Fine tuning of the universe

I was reading a book today, called 'A case for a creator', and its about intelligent design. If you don't know what ID is, then you wont understand what this post is about.
Well, i don't believe in ID, but i have to admit they do have some good arguments for it. For instance, the chance of the values of Gravity and Radiation to be where they are is the same as the chance of chucking a dart at a dart-board the size of the world, and hitting a bulls-eye the size of half an atom.
Another example is the electromagnetic coupling constant. If you had a ruler that crossed the whole universe, that was divided into one inch sections (each inch representing a certain value, going up from one end to the other), and you placed your finger where the constant is, if you moved your finger one inch to the right, chemical bonding would be disrupted; elements more massive than boron would be unstable to fission. If you moved your finger to the left, chemical bonding would be insufficient for life chemistry.
And what are the chances of all of these values being just right? Tiny.
It was one out of something, i cannot remember the exact figure, but i do remember the number had more zero's in it than there are fundamental particles in the universe. It was something like 160 billion to the power of 160 billion timed by itself 160 billion times. Now, it is impossible to write this number out, as it has more zeros in it than there are sub-atomic particles in the universe.

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160,000,000,000,000x10^160,000,000,000

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I dont want to spark a religious debate, but what does everyone here think about it?

Links:
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/designun.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe

i just posted in your other topic, (avoid mass posting) but anyways, i for one believe in ID, by who, i dont know? but damn we are all reallllllllly lucky or there is somone or somthing looking out for us... as you said, the chances this went right are slimmer than none.

I have a challenge for you. Take a regular deck of 52 playing cards. Shuffle them 20 times so they are completely randomized. Then deal 5 cards off the top of the deck.

What are your chances of dealing yourself a Royal Flush in Hearts?

Since all 5 cards are in the deck when you draw the first, your chances are 5 in 52. The next draw there are only 4 left in the deck so your chances are 4 in 51, etc. The computation is like this...

5/52*4/51*3/50*2/49*1/48

So you have a 120/311,875,200 chance, or 1 in 2,598,960.

Those are pretty long odds. Now take a random assortment of cards. Say the Jack of spades, 3 of diamonds, 7 of clubs, King of Hearts, and 10 of diamonds. There isn't any pattern to the cards. They're a lousy hand if you're playing poker. But what are the odds of drawing this lousy hand compared to the perfect hand we dealt before?

It's exactly the same. 1 in 2,598,960.

No matter what set of 5 cards you choose to look for, the odds of drawing the hand you pick is the same. The only reason dealing out the Royal Flush would look amazing is because we assign special value to that combination of cards. Every hand you get from a randomized deck in poker is a 1 in a million deal (or one in 2.6 million).

Now, applying this to the cosmological constants, you can make the same argument. The only reason the electromagnetic constant or the gravitational constant or any other constant seem to be exquisitely precise is because we recognize the importance of those numbers in our frame of existence. So, one could argue that if we drastically changed one of those values, we wouldn't get THIS state of existence, but another one with equal or perhaps even greater value may be created.

That said, I believe in creation as well. :)

tara, that was amazing... bah i hate not being onehundred percent sure.

this is a controversial topic, if someone wants to get on AIM or Yahoo or MSN and have a debate with me. that'd be fun. but your gunna have to argue against ID and creationism. ;)

From what I've seen as well as read, Creationism (or Intelligent Design) has absolutely no proof. The entire basis from which people argue for it is against evolution (which, by coincidence, does have facts supporting it!). I'm not too informed about the subject, but that's just my opinion on the topic.

I support evolution and not intelligent design until it's proven otherwise.

I believe in no god or anything the like. Idc if I've evolved from a monkey, I'm not one at the moment.

God is just a fairytale to me and most of those "good arguments" are just stupid and annoying to me...

AND I'm not 100% sure what "intelligent design" is, but seems to me it's about people trying to make some science out of "god" etc.?

