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Find Out About the Future of Science
Science magazine writer Charles Seife has written a new book, Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe. According to Publishers Weekly, Charles claims, "Scientists...now know how the universe will end and are on the brink of understanding its beginning. Their findings will be among the greatest triumphs of science, even towering above the deciphering of the human genome." A brave statement! Charles is happy to answer your questions about ongoing research that is busily revealing the basic nature of life, the universe, and everything in a serious (as opposed to humorous) sense, so ask away. One question per post, please. We'll post the answers as soon as we get them beck.
do you get embarassed by publishing hype such as "Scientists...now know how the universe will end"?
Oh god (irony), not this crap again.
Haven't you got anything better to do that to keep 'refining' Creationism whenever in response to Evolution showing it to be unnecessary.
There is NO NEED for intelligent design. It's only purpose is to allow you justify your belief in God. I don't care if it's the Bombadier Beetle, the jinking Moth, whatever, it's just as sensible to think of a way it could've evolved than to allege that there is a God. And a God is a damn big hypothesis that only serves to abstract out the thing you can't explain.
Justin.
Bored of bloody desperate religionists arguing over who's got the best imaginary friend.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
...only a theory.
Please, before you start arguing about science, try and understand its terminology at least a little.
Although OOGG caveman, OOGG not around during Big Bang, Pre-Cambrian era, dinosaurs, etc. However, OOGG old enough remember debate on Darwinian evolution.
You mention "continually reexamined in the light of new evidence" yet mention no new evidence. OOGG hear such comments many times. OOGG know Darwin think of many objections, answer with real evidence. Many observations on human breed pigeons, dogs, agriculture, etc., substantiate Darwin argument. Many more observations since Darwin's time substantiate evolutionary ideas. "Intelligent design" provide no observation other than "I don't believe in the alternative."
Perhaps try read Darwin's book?
Theoretical physicists and astronomers don't "know" anything by definition. They guess using the best mathematical and scientific models they have at their disposal.
Science used to "know" the world was flat. They used to "know" that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the human heart worked just like a furnace.
Then, one day, some guy sailed over the horizon and didnt fall off. A pump was invented, and the notion of a heart as a pump came to being.
Each time people had thought they'd reached the pinnacle of understanding, and had all the answers. Then paradigms shifted, and completely changed our ways of thinking, and all our previous answers and theories were null and void.
What makes you so sure that this isnt simply happening again?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I read the whitepaper presented, and it has some difficulties:
1. It suggests the variables necessary for life as we know it. While life on Earth is incredibly varied, it isn't the end-all-be-all. Perhaps fundamentally different life could exist in different conditions, ranging from the mass of a neutrino to the spectral-jibber-jabber constant.
2. It doesn't present ranges for the variables. It does give "if higher/lower/more/fewer" qualitative statements, but not quantative. What if a variable was increased by 1%? 10%? 100%? What is the range for those variables to preserve current life-abling conditions?
I think most scientists would concur that the probability of life as we know it is almost certainly zero*. And yet, we have life, as we know it. If a variable was fudged in the past, we surely wouldn't have life as we know it, but that is not the same analysis as not having life at all.
* math for really, really, really freakin' close to zero. A finite number of instances of life given an infinite number of chances.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
The existence of God cannot be disproven scientifically. As long as something cannot be disproven, it is a valid theory.
Err... if a theory is not falsifiable, it is certainly not a useful theory, scientifically speaking.
And if, as you assert, the existence of God cannot be disproven scientifically, then God is not a topic of science. So....
What I am trying to say is that you can believe what you want, but don't force it on others. Eliminating Intelligent Design, or whatever you want to call it, from school curriculum amounts to nothing more than censorship, just like eliminating evolution.
You can keep intelligent design in your curriculum. But it should be a part of a religion or comparative world faiths class, not a part of a science class, because it is not science. It is wrong to claim that it is, and it is dogmatic interference to insist that it be taught as such.
-Rob
Assuming that scientists do answer the questions "How did the universe begin?" and "How will it end?", what are the implications for your life personally, and in your judgement for society as a whole? Final proof of such answers could have profound moral and sociological effect. For example, much of science is dedicated to these topics today- once the answers are set, what is tommorrow's "next big question"? On a personal level, how would you change if you knew for sure the answer to these questions? Would you see other people differently?
When I took an Astronomy course, I learned that scientists have observed that the Universe expanding more rapidly than in the past and that expansion is accelerating. From this our prof drew the conclusion that Universe would expand forever in heat death.
The thing I don't understand is why we can conclude that from measuring the second derivative of the size of the Universe (acceleration). If the third derivative were negative, it wouldn't matter (to the fate of the Universe) that the first two were positive. The Universe would still end in a big crunch, right? How closely have scientists measured the function that governs the size of the Universe? And what do they know about it?
