Cosmology: Early dark galaxies

A finding that fits the theory; gas galaxies:-
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-dark-galaxies-early-universe.html-And Hubble finds ancient fossil galaxies:-http://phys.org/news/2012-07-hubble-telescope-unmasks-ghost-galaxies.html

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The concept behind this Sci Am article is that our type of black hole created a galaxy that allowed life. ? A fine-tuned black hole? The author thinks it is all by chance. Read the whole print article if you can, but note the theistic comments after the preview article:-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-black-holes-shape-galaxies-stars-planets-around-them&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SPC_20120719

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=grand-design-spiral-bx442&WT.mc_id... galaxies this age are lumpy and not pretty spirals.

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http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/23-20-things-you-didnt-know-about-gravity#.UfA...

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Using a new technique called quantum squeezing to try to measure for gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein;-http://phys.org/news/2013-08-einstein-window-universe.html-squeezed light described:-http://www.squeezed-light.de/

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What happens at the boundary of a black hole is in confusion and debate. And of course it involves entanglement and QM, and quantum field theory. Suskind who prefers quantum loop gravity in involved:-http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/science/space/a-black-hole-mystery-wrapped-in-a-firewall-paradox.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130813&_r=0-Does Ruth's theory solve the problem?

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DAVID: What happens at the boundary of a black hole is in confusion and debate. And of course it involves entanglement and QM, and quantum field theory. Suskind who prefers quantum loop gravity in involved:-http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/science/space/a-black-hole-mystery-wrapped-in-a-firew...-Does Ruth's theory solve the problem?-It doesn't look as if anyone's theory solves the problem, since nobody appears to have a clue about what's going on, but it would be nice to hear Ruth's own take on this. Meanwhile, I do like the comment from Richard M. Waugaman, M.D. and Chevy Chase, MD: -"The only thing more exciting than scientific discoveries is scientific uncertainty, which protects us from the dangerous hubris of thinking we-- or Einstein-- have all the answers."-Sums up the current situation very neatly. You wonder what scientists will be telling us a hundred years from now. On the other hand - for we agnostics always have another hand - I can only admire people like Ruth who continue to grapple with these seemingly insoluble mysteries. Human perseverance is a wonderful thing.

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> dhw: Sums up the current situation very neatly. You wonder what scientists will be telling us a hundred years from now. On the other hand - for we agnostics always have another hand - I can only admire people like Ruth who continue to grapple with these seemingly insoluble mysteries. Human perseverance is a wonderful thing.-It seems to me agnostics have three or four hands. The article demonstrates that a melding of classical Einstein and quantum theory is as far away as ever. A grand unified theory (GUT) appears to me to be impossible if the degree of separation described in Ruth's theory, requiring formal transactions, is correct. String theory seems dead in its tracks.

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Maybe black holes are not so black. Hawkings recent comments have confused the lay public:-http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/relativity-space-astronomy-and-cosmology/black-holes/black-hole-information-paradox-an-introduction/

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A new theory based on supersymmetry, itself not proven by the LHC in the work done after the Higgs was found.-http://phys.org/news/2013-01-revolutionary-theory-dark.html-But interesting. Do you feel those neutrinos piercing your body?

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The electron seems to say no:-http://www.livescience.com/41093-electron-spherical-electric-dipole-moment.html?cmpid=555152

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Our neighboring spiral galaxy, 2.5 million light years away:-http://phys.org/news/2013-08-stunning-images-andromeda-world-powerful.html-This is what we look like but smaller

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It appears to be lighter than it should be, which seems to make it a very special type of galaxy. Theists take note:-http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929302.900

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Weighing in with three flavors of neutrinos adds to the standard model of particles:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140210101947.htm

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Gravitational lensing measures mass more accurately. the mass may have been found:-http://www.nature.com/news/missing-galaxy-mass-found-1.14731?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20140220

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And so we may say good by to Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and maybe even black holes and other speculative phenomena.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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Tony; And so we may say good by to Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and maybe even black holes and other speculative phenomena.-No, this is getting rid of the speculation that nutrinos are needed for the missing galaxy masses. Dark matter and dark energy are still needed to fill in for the eztimated 70+% of missing mass in the universe and to account for the expansion. But you are right, lots is just theoretical speculation so far.

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Tony; And so we may say good by to Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and maybe even black holes and other speculative phenomena.
> 
> No, this is getting rid of the speculation that nutrinos are needed for the missing galaxy masses. Dark matter and dark energy are still needed to fill in for the eztimated 70+% of missing mass in the universe and to account for the expansion. But you are right, lots is just theoretical speculation so far.-But the reason for the need of Dark Matter and Dark Energy is to account for missing mass. If we can account for the missing mass, then the need for those theories disappears.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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Tony; And so we may say good by to Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and maybe even black holes and other speculative phenomena.
> > 
> > No, this is getting rid of the speculation that nutrinos are needed for the missing galaxy masses. Dark matter and dark energy are still needed to fill in for the eztimated 70+% of missing mass in the universe and to account for the expansion. But you are right, lots is just theoretical speculation so far.
> 
> Tony: But the reason for the need of Dark Matter and Dark Energy is to account for missing mass. If we can account for the missing mass, then the need for those theories disappears.-But as I interpret the lensing article that started this discussion, the degree of bending of light demonstrated more mass in the galaxies studied than was visible, indicating more dark matter was present, so nutrinos to add mass not needed.

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Tony: And so we may say good by to Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and maybe even black holes and other speculative phenomena.-If not black holes, what are these guys looking at:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140219124621.htm-General relativity gives us black holes,which seem to really exist, but the speculation occurs when stringy theories try to look at quantum explanations for the activity at the horizons of the holes. This is why Hawking seems so confused in his recent announcement about escapes. I accept the black hole concept, not the unproven speculations.

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/milky-way%E2%80%99s-magnetic-field-mapped

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Still trying for multiverses:-"Another goal, the two authors propose would be seeking the detection of "spectroscopically deviant" patches in the CMBâevidence of which would suggest the existence of other universes."- Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-05-pair-physicists-contemplate-future-cosmology.html#jCp

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Using Beta polariziation to study the neutrino for its mass. An adjunct to the Bicep 2 study of the CMB polarization for gravity waves:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140513132705.htm

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Yes, according to physicists, but not really:-"According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, quantum fluctuations in the metastable false vacuum ... a state absent of space, time or matter ... can give rise to virtual particle pairs. Ordinarily these pairs self-annihilate almost instantly, but if these virtual particles separate immediately, they can avoid annihilation, creating a true vacuum bubble. The Wuhan team's equations show that such a bubble has the potential to expand exponentially, causing a new universe to appear. All of this begins from quantum behavior and leads to the creation of a tremendous amount of matter and energy during the inflation stage. (Note that as stated in this paper, the metastable false vacuum has "neither matter nor space or time," but is a form of wavefunction referred to as "quantum potential." While most of us wouldn't be inclined to call this "nothing," physicists do refer to it as such.)"-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/05/22/is-all-the-universe-from-nothing/

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"I've proposed that there is such a principle, related to the Second Law of thermodynamics. This, you might recall, is the law of nature which says that you can't build a perpetual motion machine; there exist processes in nature which are impossible to reverse.Technically, physicists define a number called the entropy to measure how scrambled-up the universe is at a given moment of time. The Second Law says that this number always increases as time passes.
 
"Even black holes obey a version of the Second Law. Their entropy turns out to be proportional to the area of their event horizon. In other words, the area of a black hole, plus the entropy of any matter outside of it, always increases with time. This formulation of the Second Law, discovered by Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking, is called the Generalized Second Law (GSL). In my dissertation research, I proved mathematically that the GSL is true in a broad range of circumstances.-"You can also use the GSL to show that time has to end at a singularity inside of black holes and had to have a beginning at the big bang. Otherwise, there'd be observers whose horizons wouldn't satisfy the GSL. Admittedly, no one really understands the laws of physics near singularities, so this part of my research is speculative and depends on what kinds of new physics might be relevant. It is conceivable that, even though the GSL is valid in all the situations we've been able to check so far, it is false near singularities." (my bold)-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2014/05/23/time-machines-would-run-afoul-of-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics-guest-post/

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From David:-QUOTE: "You can also use the GSL [Generalized Second Law] to show that time has to end at a singularity inside of black holes and had to have a beginning at the big bang. Otherwise, there'd be observers whose horizons wouldn't satisfy the GSL. Admittedly, no one really understands the laws of physics near singularities, so this part of my research is speculative and depends on what kinds of new physics might be relevant. It is conceivable that, even though the GSL is valid in all the situations we've been able to check so far, it is false near singularities." (David's bold)-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2014/05/23/time-machines-would...-No harm in speculation, but since you have put this highly controversial speculation in bold, we need to review the situation. You and I have agreed that nothing can come from nothing (see the first section of your post), in which case there must have been something before the big bang. But as George has argued, there cannot be a "before" without time. We then come to the problem of defining time. If we take it as meaning the sequence of before/now/after, or past/present/future, you and I cannot say time began with the big bang. (We don't know George's definition of time.) You have tried to define it in terms of the passage of events, and the big bang is the first event we know of (or think we know of ... the big bang remains a theory, not a fact). But we have no way of knowing whether there were or were not other events before the big bang, and so even if we accept your definition of time, we have no way of knowing whether the statement in bold is true or false. The heading: "Cosmology: time begins" therefore seems to me just as misleading in its boldness as "Innovation and Speciation: pre-planning". Far too many sensational headlines! Methinks we need a bit of moderate agnosticism on the AgnosticWeb!