@method, hopefully i write this b4 somone else.
What evidence can you give about evolution? any what soever?
what can evolution prove more accurately/precisely then ID?
What is the chance that some tiny particles reacted and created the universe?
1 in a googleplex... Think if i said, i filled a baloon with cut up peices of paper, i ten inflated the balloon, popped it with a knife, and bam. that printer paper turned into a doll house? the chances of that are even higher then The bIgBoOm theory... again, how did those Particles even get there to begin with??
and as far as i am concerned you cant create somthing. you can only change.
so how where those particles that reacted to creat the PERFECT universe come into existince?
what ecidence backs up ID? the Bible. in science how is a book known to be trusted? On 3 things, A. How old it is, B. How many copies, and C. if it self contradicts.
The bible is very old, it has many copies, and dosn't contradict itself.
so scientificly it is THEE most trusted book. The problem is ppl want to belive what ever the hell they wana belive. and neglect USING LOGIC...
Get on AIM/MSN/Yahoo, and pm me if you want to get millions of stuff backing up my view.
And the dumb ass idea about evolution came After creationism. creationism and ID have WAY more evidence backing them up. and therefore are WAY more scientifically sound then Evolution..
Dr. Darwin said there was a flaw with evolution, "there are no in between" stages of corpse and such around. no body ever found a half monkey half human did they?
and BTW Darwin did actually say that.
heres some stoof to read:

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Basically, Behe's approach was this: Complex systems in advanced organisms depend on many biochemical steps, all of which must be in place for the system to work at all.

So how, Behe asked, could such a complex system have evolved, if the only method available was random variation plus natural selection?

It would be impossible to believe that the entire series of steps in the complex system could randomly appear all at once. But any one step along the way, since it does nothing by itself, could not give the organism that had it any competitive advantage. So why would each of those traits persist and prevail long enough for the complex system to fall into place?

Behe's conclusion is that since complex biochemical systems in advanced organisms could not have evolved through strict Darwinian evolution, the only possible explanation is that the system was designed and put into place deliberately.

In other words, though he shuns the word, complex systems had to have a creator -- they have to be intelligently designed.

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The Darwinists Reply

The Darwinist answer was immediate. Unfortunately, it was also illogical, personal, and unscientific. The main points are:

1. Intelligent Design is just Creation Science in a new suit (name-calling).

2. Don't listen to these guys, they're not real scientists (credentialism).

3. If you actually understood science as we do, you'd realize that these guys are wrong and we're right; but you don't, so you have to trust us (expertism).

4. They got some details of those complex systems wrong, so they must be wrong about everything (sniping).

5. The first amendment requires the separation of church and state (politics).

6. We can't possibly find a fossil record of every step along the way in evolution, but evolution has already been so well-demonstrated it is absurd to challenge it in the details (prestidigitation).

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on another note:
For evolution to take place the earth is billions of years old. if that was the case.
The sun would have to be so HUGE for all the gases to not have been burned up by now.
If the sun wasn't huge it would Freeze the earth Promto leaving no possibility for life.
If the Sun WAS HUGE then it would burn up the earth...

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Originally Posted by Method

From what I've seen as well as read, Creationism (or Intelligent Design) has absolutely no proof. The entire basis from which people argue for it is against evolution (which, by coincidence, does have facts supporting it!). I'm not too informed about the subject, but that's just my opinion on the topic.

I support evolution and not intelligent design until it's proven otherwise.

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The presence or lack of evidence depends on what you're talking about. If you're talking about evolution of one population of living organisms into something with different characteristics, there's plenty of proof of that. If you're talking about bacteria magically springing forth out of soup billions of years ago, there's no proof of that whatsoever.

In fact, when it comes to abiogenesis (the scientific study of how life arose from non-life), there is much more scientific evidence to support the idea that intelligent beings are able to create life than there is for soup to turn into life spontaneously. One of the major issues is related to information. Creating an ordered structure like a strand of DNA or RNA out of single nucleotides is only one minor step toward life. The much more important step is to organize it to contain the information necessary for life.

Today scientists are creating the first completely artificial life form. Its entire DNA code will be designed by human beings. Scientists have spent the last 40+ years trying to make life arise spontaneously from soup by various methods, and have utterly failed. Even trying to help it along in numerous different ways has failed. I would think that to an objective, rational person that would argue in favor of life being designed by someone or something, since we are actually doing it ourselves in a relatively straightforward manner, even with the very limited understanding of life we presently have.

Actually, we did not evolve from monkeys. We evolved from the common ancestor that us and monkeys share.

The ancestor looks nothing like us or monkeys/apes.

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Originally Posted by bobng

Actually, we did not evolve from monkeys. We evolved from the common ancestor that us and monkeys share.

