Intelligent Design and Peer Review

Discovery Institute ^ | November 1, 2003 | William A. Dembski

[Nebullis]

The placebo effect applied to the magnetized bands. It was a separate issue.

The question about the prayer study (familiar, because AndrewC used to post this type of thing) concerns background effects, not placebo effects. Whas there a negative control? Let's just say all the "targets" in that study had universal coverage on the order of 100,000 prayers from individuals around the world. How could an additional, say, 1000 prayers have such a massive effect? What does that say about the 100,000? We don't have the exact figures, I realize that, but I wonder if the Duke researchers even know that there are lots of people who pray for others without knowing their names or their conditions?

[Virginia-American]

Another story about the prayer study

[Nebullis]

From the article;

"An analysis of the results found that there were no significant differences in the recovery and health of the patients who were prayed for and those who were not."

It sounds like there may have been a little problem with the controls. I propose calling a day of prayer-fast world-wide. Contact some really good intercessioners, some with previous success, for instance, and have them put their all into it. Additionally, a number of people can pray near the rooms of the sick to keep the evil forces away. A sort of Praraday shield. There has to be a way to get a real handle on this thing.

God will not be mocked, however. I don't know if He'll agree to participate in such a study.

[PatrickHenry]

I recall reading something long ago about such studies, and I came away from the article realizing how difficult it is to control for all the potential variables. It's like the studies we often see showing longer lifespans for married men. What does that prove about marriage itself? Many of the perpetually sick, the winos, the derranged, career criminals, the alternate lifestyle types, and other such marital undesirables would be "naturally" excluded from the population of married men, thus skewing the results.

Similarly, among the people prayed for and who recovered, were some of them "naturally" in better shape, merely because they were already healthy enough to be regularly attending church, had a large support group, etc.? It might be that a group of gregarious people and a group of sullen loners would exhibit wildly different health statistics, prayers or no prayers. In other words, it's difficult in such studies to avoid playing with a stacked deck.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the link on the more recent Duke study!!!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply!

God will not be mocked, however. I don't know if He'll agree to participate in such a study.

Indeed. Why would He make an exception now by allowing Himself to be proven to medical researchers when He has said before that He would confound the wise so "That no flesh should glory in his presence" (1 Cr 1:29)?

When the day comes that He shows His power, there will be no unbelievers. Until then there is the testimony of believers such as I am: I have received and witnessed many miraculous healings which were requested by intercessory prayer - the common thread was faith.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post!

Indeed, in any such formal study it must be much easier to collect the information than to understand it.

[betty boop]

Thanks for posting the link to the alternative view of the prayer study, V-A. From where I sit, it seems a rather crude way to regard prayer as “putting God to the test,” only to find that God does not always “deliver.”

Personally, I suspect that prayer and its effects are not proper subjects for scientific investigation. I just don’t see how prayer can be “observed” – that is, made available to the scientific method. PatrickHenry pointed out some of the logistical problems, like how to construct a control group (or groups). I suppose such issues arise mainly due to the fact that one cannot subject something that is inherently immaterial to the techniques of scrutiny proper only to material, physical objects.

Neither view – “pro”- or “anti”-prayer – fails on logical grounds or is falsifiable on the basis of the scientific method; neither is internally logically inconsistent. They just happen to be mutually exclusive. And so it seems we are free to hold our “opinion” of the matter.

For what credentials does science have to be the key referee of this controversy? As an interested party, it cannot qualify as a fair judge.

Speaking of opinion, mine is that prayer and meditation are not only good for the soul, they are generally good for the world. Prayer is ever a loving approach to God in hopeful supplication that He will not fail to come to the aid of the suffering, the sick, the dying, the vulnerable; or people who could benefit from a blessing of “Godspeed” for a project or a purpose. Thus prayer is also indirectly a joining in fellowship with a wider human community. It seems to me that prayer spiritually benefits both the one who is prayed for, and the one who prays.

The fact that the prayed-for outcome may not materialize to our view does not establish that God has denied our prayer. It may be He fulfilled it in a way of which we are not aware, of which we cannot be aware.

It is for this reason that I always conclude a prayer with this expression of trust: “In all things, Lord, Thy will, not mine, be done.” I bow my head – I refer to -- the infinitely greater Divine love, wisdom, judgment, will, and purpose rather than defer to my own puny, mortal, fallible, and contingent wisdom, etc.

Prayer is an essential form of Hope, one of the three great Christian theological virtues, the other two being Faith and Charity (Love).

Under Faith and Love, Hope must express in a manner that encompasses our fellow human beings; hence, we pray out of concern for the well-being primarily of their souls, but also of the material conditions of their lives.

