Re:The Failure of the Intelligent Design Argument
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
Again whether it is one or many it doesn't matter. There is no evidence for the infinite Metaverse, but there is evidence of a designed system, namely our finite universe. An infinite metaverse is pure speculation, an intelligent designer follows logically from the hard data and other designed systems.
Re:Rejoyce! I've found Hank!
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
I didn't think otherwise which is why I said this has nothing to do with Christianity.
Re:The Failure of the Intelligent Design Argument
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
You missed my point. There is absolutely no evidence for infinite metaverses. It is more rational to conclude an infinite cause, since it's very definition requires the cause to be outside of the effect. Arguing for an infinite effect makes no sense, there is evidence against it (finite universe) and evidence for an intelligence (fine-tuning).
Re:The Failure of the Intelligent Design Argument
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
This other rational conclusion explains nothing and does not provide any hard data.
Saying that my example does nothing to discount your argument is simply conjecture. Respond, don't just say stuff.
Re:The Failure of the Intelligent Design Argument
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
Actually no. It far more rational, because of the evidence to conclude that an intelligence is the cause of this effect. Simply because there is no evidence of an infinite metaverse, also an infinite effect leads to many contradictions. An intelligence outside of time and therefore not constrained by time is supported by at least the preponderance of the evidence.
What we know:
1.Finite universe
2.Fine tuning
3.Irreducibly complex systems
Conclusion:
Intelligent Designer or Infinite chances
It is not a matter of taste but a matter of hard data.
Cosmologist Edward Harrison makes this deduction:
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."
Re:Rejoyce! I've found Hank!
on
Calculating God
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· Score: 1
This has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, much less the Intelligent Design movement which is not necessarily religious.
Re:The Failure of the Intelligent Design Argument
on
Calculating God
·
· Score: 1
>
Well for one there is no evidence of any infinitely repeating series of universes, in fact physics argues against such a state.
But the first part of your argument is a common objection. By way of illustration, say you were tied to a stake and were about to be shot by 30 expert sharp shooters. They begin firing and after the smoke clears you find yourself alive. the prisoner could conclude, since he is alive, that all the sharpshooters missed by some extremely unlikely chance. He may wish to attribute his survival to an incredible bit of good luck, but he would be far more rational to conclude that the guns were loaded with blanks or that the sharpshooters all deliberately missed. Someone must have purposed he should live. Likewise, the rational conclusion to draw from the incredible fine tuning of the universe is that Someone purposed we should live.
>
This makes no sense. Saying that the cause is outside and thus not constrained by the effect is perfectly logical. Picture a 3-dimensional being putting his finger through a 2-dimensional world
No problem ababout misreading my original post, but man you are still doing it. I am talking about the actual light sensitive spot. You keep talking about how there are all these different kinds of eyes that form a progression from simple to complex, ( again that is not true, the trilobite eye is the oldest and most complex eye structure far surpassing it's descendants.) but my argument is what makes any eye an eye? The light sensitive spot.
This structure is irreducibly complex.This indicates that such a system consist of several interlocking parts, all of which must be in place before they can function. And since Darwinian processes kick in only after there is minimal function, the origin of an irreducibly complex system is out of reach of standard Darwinian explanations.
This is all wrong. This the exact opposite of what biologists such as Dawkins and even Darwin stated, that that is *exactly* how nature works.
""If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
You are response has absolutely nothing to do with my post. You saw the word "eye" in my post and assumed I was talking about the fully formed eye creationist argument. That is not the ID contention.
My post centered on the light sensitive spot which is irreducibly complex and has no precursor, but even the fully formed eyes of all kinds do not have not one precursor as well, but that is a different topic.
When light strikes the retina a photon is absorbed by an organic molecule called 11-cis-retinal, causing it to rearrange within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in shape of retinal forces a corresponding change in shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which it is tightly bound. As a consequence of the protein's metamorphosis, the behavior of the protein changes in a very specific way. It goes on and on like this. It fulfills the definition of irreducible complexity, and a challenge from Darwin himself:
In The Origin of Species Darwin stated:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
Re:The Failure of the Intelligent Design Argument
on
Calculating God
·
· Score: 1
If this argument is the death knell of the ID argument then I guess ID will be around a very long time.
This argument is very flawed.
