James Le Fanu: Why Us? (The limitations of science)

by David Turell , Friday, May 29, 2009, 19:37 (5444 days ago) @ George Jelliss
edited by unknown, Friday, May 29, 2009, 19:43

I would say I place a high value on seeking the truth, and hope that I have got it right, but am prepared to change my mind if evidence shows I was wrong.
 
Right on!! I believe that fixed opinions are wrong. As science advances we all must be flexable
 
> DT: "Now imagine that suddenly, without warning, science itself has begun to turn on you...cosmology has determined that the Universe had a beginning,"
 
> I've never had any strong belief about the universe having a beginning or not. I don't see that this has any bearing on theism or atheism. - But I think it does. There are only a few possibilites: either the universe is eternal with Big Bangs and Big Crunches, and that gets rid of a deity in my opinion; the multiverse theory is based on an unproven and probably impossible-to-prove string theory, so that's out and George agrees for Occam's reasons; and finally, our space-time is flat, which theoretically allows life, but ends in expansion to the point that there is heat death, or a 'Big Rip' in space- time, but either way our sun dies in 5 billion years: Can we find another solar system in tha time and move there? And finally The Vic Stenger theory of a pre-existing space-time which is just like ours with virtual particles, so our Big Bang is possible by chance, a totally unprovable theory. If our universe arrived from a total void, there is a deity. 
 
> DT: "the fundamental constants of physics and cosmology are turning out to have been incredibly fine tuned to support the existence of life," 
 
> There is no evidence that the constants are really variables that can be tuned, even crudely. The value of pi is the way it is for mathematical reasons, not because God chose it that way. - If one leaves out the term 'fine tuning' then one can simple say those values,100 of them, allow for life, and leave it at: 'why is that so?' - > DT: "the stunning complexity and sophistication of the cell beggars any naturalistic explanation of its origin, and the neo-Darwinian synthesis is being called into question by unanswerable attacks on its explanatory power."
 
> This has been the theme of many of DT's posts. I simply say this is just plain wrong. Certainly the mechanisms of the cell are mind-blowingly complicated, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have evolved (or developed if you prefer) by natural processes. The theories based on Darwin's insight are continually being improved, it is nowhere near any collapse that the DI and its apologists would like to see. - 
As science advances what it finds is more and more complexity. At some point the probability of chance accomplishing this will disappear. That is my expectation. The advance of science will undo Darwin, yet I am absolutely sure evolution occurred by some mechanism still hidden in DNA/RNA. - 
> Not knowing who Guillermo Gonzalez was I looked him up:
 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Gonzalez_(astronomer)
 
> Surprise, surprise! He is: "an astrophysicist and notable proponent of intelligent design, and is a professor at Grove City College, an evangelical Christian school, in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, considered the hub of the intelligent design movement, and a fellow with the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, which also promotes intelligent design." - He was thrown out of U. of Iowa for his beliefs, last year. I find some of the scientific conclusions by the ID folks to be quite valid. As a Jew I do not accept the Discovery background 'wedge document'.
 
> I believe DT is referring to his Privileged Planet ideas: - Which add to the points made in "Rare Earth", written by two very secular scientists.