So there are these "Constants of Nature" that make life possible in our universe...

[meltdown75]

i think scientists are naive to think that by "proving" things on our little ball of dirt, using nothing but their own five human senses, they can apply their findings to the universe and beyond. science requires belief just as religion does - belief that what we can experience is all there IS to experience, and also belief in humans as the penultimate beings in the universe. oh and also Earth as the ideal environment for conducting such experiments, which we also do not know to be the case.

 

[Kalmah]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Arcadio

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Sweet, another chance to use the Douglas Adams puddle analogy!

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' "

No. You don't understand. There are certain values, called constants, which are fixed (duh). If those values were just a tiny percent lower, then life could not be possible anywhere in our universe. For example, if the size of a proton was just a tiny bit smaller, then life in our universe could not exist, since protons would be unstable, and atoms could not form. Therefore, life could not exist. So it looks like someone fine-tuned these values in our favor.

Useful Link

*whoosh*

Sound of the metaphor going straight over Arcadio's head.


If those contents were a little different, life wouldn't have developed, and thus nothing would be around to question, "Why is the Universe so screwed up?"

There may well be a billion other little spacetime bubbles where matter could never form because of the screwy constants. Ours happens to work for matter as we know it, allowing the formation of life as we know it.

You've put the carriage ahead of the horse.

Speaking of which, carriage and horse:
"Wow, look at how this horse attaches so nicely to this carriage? Surely horses were designed to hook up to carriages!"

It don't work that way. Horse came first, carriage came later.
Constants came first, matter and life came later. No "design" was ever involved, nor was it ever even necessary.

:thumbsup:

 

[dennilfloss]

"Life as we know it..."

The devil is in the details.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
i think scientists are naive to think that by "proving" things on our little ball of dirt, using nothing but their own five human senses, they can apply their findings to the universe and beyond. science requires belief just as religion does - belief that what we can experience is all there IS to experience, and also belief in humans as the penultimate beings in the universe. oh and also Earth as the ideal environment for conducting such experiments, which we also do not know to be the case.

I guess you need to tell that to Einstein and Newton, at least; they had the audacity to suggest that their theories held true for the universe as a whole.

The only difference is that they do, and they determine this by actually testing it... not assuming it. This whole thing about falsifiability, empiricism, etc. makes it so that ideas that work prevail.

I'm done with this thread though. It's clear we're just arguing the definition of science. Why people didn't get a proper foundation of scientific philosophy in school is beyond me.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
i think scientists are naive to think that by "proving" things on our little ball of dirt, using nothing but their own five human senses, they can apply their findings to the universe and beyond. science requires belief just as religion does - belief that what we can experience is all there IS to experience, and also belief in humans as the penultimate beings in the universe. oh and also Earth as the ideal environment for conducting such experiments, which we also do not know to be the case.

Now you're just prescribing a bunch of nonsense to scientists and scientific theory that just isn't true. You're applying your beliefs to science
Get a job, hippie!

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: meltdown75
i think scientists are naive to think that by "proving" things on our little ball of dirt, using nothing but their own five human senses, they can apply their findings to the universe and beyond. science requires belief just as religion does - belief that what we can experience is all there IS to experience, and also belief in humans as the penultimate beings in the universe. oh and also Earth as the ideal environment for conducting such experiments, which we also do not know to be the case.

I guess you need to tell that to Einstein and Newton, at least; they had the audacity to suggest that their theories held true for the universe as a whole.

The only difference is that they do, and they determine this by actually testing it... not assuming it. This whole thing about falsifiability, empiricism, etc. makes it so that ideas that work prevail.

I'm done with this thread though. It's clear we're just arguing the definition of science. Why people didn't get a proper foundation of scientific philosophy in school is beyond me.

the problem is, some people go into different fields of study that don't even require math or science. so we rely on smart people such as yourself to bring us back up to speed once in a while.

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: Descartes
Again, please see anthropic principle rather than asking the same question a thousand times. Why can't people be more economical with their intellect?

Hell, I'll even link it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

OP: this debate is far from new, and you're on the losing side...

 

[Kalmah]

Originally posted by: meltdown75

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: meltdown75
i think scientists are naive to think that by "proving" things on our little ball of dirt, using nothing but their own five human senses, they can apply their findings to the universe and beyond. science requires belief just as religion does - belief that what we can experience is all there IS to experience, and also belief in humans as the penultimate beings in the universe. oh and also Earth as the ideal environment for conducting such experiments, which we also do not know to be the case.