1.The design argument is looking at an effect,and comparing it to other effects and saying this effect has a cause. You cannot say that the effect itself was infinite because that leads to many contradictions.
2. Overwhelming scientific evidence states that the universe has a *finite* beginning 15 or so billion years ago.Nuff said. There is no evidence of a metaverse or other universes.
3.It also contains many characteristics that are fine-tuned, showing future usefulness and intelligent design. Some people probably have seen some of this on CNN or a Discovery channel documentary but it has been widespread in astrophysics circles for the past decade.A couple of examples would be the gravitational interaction with a moon: if greater, the tidal effects on the oceans, atmosphere, and rotational period would be too severe; if less, orbital obliquity changes would cause climatic instabilities; movement of nutrients and life from the oceans to the continents and vice versa would be insufficient; magnetic field would be too weak.And Jupiter's distance if greater; too many asteroid and comet collisions would occur on Earth,if less: Earth's orbit would become unstable.
4.Something falls out or is a consequence of the facts that we know. Time is finite and was created, then the creator of time is outside of time, and therefore a beginning for the creator is meaningless. He is not constrained by our time dimension.A that a creator can not be inside or part of His creation, it logically stands to reason that He is outside of it. Since He is outside of it, He is beyond having a designer, since there is nothing that can design one who is outside.
Your question about the designer helps to highlight one of the differences between the Intelligent Design movement and the standard creationist position. In the past, the question of design has always been linked to the identity of the designer. With the advent of this movement, the link is being severed. The question becomes, can design be recognized even if the designer is unknown? I think this is a step forward because it enables us to distance ourselves from religious conflict and to concentrate on the evidence at hand. In everyday life, we frequently recognize design without personally knowing who did the designing.
I think the issue becomes troubling, though, to people who are used to clipping the idea of design from science by resorting to philosophical or theological questions. In a way this is ironic because by separating out such theology from science, ID is, in effect, doing what atheists claim to have wanted all along. The unforeseen result, though, is that if science is allowed to recognize design in nature, this invigorates rather than squashes the religious and philosophical debates that such people thought they had already won.
This is awful reasoning. First of all , when it comes to unlikely events, we are talking about specification. This is used in science of any stripe. For example, it is very unlikely that one would win the lottery, but someone has to. And if that person wins, a very unlikely event has just occured.
However, lets specify it a little more. Say that the person who won, was a "wise guy", a member of the mafia. Now that person has won twice in a row this year. What would you conclude? Fraud.Intelligent design instead of random chance.
What if you found this post , verbatim, written on another site's discussion forum? What would you conclude? Random chance? Absolutely not. Either I copied from that post or that poster is also me.
But as I mentioned in a previous post it's not only about unlikely events. It is also about design parameters, what makes x a designed object and y not a random object. For example, the light-sensitive structure of the eye is irreducibly complex, it could not have come about via small single steps or it would not function. Behe uses the illustration of a mouse trap. Take one piece away and you don't have a mouse trap anymore. So we have future usefulness rather then past usefulness. Very intriguing.
It's not just about what is unlikely, although that is a valid point. That is a misnomer among those who oppose intelligent design theories. It's also about recognizing design in the same way that crypotography, SETI, etc. do. In the case of Michael Behe's material, some examples can be found here: http://www.arn.org/behe/mb_mm.htm
Well you have to say why he is a sexist, you can't just say it. Your point was to accuse Jon of being a bigot without providing any support (simply mentioning a past article doesn't count, give examples). I would have moderated you "flamebait", but troll is good enough.
To say that those areas existed before the internet and therefore the internet does not foster scientific discovery in these areas is the non-sequitor here. An example would be, particle accelerators,physics existed before this technology, but because of this technology scientific discovery is inspired by it. The internet has offered breakthroughs in computer science in things such as distributed and network computing, not to mention what we can look forward to in the future.
I'm shocked to read this post. The internet very much IS a device that DOES further discovery.But physics is not the only science out there.There is computer science,cryptography,physics, even quantum physics, heck even psychology, etc. all of which resides in the realm of the internet.
I realize that arguing from authority has little convincing power.However, that was not the point of my post. I was responding to the person who stated that physicists do not share Paul Davies' view that physics and theology overlap.This was a gross misrepresentation of current scientific views.
However, the overlap is there BECAUSE of the evidence.And the evidence is overwhelming.