I just read Lance Morrow’s Evil: An Investigation (2003). It was a most provocative book. He propounds no theories – he just does what the subtitle suggests: He investigates. But he allows himself a speculation from time to time. One of them is that the opposite of Evil is not Good. The opposite of Evil is Hope. I liked that a lot.

So I imagine at the end of the day, having made such a “confession,” scientific materialists out there will have a great chuckle over my superstitious and quite ridiculous suppositions and myths.

What they may not realize is that I sometimes find myself chuckling over their superstitious and quite ridiculous suppositions and myths.

My favorite one these days is the theory of the “primaeval soup” out of which all biological life is said to have spontaneously arisen, out of the blind chemistry of inert matter, all on a random basis; and then organize itself for greater biological diversity and complexity on a random basis, under the guiding hand of the physical laws and Natural Selection.

In a nutshell, there are not a few problems with this theory, in light of recent discoveries/experiments in quantum physics, astrophysics, geology, microbiology, mathematics, probability theory, and information theory.

One big problem in another nutshell:

Haldane’s model of the “primaeval soup” and ensuing random evolution from inert matter to living organism was predicated on the assumption that the universe is eternal and infinite. If you have an infinite time for a stochastic process to work itself out, then anything and everything that does not violate the basic laws of physics will eventually happen. Including the evolution of species, presumably ever in the “progressive” direction of increasing survival fitness and genetic success.

But the Big Bang theory, almost universally accepted these days, kills this cosmology. No longer is there infinite time for a random process to work itself out, so to describe or account for the biological diversity that we see today.

As Dean Overman writes in A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (2003):

“Haldane, Oparin and Wald wrote their papers at a time when the universe was believed to have no beginning or end and to be infinite in size. In an eternal, infinite universe, anything can happen. Data supporting the Big Bang theory from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite and new discoveries in the geological records change the perspective of the time available for the emergence of life. The time available on earth is extremely limited. The earth began to form about 4.6 billion years ago. Radioactive decay, the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, the production of thermal energy from the effects of gravity conversion, and crashing meteors made the surface of the earth sufficiently hot to make compounds of biological interest unstable for approximately 1.62 billion years. In other words, prior to 3.98 billion years ago, the earth was too torrid for the emergence of life. The fossil records, however, indicate that life formed on earth at least 3.85 billion years ago over a period of less than 130 million years….”

We turn now to calculations of the mathematical probability that unguided, random development accounts for the emergence of life from inert matter on earth, given the finite time limit of 130 million years in which random processes have to work.

Overman suggests how remote such probabilities have of actually reifying in nature in an apt analogy – the analogy of the Amazing Monkeys Who Type Out the Dialog from a Certain Scene in Shakespeare’s Henry VI -- who just manage to get it all right via a random process, given enough time:

“Assuming the Big Bang occurred 15 billion years ago and that one million monkeys started typing at Planck time (10^-43 of the first second) and that each monkey types one letter every second, over a million billion years would be required to produce all probable [alphabetic] combinations [to accurately type a certain passage from Macbeth, consisting of 379 letters]. To put time in terms of a power of 10, only 10^18 seconds have occurred in all of time. As with the time available for abiogenesis, the monkeys simply do not have sufficient time in 10^18 seconds to have any real chance of typing this short passage from Shakespeare [this probability has been calculated at 26^379 using combinatorial methods*]. When we turn to calculations of mathematical probabilities for the unguided, random development of life, we find odds that are even more remote, especially given the finite time limit of 130 million years.”

[*To put the probability figure cited in the paragraph immediately above into perspective, Overman notes most mathematicians view a probability of 10^50 as mathematically impossible.] Overman quotes Harold Morowitz on this issue:

“I think it is conservative to say that continuous life on Earth formed 3.8+/- 0.2 Ga (billion years) ago. This is not a precise estimate, but it places the event in the late Hadean or early Archean period, suggesting that as soon as the Earth cooled down sufficiently, life formed rapidly on a geological time scale. A less conservative estimate would be 3.9 +/- Ga ago – a very different view from the classical perspective involving random chemicals reacting for eons and finally lucking out, resulting in a living cell coming together. The thrust of narrowing the window in time is to shift the emphasis from low probability, random events to the deterministic production of living entities.”

Overman puts the question another way, noting “the simplest living cells such as bacteria are extraordinarily complex, containing many nucleic acids and enzymes and molecules, all comprised by thousands of atoms, all joined together in a precise sequence.” Fred Hoyle, an evolutionist (“though not a Darwinist”) and an atheist, noted the enormous statistical difficulty in accounting for the emergence of the simple bacterium from inorganic matter within the available time frame (i.e., 130 million years). Consider just what a staggering problem even the single-celled bacterium is for combinatorial stochastic analysis. Even assuming that “the first living cell was much simpler than today’s bacteria,” as Overman puts it, “[Hoyle’s] calculation for the likelihood of even one very simple enzyme arising at the right time in the right place was only one chance in 10^20 or 1 in 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000.”

Hoyle wrote:

“No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning… there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court… the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems … cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes…. For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly … There is no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.”

To which his close collaborator Chandra Wickramasinghe added a pungent summary statement: “The chances that life just occurred are about as unlikely as a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747.”

Now it is true that Darwinism is “only” about the “origin of species,” as the title of his magnum opus indicates. It does not claim to account for the “origin of life.”

But logically, the first bacterium was the “origin” of that species. And on the evidence it appears that the emergence of the first simple, single-celled biological organism cannot have happened by means of a random process, proceeding from inert matter to “life” (a phenomenon apparently undefined and uninvestigated by Darwin) within the available time period.

So, how does Darwinist theory explain itself/maintain itself against such objections? Certainly there appears to be a whole lot more going on in this universe than just Natural Selection….

Think about it: Logically, ‘natural selection’ requires something from which to select. That means there’s a “there” there already.

Yet the theory seems to want to explain the problem of natural evolution of species, the rise in complexity, etc., etc., while leaving the problem of the origin or basis of life in total obscurity – resting blissfully on materialist ideology, and faith in the guiding (yet invisible) hand of materialist Natural Selection (which being a concept, is hardly a “material” thing…).

I have to leave it to the reader to figure out what this all means.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll go say my prayers now… starting with prayers for my boon friends, companions, and collaborators here at FR…. :^)

Thank you so much for writing, V-A, PH, Nebullis. Good night to all!

[betty boop]

Sorry, but my last citation of Shakespeare is incorrect. There is no Henry "6"; but there is a Henry "4", a source proving helpful to certain intellectual maunderings I have experienced recently. Thanks to Dean Overman for the insights in his book, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (1997).

[RadioAstronomer]

Placemarker. :-)

[Tribune7]

bump

[VadeRetro]

The only models of abiogenesis creationists ever cite and attack are in fact creationist "suddenly-one-day-"Zap!" models. A huge, complex thing (a DNA molecule, a whole cell, a rhesus monkey, whatever) spontaneously jumps together from simple parts. That's the creationist way. Every one of those funny numbers with huge exponents in the creo literature models such a process. Frankly I doubt even an omnipotent God would make a man out of a pile of molecules all in one step. It's the dumb way.

Features of genuine evolutionary scenarios:

• Bootstrapping from simpler versions (true gradualism),
• Massive parallelism (billions of molecular "experiments going at once"),
• Lots of time.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your excellent essay! Hugs!!!

So I imagine at the end of the day, having made such a “confession,” scientific materialists out there will have a great chuckle over my superstitious and quite ridiculous suppositions and myths.

What they may not realize is that I sometimes find myself chuckling over their superstitious and quite ridiculous suppositions and myths.

LOLOL! Me, too!

And I agree that the disciplines of mathematics - particularly information theory and geometry - combined with physics, cosmology and molecular biology - will eventually reformulate evolution theory.

IMHO, the first pillar - random mutations - is already in jeopardy because the lack of mutability in regulatory control genes points to autonomous biological self-organizing complexity as a better explanation, i.e. evolution is not a directionless walk.

The second pillar - natural selection - has been placed in doubt (Wolfram) in that natural selection more often works against such a mechanism than for it.

And that is without even looking at the syntactic autonomy required for abiogenesis (Rocha) or the underlying physics of life v non-life (Pattee) or the information content necessary to sustain biological life (Yockey).

Finally, all of these efforts are set in the context of our understanding of the universe or multi-verse (Tegmark, Penrose, Ovrut) - which has a beginning - and the astonishingly improbable physical laws of this universe (Rees) - and moreover, the geometry or dimensionality of all that there is (Vafa).

This is a very exciting time to be a spectator, both of science and of spirit!

[Phaedrus]

Reality is.

[betty boop]

And that is without even looking at the syntactic autonomy required for abiogenesis (Rocha) or the underlying physics of life v non-life (Pattee) or the information content necessary to sustain biological life (Yockey).

Indeed, A-G, we do live in most exciting times!

I've just finished reading a wonderful book, by Dean L. Overman, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997). I enjoyed it so much, and I'd bet you'd like it, too. He quotes extensively from Yockey and Penrose, Hawking, many others. He points out that "order" and "complexity" are not synonyms, and elucidates the critical difference between them. By complexity, he means information content -- the minimum number of instructions necessary to specify and maintain a structure. So you can see information theory is very out front in Overman's analysis.

He writes, "Highly complex structures require many instructions. A structure may be highly ordered, such as a crystal, but contain very few instructions." Order displays pattern, sequence. Indeed, very simple instruction sets (and even chaos) have been observed to produce regular patterns. But highly complex structures -- such as DNA -- are nonperiodic, seemingly random sequences. DNA is "complex" in the way a crystal is not: Its complexity means it can encode an astronomically vast number of instructions/information content to specify its structure and realize its function.

Overman is also very keyed into issues in particle astrophysics. He wrote:

"Because the formation of life requires the formation of a universe compossible with life, the case against accident as an explanation for life is satisfied completely by an examination of the probabilities involved in the fine tuning of particle astrophysics without regard to issues raised by molecular biology. When one couples the probabilities in physics against an accidental universe compossible with life with the molecular biological and pre-biological possibilities against the formation of the first form of life from inert matter, the compounded calculation wipes the idea of accident entirely out of court."

The statement comes in the book's conclusion. It seems to have been thoroughly well argued and documented throughout.

Of course, there are things that cannot be known for a certainty. Most cases, we have to be satisfied with the standard, "beyond a reasonable doubt." I think Overman makes an persuasive case against life arising by accident; but I'll be checking his thesis against future developments, new evidence, new discoveries....

Just "thinking out loud" through some of Overman's ideas here, A-G. Thanks for letting me rant! You've got to read this book!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your excellent essay and for sharing the conclusions and your take on the book! Indeed, this is yet another ”must read” for me!

It seems whenever we start speaking of complexity, order, randomness, chaos, probability and entropy the conversation tends to get caught up in a quagmire of definitions.

I certainly agree with the author’s measure of complexity – which roughly corresponds to the Chaitin/Kolmogorov view that complexity can be measured as the size of smallest program which will produce the subject string.

Sadly, there is a tendency around here to dismiss the importance of Shannon entropy to biological information content. Instructions flow through biological systems like communications between devices and thus, Shannon is very relevant in my view. Shannon entropy is roughly the uncertainty of that flow, the successful flow is information.

Likewise, when we speak of order there seems to be a tendency here to observe that when the universe dissolves in the end, it will have achieved both maximum entropy and greatest order. That is an interesting observation but it doesn’t really tell us much about order in biological systems.

Randomness raises the same kind of issue. For instance, both pi and Chaitin’s Omega will generate a string which – if you were to select a chunk of it at a respectable distance – would appear to be random. In the case of pi that impression would be false. In the case of Omega after a certain number of positions, that impression would be true.

Or would it? … since in both cases, the number itself is a derivation of algorithm and thus, not random. I believe this is Wolfram’s counter-point, i.e. that all randomness is only pseudo-randomness.

Indeed, on closer inspection (especially in alternative bases) - most candidate number generating algorithms have a high degree of auto-correlation.

The order and complexity of biological information content is frankly stunning. But if the greater the entropy, the higher the order, then the less the opportunity for complexity. On its own then, complexity can only form in lower entropy, higher chaos. But is that rational? IOW, for a metaphysical naturalist explanation to prevail it must have gone from chaos to complexity to order to entropy to more chaos, more complexity, more order, more entropy and so on.

In sum, if the initial conditions are not random - indeed, if there is no randomness apart from pseudo-randomness - then the metaphysical naturalism theory of origins fails.

The counter to actual randomness around here has been the Brownian motion, but that (like pi and Omega) is an effect and not a cause, i.e. the consequence of ongoing bombardment by atoms and molecules.

"Because the formation of life requires the formation of a universe compossible with life, the case against accident as an explanation for life is satisfied completely by an examination of the probabilities involved in the fine tuning of particle astrophysics without regard to issues raised by molecular biology. When one couples the probabilities in physics against an accidental universe compossible with life with the molecular biological and pre-biological possibilities against the formation of the first form of life from inert matter, the compounded calculation wipes the idea of accident entirely out of court."

And this is the rub. Because the physical constants that exist – that absolutely, positively must exist – for biological life to have formed in this universe are stunningly improbable.

The only defense the metaphysical naturalists have to this is the plenitude argument – everything that can exist does, in some parallel universe.

Even for the die-hards who hold on to the hope of plenitude, they are nevertheless stuck with a beginning – and for that, they have no defense!

[Virginia-American]

Personally, I suspect that prayer and its effects are not proper subjects for scientific investigation. I just don’t see how prayer can be “observed” – that is, made available to the scientific method. PatrickHenry pointed out some of the logistical problems, like how to construct a control group (or groups).

The patients were divided randomly, no one knew who was gettting the extra prayers and who wasn't.

I suppose such issues arise mainly due to the fact that one cannot subject something that is inherently immaterial to the techniques of scrutiny proper only to material, physical objects.

They just did, didn't they?