I guess you need to tell that to Einstein and Newton, at least; they had the audacity to suggest that their theories held true for the universe as a whole.

The only difference is that they do, and they determine this by actually testing it... not assuming it. This whole thing about falsifiability, empiricism, etc. makes it so that ideas that work prevail.

I'm done with this thread though. It's clear we're just arguing the definition of science. Why people didn't get a proper foundation of scientific philosophy in school is beyond me.

the problem is, some people go into different fields of study that don't even require math or science. so we rely on smart people such as yourself to bring us back up to speed once in a while.

no, you are stoopid!

Let's all go back to the 1st grade mentality shall we?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
the problem is, some people go into different fields of study that don't even require math or science. so we rely on smart people such as yourself to bring us back up to speed once in a while.

This post is almost certainly sarcasm, but sadly it's true, and a lot of people don't seem to realize it.

Math is just another language, one which we can use to describe how our environment works, and one which is useful for predicting future behavior. Far too many people are not at all well-versed in the language, and on the higher end, the language itself is still being written.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: Descartes
Look up the anthropic principle if you want to learn more about this argument that has been discussed ad nauseum.

Read up a little on that if you want to see why people that don't already believe won't accept it.

The anthropic principle is a BS get out of jail free argument not far from religion.

What created the universe? Uh... God?

Why are these numbers the numbers that they are? Uh... cause if they weren't we wouldn't be here to ask the question?

There are certain constants that take on a certain value and if they were different then the universe would be unlike what we know. However, we can still ask why those numbers are the numbers they are and answer it intelligently. The LHC will (probably) give us a lot of information about the Higgs field, and will thus tell us why all the particles in the universe have the masses they do, giving us the answer to why the ratio of the proton mass to the electron mass is 1836.xxxx.

You can stop at what you don't know and give a cop out answer like "God" or "cause we wouldn't be here if it wasn't", or you can give some physicists a couple billion dollars to answer the question for you

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: meltdown75
the problem is, some people go into different fields of study that don't even require math or science. so we rely on smart people such as yourself to bring us back up to speed once in a while.

This post is almost certainly sarcasm, but sadly it's true, and a lot of people don't seem to realize it.

Math is just another language, one which we can use to describe how our environment works, and one which is useful for predicting future behavior. Far too many people are not at all well-versed in the language, and on the higher end, the language itself is still being written.

i was being serious, both about Descartes being intelligent and about myself being ignorant on the concepts of science and math. i failed grade 11 math and chemistry... but i was still able to get a degree in BSing. i used to be good in math as a kid, then they pulled me out of math class to attend some "enriched" learning program where we'd go to planetariums or read Shakespeare and stuff. thanks enrichment program, i'm dumber thanks to you, but to thine own self be true?

 

[Jeff7]

The amusing thing about the "God" answer is how God's responsibilities have changed over time. As science advanced, things once attributed to God were explainable through other means. Sunlight, rain, earthquakes - all once "acts of God" are now known to simply be the result of natural phenomena. The explanation then shifted, not that God was directly responsible for these things, but that he simply set everything in motion. He always managed to stay one step ahead of science.
Hell, at one point, weren't the gods holed up on Mount Olympus, a place that the general population would likely never see the top of? Now we've got satellite photos of the mountains. Oops, looks like Zeus has set up an underground bunker, and camouflaged the entrance. They always seem to stay a step ahead, damn them!

And something else: Church bells. Wasn't the point of them to be loud enough so that God could hear them all the way up in the Heavens?
Hmm, space doesn't conduct sound. Drat, God hasn't heard any of it.
....or maybe he's just pissed off at all the noise, hence the need for lightning rods on steeples.

Originally posted by: meltdown75

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: meltdown75
the problem is, some people go into different fields of study that don't even require math or science. so we rely on smart people such as yourself to bring us back up to speed once in a while.

This post is almost certainly sarcasm, but sadly it's true, and a lot of people don't seem to realize it.

Math is just another language, one which we can use to describe how our environment works, and one which is useful for predicting future behavior. Far too many people are not at all well-versed in the language, and on the higher end, the language itself is still being written.

i was being serious, both about Descartes being intelligent and about myself being ignorant on the concepts of science and math. i failed grade 11 math and chemistry... but i was still able to get a degree in BSing. i used to be good in math as a kid, then they pulled me out of math class to attend some "enriched" learning program where we'd go to planetariums or read Shakespeare and stuff. thanks enrichment program, i'm dumber thanks to you, but to thine own self be true?

I've got my own sort of theory about math - I think of it as a language, but it's been designed* in a different structure than other languages, and is taught differently. It is far more rigid and logical than a spoken/written language. It's my opinion that if the basics are not learned early in life, when the mind is still extremely plastic, those skills may never truly be properly acquired. It's the same thing that comes with spoken languages - it's much easier to learn a language at a young age than it is later on.

And some people do math, others do social-ish things. And both are important for our society; unfortunately, limitations on lifespan and logistics simply mean that there isn't enough time to learn more than one specific thing. Logistics is a concern, since most people can't spend 50% of his life in college, because we need people to be productive in the workforce for a majority of their lives. And that's the other issue: lifespan. If we lived 500 years, or 1000, spending 100 years in college might be possible. Imagine what someone could do with cross-functional knowledge in advanced mathematics, physics, biology, meteorology, sociology, and economics.
Whole new fields could open up, correlations never even imagined to us could suddenly become clear. Increasing lifespan, increasing productivity.....all of it can help lead to exponential progress.


*Yes, designed; I figure I'll head this off before someone takes it off on a totally screwed up tangent.
Yes, our system of math was designed. By humans. It's just a way of describing what already exists. 2+2 = 4.
"2" is a symbolic thing, an idea. As are "+", "=", and "4". And they describe how our environment works.
"2" of one thing, grouped with "2" of another one will give "4" of it. It's not like someone was digging and found a number 2 somewhere in the ground, with God's insignia inscribed on it.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: meltdown75

Originally posted by: nakedfrog

Originally posted by: meltdown75
you should watch that ID documentary with Ben Stein, or maybe you just did. i forget the name of it. good watching though, regardless of which side of the argument you're on.

i found it laugh-out-loud funny that Richard Dawkins, immediately after verifying all his views on the silly notion of a higher power / diety of any sort, gave a nod to the possibility that aliens started life on Earth.

:facepalm:

so after all that pontificating and championing of the atheist argument, it turns out his FSM is simply piloting a UFO. thanks for comin out, Dawkins.

God created the universe, right? To a theist?
That's got nothing to do with whether or not some little green men made a pit stop on primordial Earth and took a dump in a puddle of ooze and kick-started the formation of life on earth.

semantics.
if they did in fact take the dump and that's what started life, would they not be considered God? or would they have had to take dumps on ALL life-supporting planets to be considered God? maybe God is in the mothership, and the aliens that took a dump on Earth are simply angels.

This isn't semantics, you're trying to redefine what a god is to match your erroneous statement. Creationists believe an entity created the Universe, the Earth, and the life on the planet. Intelligent Design posits that some higher being not only created the life on this planet but is guiding the evolution of life. Dawkins' is talking about the possibility that life started here as a stuff deposited by an alien object. Dawkins' view does not fall anywhere in the definition of a deity or higher power as it is used in the sense of the origins and evolution of life on Earth.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: Descartes
I'm just going to parrot the standard responses to these arguments since almost all of the standard pro-god/anti-god arguments have really been discussed, in books and elsewhere, a thousand times.

I tried making this type of point in a previous Arcadio thread where he thought he had stumbled onto something incredible but it was in fact centuries old. This is basically his MO. He starts threads on subjects that aren't even remotely new or interesting and words them in a way to make it seem like he has discovered something, and often ignores their refutations or details.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: Arcadio

Originally posted by: Kalmah
Lets see... 1 galaxy = a bjillion stars
a bjillion galaxies x a bjillion stars = 1 metric assload of stars
1 metric assload of stars = probably a good chance that one of them just so happens to be the right conditions for life... if not more

That is all.

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Sweet, another chance to use the Douglas Adams puddle analogy!

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' "

No. You don't understand. There are certain values, called constants, which are fixed (duh). If those values were just a tiny percent lower, then life could not be possible anywhere in our universe. For example, if the size of a proton was just a tiny bit smaller, then life in our universe could not exist, since protons would be unstable, and atoms could not form. Therefore, life could not exist. So it looks like someone fine-tuned these values in our favor.

Useful Link

Arcadio I will admit that you appear to be semi-intelligent. Unfortunately you don't look at all the facts, picking and choosing which facts to pay attention to and which to ignore because they don't fit with your beliefs about "God".

Imagine our universe as a grain of sand in a desert. Imagine that every other grain of sand is a different universe with one minute change. Maybe one gravity is the strongest of the 4 forces and everything is just one big hunk of matter. Maybe another Earth was never hit by the object that hit us and created the moon (provided that is actually what happened of course). In another atoms are made up of another sub-atomic particle in addition to protons, neutrons, and electrons. In another light is only a wave, and another light is only a particle. In yet another women have the boobs and penis, and men just have a vagina. In another your parents decided to have an abortion. In another you found the letter "h". In another Russia is the only remaining super power. In another we never broke free from Great Britan. I can go on like this forever, because the idea of the multiverse is that every possible outcome that could have ever happened, did happen in another universe.

You say "someone fine-tuned these values in our favor", but what proof is there of that? Based on the known laws that govern our universe, if the proton was .2% bigger the matter we know of and are made of couldn't exist. That absolutely does not mean that life couldn't exist, or that atoms couldn't exist. They could have taken a different form that worked. Our universe wasn't "fine-tuned" for us, we were "fine-tuned" by nature for our universe. We evolved based upon the laws that govern the universe.

Hell even in the Bible, it states that "God" created us in his image correct? Assuming that is a true statement, then that means we were created by "God" in this universe. The fact that we are in this universe means that either we evolved to form life obeying the laws of the universe, or we were created by "God" to obey the laws of this universe. Regardless of religious beliefs, we came to be in this universe based upon the laws of it. The universe wasn't crafted for us, we were crafted for it (either by nature through evolution, or "God" when we were created).

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: Throckmorton
If it's true that protons wouldn't exist if they were 0.2% bigger... Then that's why they aren't 0.2% bigger.

QFT

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire
This isn't semantics, you're trying to redefine what a god is to match your erroneous statement. Creationists believe an entity created the Universe, the Earth, and the life on the planet. Intelligent Design posits that some higher being not only created the life on this planet but is guiding the evolution of life. Dawkins' is talking about the possibility that life started here as a stuff deposited by an alien object. Dawkins' view does not fall anywhere in the definition of a deity or higher power as it is used in the sense of the origins and evolution of life on Earth.

"this", ie. this whole argument isn't semantics, i agree. i was using that term in reference to nakedfrog's post only.

Jeff7: i don't understand why people can't have this discussion without bringing religion into it.... right down to the church bells, lol. belief in ID does not constitute belief in God or any particular religion. people equate creationist beliefs to ID beliefs. i suppose it helps to pigeonhole the greatest amount of people that don't share your views though.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
The amusing thing about the "God" answer is how God's responsibilities have changed over time. As science advanced, things once attributed to God were explainable through other means. Sunlight, rain, earthquakes - all once "acts of God" are now known to simply be the result of natural phenomena. The explanation then shifted, not that God was directly responsible for these things, but that he simply set everything in motion. He always managed to stay one step ahead of science.
Hell, at one point, weren't the gods holed up on Mount Olympus, a place that the general population would likely never see the top of? Now we've got satellite photos of the mountains. Oops, looks like Zeus has set up an underground bunker, and camouflaged the entrance. They always seem to stay a step ahead, damn them!

And something else: Church bells. Wasn't the point of them to be loud enough so that God could hear them all the way up in the Heavens?
Hmm, space doesn't conduct sound. Drat, God hasn't heard any of it.
....or maybe he's just pissed off at all the noise, hence the need for lightning rods on steeples.

Originally posted by: meltdown75

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: meltdown75
the problem is, some people go into different fields of study that don't even require math or science. so we rely on smart people such as yourself to bring us back up to speed once in a while.

This post is almost certainly sarcasm, but sadly it's true, and a lot of people don't seem to realize it.

Math is just another language, one which we can use to describe how our environment works, and one which is useful for predicting future behavior. Far too many people are not at all well-versed in the language, and on the higher end, the language itself is still being written.

i was being serious, both about Descartes being intelligent and about myself being ignorant on the concepts of science and math. i failed grade 11 math and chemistry... but i was still able to get a degree in BSing. i used to be good in math as a kid, then they pulled me out of math class to attend some "enriched" learning program where we'd go to planetariums or read Shakespeare and stuff. thanks enrichment program, i'm dumber thanks to you, but to thine own self be true?