Re:Philosophy and physics overlap
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
Actually most physicists have, even the staunchest atheists.The above quote is quite inaccurate.
Many prominent physicists share this overwhelming train of thought.For example:
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument." Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1985), pages 252, 263.
"a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology..." Sir Fred Hoyle, "The Universe," page 16.
"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency--or, rather, Agency--must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe (New York: William Morrow, 1988), page 27.
"The medieval theologian who gazed at the night sky through the eyes of Aristotle and saw angels moving the spheres in harmony has become the modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature.... When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." Tony Rothman, "A 'What You See Is What You Beget' Theory," Discover (May 1987), page 99.
"Nature does exhibit remarkable coincidences and these do warrant some explanation." Bernard J. Carr and Martin J. Rees, "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World," Nature 278 (1979), pages 605-612;
"One would have to conclude either that the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidences or that the universe was indeed tailor-made for life. I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor!" Freeman Dyson, Infinitein All Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), page 298.
"The problem here is to try to formulate some statement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. In other words, the problem is to read the mind of God." Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, ed., Cosmos, Bios, and Theos (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1992), page 52.
"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." Stuart Gannes, Fortune, 13 October 1986, page 57.
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan." Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, Creation of the Universe, trans. T. Kiang (Singapore: World Scientific, 1989), page 173.
"We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. So there is a chance that the best of all possible mathematics will be created out of physicists' attempts to describe nature" Roger Penrose, in the movie A Brief History of Time (Burbank, CA: Paramount Pictures Incorporated, 1992).
"A question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology the creation of the universe has now become an area of active research in physics." George F.R.Ellis,ibid
"I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1985), pages 252, 263.
"Amazing fine-tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word "miraculous" without taking a stand as to the ontological status of that word." John Noble Wilford, "Sizing Up the Cosmos: An Astronomer's Quest," New York Times, 12 March 1991, page B9.
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument" Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), page 116.
"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." Joseph Silk, Cosmic Enigma (1993), pages 8-9.
"If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use." Tim Stafford, "Cease-fire in the Laboratory," Christianity Today, 3 April 1987, page 18.
So as you can see, the statement "Well, most physicists haven't, actually;", is quite ridiculous.
In this opinion of this physicist.
Re:Been wanting to vent this
on
The Mind of God
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· Score: 1
I don't think you quite get it or maybe the fact that it is represented by mathematics doesn't drive it home to you. William Dembski , a mathematician from Cambridge and an intelligent design theory proponent wrote an excellent monograph on what is called "specified complexity". _The Design Inference : Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities_ William A. Dembski It's a science, inferring design by eliminating chance and regularity.We do this all the time in every day life and especially in Computer Science fields such as cryptography,for example, discerning a string of digits and inferring whether or not that came from an intelligent agent, or random computer processes. SETI also offers an excellent example.To increase their chances of finding an extra-terrestrial intelligence, SETI researchers have to monitor millions of radio signals from outer space. Many natural objects in space produce radio waves. Looking for signs of design among all these naturally produced radio signals is like looking for a needle in a haystack. To sift through the haystack, SETI researchers run the signals they monitor through computers programmed with pattern-matchers. So long as a signal doesn't match one of the pre-set patterns, it will pass through the pattern-matching sieve. If, on the other hand, it does match one of those patterns, then, depending on the pattern matched, the SETI researchers may have cause for celebration. The SETI researchers in Contact did find a signal worthy of celebration, namely the sequence of prime numbers from 2 to 101, represented as a series of beats and pauses (2 = beat-beat-pause; 3 = beat-beat-beat-pause; 5 = beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-pause; etc.). The SETI researchers in Contact took this signal as decisive confirmation of an extra-terrestrial intelligence. What is it about this signal that warrants us inferring design? Whenever we infer design, we must establish two things-complexity and specification. Complexity ensures that the object in question is not so simple that it can readily be explained by natural causes. Specification ensures that this object exhibits the type of pattern that is the signature of intelligence. Another simpler example would be if you were tied to a stake and about 15 expert sharpshooters were shoot you all at once, and you find out after the smoke clears that you are still alive.What are you to conclude? Basically, that bullets were blanks or that they all missed on purpose.To say that they all missed by accident is ludicrous. I think that the evidence brought forth by researches such as Paul Davies and George Greenstein,both non-religious, is just that kind of evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
Again whether it is one or many it doesn't matter. There is no evidence for the infinite Metaverse, but there is evidence of a designed system, namely our finite universe. An infinite metaverse is pure speculation, an intelligent designer follows logically from the hard data and other designed systems.
I didn't think otherwise which is why I said this has nothing to do with Christianity.
I thought I totally made up "Vishak" as well and that it was totally original.Turns out it's a very common Indian name. Go figure.
hehehe
You missed my point. There is absolutely no evidence for infinite metaverses. It is more rational to conclude an infinite cause, since it's very definition requires the cause to be outside of the effect. Arguing for an infinite effect makes no sense, there is evidence against it (finite universe) and evidence for an intelligence (fine-tuning).
This other rational conclusion explains nothing and does not provide any hard data.
Saying that my example does nothing to discount your argument is simply conjecture. Respond, don't just say stuff.
Actually no. It far more rational, because of the evidence to conclude that an intelligence is the cause of this effect. Simply because there is no evidence of an infinite metaverse, also an infinite effect leads to many contradictions.
An intelligence outside of time and therefore not constrained by time is supported by at least the preponderance of the evidence.
What we know:
1.Finite universe
2.Fine tuning
3.Irreducibly complex systems
Conclusion:
Intelligent Designer
or
Infinite chances
It is not a matter of taste but a matter of hard data.
Cosmologist Edward Harrison makes this deduction:
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."
This has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, much less the Intelligent Design movement which is not necessarily religious.
>
Well for one there is no evidence of any infinitely repeating series of universes, in fact physics argues against such a state.
But the first part of your argument is a common objection. By way of illustration, say you were tied to a stake and were about to be shot by 30 expert sharp shooters. They begin firing and after the smoke clears you find yourself alive. the prisoner could conclude, since he is alive, that all the sharpshooters missed by some extremely unlikely chance. He may wish to attribute his survival to an incredible bit of good luck, but he would be far more rational to conclude that the guns were loaded with blanks or that the sharpshooters all deliberately missed. Someone must have purposed he should live. Likewise, the rational conclusion to draw from the incredible fine tuning of the universe is that Someone purposed we should live.
>
This makes no sense. Saying that the cause is outside and thus not constrained by the effect is perfectly logical. Picture a 3-dimensional being putting his finger through a 2-dimensional world
No problem ababout misreading my original post, but man you are still doing it. I am talking about the actual light sensitive spot. You keep talking about how there are all these different kinds of eyes that form a progression from simple to complex, ( again that is not true, the trilobite eye is the oldest and most complex eye structure far surpassing it's descendants.)
but my argument is what makes any eye an eye? The light sensitive spot.
This structure is irreducibly complex.This indicates that such a system consist of several interlocking parts, all of which must be in place before they can function. And since Darwinian processes kick in only after there is minimal function, the origin of an irreducibly complex system is out of reach of standard Darwinian explanations.
This is all wrong. This the exact opposite of what biologists such as Dawkins and even Darwin stated, that that is *exactly* how nature works.
""If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
You are response has absolutely nothing to do with my post. You saw the word "eye" in my post and assumed I was talking about the fully formed eye creationist argument. That is not the ID contention.
My post centered on the light sensitive spot which is irreducibly complex and has no precursor, but even the fully formed eyes of all kinds do not have not one precursor as well, but that is a different topic.
When light strikes the retina a photon is absorbed by an organic molecule called 11-cis-retinal, causing it to rearrange within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in shape of retinal forces a corresponding change in shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which it is tightly bound. As a consequence of the protein's metamorphosis, the behavior of the protein changes in a very specific way. It goes on and on like this. It fulfills the definition of irreducible complexity, and a challenge from Darwin himself:
In The Origin of Species Darwin stated:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
If this argument is the death knell of the ID argument then I guess ID will be around a very long time.
This argument is very flawed.
1.The design argument is looking at an effect,and comparing it to other effects and saying this effect has a cause. You cannot say that the effect itself was infinite because that leads to many contradictions.
2. Overwhelming scientific evidence states that the universe has a *finite* beginning 15 or so billion years ago.Nuff said. There is no evidence of a metaverse or other universes.