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> dhw: No harm in speculation, but since you have put this highly controversial speculation in bold, we need to review the situation. You and I have agreed that nothing can come from nothing (see the first section of your post), in which case there must have been something before the big bang. But as George has argued, there cannot be a "before" without time. We then come to the problem of defining time. If we take it as meaning the sequence of before/now/after, or past/present/future, you and I cannot say time began with the big bang.-I must say that our concept of time began after the Big Bang. Note the following. Before the big bang is unknowable:-https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/92e02ca82f7f-> dhw: But we have no way of knowing whether there were or were not other events before the big bang, and so even if we accept your definition of time, we have no way of knowing whether the statement in bold is true or false. The heading: "Cosmology: time begins" therefore seems to me just as misleading in its boldness as "Innovation and Speciation: pre-planning". Far too many sensational headlines! Methinks we need a bit of moderate agnosticism on the AgnosticWeb!-Our time begins at the Big Bang. Period. But something caused the big bang. Since the universe is all energy in various forms, what caused the BB is energy. And unforunately for us timeless energy is all we can conclude prior to the bb, because we measure time by a succession of events. Moderation is what keeps you stuck on the fence.

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A new outlying paper tries to refute the supernova studies of several years ago, which clearly seemed to illustrate the expansion. The authors have no explanation for the red shift, which to them has an unknown cause.-http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-universe-not-expanding-01940.html

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Dhw: If we take [time] as meaning the sequence of before/now/after, or past/present/future, you and I cannot say time began with the big bang.-DAVID: I must say that our concept of time began after the Big Bang. Note the following. Before the big bang is unknowable:-https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/92e02ca82f7f-You've explained "our concept of time" as "we measure time by a succession of events". Since we humans cannot measure anything unknown to us, of course that particular concept began after the BB, but that doesn't mean no events before the BB, and therefore no time. You might as well argue that since God's existence is unknowable, there is no God! If we don't know whether there were events, we don't know whether there was time. The website you've quoted contradicts you:
 
QUOTE: In fact, the particulars of this [data concerning the temperature of the universe] tell us that not only did time not begin at the Big Bang, but that we know what happened before the Big Bang: there was a period of cosmic inflation, where a tremendous amount of energy intrinsic to space itself dominated the Universe, and it expanded exponentially quickly at a fantastically large rate! -The bold is the author's, not mine. "Before the BB" is slightly misleading, because later he qualifies it with "a little bit". However, he does not restrict the amount of time involved:-QUOTE: Image generated by me, of the scale of the Universe (y-axis) vs. time (arbitrary units).
It tells us that rather than a singularity at "t=0", or where the Big Bang occurred, it tells us that [sic] the Universe existed in an inflationary state, or a state where it was exponentially expanding, for an indeterminately long amount of time. [/b]-Again, the bold is the author's, not mine, and he goes on to ask (among other questions): "did the inflationary state last forever going backwards?" Of course we don't and can't know, though he says: "It's even possible that time is cyclical, and that the cycles change with each iteration!"-Final quote: "But even though we can trace back our cosmic history all the way to the moment of the Hot Big Bang, and even before that (a little bit) to the epoch of cosmic inflation, that's where our knowledge ends. So thousands of years later, we're right back to where we started."-On the assumption that you would regard inflation as an event, this can hardly be said to support the claim that time itself began with the BB. He is making the same point as me: we do not and cannot know when time began.

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dhw: The website you've quoted contradicts you:-Not really. It is now considered that the hot big bang followed inflation. I was sloppy in what I said. From whatever began this universe for 10^-43 seconds there was inflation and then the hot big bang. Time begins with these events we theorize about. The quote is correct:
> 
> QUOTE: In fact, the particulars of this [data concerning the temperature of the universe] tell us that not only did time not begin at the Big Bang, but that we know what happened before the Big Bang: there was a period of cosmic inflation, where a tremendous amount of energy intrinsic to space itself dominated the Universe, and it expanded exponentially quickly at a fantastically large rate! 
> 
> dhw:Again, the bold is the author's, not mine, and he goes on to ask (among other questions): "did the inflationary state last forever going backwards?" Of course we don't and can't know, though he says: "It's even possible that time is cyclical, and that the cycles change with each iteration!"-IF there are iterations of a cyclical nature.
> 
> dhw: Final quote: "But even though we can trace back our cosmic history all the way to the moment of the Hot Big Bang, and even before that (a little bit) to the epoch of cosmic inflation, that's where our knowledge ends. So thousands of years later, we're right back to where we started."
> 
> dhw: On the assumption that you would regard inflation as an event, this can hardly be said to support the claim that time itself began with the BB. He is making the same point as me: we do not and cannot know when time began.-You interpretation is confused. We don't know what caused the inflation that began our universe but that is the beginning of our time. It is the first event (in theory) we count as in 'our' time. Further Einstein treats our universe as space-time and it is shown to work. Our space-time began with inflation.

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Dhw: The website you've quoted contradicts you. 
DAVID: Not really. It is now considered that the hot big bang followed inflation. I was sloppy in what I said. From whatever began this universe for 10^-43 seconds there was inflation and then the hot big bang. Time begins with these events we theorize about. -Here you say "time begins", but you are very careful in the following exchange to talk of 'our time':
 
dhw: On the assumption that you would regard inflation as an event, this can hardly be said to support the claim that time itself began with the BB. He is making the same point as me: we do not and cannot know when time began.-DAVID: Your interpretation is confused. We don't know what caused the inflation that began our universe but that is the beginning of our time. It is the first event (in theory) we count as in 'our' time. Further Einstein treats our universe as space-time and it is shown to work. Our space-time began with inflation.-Let me repeat my objection to this. You've explained "our" time as "we measure time by a succession of events". Since we humans cannot measure anything unknown to us, of course our human mode of time measurement begins with the BB, but that doesn't mean no events and therefore no time before the BB. You might as well argue that since God's existence is unknowable, there is no God! If we don't know whether there were events, we don't know whether there was time. The author of the article you recommended points out that inflation may stretch back FOR EVER, and "it's even possible that time is cyclical, and that the cycles change with each iteration." Yes, it's all "mays"and "possibles" ... we simply don't know. That means we don't know when time began. We only know (or think we know) of an event through which time became measurable by us humans.-The distinction becomes important when we relate it to George's atheistic argument that nothing preceded the birth of our universe: he says there was no before, no cause, no time. The theistic argument depends on there being a before and a cause, and you cannot have a before or a cause-and-effect sequence without time. That is part of the reason why I'm so surprised at the rigidity of your argument

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> Let me repeat my objection to this. You've explained "our" time as "we measure time by a succession of events". Since we humans cannot measure anything unknown to us, of course our human mode of time measurement begins with the BB, but that doesn't mean no events and therefore no time before the BB. .... We only know (or think we know) of an event through which time became measurable by us humans.-Please note once again that inflation preceded the hot big bang. Time for us starts with the theoretical inflation period. Guth Borde and Vilenkin have published two papers which say "the past is incomplete", which means in their view that there is no past which we can indentify in theoretical math. Linde and others who work with and accept inflation theories agree.
> 
> dhw: The distinction becomes important when we relate it to George's atheistic argument that nothing preceded the birth of our universe: he says there was no before, no cause, no time. The theistic argument depends on there being a before and a cause, and you cannot have a before or a cause-and-effect sequence without time. That is part of the reason why I'm so surprised at the rigidity of your argument.-It again is a matter of definition. Our time starts with inflation. We don't know what went before, but we know there was start. For me there had to be a cause, which I accept as timeless from our viewpoint. An unchanging cause philosophically does not require time.

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The expansion of our universe is speeding up and it implies that the most distant parts are receding faster than the speed of light:-https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-disappearing-universe-d7447467c63a?utm_source=newsletter68&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=68

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Still a huge debate over Biceps 2, and a refutation of multiverses:-:No matter if the BICEP2 results turn out to be true or not, they are not good science. Therefore, the claim that the hype was premature is quite accurate and not too harsh at all. Publications that are based on scraping the presentation slides of other groups should be flat out rejected. That is no clean process and should not be allowed within the science community.
 
