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Has Cosmology Been Solved?
An anonymous reader writes "In 1998, Dr. Michael Turner published a famous paper titled 'Cosmology Solved? Quite Possibly!' where he outlined seven major issues cosmologists should address in the following ten years. Nine years later, he revisits the list in an interview with the Slackerpedia Galactica podcast. He summarizes progress on each issue, adds some new goals for the next ten years, and even suggests that cosmology is now more interesting than science fiction."
Well, technically, it you believe in creationism then it is no stretch to believe that oil was put in the "propper" place, etc. For example, there are religions that believe that Earth was built modeled after another world. If that was true, you would expect normal geology even if it was built in 7 days.
On the other hand, the true test is:
1) find a black hole 50,000 light years away
2) build a telescope big enough to see Earth at 100,000 light years distance
3) look at the edge of the black hole, using it as a mirror to reflect back the light that left Earth 100,000 years ago
Who says that creationism is untestable? Not me!
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The problem is intelligence. Unrestricted intelligence is difficult for natural selection to control, since it's so malleable. A moth with a hardwired reaction to fly towards a light source doesn't stop and think to itself, "hey, should I really be doing this?" as it flies towards a lit 300W halogen bulb. However, if you gave a moth intelligence, that questioning would suddenly become an option. Intelligent moths might still feel a hardwired compulsion to fly towards light sources, but they'd also be able to question it, and you'd get fewer accidental suicide-by-frying in the moth community. But you'd also get moths starting to wonder about life, the universe, and everything, which can be a big distraction.
If religion enhances a group's survival for the reasons I gave, that would help explain the establishment and continued hold of religion. However, because humans are intelligent, new humans always have the option of questioning and rejecting religion, even if (for the sake of argument) they have some kind of hardwired predilection towards religion. (Theologians would talk about free will here.) Now that our societies can support people who are only very indirectly involved in the group's survival, devoting what would otherwise be valuable "survival time" to pondering such topics becomes viable.