3.It also contains many characteristics that are fine-tuned, showing future usefulness and intelligent design. Some people probably have seen some of this on CNN or a Discovery channel documentary but it has been widespread in astrophysics circles for the past decade.A couple of examples would be the gravitational interaction with a moon: if greater, the tidal effects on the oceans, atmosphere, and rotational period would be too severe;
if less, orbital obliquity changes would cause climatic instabilities; movement of nutrients and life from the oceans to the continents and vice versa would be insufficient; magnetic field would be too weak.And Jupiter's distance if greater; too many asteroid and comet collisions would occur on Earth,if less: Earth's orbit would become unstable.
4.Something falls out or is a consequence of the facts that we know. Time is finite and was created, then the creator of time is outside of time, and therefore a beginning for the creator is meaningless. He is not constrained by our time dimension.A that a creator can not be inside or part of His creation, it logically stands to reason that He is outside of it. Since He is outside of it, He is beyond having a designer, since there is nothing that can design one who is outside.
Your question about the designer helps to highlight one of the differences between the Intelligent Design movement and the standard creationist position. In the past, the question of design has always been linked to the identity of the designer. With the advent of this movement, the link is being severed. The question becomes, can design be recognized even if the designer is unknown? I think this is a step forward because it enables us to distance ourselves from religious conflict and to concentrate on the evidence at hand. In everyday life, we frequently recognize design without personally knowing who did the designing.
I think the issue becomes troubling, though, to people who are used to clipping the idea of design from science by resorting to philosophical or theological questions. In a way this is ironic because by separating out such theology from science, ID is, in effect, doing what atheists claim to have wanted all along. The unforeseen result, though, is that if science is allowed to recognize design in nature, this invigorates rather than squashes the religious and philosophical debates that such people thought they had already won.
This is awful reasoning. First of all , when it comes to unlikely events, we are talking about specification. This is used in science of any stripe. For example, it is very unlikely that one would win the lottery, but someone has to. And if that person wins, a very unlikely event has just occured.
However, lets specify it a little more. Say that the person who won, was a "wise guy", a member of the mafia. Now that person has won twice in a row this year. What would you conclude? Fraud.Intelligent design instead of random chance.
What if you found this post , verbatim, written on another site's discussion forum? What would you conclude? Random chance? Absolutely not. Either I copied from that post or that poster is also me.
But as I mentioned in a previous post it's not only about unlikely events. It is also about design parameters, what makes x a designed object and y not a random object. For example, the light-sensitive structure of the eye is irreducibly complex, it could not have come about via small single steps or it would not function. Behe uses the illustration of a mouse trap. Take one piece away and you don't have a mouse trap anymore. So we have future usefulness rather then past usefulness. Very intriguing.
It's not just about what is unlikely, although that is a valid point. That is a misnomer among those who oppose intelligent design theories. It's also about recognizing design in the same way that crypotography, SETI, etc. do. In the case of Michael Behe's material, some examples can be found here:
http://www.arn.org/behe/mb_mm.htm
Grammar Man saying "Its in about the same.."
Looks like we are all going to grammar hell in a hand basket.
Well you have to say why he is a sexist, you can't just say it. Your point was to accuse Jon of being a bigot without providing any support (simply mentioning a past article doesn't count, give examples). I would have moderated you "flamebait", but troll is good enough.
I think everyone rushed to a computer store when they saw this article. All I see are trolls replying.
People who use Lotus didn't feel a thing either.
To say that those areas existed before the internet and therefore the internet does not foster scientific discovery in these areas is the non-sequitor here. An example would be, particle accelerators,physics existed before this technology, but because of this technology scientific discovery is inspired by it. The internet has offered breakthroughs in computer science in things such as distributed and network computing, not to mention what we can look forward to in the future.
I'm shocked to read this post. The internet very much IS a device that DOES further discovery.But physics is not the only science out there.There is computer science,cryptography,physics, even quantum physics, heck even psychology, etc. all of which resides in the realm of the internet.
Please please please bring back Fraggle Rock! God I miss comming home from school, and hoping the old guy gets eaten by his muppet dog.
I realize that arguing from authority has little convincing power.However, that was not the point of my post. I was responding to the person who stated that physicists do not share Paul Davies' view that physics and theology overlap.This was a gross misrepresentation of current scientific views.
However, the overlap is there BECAUSE of the evidence.And the evidence is overwhelming.
Actually most physicists have, even the staunchest atheists.The above quote is quite inaccurate.
Many prominent physicists share this overwhelming train of thought.For example:
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument."
Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1985), pages 252, 263.
"a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology..."
Sir Fred Hoyle, "The Universe," page 16.
"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency--or, rather, Agency--must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"
George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe (New York: William Morrow, 1988), page 27.
"The medieval theologian who gazed at the night sky through the eyes of Aristotle and saw angels moving the spheres in harmony has become the modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature.... When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."
Tony Rothman, "A 'What You See Is What You Beget' Theory," Discover (May 1987), page 99.
"Nature does exhibit remarkable coincidences and these do warrant some explanation."
Bernard J. Carr and Martin J. Rees, "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World," Nature 278 (1979), pages 605-612;
"One would have to conclude either that the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidences or that the universe was indeed tailor-made for life. I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor!"
Freeman Dyson, Infinitein All Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), page 298.
"The problem here is to try to formulate some statement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. In other words, the problem is to read the mind of God."
Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, ed., Cosmos, Bios, and Theos (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1992), page 52.
"The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."
Stuart Gannes, Fortune, 13 October 1986, page 57.
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan."
Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, Creation of the Universe, trans. T. Kiang (Singapore: World Scientific, 1989), page 173.
"We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it. So there is a chance that the best of all possible mathematics will be created out of physicists' attempts to describe nature"
Roger Penrose, in the movie A Brief History of Time (Burbank, CA: Paramount Pictures Incorporated, 1992).
"A question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology the creation of the universe has now become an area of active research in physics."
George F.R.Ellis,ibid
"I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."
Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan, 1985), pages 252, 263.
"Amazing fine-tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word "miraculous" without taking a stand as to the ontological status of that word."
John Noble Wilford, "Sizing Up the Cosmos: An Astronomer's Quest," New York Times, 12 March 1991, page B9.
"Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God--the design argument of Paley--updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument"
Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), page 116.
"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."
Joseph Silk, Cosmic Enigma (1993), pages 8-9.
"If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use."
Tim Stafford, "Cease-fire in the Laboratory," Christianity Today, 3 April 1987, page 18.
So as you can see, the statement "Well, most physicists haven't, actually;", is quite ridiculous.
In this opinion of this physicist.
I don't think you quite get it or maybe the fact that it is represented by mathematics doesn't drive it home to you. William Dembski , a mathematician from Cambridge and an intelligent design theory proponent wrote an excellent monograph on what is called "specified complexity". _The Design Inference : Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities_ William A. Dembski It's a science, inferring design by eliminating chance and regularity.We do this all the time in every day life and especially in Computer Science fields such as cryptography,for example, discerning a string of digits and inferring whether or not that came from an intelligent agent, or random computer processes. SETI also offers an excellent example.To increase their chances of finding an extra-terrestrial intelligence, SETI researchers have to monitor millions of radio signals from outer space. Many natural objects in space produce radio waves. Looking for signs of design among all these naturally produced radio signals is like looking for a needle in a haystack. To sift through the haystack, SETI researchers run the signals they monitor through computers programmed with pattern-matchers. So long as a signal doesn't match one of the pre-set patterns, it will pass through the pattern-matching sieve. If, on the other hand, it does match one of those patterns, then, depending on the pattern matched, the SETI researchers may have cause for celebration. The SETI researchers in Contact did find a signal worthy of celebration, namely the sequence of prime numbers from 2 to 101, represented as a series of beats and pauses (2 = beat-beat-pause; 3 = beat-beat-beat-pause; 5 = beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-pause; etc.). The SETI researchers in Contact took this signal as decisive confirmation of an extra-terrestrial intelligence. What is it about this signal that warrants us inferring design? Whenever we infer design, we must establish two things-complexity and specification. Complexity ensures that the object in question is not so simple that it can readily be explained by natural causes. Specification ensures that this object exhibits the type of pattern that is the signature of intelligence. Another simpler example would be if you were tied to a stake and about 15 expert sharpshooters were shoot you all at once, and you find out after the smoke clears that you are still alive.What are you to conclude? Basically, that bullets were blanks or that they all missed on purpose.To say that they all missed by accident is ludicrous. I think that the evidence brought forth by researches such as Paul Davies and George Greenstein,both non-religious, is just that kind of evidence.