"On an other note, I dont understand how one can conclude from inside our universe on the existence of other universes or bubbles. That makes no sense. We are unable to understand how the natural constants come to their values, even if we accept the (any) inflation model to be correct. Taking our not-understanding as proof of a multiverse concept is grotesque. It is religious at best, comparable to the invention of a creator of the world as a model for the existence of the world in ancient times. The multiverse is in its nature not falsifiable. It should have no in science."-http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6921

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DAVID: Still a huge debate over Biceps 2, and a refutation of multiverses-http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6921-The passage you quoted was from a response to the original article, which goes much further in its scepticism concerning inflationary theory itself, as follows:-"He also takes the occasion to note the odd fact that while BICEP2 results have been claimed to be proof of inflation and the multiverse, if they turn out to be wrong, that's fine too:-The BICEP2 incident has also revealed a truth about inflationary theory. The common view is that it is a highly predictive theory. If that was the case and the detection of gravitational waves was the 'smoking gun' proof of inflation, one would think that non-detection means that the theory fails. Such is the nature of normal science. Yet some proponents of inflation who celebrated the BICEP2 announcement already insist that the theory is equally valid whether or not gravitational waves are detected. How is this possible?-The answer given by proponents is alarming: the inflationary paradigm is so flexible that it is immune to experimental and observational tests. First, inflation is driven by a hypothetical scalar field, the inflaton, which has properties that can be adjusted to produce effectively any outcome. Second, inflation does not end with a universe with uniform properties, but almost inevitably leads to a multiverse with an infinite number of bubbles, in which the cosmic and physical properties vary from bubble to bubble. The part of the multiverse that we observe corresponds to a piece of just one such bubble. Scanning over all possible bubbles in the multiÂ¬verse, everyÂ¬thing that can physically happen does happen an infinite number of times. No experiment can rule out a theory that allows for all possible outcomes. Hence, the paradigm of inflation is unfalsifiable...-Taking this into account, it is clear that the inflationary paradigm is fundamentally untestable, and hence scientifically meaningless."

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> DAvid: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6921
> 
> dhw: The passage you quoted was from a response to the original article, which goes much further in its scepticism concerning inflationary theory itself, -> "He also takes the occasion to note the odd fact that while BICEP2 results have been claimed to be proof of inflation and the multiverse, if they turn out to be wrong, that's fine tooHE) is a skeptic of inflation, Paul Steinhardt, who favors a membrane theory for a cyclical universe. Woit is very skeptical of string theory (has membranes) and adds this in HIS (Woit's) blog:-"Steinhardt was on a panel last Friday night here in New York at the World Science Festival, which can be watched here. The panel included Guth and Linde (who earlier in the week got $1 million for their work on inflation), as well as John Kovac of BICEP, and Amber Miller, Dean of Science here at Columbia. The last part of the video includes an unsuccessful attempt by Steinhardt to pin down Kovac on the significance of the BICEP2 evidence for primordial gravitational waves claim, as well as an exchange with Guth and Linde. They both defend inflation as the best model of the alternatives. -"Multiverse promotion continues apace, with Steinhardt one of a rather small number of physicists publicly objecting. On Monday Alexander Vilenkin will explain to the public at the American Museum of Natural History that "the Big Bang was not a unique event in cosmic history and that other Big Bangs constantly erupt in remote parts of the universe, producing new worlds with a great variety of physical properties" (see here). A recent story on livescience has Brian Greene on the multiverse. Over at Massimo Pigliucci's Scientia Salon Coel Hellier is starting a multipart series arguing against multiverse skeptics with The multiverse as a scientific concept â part I. Nothing in Part I about the problematic issues (untestable claims that fundamental physics is "environmental"), maybe in Part II..."-Considering the idiocy over global warming, consensus in science is a bad word, but most everybody accepts inflation theory because of the accuracy of its predictions. I like to show all sides of the debate. Steinhardt is off in one corner.

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Seems like the universe, at least in our solar system, is filled with a big supply of water. the article also offers flights of fancy about strange life in that water:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2015/03/13/have-we-got-solar-system-habitability-backwards/-"These facts range from the extraordinary surface topography of places like Europa, to the 101 active geysers of Enceladus (and perhaps geysers on Europa too), the salty particles making Saturn's E-ring, and the silicate nanoparticles that could have originated in hydrothermal environments in Enceladus, as well as the sulfates scattered across Europa's surface, the slithering of Titan's outer crust, and the in-situ and remote measurements of induced magnetic fields in Europa and Ganymede that suggest a conductive internal medium.-"I think at this point only the most contrived of explanations could avoid concluding that most of the liquid water in our solar system resides beyond the Earth - conceivably 15 to 16 times or more the volume of all terrestrial surface water."

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With many solar systems now described other than our own, ours stands out as different. The paper suggests a theory as to why:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150323162245.htm-"'Now that we can look at our own solar system in the context of all these other planetary systems, one of the most interesting features is the absence of planets inside the orbit of Mercury," said Gregory Laughlin, professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz and coauthor of the paper. "The standard issue planetary system in our galaxy seems to be a set of super-Earths with alarmingly short orbital periods. Our solar system is looking increasingly like an oddball."-"The new paper explains not only the "gaping hole" in our inner solar system, he said, but also certain characteristics of Earth and the other inner rocky planets, which would have formed later than the outer planets from a depleted supply of planet-forming material."

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Gamma ray burst split into two waves four minutes apart, lower energy first, then higher energy. Doesn't fit Einstein's space-time general relativity theory. Difference explained here:-"And detailed analysis revealed something decidedly unusual about the burst: the lower energy radiation seemed to have arrived up to 4 minutes before the higher energy radiation Movie Camera. This is a big no-no if space-time behaves according to Einstein's relativity. In relativity's smooth space-time, all light travels at the same speed regardless of its energy. But the effect was entirely compatible with other, rival theories that attempt to characterise space-time in terms of quantum mechanics - the theory entirely separate to, and incompatible with, general relativity that explains how everything besides gravity works.-"In quantum theory, nothing is static or certain. Particles and energy can fluctuate and pop in and out of existence on the briefest of time scales. Many theories of quantum gravity - the yearned-for "theories of everything" that will unify our descriptions of space-time and gravity with quantum mechanics - suggest something similar is true of space-time: instead of a smooth continuum, it is a turbulent quantum foam with no clearly defined surface. Einstein's undulating landscape becomes more like a choppy seascape through which particles and radiation must fight their way. Lower-energy light with its longer wavelengths would be akin to an ocean liner, gliding through the foamy quantum sea largely undisturbed. Light of higher energy and shorter wavelengths, on the other hand, would be more like a small dinghy battling through the waves."-http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129500.700-breaking-relativity-celestial-signals-defy-einstein.html?page=1#.VRhpv2BFC1s-The New Scientist is an excellent source, and if you sign up you can see many great articles. There is no catch and no harm to do this. I've followed it for years.

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This is actually really quite interesting. If this proves to be true, the impact would be profound, far beyond the scope of what most people think. Not only would it change our understanding of the universe, but it would completely topple radiometric dating and a thousand other tiny little things that rely on the E=MC^2 equation to be considered true.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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Tony: This is actually really quite interesting. If this proves to be true, the impact would be profound, far beyond the scope of what most people think. Not only would it change our understanding of the universe, but it would completely topple radiometric dating and a thousand other tiny little things that rely on the E=MC^2 equation to be considered true.-I don't see how isotopic dating relies totally on E=MC^2.

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Tony: This is actually really quite interesting. If this proves to be true, the impact would be profound, far beyond the scope of what most people think. Not only would it change our understanding of the universe, but it would completely topple radiometric dating and a thousand other tiny little things that rely on the E=MC^2 equation to be considered true.
> 
> I don't see how isotopic dating relies totally on E=MC^2.-The link between radiometric dating and lightspeed-Question: Is there a direct link between radiometric dating and the speed of light?-Setterfield: Yes, there is. 'c', the speed of light, is in the numerator of every reduced radio decay rate equation.-Question: Could you please explain to me in simple terms why the rate of atomic decay depends upon the speed of light?-Setterfield: Atomic decay rates do not depend on the speed of light. Both are, however, 'children' of the same parent -- the Zero Point Energy. Because of this, and because the speed of light is in the numerator of every reduced radio decay rate equation, any changes in the speed of light are indicating changes in atomic decay rates.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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> Tony: The link between radiometric dating and lightspeed
> 
> Question: Is there a direct link between radiometric dating and the speed of light?
> 
> Setterfield: Yes, there is. 'c', the speed of light, is in the numerator of every reduced radio decay rate equation.
> 
> Question: Could you please explain to me in simple terms why the rate of atomic decay depends upon the speed of light?
> 
> Setterfield: Atomic decay rates do not depend on the speed of light. Both are, however, 'children' of the same parent -- the Zero Point Energy. Because of this, and because the speed of light is in the numerator of every reduced radio decay rate equation, any changes in the speed of light are indicating changes in atomic decay rates.-Since the speed of light doesn't change, as far as it has been demonstrated, I still don't see how c makes any difference. The objection does not use the whole equation.