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
From the HyperDictionary: scientific theory - a theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable"
Proponents of ID and other some such notions love to brutally abuse the term theory to confuse the issues. For something to rise to the accepted level of theory, it must be based on scientific observations. It must have passed through the hypothesis stage of initial concept deliniation. It must be tested repeatedly, succeeding each time (or the initial hypothesis must be reworked). It has to pass peer review.
ID and other notions don't even rise to the level of hypothesis.
> Intelligent Design, a recent theory that has gained enough respect from the scientific community
ID has no respect in the scientific community whatsoever. (If it did, Dembski wouldn't be making up paranoid conspiracy theories to explain why it doesn't.)
> that it is being taught alongside evolution in many schools and colleges
A number of creationist pressure groups have tried to get it adopted by state school boards, but AFAIK they haven't actually succeeded anywhere.
Which is all for the best, since if you ask an ID advocate what should go in their lesson plan all you'll get is a blank look. All the political noise the ID movement has stirred up over the past few years is based on nothing more than a couple of easily refuted arguments that evolution must have had some help somewhere along the way.
> explains that to even reach the stage at which we exist there are no fewer than twenty-six variables necessary for our universe to even consider permitting life and a further sixty-six within our galaxy and Earth itself that allowed the multitude of living beings not only to come into being but to flourish
Those aren't findings of the ID movement; they're arguments that the ID movement appeals to. (Showing, in passing, that ID is nothing more than the old fine-tuning argument painted up with a fresh layer of pseudo-science.)
> (this whitepaper that was in My Favorites breaks these criteria into probabilities -- great read if you prefer to see the evidence of this hypothesis)
Probability arguments are what creationists use to deny that something has happened. (Scientists also acknowledge that the universe is a very improbable place, or would be if all configurations of matter and energy were equally probable, but from that recognition they part with creationists by investigating the causes of the observed non-randomness rather than invoking armchair arguments to deny causes.)
> Some perhaps are content with chaos theory, but I'm glad there's another scientific viewpoint that can rationalize the concept that free will is the only variable that yet seems unaccounted for
The existence of free will hasn't even been demonstrated; it's small wonder that it hasn't been accounted for.
>
No, it isn't even a theory. It's speculation unconstrained by any evidence.
> So I'm glad that there are still some minds out there, like Copernicus and Einstein, that are not satisfied with science by rote, and I think that if we allow ourselves break out of the current dominant paradigms for just a little bit the change in perspective can open many new insights.
Hope you were just trolling. That would be a good trollpost, but a pathetic serious post.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Yes, so-called "Intelligent Design" is inherently a religious concept. So what? How does that invalidate it? The existence of God cannot be disproven scientifically. As long as something cannot be disproven, it is a valid theory.
The fact that it can't be disproven shows its worthlessness as a theory. There is no conceivable observation that isn't compatible with 'goddidit', which makes 'goddidit' completely useless as an explanation for anything.
[Snip fantasia on Genesis I]
> For having been written thousands of years ago by a man (Moses) who knew nothing about science, it seems pretty close to me.
Regardless who wrote it and when, it sounds pretty wrong to me.
> I understand why some people refuse to believe in a God. It takes a very open mind to believe in something you have no evidence of.
Alas, it takes an open mind to believe in things we do have evidence of, such as the big bang and biological evolution.
And if you're so keen on believing stuff without any supporting evidence, why don't you believe in all the other gods and unicorns that people have professed throughout the ages? You're merely engaging in special pleading.
> Eliminating Intelligent Design, or whatever you want to call it, from school curriculum amounts to nothing more than censorship, just like eliminating evolution.
No, omitting ID is just like omitting other pseudosciences based on bad arguments.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No one can disprove God's existence.
I can't disprove the existence of Leprechauns either, but that doesn't mean I go looking for gold at the end of a rainbow.
The unending search for truth through science is a humanistic attempt to place one's self above God and finally be "free" from Him.
That's an awfully general statment there. If what you mean is that revealed religion is the only access to "God", then which one are you talking about.
In order for someone to disprove God's existence they would have to be omniscient and omnipresent.
Why ? Deists have produced some interesting "proofs" of a "Greatest Conceivable Being" (google it yourself) but these have nothing to do with disproof. BTW the GCB may have nothing to do with the "God" of the 1611 KJV.
It sounds like you resent science. Scientists typically are not trying to prove, or disprove the existence of god, God or the GCB. They work only by what can be observed. And you are correct, scientists are neither omniscient, omnipotent, nor omnipresent; if those qualities are required you must go to someone who claims to have a revelation from a being that is. Who would that be Moses ? Mohammed ? Jesus ? Siddhartha ? Zarathushtra ?
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton