?? Is your faith now in jeopardy?? Was Christianity in doubt because Galileo was right and the Earth was not the center of the solar system as the Catholic Church once maintained?? What happens if we ever do meet intelligent life in the universe?? Is this man's faith now in jeopardy because one of his central theses is disproven??? When will the fundamentalists stop making this mistake??

5. The weakest part of the article, and the one barely supported was the notion that the Universe could not have created life (man). The article is weak; principally it is argument by assertion and the assertion is over stated. In particular, the citations are all from Theoretical Biology, which is intended to be speculative. There is zero proof here. Moreover, the summarizer over states by stating that this has been proven. It clearly hasn't. It has been thought about though, which is what science does.

Your comments are on the mark and thoughtful. Especially:

"2. ...
* Design of the Universe is NOT "Intelligent Design". Design of the Universe is the idea that the Universe was designed by a Creator.
* "Intelligent Design" is the very specific notion that the Creator, having designed the Universe 15 billion years ago, got it wrong and had to tinker with it multiple times subsequently to get life to work."

Further:
There is also a thinking fallacy implied in the original article, namely failure to notice that "what is observed trumps apriori speculations".

a. If you calculate the probability of winning the Grand Lottery worth $100+ million, you find that it is virtually zero, using solid mathematics. Nonetheless, every month or so, someone actually wins it.

b. If you calculate the probability that I exist with certain traits, my parents found each other, my grandparents existed and found each other, that certain sperm and ova would unite, that any would survive childhood, and live in such places as Italy, Lebanon, Germany, Ireland, and Ohio, etc., etc., the probability would be next to zero. This argument implies that none of us exist.

The fact is that I and others do exist. A priori estimates of the probability are thus meaningless. Observable fact trumps speculations.

c. If the physics of the Universe were different, then maybe life would not have developed and maybe humans would not have evolved. There would, then, not be any issues or posts about whether a god did it and about what 'salvation' means. There is nothing in science that supports a view about souls or eternal life. Obviously, it is humans that created the notion of gods. The desire for being associated with 'magical' powers is strong, from comic book figures to belief in 'psychics'.

History shows multiple creation myths have arisen in different peoples and cultures. In science, we know that Noah's Flood could not possibly have happened without turning everything we know about the world on its ear, including morality. Ross ignores this.

The weakest part of the article, and the one barely supported was the notion that the Universe could not have created life (man). The article is weak; principally it is argument by assertion and the assertion is over stated.

Hello 2ndreconmarine! It’s so good to see you again!

WRT to the above, I’m not clear what you mean by "Universe" in this statement. Do you mean matter plus physical laws?

The subject matter of the article at the top is so very near and dear to my heart. And yet – I have a “front-burner project” going on now that I have to take care of before I’ll have the opportunity to engage in this discussion. With any luck at all, I’ll be back in a day or so. And I’m most anxious for that to be the case, for this promises to be a great feast!

Meanwhile, I just received a very interesting article from a friend, by George F R Ellis, Mathematics Department, University of Cape Town, entitled “Physics and the Real World.” I haven’t read it through yet, but it appears to be on-topic. Maybe you’ll find it of interest. Here’s the abstract:

Physics and chemistry underlie the nature of all the world around us, including human brains. Consequently some suggest that in causal terms, physics is all there is. However we live in an environment dominated by objects embodying the outcomes of intentional design (buildings, computers, teaspoons). The present-day subject of physics has nothing to say about the intentionality resulting in existence of such objects, even though this intentionality is clearly causally effective. This paper examines the claim that the underlying physics uniquely causally determines what happens, even though we can’t predict the outcome. It suggests that what occurs is the contextual emergence of complexity: the higher levels in the hierarchy of complexity have autonomous causal powers, functionally independent of lower-level processes. This is possible because top-down causation takes place as well as bottom-up action, with higher-level contexts determining the outcome of lower level functioning, and even modifying the nature of lower level constituents. Stored information plays a key role, resulting in non-linear dynamics that is non-local in space and time. Brain functioning is causally affected by abstractions such as the value of money and the theory of the laser. These are realized as brain states in individuals, but are not equivalent to them. Consequently physics per se can’t causally determine the outcome of human creativity, rather it creates the possibility space allowing human intelligence to function autonomously. The challenge to physics is to develop a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures, with top-down causation and memory effects allowing higher levels of order to emerge with genuine causal powers.

You can download the PDF from this URL:

http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/~ellis/realworld.pdf.

Be back soon, God willing!

Thanks ever so much for the ping, 2ndreconmarine!

“Intelligent Design” is the very specific notion that the Creator, having designed the Universe 15 billion years ago, got it wrong and had to tinker with it multiple times subsequently to get life to work.

Hello 2ndreconmarine! WRT the above: This is the seemingly intractable problem regarding Intelligent Design — there seem to be as many definitions of it as there are commentators on it. The definition you give here is not at all what I think of as ID. All the intelligent design hypothesis states is that “certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.” Certain features, not all features. On my understanding, ID does not at all deny Darwinian evolution. It simply maintains that living organisms cannot be fully accounted for on the basis of random mutation + natural selection alone.

As Alamo-Girl tirelessly points out, what is most needful is to discriminate the important differences between ID and the ID movement. The latter is not science. The former is, if we are to listen to scientists such as John Wheeler, Fred Hoyle, et al. To me it doesn't matter a whit that these gentlemen did not self-describe as IDers. (Hoyle was an atheist.) You just have to take a look at their work and what they had to say about it to draw that conclusion.

I find it fascinating that the description you give of ID above is actually the view of Sir Isaac Newton. It was Newton himself who “thought to catch this tendency of the mechanical explanation [of nature as] leading to a world independent from God.” [see: Wolfhart Pannenberg, Towards a Theology of Nature, 1993]. As a practical matter, Newton was concerned that all that random bumping around of material objects would inevitably become a source of disorder in the world; and that God would have to step in from time to time to set matters aright again.

BTW, FWIW, this is not my belief. Though I share with Newton the idea that God is active in the world because the essential nature of God is, as Newton put it, “the Lord of Life with His creatures,” I strongly doubt he has to intervene and tinker with the physical creation, nor does every new species require a “special creation” by God. Evolution may very well be the tool God chose to realize His grand design in time.

My own thought in the matter — which is purely speculative of course — is that the world takes its foundation in an algorithm from inception, which defines all possible infinite possibility spaces for anything that can come into existence in this universe. It is a kind of blueprint that specifies the kinds of outcomes that can be realized, in advance; but it does not need to precisely define each and every unique, particular entity that comes into existence. The “design” is so unimaginably perfect that it runs as if on automatic pilot, so to speak. This is a model of that which is unchangeable (Logos and laws which flow from it) and that which is susceptible to change, to development.

Of course, readers in philosophy will instantly catch me out here as a Neoplatonist. :^)

As a Christian, I identify this algorithm from inception as the Word, the Logos of God. A scientist might associate it with the singularity of the big bang. God spoke the Word, and then just let’ er rip. An expanding universe suitable for the evolution of life is the result.

It’s important to mention here that I fully recognize my “speculation” on this topic is not strictly-speaking “scientific.” Rather, it is cosmological. I’d just like to point out that many scientists today, especially in physics, astrophysics, and information science, have been drawn to the cosmological implications of their work. Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, seems to be working overtime to constrain their field of endeavor to the narrowest possible.

Lastly, I think the real bone that Neodarwinism wants to pick with ID is ID’s skepticism about methodological naturalism. In particular, MN does not appear to be eminently suitable to exploring such things as consciousness, intelligence, and successful communication in nature. It is, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, limited to only two of Aristotle’s four causes, the material and the efficient. And yet, the more we study the universe and the things in it, the more we realize that questions of formal and final cause are essential to understanding the “all that there is” in this universe.

Well, that is my present understanding at any rate, subject to change as “new data come in.” :^)

Incidentally, that Ellis article I provided the URL for well develops the idea of final causes in nature, called “goals” in the article. Spunkets and I were having a conversation about that, a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t get very far, unfortunately.

I very much enjoyed the article at the top of this thread, and thank you for pinging me to it. I agree with you that it’s unproductive for one to base religious belief on scientific theories. If you have faith, you don’t need the theories. As to whether there is intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, all I can say is: I don’t know, and presently have no way of finding out. Seems like a very good reason to remain silent on the subject.

Again, thanks, 2ndreconmarine, for pinging me to this fascinating article, and for your excellent essay/post! Sorry to be so tardy with my reply.