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> > Tony: The link between radiometric dating and lightspeed
> > 
> > Question: Is there a direct link between radiometric dating and the speed of light?
> > 
> > Setterfield: Yes, there is. 'c', the speed of light, is in the numerator of every reduced radio decay rate equation.
> > 
> > Question: Could you please explain to me in simple terms why the rate of atomic decay depends upon the speed of light?
> > 
> > Setterfield: Atomic decay rates do not depend on the speed of light. Both are, however, 'children' of the same parent -- the Zero Point Energy. Because of this, and because the speed of light is in the numerator of every reduced radio decay rate equation, any changes in the speed of light are indicating changes in atomic decay rates.
> 
> Since the speed of light doesn't change, as far as it has been demonstrated, I still don't see how c makes any difference. The objection does not use the whole equation.-Because, that article you referenced would mean that the speed of light is not constant at all wavelengths. Which is an argument that has been made repeatedly, but ignored.-
"Lower-energy light with its longer wavelengths would be akin to an ocean liner, gliding through the foamy quantum sea largely undisturbed. Light of higher energy and shorter wavelengths, on the other hand, would be more like a small dinghy battling through the waves."

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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6751 views


> >David: Since the speed of light doesn't change, as far as it has been demonstrated, I still don't see how c makes any difference. The objection does not use the whole equation.
> 
> Tony: Because, that article you referenced would mean that the speed of light is not constant at all wavelengths. Which is an argument that has been made repeatedly, but ignored.
> 
> 
> "Lower-energy light with its longer wavelengths would be akin to an ocean liner, gliding through the foamy quantum sea largely undisturbed. Light of higher energy and shorter wavelengths, on the other hand, would be more like a small dinghy battling through the waves."-Good point, but 4 minutes over thousands or millions of light years is a tiny percentage of difference. How much would that change the estimates of age through isotopic decay timings?

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> > >David: Since the speed of light doesn't change, as far as it has been demonstrated, I still don't see how c makes any difference. The objection does not use the whole equation.
> > 
> > Tony: Because, that article you referenced would mean that the speed of light is not constant at all wavelengths. Which is an argument that has been made repeatedly, but ignored.
> > 
> > 
> > "Lower-energy light with its longer wavelengths would be akin to an ocean liner, gliding through the foamy quantum sea largely undisturbed. Light of higher energy and shorter wavelengths, on the other hand, would be more like a small dinghy battling through the waves."
> 
>David: Good point, but 4 minutes over thousands or millions of light years is a tiny percentage of difference. How much would that change the estimates of age through isotopic decay timings?-Ask a physicist. But, to my way of thinking, if the decay rates are not constant, then we can not say for sure how much they are off, because we have know way of knowing the speed of light over millions and billions of years.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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6737 views


> >David: Good point, but 4 minutes over thousands or millions of light years is a tiny percentage of difference. How much would that change the estimates of age through isotopic decay timings?
> 
> Tony: Ask a physicist. But, to my way of thinking, if the decay rates are not constant, then we can not say for sure how much they are off, because we have know way of knowing the speed of light over millions and billions of years.-I still don't think it would matter with a four minute difference. I know you don't like isotope dating, but I think you are straining for an objection. Most physicists accept the dating method as valid.

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> > >David: Good point, but 4 minutes over thousands or millions of light years is a tiny percentage of difference. How much would that change the estimates of age through isotopic decay timings?
> > 
> > Tony: Ask a physicist. But, to my way of thinking, if the decay rates are not constant, then we can not say for sure how much they are off, because we have know way of knowing the speed of light over millions and billions of years.
> 
>Davaid: I still don't think it would matter with a four minute difference. I know you don't like isotope dating, but I think you are straining for an objection. Most physicists accept the dating method as valid.-Most of them except the speed of light as constant too. Just sayin'. And, I am not straining for an objection. There are numerous objections to the method. However, my original point was NOT simply about radiometric dating, but merely to point out that this discovery could have some major reverberations throughout many different disciplines. -What happens to CMBR research, or the search for other planets/stars?

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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6715 views

Tony: Most of them except the speed of light as constant too. Just sayin'. And, I am not straining for an objection. There are numerous objections to the method. However, my original point was NOT simply about radiometric dating, but merely to point out that this discovery could have some major reverberations throughout many different disciplines. 
> 
> What happens to CMBR research, or the search for other planets/stars?-That is a good point, but remember the difference in the speed of light in this article depends upon the quantum characteristics of the space-time it is passing through. Difference in speed is not due to a change in light itself.

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Tony: Most of them except the speed of light as constant too. Just sayin'. And, I am not straining for an objection. There are numerous objections to the method. However, my original point was NOT simply about radiometric dating, but merely to point out that this discovery could have some major reverberations throughout many different disciplines. 
> > 
> > What happens to CMBR research, or the search for other planets/stars?
> 
>David: That is a good point, but remember the difference in the speed of light in this article depends upon the quantum characteristics of the space-time it is passing through. Difference in speed is not due to a change in light itself.-That is correct. It is a very fundamental shift in the way that we look at space. As is true any time you change something very fundamental, the repercussions grow larger the further up the ladder you climb. The speed of light may only fluctuate slightly, and the variance energy/mass of an atom may be insignificant because they are directly connected to the speed. However each step you move further away from that direct connection the greater the change. Like a pendulum, at the base the change is small, but at the tip, things are moving at much greater magnitudes.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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6770 views

How our living elements come from the stars:-http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/our-cosmic-selves.html?emc=edit_th_20150404&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=60788861&_r=0--"That discovery is relatively recent. Four astrophysicists developed the idea in a landmark paper published in 1957. They argued that almost all the elements in the periodic table were cooked up over time through nuclear reactions inside stars  rather than in the first instants of the Big Bang, as previously thought. The stuff of life, in other words, arose in places and times somewhat more accessible to our telescopic investigations.-"Since most of us spend our lives confined to a narrow strip near Earth's surface, we tend to think of the cosmos as a lofty, empyrean realm far beyond our reach and relevance. We forget that only a thin sliver of atmosphere separates us from the rest of the universe.-"But science continues to show just how intimately connected life on Earth is to extraterrestrial processes. In particular, several recent findings have further illuminated the cosmic origins of life's key ingredients.-"Take the element phosphorus, for example. It is a critical constituent of DNA, as well as of our cells, teeth and bones. Astronomers have long struggled to trace its buildup through cosmic history, because the imprint of phosphorus is difficult to discern in old, cool stars in the outskirts of our galaxy. (Some of these stellar time capsules contain the ashes of their forebears, the very first generation of stars that formed near the dawn of time.)-******-"Astrochemists are excited by this discovery because amino acids, which have been found already in some meteorites, form the basis of proteins. Meanwhile, last month, NASA scientists reported the creation of key DNA components in a laboratory experiment that simulated the space environment. Together, these findings raise the odds that life's building blocks were concocted in space and blended into the material that formed Earth and its planetary siblings.-"Amid the material comforts and the relentless distractions of modern life, the universe at large may appear remote, intangible and irrelevant, especially to those of us who are city dwellers. But the next time you catch a glimpse of the Milky Way in its true glory, from a dark outpost far from city lights, think of those countless stars as nuclear factories and the starless hazy patches as molecular breweries. It is not much of a stretch to imagine the inchoate seeds of life emerging in the distance."

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Describes the theories of how our system formed and it doesn't fit the pattern seen around other stars:-https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-special-is-the-solar-system-bc6ecdb5a1ab-"Our solar system follows a clear pattern. Small, rocky planets close to the Sun, large gas planets farther out, and a belt of astroids between them. On a broad level that would seem to make sense. As the Sun formed, the intense energy of its newfound solar wind would tend to push lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium toward the outer solar system, leaving only rocky material behind. It's tempting then to imagine that most solar systems would follow a similar pattern of close rocky planets and more distant gas giants. But as we've discovered more exoplanetary systems, we find that isn't the case. In fact it increasingly looks like our solar system might be the exception rather than the norm.-"When we look at other star systems, we find that a gas planet far from its star is rather unusual. One way to categorize planets is by the energy they receive from their star. Hot planets, such as Mercury and Venus in our solar system, warm (possibly habitable) planets such as Earth and Mars, and cold planets such as Jupiter and beyond. The cut-offs for a particular system depend upon the energy produced by a particular star, but it gives a good idea of near, mid-range and distant planets. In our own solar system, all the gas planets are cold planets. But among all confirmed exoplanets, less than 20% of gas planets are cold. The most common type of gas planets are hot jovians. These are large, Jupiter-mass planets close to their star."

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It is April's fools day, I think:-http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.08130v1.pdf-"The discovery that most of the energy density in the universe is stored in the form of dark energy has profound consequences for our future. In particular our current limited under-standing of quantum theory of gravity indicates that some time in the future our universe will undergo a phase transition that will destroy us and everything else around us instantaneously. However the laws of gravity also suggest a way out { some of our descendants could survive this catastrophe by riding gravity away from the danger. In this essay I describe the tale of this escape from doomsday."

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DAVID: It is April's fools day, I think:-http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.08130v1.pdf-Thank you so much for this invaluable reference. I was in despair after Professor Miyagawa's MIT had rejected my application for a research grant (see "Origin of Language", 5 April at 14.15), but hope springs eternal... I shall now apply to the Harish-Chandra Research Institute. And I have a new theory to develop: our universe is made of a renewable substance called zogipantopyrussurypotnapigoz, which means it can NEVER END. They can't possibly turn me down, can they?

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DAVID: It is April's fools day, I think:
> 
> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.08130v1.pdf
> 
> dhw: Thank you so much for this invaluable reference. I was in despair after Professor Miyagawa's MIT had rejected my application for a research grant (see "Origin of Language", 5 April at 14.15), but hope springs eternal... I shall now apply to the Harish-Chandra Research Institute. And I have a new theory to develop: our universe is made of a renewable substance called zogipantopyrussurypotnapigoz, which means it can NEVER END. They can't possibly turn me down, can they?-Appears not to be a hoax. Even serious scientists can daydream:-http://www.hri.res.in/~sen/ -"A few days ago I wrote an essay with the title `Riding Gravity Away from Doomsday'. In this essay I discussed the best possible future course of action for the humankind to prolong its life given two assumptions: 1) that our universe is not absolutely stable and could undergo a phase transition in the future, and 2) that the accelerated expansion of the universe that we see today is due to a cosmological constant. The first one is a theoretical possibility that has been discussed since 1970's by many people and current experimental knowledge could at best put an upper bound of one in ten billion per year to the probability of such an event. The second one is the most widely accepted interpretation of the observed expansion rate of the universe although there are certainly alternative proposals. Both assumptions are natural in string theory, but can be discussed independently of string theory.
 
"Few days after I submitted the essay to the arXiv, one of my colleagues drew my attention to a blog where some discussion on this essay had appeared. Upon visiting the blog, I was amused to see the passionate attack on eternal inflation and the multiverse that the essay had generated, while the essay itself was based only on the assumptions stated above and the standard rules of classical general theory of relativity. Indeed, a word search shows that none of the words eternal, inflation or multiverse appear anywhere in the abstract, text or the figure captions. Of course, many of the physical and mathematical results used in this essay are borrowed from the corresponding results in eternal inflation since our universe is now entering the same kind of accelerated expansion phase that is postulated to exist during inflation."

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It will take over for the aging and failing Hubble and is three times bigger and will see much further back:-https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-new-hope-in-space/2015/10/02/5c343cb2-6863-11e5-8325-a42b5a459b1e_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_opinions

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It seems to be 50% bigger than previously thought:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150311124139.htm-"Importantly, the findings show that the features previously identified as rings are actually part of the galactic disk, extending the known width of the Milky Way from 100,000 light years across to 150,000 light years, said Yan Xu, a scientist at the National Astronomical Observatories of China (which is part of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing), former visiting scientist at Rensselaer, and lead author of the paper.-"'Going into the research, astronomers had observed that the number of Milky Way stars diminishes rapidly about 50,000 light years from the center of the galaxy, and then a ring of stars appears at about 60,000 light years from the center," said Xu. "What we see now is that this apparent ring is actually a ripple in the disk. And it may well be that there are more ripples further out which we have not yet seen.'"

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We are way bigger than most others:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mighty-milky-way/?redirect=1

"Yet astronomers in the know have long realized that our galaxy is exceptional. By size alone, it’s “in the top percentile of all the galaxies that exist,” says Joss Bland-Hawthorn, an astronomer at the University of Sydney who helped compile the galaxy’s vital statistics for a 2016 article in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He puts the Milky Way’s mass at a hefty 1.0 trillion to 1.6 trillion times that of the sun, outweighing the vast majority of its peers by a factor of 10 to more than a million and greatly outshining them as well.

***

"In 2005, the number of known Milky Way satellites began to soar after searches of large areas of the sky uncovered a new type of galaxy, what astronomers call the ultra-faint dwarfs, even smaller and dimmer than dwarf spheroidals. Adding in the ultra-faint systems boosts the number of all known Milky Way satellite galaxies to more than 50, writes Josh Simon, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, in the 2019 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Most are ultra-faint dwarfs; all are dimmer than the Milky Way. And last year, Simon made a surprising discovery suggesting that plenty more satellite galaxies await detection.

***

“'For the next 10 years or so, I think the number of [satellite] galaxies will increase pretty dramatically,” says Vasily Belokurov, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge whose team has turned up many of the new galaxies. He suspects that the Milky Way has a total of roughly 200; even the most conservative estimates put the number at 100. And that makes the Milky Way even more of a galactic standout, in the top 1 percent, says Simon: Fully 99 percent of all galaxies would be smaller, fainter and less massive—giving our galactic home an A-plus from any cosmic teacher who grades the galaxies. If the total satellite population is as high as 200, we’d be in the top 0.5 percent.

"In short, we live in a galaxy that is far bigger, brighter and more massive than most other galaxies in the universe. And in all likelihood, so do most other life forms in the universe, if such exist. That’s because the small galaxies that throng the cosmos possess so few stars; our own galaxy has many more stars than all the galaxies revolving around it put together. So, in terms of pure numbers, if every star has exactly one planet that is exactly like Earth and teeming with life, it’s likely that most living beings in the universe reside in a galaxy that’s far above average.

"So the next time you’re speeding through intergalactic space in your brand new galaxyship—mere starships are so twenty-third century—you can brag to any aliens you meet beyond the Milky Way that you hail from a gargantuan galaxy. But chances are, so can they."

Comment: our massiveness is attested to by the number of satellite galaxies. But our uniqueness is in our rarity in the universe. We are a privileged planet in a special galaxy. God at work? The article suggests life will only be in our kind of galaxy.

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QUOTE: "So the next time you’re speeding through intergalactic space in your brand new galaxyship—mere starships are so twenty-third century—you can brag to any aliens you meet beyond the Milky Way that you hail from a gargantuan galaxy. But chances are, so can they."

DAVID: our massiveness is attested to by the number of satellite galaxies. But our uniqueness is in our rarity in the universe. We are a privileged planet in a special galaxy. God at work? The article suggests life will only be in our kind of galaxy.

Rareness is not the same as uniqueness, and even if it is true that life can only occur in big galaxies, we do not have a clue how many big galaxies there are in the universe. In all honesty, I don’t see the point of this article. And one can’t help wondering why your God bothered with all the small galaxies if his only purpose was to produce H. sapiens.

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QUOTE: "So the next time you’re speeding through intergalactic space in your brand new galaxyship—mere starships are so twenty-third century—you can brag to any aliens you meet beyond the Milky Way that you hail from a gargantuan galaxy. But chances are, so can they."

DAVID: our massiveness is attested to by the number of satellite galaxies. But our uniqueness is in our rarity in the universe. We are a privileged planet in a special galaxy. God at work? The article suggests life will only be in our kind of galaxy.

dhw: Rareness is not the same as uniqueness, and even if it is true that life can only occur in big galaxies, we do not have a clue how many big galaxies there are in the universe. In all honesty, I don’t see the point of this article. And one can’t help wondering why your God bothered with all the small galaxies if his only purpose was to produce H. sapiens.

You may have forgotten, but one of the requirements of life is a planet which is far from the dangerous activity in the center of a galaxy. The Milky Way grew/grows by swallowing smaller galaxies, and we sit out at the two-thirds point on the second spiral arm in a quiet neighborhood. Same evolutionary story you try to deny as God's method: start a universe, evolve it, grow/evolve the right-sized galaxy, create a perfect Earth planet and evolve it for life to start, evolve life to create humans. All in the history presented.

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dhw: Rareness is not the same as uniqueness, and even if it is true that life can only occur in big galaxies, we do not have a clue how many big galaxies there are in the universe. In all honesty, I don’t see the point of this article. And one can’t help wondering why your God bothered with all the small galaxies if his only purpose was to produce H. sapiens.

DAVID: You may have forgotten, but one of the requirements of life is a planet which is far from the dangerous activity in the center of a galaxy. The Milky Way grew/grows by swallowing smaller galaxies, and we sit out at the two-thirds point on the second spiral arm in a quiet neighborhood. Same evolutionary story you try to deny as God's method: start a universe, evolve it, grow/evolve the right-sized galaxy, create a perfect Earth planet and evolve it for life to start, evolve life to create humans. All in the history presented.

I have never denied the process of evolution, and if God exists, of course evolution was his method of achieving whatever may have been his purpose. What I object to is the blinkered insistence that the whole of evolution (and let’s not forget that according to you every phase is specially designed) had the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens. So please explain why you think your always-totally-in-control God specially designed all the wrong-sized galaxies if his purpose was to specially design the right-sized galaxy to create humans.

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dhw: Rareness is not the same as uniqueness, and even if it is true that life can only occur in big galaxies, we do not have a clue how many big galaxies there are in the universe. In all honesty, I don’t see the point of this article. And one can’t help wondering why your God bothered with all the small galaxies if his only purpose was to produce H. sapiens.

DAVID: You may have forgotten, but one of the requirements of life is a planet which is far from the dangerous activity in the center of a galaxy. The Milky Way grew/grows by swallowing smaller galaxies, and we sit out at the two-thirds point on the second spiral arm in a quiet neighborhood. Same evolutionary story you try to deny as God's method: start a universe, evolve it, grow/evolve the right-sized galaxy, create a perfect Earth planet and evolve it for life to start, evolve life to create humans. All in the history presented.

dhw: I have never denied the process of evolution, and if God exists, of course evolution was his method of achieving whatever may have been his purpose. What I object to is the blinkered insistence that the whole of evolution (and let’s not forget that according to you every phase is specially designed) had the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens. So please explain why you think your always-totally-in-control God specially designed all the wrong-sized galaxies if his purpose was to specially design the right-sized galaxy to create humans.

You entirely miss the point about evolving everything. My view is God prefers to evolve toward His goals. Tiny galaxies are not wrong-sized for His purpose. The small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way are added to the Milky Way bit by bit to increase its size to the necessary bulk for a life planet to appear, exactly as the cosmological findings tell us. As with humans He eventually evolved the kind of galaxy He needed. Accept on one hand and reject on the other, but it is obvious to me God prefers to evolve toward all His goals,

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dhw: […] please explain why you think your always-totally-in-control God specially designed all the wrong-sized galaxies if his purpose was to specially design the right-sized galaxy to create humans.

DAVID: You entirely miss the point about evolving everything. My view is God prefers to evolve toward His goals. Tiny galaxies are not wrong-sized for His purpose. The small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way are added to the Milky Way bit by bit to increase its size to the necessary bulk for a life planet to appear, exactly as the cosmological findings tell us. As with humans He eventually evolved the kind of galaxy He needed. Accept on one hand and reject on the other, but it is obvious to me God prefers to evolve toward all His goals.

You keep talking as though I reject evolution. What I object to is (a) your insistence that your God specially designed every step in evolution, and (b) that the purpose of every special design of every step was to produce the brain of H. sapiens. (See "unanswered questions"[/b]). With regard to galaxies, I don’t have a problem with your history of the Milky Way. I’m asking why you think he designed all the other, wrong-sized galaxies which, according to the article, are too small to produce life.

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dhw: […] please explain why you think your always-totally-in-control God specially designed all the wrong-sized galaxies if his purpose was to specially design the right-sized galaxy to create humans.

DAVID: You entirely miss the point about evolving everything. My view is God prefers to evolve toward His goals. Tiny galaxies are not wrong-sized for His purpose. The small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way are added to the Milky Way bit by bit to increase its size to the necessary bulk for a life planet to appear, exactly as the cosmological findings tell us. As with humans He eventually evolved the kind of galaxy He needed. Accept on one hand and reject on the other, but it is obvious to me God prefers to evolve toward all His goals.

dhw: You keep talking as though I reject evolution. What I object to is (a) your insistence that your God specially designed every step in evolution, and (b) that the purpose of every special design of every step was to produce the brain of H. sapiens. (See "unanswered questions"[/b]). With regard to galaxies, I don’t have a problem with your history of the Milky Way. I’m asking why you think he designed all the other, wrong-sized galaxies which, according to the article, are too small to produce life.

What you are really asking is why the universe is so huge? I have no idea. In two billion years we are supposed to meet and join Andromeda. Life won't survive that.

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dhw: […] With regard to galaxies, I don’t have a problem with your history of the Milky Way. I’m asking why you think he designed all the other, wrong-sized galaxies which, according to the article, are too small to produce life.

DAVID: What you are really asking is why the universe is so huge? I have no idea. In two billion years we are supposed to meet and join Andromeda. Life won't survive that.

It’s all very well to focus on the one galaxy we know has produced life, and to claim that your God must have designed it, but I am specifically asking why, if your always-in-total-control God’s sole purpose was to create H. sapiens, he specially designed vast numbers of galaxies that are too small to produce life. One of the problems we all have to face is the seemingly impersonal nature of this vast universe, with its infinite amounts of matter constantly changing, celestial bodies coming and going with no discernible purpose, for ever and ever. Even you suggest that your God is hidden. The seeming impersonality of the huge universe can also suggest that your God doesn’t exist. Hence the agnostic’s dilemma.

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dhw: […] With regard to galaxies, I don’t have a problem with your history of the Milky Way. I’m asking why you think he designed all the other, wrong-sized galaxies which, according to the article, are too small to produce life.

DAVID: What you are really asking is why the universe is so huge? I have no idea. In two billion years we are supposed to meet and join Andromeda. Life won't survive that.

dhw: It’s all very well to focus on the one galaxy we know has produced life, and to claim that your God must have designed it, but I am specifically asking why, if your always-in-total-control God’s sole purpose was to create H. sapiens, he specially designed vast numbers of galaxies that are too small to produce life. One of the problems we all have to face is the seemingly impersonal nature of this vast universe, with its infinite amounts of matter constantly changing, celestial bodies coming and going with no discernible purpose, for ever and ever. Even you suggest that your God is hidden. The seeming impersonality of the huge universe can also suggest that your God doesn’t exist. Hence the agnostic’s dilemma.

We know the universe is fine-tuned for life, and it is seen that the Milky Way is also fine-tuned in its size and the safety for the Earth so far out from the dangerous center of the galaxy. Perhaps the enormity of the universe has a purpose we don't yet understand. Modern cosmology as a science is very young. Your agnosticism has to accept that your view allows is all by chance, including the appearance of our consciousness which allows you and I to have this discussion. I see design that must have a designer

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DAVID: What you are really asking is why the universe is so huge? I have no idea. In two billion years we are supposed to meet and join Andromeda. Life won't survive that.

dhw: It’s all very well to focus on the one galaxy we know has produced life, and to claim that your God must have designed it, but I am specifically asking why, if your always-in-total-control God’s sole purpose was to create H. sapiens, he specially designed vast numbers of galaxies that are too small to produce life. One of the problems we all have to face is the seemingly impersonal nature of this vast universe, with its infinite amounts of matter constantly changing, celestial bodies coming and going with no discernible purpose, for ever and ever. Even you suggest that your God is hidden. The seeming impersonality of the huge universe can also suggest that your God doesn’t exist. Hence the agnostic’s dilemma.

DAVID: We know the universe is fine-tuned for life, and it is seen that the Milky Way is also fine-tuned in its size and the safety for the Earth so far out from the dangerous center of the galaxy. Perhaps the enormity of the universe has a purpose we don't yet understand. Modern cosmology as a science is very young. Your agnosticism has to accept that your view allows is all by chance, including the appearance of our consciousness which allows you and I to have this discussion. I see design that must have a designer.

I don’t understand your first sentence. So far the only life we know of in this vast universe is ours. It would seem then that so far only our galaxy is “fine-tuned for life”. So the question remains: why would your always-in-total-control God design all the galaxies that are not fine-tuned for life if all he wanted was us? “A purpose we don’t yet understand” is not much of an answer. My agnosticism allows for chance and allows for your designer. I am unable to take firm decisions on matters “we don’t yet understand”, and your use of “yet” puts you very much on a par with Dawkins, who talks of “natural phenomena we don’t yet understand.” Both of you imply that time will reveal the truth of your subjective beliefs. He continues: “If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural (God Delusion, p.14). I would put the atheist hope exactly on a par with the theist hope for the opposite.

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dhw: […] With regard to galaxies, I don’t have a problem with your history of the Milky Way. I’m asking why you think he designed all the other, wrong-sized galaxies which, according to the article, are too small to produce life.

DAVID: What you are really asking is why the universe is so huge? I have no idea. In two billion years we are supposed to meet and join Andromeda. Life won't survive that.

dhw: It’s all very well to focus on the one galaxy we know has produced life, and to claim that your God must have designed it, but I am specifically asking why, if your always-in-total-control God’s sole purpose was to create H. sapiens, he specially designed vast numbers of galaxies that are too small to produce life. One of the problems we all have to face is the seemingly impersonal nature of this vast universe, with its infinite amounts of matter constantly changing, celestial bodies coming and going with no discernible purpose, for ever and ever. Even you suggest that your God is hidden. The seeming impersonality of the huge universe can also suggest that your God doesn’t exist. Hence the agnostic’s dilemma.

DAVID: We know the universe is fine-tuned for life, and it is seen that the Milky Way is also fine-tuned in its size and the safety for the Earth so far out from the dangerous center of the galaxy. Perhaps the enormity of the universe has a purpose we don't yet understand. Modern cosmology as a science is very young. Your agnosticism has to accept that your view allows is all by chance, including the appearance of our consciousness which allows you and I to have this discussion. I see design that must have a designer.

dhw: I don’t understand your first sentence. So far the only life we know of in this vast universe is ours. It would seem then that so far only our galaxy is “fine-tuned for life”. So the question remains: why would your always-in-total-control God design all the galaxies that are not fine-tuned for life if all he wanted was us? “A purpose we don’t yet understand” is not much of an answer. My agnosticism allows for chance and allows for your designer. I am unable to take firm decisions on matters “we don’t yet understand”, and your use of “yet” puts you very much on a par with Dawkins, who talks of “natural phenomena we don’t yet understand.” Both of you imply that time will reveal the truth of your subjective beliefs. He continues: “If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural (God Delusion, p.14). I would put the atheist hope exactly on a par with the theist hope for the opposite.

You are simply describing our differences. I have chosen to believe in God because of evidence I see which is beyond a reasonable doubt. Whenever we question God's designs, research eventually shows the reasons: the retina an the appendix are two examples. I don't question the size of the universe. Do you think just our galaxy should exist?

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2998 views

dhw: I don’t understand your first sentence. So far the only life we know of in this vast universe is ours. It would seem then that so far only our galaxy is “fine-tuned for life”. So the question remains: why would your always-in-total-control God design all the galaxies that are not fine-tuned for life if all he wanted was us? “A purpose we don’t yet understand” is not much of an answer. My agnosticism allows for chance and allows for your designer. I am unable to take firm decisions on matters “we don’t yet understand”, and your use of “yet” puts you very much on a par with Dawkins, who talks of “natural phenomena we don’t yet understand.” Both of you imply that time will reveal the truth of your subjective beliefs. He continues: “If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural (God Delusion, p.14). I would put the atheist hope exactly on a par with the theist hope for the opposite.

DAVID: You are simply describing our differences. I have chosen to believe in God because of evidence I see which is beyond a reasonable doubt.

I am not questioning your belief in God. I am questioning your interpretation of your God’s motives and methods.

DAVID: Whenever we question God's designs, research eventually shows the reasons: the retina an the appendix are two examples. I don't question the size of the universe. Do you think just our galaxy should exist?

Just like Dawkins, you hope your interpretation of the universe will be proven correct. No, I don’t think just our galaxy should exist. I am asking you to explain why you think your God created vast numbers of galaxies unsuitable for life if – as you constantly maintain – his only purpose for creating the universe was to produce H. sapiens. I am not questioning your God’s designs but your interpretation of his motives and methods, and I do not find “research eventually shows the reasons” a very satisfying answer to my question about galaxies.

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2983 views

DAVID: We know the universe is fine-tuned for life, and it is seen that the Milky Way is also fine-tuned in its size and the safety for the Earth so far out from the dangerous center of the galaxy. Perhaps the enormity of the universe has a purpose we don't yet understand. Modern cosmology as a science is very young. Your agnosticism has to accept that your view allows is all by chance, including the appearance of our consciousness which allows you and I to have this discussion. I see design that must have a designer.

dhw: I don’t understand your first sentence. So far the only life we know of in this vast universe is ours. It would seem then that so far only our galaxy is “fine-tuned for life”. So the question remains: why would your always-in-total-control God design all the galaxies that are not fine-tuned for life if all he wanted was us? “A purpose we don’t yet understand” is not much of an answer. My agnosticism allows for chance and allows for your designer. I am unable to take firm decisions on matters “we don’t yet understand”, and your use of “yet” puts you very much on a par with Dawkins, who talks of “natural phenomena we don’t yet understand.” Both of you imply that time will reveal the truth of your subjective beliefs. He continues: “If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural (God Delusion, p.14). I would put the atheist hope exactly on a par with the theist hope for the opposite.

DAVID: You are simply describing our differences. I have chosen to believe in God because of evidence I see which is beyond a reasonable doubt.

I am not questioning your belief in God. I am questioning your interpretation of your God’s motives and methods.

DAVID: Whenever we question God's designs, research eventually shows the reasons: the retina an the appendix are two examples. I don't question the size of the universe. Do you think just our galaxy should exist?

dhw: Just like Dawkins, you hope your interpretation of the universe will be proven correct. No, I don’t think just our galaxy should exist. I am asking you to explain why you think your God created vast numbers of galaxies unsuitable for life if – as you constantly maintain – his only purpose for creating the universe was to produce H. sapiens. I am not questioning your God’s designs but your interpretation of his motives and methods, and I do not find “research eventually shows the reasons” a very satisfying answer to my question about galaxies.

You should understand I simply accept what God as done. You have the problem of wondering why. I know my current efforts art explaining things to you as I see them falls short. But I do see scientific advances as explaining as time goes by.

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dhw: I am not questioning your belief in God. I am questioning your interpretation of your God’s motives and methods.

DAVID: Whenever we question God's designs, research eventually shows the reasons: the retina an the appendix are two examples. I don't question the size of the universe. Do you think just our galaxy should exist?

dhw: Just like Dawkins, you hope your interpretation of the universe will be proven correct. No, I don’t think just our galaxy should exist. I am asking you to explain why you think your God created vast numbers of galaxies unsuitable for life if – as you constantly maintain – his only purpose for creating the universe was to produce H. sapiens. I am not questioning your God’s designs but your interpretation of his motives and methods, and I do not find “research eventually shows the reasons” a very satisfying answer to my question about galaxies.

DAVID: You should understand I simply accept what God as done. You have the problem of wondering why. I know my current efforts art explaining things to you as I see them falls short. But I do see scientific advances as explaining as time goes by.

I’m sorry, but you always talk non-stop about your God’s purposefulness, and have even accused me of NOT seeing this. Purpose is the reason why actions are performed. You do not "simply accept what God has done", because you insist that his sole purpose was to produce H. sapiens. You yourself don’t know why he specially designed all those small galaxies unsuitable for life, and you don’t know why he specially designed the salmon’s migratory reproduction system. And so now you don’t want to talk about purpose!

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2976 views

dhw: I am not questioning your belief in God. I am questioning your interpretation of your God’s motives and methods.

DAVID: Whenever we question God's designs, research eventually shows the reasons: the retina an the appendix are two examples. I don't question the size of the universe. Do you think just our galaxy should exist?

dhw: Just like Dawkins, you hope your interpretation of the universe will be proven correct. No, I don’t think just our galaxy should exist. I am asking you to explain why you think your God created vast numbers of galaxies unsuitable for life if – as you constantly maintain – his only purpose for creating the universe was to produce H. sapiens. I am not questioning your God’s designs but your interpretation of his motives and methods, and I do not find “research eventually shows the reasons” a very satisfying answer to my question about galaxies.

DAVID: You should understand I simply accept what God as done. You have the problem of wondering why. I know my current efforts art explaining things to you as I see them falls short. But I do see scientific advances as explaining as time goes by.

dhw: I’m sorry, but you always talk non-stop about your God’s purposefulness, and have even accused me of NOT seeing this. Purpose is the reason why actions are performed. You do not "simply accept what God has done", because you insist that his sole purpose was to produce H. sapiens. You yourself don’t know why he specially designed all those small galaxies unsuitable for life, and you don’t know why he specially designed the salmon’s migratory reproduction system. And so now you don’t want to talk about purpose!

I do see God's purposefulness, but you are asking me questions I cannot answer with any kind of theory, while I know God acted with purpose as He fine tuned our universe. Explaining His designs are just like doubting the design of the retina. Research always manages to show why! And of course you can talk about it, but mostly you just doubt or humanize.

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2974 views

dhw: I’m sorry, but you always talk non-stop about your God’s purposefulness, and have even accused me of NOT seeing this. Purpose is the reason why actions are performed. You do not "simply accept what God has done", because you insist that his sole purpose was to produce H. sapiens. You yourself don’t know why he specially designed all those small galaxies unsuitable for life, and you don’t know why he specially designed the salmon’s migratory reproduction system. And so now you don’t want to talk about purpose!

DAVID: I do see God's purposefulness, but you are asking me questions I cannot answer with any kind of theory, while I know God acted with purpose as He fine tuned our universe. Explaining His designs are just like doubting the design of the retina. Research always manages to show why! And of course you can talk about it, but mostly you just doubt or humanize.

If God exists, then of course he acted with purpose. But you keep insisting that you KNOW his purpose, namely to produce H. sapiens. And you know that he specially designed every life form, and he did so for the sole purpose of getting them to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed H. sapiens, and you know that he specially designed lots of small galaxies incapable of harbouring life although all he wanted to do was to design a galaxy capable of harbouring life so that he could produce H. sapiens. I am challenging these basic assumptions, and you yourself admit that you have no idea why he chose that method to achieve that purpose. I offer alternative explanations which you admit make perfect sense. Why do you assume your God does not have human characteristics, and does not work in ways that conform to human logic?