Neither view – “pro”- or “anti”-prayer – fails on logical grounds or is falsifiable on the basis of the scientific method; neither is internally logically inconsistent. They just happen to be mutually exclusive. And so it seems we are free to hold our “opinion” of the matter.

It was tested as best as we can, and failed. Maybe God is into something like the so-called 'shyness effect' in parapsychology (PK, remote viewing, etc, just don't seem to work in the presence of skeptics, especially those who know how to detect fraud), or maybe prayer doesn't have any effect on healing.

For what credentials does science have to be the key referee of this controversy? As an interested party, it cannot qualify as a fair judge.

Then find some one else, not scientists, to set up a double blind experiment, or some other protocol that eliminates the placebo effect. Amazing Randi, perhaps, though I don't think this is his sort of thing.

Speaking of opinion, mine is that prayer and meditation are not only good for the soul, they are generally good for the world .... Thus prayer is also indirectly a joining in fellowship with a wider human community. It seems to me that prayer spiritually benefits both the one who is prayed for, and the one who prays.

IMO, it's probably good for the person doing it, as is meditation. I doubt it has any effect whatsoever on others.

I really can't comment on theological speculations but there's some truth to "The opposite of Evil is Hope. I liked that a lot.", I think.

My favorite one these days is the theory of the “primaeval soup” out of which all biological life is said to have spontaneously arisen, out of the blind chemistry of inert matter, all on a random basis; and then organize itself for greater biological diversity and complexity on a random basis, under the guiding hand of the physical laws and Natural Selection.

This is basically the Haldane-Oparin hypothesis from 1924. A quarter century before the genetic code was discovered.

Haldane’s model of the “primaeval soup” and ensuing random evolution from inert matter to living organism was predicated on the assumption that the universe is eternal and infinite.

Cite, please. Even before Hubble, the Earth (if not the entire Universe) was thought to have a finite age, measured in the millions or billions of years. (the ancient Earth is in fact one of Darwin's correct predictions)

In a nutshell, there are not a *few* problems with this theory, in light of recent discoveries/experiments in quantum physics, astrophysics, geology, microbiology, mathematics, probability theory, and information theory.

Quantum Physics has a bearing on origin-of-life studies!? (beyond chemical effects) Cite, please.

recent discoveries in mathematics, probability theory, and information theory?! Which ones?

Astrophysics?! Again, cite please.

But the Big Bang theory, almost universally accepted these days, kills this cosmology. No longer is there infinite time for a random process to work itself out, so to describe or account for the biological diversity that we see today.

Again, please find me someone who said infinite time was necessary. Or that the Earth was infinitely old.

Assuming the Big Bang occurred 15 billion years ago and that one million monkeys started typing at Planck time (10^-43 of the first second) and that each monkey types ...[blah]... million billion years would be required ... [blah]...As with the time available for abiogenesis,

The monkey analogy is utterly irrelevent.

...the monkeys simply do not have sufficient time ... When we turn to calculations of mathematical probabilities for the unguided, random development of life, we find odds that are even more remote, especially given the finite time limit of 130 million years.”

Really? He should show his work.

Overman notes most mathematicians view a probability of 10^50 as mathematically impossible

I'd like a cite on this one, too. Of course it's a very low probabliity, but who came up wth the 50? Sounds a bit like Dembski and his non-peer-reviewed speculations.

Overman puts the question another way, noting “the simplest living cells such as bacteria are extraordinarily complex, containing many nucleic acids and enzymes and molecules, all comprised by thousands of atoms, all joined together in a precise sequence.” Fred Hoyle,...are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40,000,

Hoyle's calculation is right. Therefore it didn't happen according to the model on which it was based.

... typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747..

Is there any evidence that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe ever gave any serious thought to the origin of life? Remember, they claimed that flu viruses came from outer space, a claim that has been refuted by evidence.

And on the evidence it appears that the emergence of the first simple, single-celled biological organism cannot have happened by means of a random process

How about nonrandom processes, like natural selection acting on the prebiotic molecules?

proceeding from inert matter to “life” (a phenomenon apparently undefined and uninvestigated by Darwin)

He thought about it, but here wasn't enough known about biochameistry to get past his famous quote (paraphrasing) " a little pond with ammonia and phosphate.."

So, how does Darwinist theory explain itself/maintain itself against such objections?

In large part, by showing they're specious.

Certainly there appears to be a whole lot more going on in this universe than just Natural Selection….

Think about it: Logically, ‘natural selection’ requires something from which to select. That means there’s a “there” there already.

Like prebiotic organic replicators?

Yet the theory seems to want to explain the problem of natural evolution of species, the rise in complexity, etc., etc., while leaving the problem of the origin or basis of life in total obscurity

No, it's just a different study than evolution, more biochemical than biological. Also, we have no real knowledge of the stages mattter went throgh as it evolved into something recognizable as life. Was there an RNA world? What preceded it? There may be no evidence at all left about such things.