The ancestor looks nothing like us or monkeys/apes.

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Pfft. Who cares? Same thing... But atleast there wasn't just some "force" that created everything...

So you'd rather believe that your an accident then loved by the creator?
thats different.. :rolleyes:

ID explains more than Evolution. Fact.

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Originally Posted by bobng

ID explains more than Evolution. Fact.

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agreed! so anyone who says scientifically evolution is better is just in denial about a creator:fiery:

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Originally Posted by footballjds

agreed! so anyone who says scientifically evolution is better is just in denial about a creator:fiery:

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There is no creator, or 'God'.

@football: Behe is an idiot who won't take "no" for an answer for intelligent design. He continues to claim it's a science (as well as astrology, apparently), despite nothing being proven about it. Keep in mind evolution doesn't always refer to the beginning of the universe / earth, but the change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift. (from dictionary.com, definition 3) I doubt anyone can claim that the Big Bang is a correct theory, but the same goes for intelligent design. Until there's proof that a "God" or "creator" magically conjured up the world, every species of animal and plant, and all the resources we use, I'm going to stick with the better based theory of evolution.

@tara: That's exactly the problem. Our limited knowledge of life and the inner workings of the body (human or animal / bacterial) limit what we can accomplish. You see life springing from "soup" (honestly, I've no idea where soup came from, but we'll run with that idea for now) as impossible, as I see a creator building everything to be impossible until one of us has proof that one or the other happened. Seeing as evolution (read: not all types, like you mentioned. Evolution's a huge topic in science) has more of a scientific basis, I'm going to believe that more than a belief system thought up by man thousands of years ago.

Just my thoughts on the matter. Keep in mind guys, it's hard to debate evolution without specifically saying what part you're talking about. Football seems to think evolution only applies to the Big Bang and beginning of life, which isn't true.

EDIT: Just noticed football's note about the Bible. Are you kidding me? The Bible was written by MAN. Considering man has no idea which idea is true now, how can you trust in that any more than a science book that has theories and ideas that have a real basis for them?

Correct me if i was wrong. About the basis on which Book's scientific liability is decided.
Also how did soup come about?
if you admit there is a God/Creator/Intelligent designer then you have to also admit you don't know everything. If there is a God, and that God is all powerful it easily explains Where we came from. how did the "soup" get there?


and sorry for mixing my religious beliefs with my scientific belief.
and BTW i am not a Christian. i believe everything in the Bible but I'm just to DAMN evil... :(

The Bible doesn't constitute as proof for intelligent design because its theories can't be tested. Heck, you can't even call intelligent design a science because God and the Bible in general are infallible. Theories are never infallible.

You can test specific evolution theories in laboratories (such as microevolution in bacteria and other organisms) that prove different theories of evolution to be true, unlike what the Bible claims happened.

I do believe in a god or a supreme being but not the way the bible (or any other similar book) puts it. I don't believe in Adam and Eve, i believe the scientists that have approved we evolved from orang-outangs, apes etc.

There has to be a god or a supreme being, i mean c'mon, what created the Big Bang, what created matter and atoms? Answer those questions and you'll be as clueless as everybody at the moment.

When will the Earth die? Will it be from the blue rays that massive sun's send out, will it be in the Big Crunch, will Aliens come down and destroy us or will it end when the sun gets too gigantic because of hydrogen and helium?

There absolutely has to be something out there. Otherwise, what created life, the universe and everything?

Well, not to disrupt this topic, but my mom always calls me a "special" accident =).

And i fully support ID, logically, something that contradicts itself, isnt worth the time to devote ones self. Ex. Hindu and Jainism. Christianity also, has the most sects then any religion, and, almost more sects and divisions of it then the major religions. Reason being something is way more believable if it has some truth in it. The bible, as someone also said, predicted more then 2000 years ago of Israel having there nation back, the Jews will have a power source in the desert, (i believe it personally lies in the Iran or Saudi Arabia area) from which will last the last years of the tribulation.

Now, im not going to preach or push this on anyone. But keep in your mind, when the world suddenly loses over 20% of tis population from mysterious means, that several people on this forum did tell you what was going to happen, before it happen =).

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Originally Posted by Method

The Bible doesn't constitute as proof for intelligent design because its theories can't be tested. Heck, you can't even call intelligent design a science because God and the Bible in general are infallible. Theories are never infallible.

You can test specific evolution theories in laboratories (such as microevolution in bacteria and other organisms) that prove different theories of evolution to be true, unlike what the Bible claims happened.

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They did test and prove that the theory of evolution was plausible, but the life forms they, "created", only lasted 7 seconds to 15 seconds before it died of suffocation.

And the complexity of the human eye would take well over 160 trillion years to get that part possibly right alone. Something like the odds of a tornado going through a junkyard, and making a fully functional 747 jet plane. This, is what one man said who was an evolutionist.

*Yawn*

That "god science" makes people seem stupid. It's just some plan so that people could get that ehh.. religious(?) stuff taught in schools or something? Correct me if I'm wrong, and please, not with "omfg its science it rly is!!11!!!", with something with a bit of intelligence.

Or AFAIK teaching about bible and god and whatnot isn't allowed, atleast not here... But if they can make it "science" they could get it taught at schools too..?

I hate all that stuff because it makes people seem stupid, it really does, believing in some "force" that just popped out of somewhere and made the world in 7 days..

Also, evolution has alot of scientists etc. and facts backing it up, ID has nothing except some old book full of fairy tales..

Pssh. Just annoying that some idiots are trying to make "god" science..

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Originally Posted by footballjds

So you'd rather believe that your an accident then loved by the creator?
thats different.. :rolleyes:

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Why the fuck would I be seeking love from some "god"? I'm not that lonely... And is that why you believe in that stuff? You just have to think there's some force that loves you out there....

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Originally Posted by alphazero

They did test and prove that the theory of evolution was plausible, but the life forms they, "created", only lasted 7 seconds to 15 seconds before it died of suffocation.

And the complexity of the human eye would take well over 160 trillion years to get that part possibly right alone. Something like the odds of a tornado going through a junkyard, and making a fully functional 747 jet plane. This, is what one man said who was an evolutionist.

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Creating life forms has nothing to do with evolution. The example I mentioned doesn't deal with creating man made organisms, so I'm not sure where you got that from.

@GoF: Yes, they're trying to make ID a science so it can be taught in schools.

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Originally Posted by GoF

Also, evolution has alot of scientists etc. and facts backing it up, ID has nothing except some old book full of fairy tales..

Pssh. Just annoying that some idiots are trying to make "god" science..

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its not some fairy tale when everything predicted happened and it was written 100's of years b4 the event. if you can believe everything that you can test in it.. why not believe it all? has anything predicted in the bible proved wrong?
no.

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Originally Posted by Method

@GoF: Yes, they're trying to make ID a science so it can be taught in schools.

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The problem is that evolution has been MISTAUGHT in science class for so long that people actually think it's proof that life originated by some form of molecular evolution from primordial soup.

Evolution should be taught in the proper context. 'Origin of life' type lectures should not be taught in high school science classes at all, since they are more of a philosophical topic than a scientific one.

It seems to me that most of this push from the ID people is to counteract the misteaching of evolution. If schools are teaching 'origins of life' in science class, then why not include ID? It's all just ideas. Nothing proven by any stretch of the imagination. It's a clear double standard.

If people ask that origins be removed, they are attacked for trying to undermine science. If they ask for other equally unproven theories to be included, they're attacked for trying to push junk science. The best solution is to remove all 'origins' philosophy classes from the science curriculum.

I still see no science in some 2000 year old stories, and that religious stuff has been mistaught for what, 2000 years already?

I see no point in trying to force people to believe in god, or to even listen about it.

Scientists have shown that 'spiritual experiences' are a physiological phenomenon. They can be recorded on scientific instruments.

Even if you believe that the human race evolved from bacteria, that doesn't change the fact that spirituality is part of being human. Even if you're a hard core evolutionist and believe that physical characteristics are determined by nature alone, you should at least try to understand why spirituality would evolve along with the rest of our inherent characteristics. To reject spirituality as non-existent or unimportant conflicts with scientific reality.

@GoF that is because most people (like yourself) are stubborn and close minded. They believe what they want because they want to, NOT because it is more scientifically sound. if you think something is more scientifically sound that is fine, but don't shut yourself up and push away something.

Actually, right now i believe in a god or a supreme being because what created life?

Also i saw a ghost the other night (The ghost was my dead dog).

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Originally Posted by footballjds

@GoF that is because most people (like yourself) are stubborn and close minded. They believe what they want because they want to, NOT because it is more scientifically sound. if you think something is more scientifically sound that is fine, but don't shut yourself up and push away something.

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Why don't you open your mind, then, to the possibility that there is no God, religion is just a scam to control the population, you've been conned your entire life and people actually did evolve from microorganisms. Obviously, not all of this may be true, but you're acting just as close-minded as any of the people arguing for evolution here.

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Until there's proof that a "God" or "creator" magically conjured up the world, every species of animal and plant, and all the resources we use, I'm going to stick with the better based theory of evolution.

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I personally believe in both evolution and a creator. I view the creator as more of a clock-maker, putting everything in the correct place so that things will work. (ie. the electromagnetic coupling constant, and the gravity/radiation values) The creator then "winds up the clock" and allows things to occur hopefully as he planned.

Evolution cannot debunk this argument, nor can it truly prove our universe was not intelligently designed.

Think of all existence as a script, designed by a scripter with the intention of causing something to occur. While running the script he cannot change his errors, and must wait until the existence he created ceases to create a better one. For all anyone knows, this is the thousandth attempt at perfection or the millionth. Who knows, maybe there is a failsafe to terminate after a certain event?

The question no one will ever be able to answer: What created the first mass, the first atom, the first 'thing'?

There was this experiment performed some years ago where some scientists placed a 'soup', as you like to call it, in a chamber that contained the approximate (as found in ice bubbles, etc) atmosphere at the time. The gasses were mostly methane, nitrogen, and some others, except oxygen. They also approximated the water content and other chemicals. They then pumped electric current through the water, and after an amount of time proteins capable of forming life emerged.

You also seem to think that biological life is 'different'. A bacterium, a cell, and all of the cells of your body are computers (in the technical sense). Lets start with a virus, which technically isn't alive, but it performs a function non-the less. It is very much like a computer virus. It places its 'code' inside a host, and, like a computer, a viruses instructions will be processed unless the host has created a defense against it. The point of this is to replicate, which it does. If you would think about it you would realize that a virus, bacteria, anything organic, simply performs the instructions encoded in its DNA. If you have ever heard of nano-machines, it is much the same, with the one's and zero's atoms like methane and some-other-thing.

Therefore, you can conclude that humans, are, in fact, a computer. Our input is food and information, our storage is the nuclei of our cells, and our output is waste and changes in out environment around you. We are a collection of molecules bonded together through chemical processes, performing what we have evolved to do over the millenniums.

The first life, most likely, was just a collection of proteins that took in carbon dioxide and changed it into oxygen to form sugars -- so that it could use those sugars to repeat the process. If you would wish to argue that its nucleus could not have just appeared with data, it didn't. It just happened that the proteins could have carried out some type of function... (there are proteins like this, they are called prions. It is what mad-cow disease is, a strangely folded protein that causes folding in surrounding proteins).

As for the chances being slim for the type of life we are, that is just our type of life. Ever think there could be helium-2 or ferric life-forms throughout the universe? Maybe there is a planet so cold that water is harder than titanium, yet sentient life is there. Or a planet with a sun made of anti-matter. Maybe a planet so far away that there are innumerable new elements.

Most people forget that the universe is huge in such arguments.

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Originally Posted by Method

Why don't you open your mind, then, to the possibility that there is no God, religion is just a scam to control the population, you've been conned your entire life and people actually did evolve from microorganisms. Obviously, not all of this may be true, but you're acting just as close-minded as any of the people arguing for evolution here.

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I actually think about what they say.
My mind is not closed to ideas.

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Originally Posted by R0b0t1

Most people forget that the universe is huge in such arguments.

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You actually just explained why science will probably never prove how life began.

Many people reject the need for a creator through the principle of parsimony. That principle is that the simplest, most direct, most likely explanation is the best. So, for example, let's say there is a Chemist that explains why chemical A and chemical B react to form chemical C using scientific methods. Then there is a preacher that says "Yes, those two chemicals react, but God makes it happen", then people would reject the preacher because God isn't "necessary", and saying that God participated adds an unnecessary layer of explanation. Since the chemist gave the simplest, most direct, most likely explanation, that one is accepted.

The problem with your comment about how the universe is huge is that people use that sort of argument to overrule parsimony. In effect, what you're saying is that any theory you may suggest about how life came about is so unlikely and so complex that it wouldn't happen 99.9999999999999999% of the time. But because the universe is large, those odds are suddenly not only reasonable, but likely.

So let's assume that what you say is true. We're the one oddball in the universe that had everything fall exactly into place, against all odds, purely by chance, leading to life. Our scientific method is unable to investigate such occurrences. It is only able to embrace simple, straightforward, natural processes, not things so unlikely or contrary to nature that it would seem more like magic (or divine intervention) than science.

Your argument takes the debate OUT of the real of science and puts it squarely into the realm of philosophy. And in that realm, ID and creationist explanations are just as valid as your own.

... How is comparing a biological life form to a computer or machine philosophical? It's a analogy that states even though they are different, they are the same.

Assume the universe is infinite. Then we would not be the only place "that fits". Because saying the universe is infinite is saying that conditions inside the universe are infinite; and that, in fact, they may replicate.


EDIT: And will someone just post SmartzKids' signature in here?

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Originally Posted by R0b0t1

Assume the universe is infinite. Then we would not be the only place "that fits". Because saying the universe is infinite is saying that conditions inside the universe are infinite; and that, in fact, they may replicate.

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I totally agree with that. I'm not quite sure what you meant by "and that, in fact, they may replicate", so I hope you didn't mean what I'm about to say.

Like he said, assume that the universe is infinite. That would mean, somewhere, chances are (actually, there probably is a 100% chance, since the possibilities are infinite) there is actually another planet called Earth, where people just like us (I mean exactly like us, with out names, our looks, our thoughts, etc). I don't know where that fits into this argument, but hey, it's fun to think about :p. Hi other me!

But still assuming that the universe is infinite, there should be a 100% chance that we would exist. Is that not correct?

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Originally Posted by bullzeye95

I totally agree with that. I'm not quite sure what you meant by "and that, in fact, they may replicate", so I hope you didn't mean what I'm about to say.

Like he said, assume that the universe is infinite. That would mean, somewhere, chances are (actually, there probably is a 100% chance, since the possibilities are infinite) there is actually another planet called Earth, where people just like us (I mean exactly like us, with out names, our looks, our thoughts, etc). I don't know where that fits into this argument, but hey, it's fun to think about :p. Hi other me!

But still assuming that the universe is infinite, there should be a 100% chance that we would exist. Is that not correct?

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So if you're correct there is a 100% chance that everything exists. Is a godlike creature exempt from this argument?

The entire argument that the universe is infinite brings any view points into validity.

I have nothing againts people believing in god.
It's just annoying how people have to try to make science out of it, because in my highest fucking opinion it has nothing, I repeat nothing to do with science. Just old stories about "god" creating the earth etc.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3759/religionwn7.png

^^MMkayh? The difference between science and faith :rolleyes:

[nooffenseirecall-NOOFFENSE]

When you're 35 yrs old and have some hair, compare yourself to neandartaln human (I don't know how to spell it in English)

[/]


Yeah, its not like your parents were... Monkeys? But hey, humankind isn't the end of evolution, propably like 1000000 years after, the evolution has... "mixed"? with the...atmosphere change thing (sorry for the egbnlihs), people look propably more like... fish?

We were still their ancestor even we propably looked like something totally different to them :)


@Tara: Wow.. :p Shit, soon Ben and Claw are coming too xD

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Originally Posted by GoF

I have nothing againts people believing in god.
It's just annoying how people have to try to make science out of it, because in my highest fucking opinion it has nothing, I repeat nothing to do with science. Just old stories about "god" creating the earth etc.

^^MMkayh? The difference between science and faith :rolleyes:

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I'm not trying to support the Bible or any other religious texts, as they were written by men who, like us, have no evidence of our origins. They simply offered a possible explanation to how their world occurred. In my arguments I am supporting a creator or god. Not necessarily a God that intervenes in our daily lives, but merely that everything could possibly be the product of some intelligent design.

Religion is like humanity, flawed. There is no doubt about that, but when you base science on preconceived notions and leave out potential answers, you are defeating the purpose of science itself.