I've got my own sort of theory about math - I think of it as a language, but it's been designed* in a different structure than other languages, and is taught differently. It is far more rigid and logical than a spoken/written language. It's my opinion that if the basics are not learned early in life, when the mind is still extremely plastic, those skills may never truly be properly acquired. It's the same thing that comes with spoken languages - it's much easier to learn a language at a young age than it is later on.

And some people do math, others do social-ish things. And both are important for our society; unfortunately, limitations on lifespan and logistics simply mean that there isn't enough time to learn more than one specific thing. Logistics is a concern, since most people can't spend 50% of his life in college, because we need people to be productive in the workforce for a majority of their lives. And that's the other issue: lifespan. If we lived 500 years, or 1000, spending 100 years in college might be possible. Imagine what someone could do with cross-functional knowledge in advanced mathematics, physics, biology, meteorology, sociology, and economics.
Whole new fields could open up, correlations never even imagined to us could suddenly become clear. Increasing lifespan, increasing productivity.....all of it can help lead to exponential progress.


*Yes, designed; I figure I'll head this off before someone takes it off on a totally screwed up tangent.
Yes, our system of math was designed. By humans. It's just a way of describing what already exists. 2+2 = 4.
"2" is a symbolic thing, an idea. As are "+", "=", and "4". And they describe how our environment works.
"2" of one thing, grouped with "2" of another one will give "4" of it. It's not like someone was digging and found a number 2 somewhere in the ground, with God's insignia inscribed on it.

100% agree.

Math is a human construct. Math is just how humanity describes the universe. What we use Math for can be used to bridge cultures, languages, species, etc. In our math, as jeff7 said, 2 of one thing and 2 of another give you 4 things in total. That concept will hold true for any life, but that is all Math is. A concept. An idea. Math is not tangible, but it is how we can describe the universe around us. Different languages call "1" different things, but the concept of "1" remains regardless.

The part of it that makes it not so universal is it's base (11+11 in base 10 will be 22, but in base 2 it will be 6). Once the base is known, Math can be basically universal.

 

[Chaotic42]

Enjoy

 

[Brainonska511]

This thread is stupid. Those constants only allow for our type of life. Who's to say that some other type of life wouldn't have formed in response to different conditions. It's kind of hard to hypothesize, since you can't exactly change universal constants or easily imagine what other types of life would look like.

 

[SunnyD]

I can't discuss anything seriously that has "PLEEEZ" in the thread title.

 

[Tim]

Originally posted by: Arcadio

Originally posted by: theplaidfad
Arcadio, answer this trivia question correctly, and you will get REPS.

Who was the 9th president of the United States of America?

This Guy, but please keep the thread on topic.

I'm sorry, that website is blocked here.
Can you spell his name out for me?

 

[Gibsons]

Steven Weinberg's answer

One excerpt: Looked at more closely, the fine-tuning of the constants of nature here does not seem so fine.

 

[PimpJuice]

Originally posted by: Arcadio

Originally posted by: theplaidfad

Originally posted by: Arcadio
There are certain constants in our universe which are fine-tuned for life. For example, if Gravity was just a tiny bit stronger, life would not be possible, since stars would exhaust their fuel too quickly. If protons were just 0.2% bigger than they are, life would not be possible either. This is a fact. So it seems that whoever designed the Universe knew we were coming.

Of course, scientists can't accept that. They cannot visualize a universe which was meant for us. So what do they think? They believe that our universe is one of a multitude of universes in the "multi-verse". They say most of those universes are actually NOT suited for life, and that our Universe is the one with the right conditions.

Why can't they accept the fact that the Universe was designed with us in mind? The whole multi-verse idea is untestable, just like the idea of an Intelligent Designer, so why don't they take that idea seriously too?

:thumbsdown::roll:

Another pointless, prattling post.

Just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it's pointless.

Just because you 'get it' doesn't make it worth a point

 

[Arcadio]

Originally posted by: theplaidfad

Originally posted by: Arcadio

Originally posted by: theplaidfad
Arcadio, answer this trivia question correctly, and you will get REPS.

Who was the 9th president of the United States of America?

This Guy, but please keep the thread on topic.

I'm sorry, that website is blocked here.
Can you spell his name out for me?

William 'enry 'arrison. The ninth president. Please send reps this way.