– resting blissfully on materialist ideology, and faith in the guiding (yet invisible) hand of materialist Natural Selection (which being a concept, is hardly a “material” thing…).

This doesn't make sense to me. What ideology? Why should a process like natural selection have any of the attributes of a material thing? More to the point, once there are imperfect replicators and some sort of competition, how can natural selection be prevented?

I have to leave it to the reader to figure out what this all means.

Amen

[PatrickHenry]

Because the physical constants that exist – that absolutely, positively must exist – for biological life to have formed in this universe are stunningly improbable.

When asked "How's your wife?" a long-ago comedian (Henny Youngman?) used to say: "Compared to what?"

Which [cleverly] leads me to question how you arrive at your "stunningly improbable" conclusion. I'll give you an example of what prompts my question. Let's say the lottery in your state has arithmetical odds against a particular numerical sequence of 50 million to one. Fine. Let's say you win. Great for you! Nothing supernatural about it. Someone's always winning. After all, some combination of numbers comes up every week. We agree that your winning is no miracle. Now let's suppose you win again. And a week later you win again. And then again! Now that's "stunningly improbable" enough to trigger an investigation.

Anyway, in concluding that your streak of wins is "stunningly improbable," we have some understanding of the genuine odds involved, how many players there are, etc. We have experience with lotteries, week after week. We know something of which we speak. But -- here comes my point -- when it comes to universes, we know nothing but this one. So how can anyone conclude that it's "stunningly improbable"? Compared to what? Given the data we have, it may just as well be stunningly inevitable.

By the way, I think that either conclusion about the universe (improbable or inevitable) is consistent with divine creation. I have no ax to grind there, and that's not what prompts my response. I'm genuinely curious about the "stunningly improbable" conclusion. Personally, I just don't see it.

[PatrickHenry]

... stunningly improbable ...

A bit more on this (I hope you can put up with me). If the universe, and life, were really "stunningly improbable," then this brings to mind a deity that interferes continuously with the natural order of things (whatever that might be) in order to bring about this "stunningly improbable" universe in which we find ourselves. When I think of a continuously interfereing deity, I can't help coming up with this kind of image:

Now this "Charlie Chaplin Modern Times" kind of deity, running around flipping switches, pulling handles, turning dials, adjusting mixtures of chemicals, tweaking relationships, etc., may be just what it takes to generate a "stunningly improbable" universe. It seems that way to me, but I don't know. My personal opinion is that a universe where things just had to turn out this way, complete with life, consciousness, intelligence, and free will, is a far more elegant, even sublime creation, than a Rube Goldberg situation that requires constant attention.

So, for what it's worth (don't tell me), I suspect that this universe, and life, and everything, isn't "stunningly improbable" at all.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your posts and your strong advocacy of the Anthropic Principle!

I'm genuinely curious about the "stunningly improbable" conclusion. Personally, I just don't see it.

Here’s the view from Martin Rees:

Why is there life? - Martin Rees

The Universe is unlikely. Very unlikely. Deeply, shockingly unlikely.

"It's quite fantastic," says Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, waving a hand through the steam rising from his salmon-and-potato casserole...

In his newest book, Just Six Numbers, Rees argues that six numbers underlie the fundamental physical properties of the universe, and that each is the precise value needed to permit life to flourish. In laying out this premise, he joins a long, intellectually daring line of cosmologists and astrophysicists (not to mention philosophers, theologians, and logicians) stretching all the way back to Galileo, who presume to ask: Why are we here? As Rees puts it, "These six numbers constitute a recipe for the universe." He adds that if any one of the numbers were different "even to the tiniest degree, there would be no stars, no complex elements, no life." ...

Faced with such overwhelming improbability, cosmologists have offered up several possible explanations. The simplest is the so-called brute fact argument. "A person can just say: 'That's the way the numbers are. If they were not that way, we would not be here to wonder about it,' " says Rees. "Many scientists are satisfied with that." Typical of this breed is Theodore Drange, a professor of philosophy at the University of West Virginia, who claims it is nonsensical to get worked up about the idea that our life-friendly universe is "one of a kind." As Drange puts it, "Whatever combination of physical constants may exist, it would be one of a kind."

Rees objects, drawing from an analogy given by philosopher John Leslie. "Suppose you are in front of a firing squad, and they all miss. You could say, 'Well, if they hadn't all missed, I wouldn't be here to worry about it.' But it is still something surprising, something that can't be easily explained. I think there is something there that needs explaining."

Meanwhile, the numbers' uncanny precision has driven some scientists, humbled, into the arms of the theologians. "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine," contends Vera Kistiakowsky, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But Rees offers yet another explanation, one that smacks of neither resignation nor theology. Drawing on recent cosmology- especially the research of Stanford University physicist Andrei Linde and his own theories about the nature of the six numbers- Rees proposes that our universe is a tiny, isolated corner of what he terms the multiverse.

The idea is that a possibly infinite array of separate big bangs erupted from a primordial dense-matter state. As extravagant as the notion seems, it has nonetheless attracted a wide following among cosmologists. Rees stands today as its champion. "The analogy here is of a ready-made clothes shop," says Rees, peeling his dessert, a banana. "If there is a large stock of clothing, you're not surprised to find a suit that fits. If there are many universes, each governed by a differing set of numbers, there will be one where there is a particular set of numbers suitable to life. We are in that one."

A review of the book to name the six numbers:

So what are the six numbers? One is the number of dimensions we live in: three. The rest are, at least at first sight, more obscure. For the record, they are N, the ratio of the strength of gravity to that of electromagnetism; epsilon, the ratio of mass lost to energy when hydrogen is fused to form helium; Omega, describing the amount of dark matter; lambda, the cosmological constant; and Q, related to the scale at which the universe looks smooth.

Here’s another set of constants from my Origins article:

http://sparc.airtime.co.uk/users/station/cosmic.htm

There are quite a few constants in physics which have values that look to have been plucked out of thin air, seemingly with no reference to anything else. It is interesting to see how a small change in one or other of them would make life totally impossible on Earth, or anywhere else in the universe. It almost seems as though the laws of physics themselves are precisely 'tuned' so as to favour the appearance of life somewhere...

Gravity. Suppose gravity was stronger or weaker than it is.

The forces show a very wide spread of strengths, which our Universe depends on to greater or lesser degrees. Suppose gravity was stronger, by a factor of 10^10. This seems quite a lot, but it would still be the weakest force, just 10^-28 of the strength of electromagnetism. The result would be that not as many atoms would be needed in a star to crush its core to make a nuclear furnace. Stars in this high-gravity universe would have the mass of a small planet in our Universe, being about 2km in diameter. They would have far less nuclear fuel as a result, and would use it all up in about one year. Needless to say, it is unlikely that any life would evolve or survive long under such conditions.

Make gravity substantially weaker on the other hand, the gas clouds of hydrogen and helium left after the Big Bang would never manage to collapse in an expanding universe, once again leaving no opportunity for life to emerge

Water. What if ice was denser than water, as are most solids compared with their liquids?

These and other odd features of water are a consequence of the hydrogen bond - the attraction of the electron-rich oxygen atoms of water molecules for the electron-starved hydrogen atoms of other water molecules. This in turn is a function of the precise properties of the oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which also determines the H-O-H bond angle of 104.5 degrees - only slightly less than the ideal tetrahedral angle of 109.5 degrees. It is (incidentally) the hydrogen bond which holds together the two strands of DNA.

It is also the hydrogen bond which is responsible for the crystalline structure of ice, which is in the form of an open lattice: this makes ice less dense than the liquid. As a result, ice floats. If ice was denser than its liquid form (as is the case with most other substances) then it would collect at the bottom of lakes and oceans, and eventually build up until the world was frozen solid. As it is, it forms a thin insulating sheet which prevents evaporation and keeps the waters below warm.

Carbon Resonance. A "put up job" according to Professor Sir Fred Hoyle.

A carbon-12 nucleus is made from the near-simultaneous collision of three of these helium-4 nuclei [within stars]. Actually, what happens is that two helium-4 nuclei merge to make beryllium-8, but beryllium-8 is so unstable that it lasts only 10^-17 of a second, and so a third alpha particle (which is what a helium nucleus is) must collide and fuse with the beryllium nucleus within that time. Not only is this triple encounter a relatively unlikely event, but any such unstable beryllium nuclei ought to be smashed apart in the process. Therefore, it should be expected that carbon itself (and consequently all heavier elements) would be rare in the Universe.

However, the efficiencies of nuclear reactions vary as a function of energy, and at certain critical levels a reaction rate can increase sharply - this is called resonance. It just so happens that there is a resonance in the three-helium reaction at the precise thermal energy corresponding to the core of a star...

So if there was another resonance at work here all the carbon would be quickly processed into oxygen, making carbon very rare again. In fact, it turns out that there is an excited state of oxygen-16 that almost allows a resonant reaction, but it is too low by just 1%. It is shifted just far enough away from the critical energy to leave enough life-giving quantities of carbon untouched.

Supernovae. How critical are the properties of neutrinos in dispersing a star's heavy elements through space?

This ejection of rich material into space is carried by an enormous flux of neutrinos generated in the explosion. The neutrino is normally such a ghostly particle that it could pass right through many light-years of solid lead, unaffected. In blasting apart a supernova, its precise interactivity (or lack of it) is such that it should have enough time to reach the stellar envelope before dumping its energy and momentum, but not so much time that it should escape. This property is partly a function of the weak force in a complex relationship which must be just as we observe it, to one part in a thousand. If the star's matter was not so effectively redistributed, it would simply collect about the dead star or fall back. It would not be available for new stars to make planets capable of bearing life. A universe without our particular kind of neutrinos would be a dead universe.

Strong Nuclear Force. What would have happened if the strong nuclear force had been different by just a few percent?

If the strong force had actually been just 13% stronger, all of the free protons would have combined into helium-2 at an early stage of the Big Bang, and decay almost immediately into deuterons. Then pairs of deuterons would readily fuse to become helium-4, leaving no hydrogen in the Universe, and so no water, and no hydrocarbons…

An increase in the strong force of just 9% would have made the dineutron possible. On the other hand a decrease of about 31% would be sufficient to make the deuteron unstable, and so remove an essential step in the chain of nucleosynthesis: the Universe would contain nothing but hydrogen, and again life would be impossible.

Flatness. What if the Universe was not so precisely balanced between ultimate collapse and unending expansion?

The Universe has been expanding for 15 billion years at a rate fantastically close to a knife-edge line between recollapse and ultimate dispersion. Even at this point in time we can not tell for sure which side of the line we are on: whether Big Crunch or Heat Death is the ultimate fate of the Universe. It is lucky for us that the Universe is flat in this way since the tiniest deviation from its initial value (which must have been exact to one part in 10^35) would have led to a rapid Big Crunch or cosmic dissipation. And, as usual, no life.

Proton-Neutron Mass Difference. Suppose protons and neutrons were not almost equal in mass.

The difference in mass between a proton and a neutron is only a little greater than the mass of the relatively tiny electron (which has about 1/1833 the mass of a proton). Calculations of relative particle abundances following the first second of the Big Bang, using Boltzmann's statistical theorem, show that neutrons should make up about 10% of the total particle content of the Universe. This is sensitive to the proton:neutron mass ratio which is (coincidentally) almost 1. A slight deviation from this mass ratio could have led to a neutron abundance of zero, or of 100%, the latter being most catastrophic for the prospects of any life appearing. Even if there were 50% neutrons, all of them would have combined with the remaining protons early in the Big Bang, leading to a Universe with no hydrogen, no stable long-lived stars, and no water. And no life

Antimatter. Why is there any matter in the Universe at all, but no appreciable quantities of antimatter?

In the colossal energies of first millionth of a second of the Big Bang, particles and their anti-particles would have been created and destroyed in pairs, equally. Once the temperature fell sufficiently, photons could no longer be readily converted into particle-antiparticle pairs, and so they annihilated each other. The present ratio of photons to protons, 'S', is 10^9, which suggests that only one proton (and one electron) per billion escaped annihilation

Dimensionality. What if there were more or fewer than three dimensions of space and one of time?

One consequence of having a three-dimensional space is the inverse square law of forces. In particular, only in such a space are stable planetary orbits possible: more or fewer dimensions introduce instability. By a series of complex arguments it can also be shown that stable atoms and chemistry also require three dimensions of space, and the distortion-free propagation of any wave-based signal also requires exactly three dimensions of space.

Of course if our Universe was actually hostile to life, we couldn't be here to remark on the fact. This is the basis of the Anthropic Principle. To put it another way: without the right kind of physics you don't get physicists.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01o.html

Moreover, the Sun's circular orbit about the galactic center is just right; through a combination of factors it manages to keep out of the way of the Galaxy's dangerous spiral arms. Our Solar System is also far enough away from the galactic center to not have to worry about disruptive gravitational forces or too much radiation.

When all of these factors occur together, they create a region of space that Gonzalez calls a "Galactic Habitable Zone." Gonzalez believes every form of life on our planet - from the simplest bacteria to the most complex animal - owes its existence to the balance of these unique conditions.

Because of this, states Gonzalez, "I believe both simple life and complex life are very rare, but complex life, like us, is probably unique in the observable Universe."

Going back to the Martin Rees article, there are basically three reactions to these stunning improbabilities:

1. God – only His being can explain all of this. (Alamo-Girl)

2. Plentitude – everything that can exist, does in some multi-verse (Rees)

3. Anthropic Principle – without the right kind of physics, you don’t get physicists (PatrickHenry)

In my view, #2 only moves the goal post because if everything that can exist does in some multi-verse, there would nevertheless still be a beginning, thus the answer is still #1.

As a #1 – I consider #3 to be giving up. Conversely, as a #3 you might consider #1 to be giving up. But perhaps we can both agree that #2 ought to be pursued?