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2965 views

DAVID: You should understand I simply accept what God as done. You have the problem of wondering why. I know my current efforts art explaining things to you as I see them falls short. But I do see scientific advances as explaining as time goes by.

dhw: I’m sorry, but you always talk non-stop about your God’s purposefulness, and have even accused me of NOT seeing this. Purpose is the reason why actions are performed. You do not "simply accept what God has done", because you insist that his sole purpose was to produce H. sapiens. You yourself don’t know why he specially designed all those small galaxies unsuitable for life, and you don’t know why he specially designed the salmon’s migratory reproduction system. And so now you don’t want to talk about purpose!

DAVID: I do see God's purposefulness, but you are asking me questions I cannot answer with any kind of theory, while I know God acted with purpose as He fine tuned our universe. Explaining His designs are just like doubting the design of the retina. Research always manages to show why! And of course you can talk about it, but mostly you just doubt or humanize.

dhw: If God exists, then of course he acted with purpose. But you keep insisting that you KNOW his purpose, namely to produce H. sapiens. And you know that he specially designed every life form, and he did so for the sole purpose of getting them to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed H. sapiens, and you know that he specially designed lots of small galaxies incapable of harbouring life although all he wanted to do was to design a galaxy capable of harbouring life so that he could produce H. sapiens. I am challenging these basic assumptions, and you yourself admit that you have no idea why he chose that method to achieve that purpose. I offer alternative explanations which you admit make perfect sense. Why do you assume your God does not have human characteristics, and does not work in ways that conform to human logic?

Because God is not a human person. In Adler's words, He is a person like no other person. You can challenge my 'basic assumptions', but I believe that God chose to start life with bacteria and use evolution to evolve humans. And He managed evolution hands on until He reached his goal. Your 'alternative explanations' are perfectly logical in human terms, which means your approach constantly makes attempts to humanize God. He is not human.

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dhw: If God exists, then of course he acted with purpose. But you keep insisting that you KNOW his purpose, namely to produce H. sapiens. And you know that he specially designed every life form, and he did so for the sole purpose of getting them to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed H. sapiens, and you know that he specially designed lots of small galaxies incapable of harbouring life although all he wanted to do was to design a galaxy capable of harbouring life so that he could produce H. sapiens. I am challenging these basic assumptions, and you yourself admit that you have no idea why he chose that method to achieve that purpose. I offer alternative explanations which you admit make perfect sense. Why do you assume your God does not have human characteristics, and does not work in ways that conform to human logic?

DAVID: Because God is not a human person. In Adler's words, He is a person like no other person. You can challenge my 'basic assumptions', but I believe that God chose to start life with bacteria and use evolution to evolve humans. And He managed evolution hands on until He reached his goal. Your 'alternative explanations' are perfectly logical in human terms, which means your approach constantly makes attempts to humanize God. He is not human.

Only a total idiot would claim that your God is a human person. What human person could create a universe? But that does not mean a creator cannot share certain attributes with his (her/its?) creations. You yourself have claimed that he wants to form a relationship with us. Hardly possible if there is no common ground! You still refuse to recognize that your concept of evolution entails your God specially designing every single life form, and the problem with your basic assumptions is that it makes no sense even to you that he should specially design millions of non-human life forms if his only purpose was to specially design humans.

DAVID’s comment (under "backwards retina":) Never question God's designs as wrong!

But we should constantly question interpretations of your God’s purposes and methods that are manifestly illogical, such as the special design of small galaxies in order to specially design one large galaxy capable of supporting life in order to specially design H. sapiens. Or the special design of the salmon’s migratory reproductive system so that the salmon may eat or be eaten until your God can specially design H. sapiens.

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2994 views

DAVID: Because God is not a human person. In Adler's words, He is a person like no other person. You can challenge my 'basic assumptions', but I believe that God chose to start life with bacteria and use evolution to evolve humans. And He managed evolution hands on until He reached his goal. Your 'alternative explanations' are perfectly logical in human terms, which means your approach constantly makes attempts to humanize God. He is not human.

dhw: Only a total idiot would claim that your God is a human person. What human person could create a universe? But that does not mean a creator cannot share certain attributes with his (her/its?) creations. You yourself have claimed that he wants to form a relationship with us. Hardly possible if there is no common ground! You still refuse to recognize that your concept of evolution entails your God specially designing every single life form, and the problem with your basic assumptions is that it makes no sense even to you that he should specially design millions of non-human life forms if his only purpose was to specially design humans.

Your argument makes no sense. Since I believe God chose to evolve humans over time, the evolutionary tree/bush is His creation and therefore makes sense. I fully understand that concept. You appear not to. I have pointed out that God chooses to evolve. That is His choice. I can't tell you why God chose that approach, but He created a universe and evolved it. He chose a special galaxy and evolved it. He created a special planet and evolved it. He created life and then evolved it. Always the same consistent pattern. The bolded phrase in your comment is a gross misstatement of my position!

DAVID’s comment (under "backwards retina":) Never question God's designs as wrong!

dhw: But we should constantly question interpretations of your God’s purposes and methods that are manifestly illogical, such as the special design of small galaxies in order to specially design one large galaxy capable of supporting life in order to specially design H. sapiens. Or the special design of the salmon’s migratory reproductive system so that the salmon may eat or be eaten until your God can specially design H. sapiens.

See above. God creates and evolves. You have twisted this discussion from specific design to methods of creation. Shame on you. Off point of the retinal report.

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dhw: You still refuse to recognize that your concept of evolution entails your God specially designing every single life form, and the problem with your basic assumptions is that it makes no sense even to you that he should specially design millions of non-human life forms if his only purpose was to specially design humans.

DAVID: Your argument makes no sense. Since I believe God chose to evolve humans over time, the evolutionary tree/bush is His creation and therefore makes sense.

A complete non sequitur, because you keep telling us that the production of H. sapiens was your God’s one and only purpose. Why, then, did he specially design the rest of the non-human evolutionary bush, extant and extinct?

DAVID: I fully understand that concept. You appear not to. I have pointed out that God chooses to evolve. That is His choice. I can't tell you why God chose that approach, but He created a universe and evolved it. He chose a special galaxy and evolved it. He created a special planet and evolved it. He created life and then evolved it. Always the same consistent pattern. The bolded phrase in your comment is a gross misstatement of my position!

As usual, you gloss over the beliefs that create the illogicality of your thinking. Yes, if your God exists, and if you believe in evolution, then he chose evolution as his method of producing all the above. But in this discussion I am not questioning God’s existence or the reality of evolution. Quite simply: If you can’t tell us why he would specially design all the non-human elements of evolution extant and extinct when his one and only purpose was to design humans, then there may be something wrong with your combination of hypotheses.

DAVID’s comment (under "backwards retina":) Never question God's designs as wrong!

dhw: But we should constantly question interpretations of your God’s purposes and methods that are manifestly illogical, such as the special design of small galaxies in order to specially design one large galaxy capable of supporting life in order to specially design H. sapiens. Or the special design of the salmon’s migratory reproductive system so that the salmon may eat or be eaten until your God can specially design H. sapiens.

DAVID: See above. God creates and evolves. You have twisted this discussion from specific design to methods of creation. Shame on you. Off point of the retinal report.

The subject under discussion on this thread is not the efficiency of individual designs but why your always-in-total-control God should have created small galaxies (and the salmon’s migratory reproductive system) if his one and only intention was to create H. sapiens. I am not questioning the efficiency of the retina design, but am pointing out that it is completely irrelevant to the discussion we are having on your God’s motives and methods: the special design of all organs and organisms for the sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens.

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2965 views

DAVID: Your argument makes no sense. Since I believe God chose to evolve humans over time, the evolutionary tree/bush is His creation and therefore makes sense.

dhw: A complete non sequitur, because you keep telling us that the production of H. sapiens was your God’s one and only purpose. Why, then, did he specially design the rest of the non-human evolutionary bush, extant and extinct?

You keep distorting my view: God had the goal of creating humans, bu t b y choosing the method of evolution, of course He had to create everything in advance.

DAVID: I fully understand that concept. You appear not to. I have pointed out that God chooses to evolve. That is His choice. I can't tell you why God chose that approach, but He created a universe and evolved it. He chose a special galaxy and evolved it. He created a special planet and evolved it. He created life and then evolved it. Always the same consistent pattern. The bolded phrase in your comment is a gross misstatement of my position!

dhw: As usual, you gloss over the beliefs that create the illogicality of your thinking. Yes, if your God exists, and if you believe in evolution, then he chose evolution as his method of producing all the above. But in this discussion I am not questioning God’s existence or the reality of evolution. Quite simply: If you can’t tell us why he would specially design all the non-human elements of evolution extant and extinct when his one and only purpose was to design humans, then there may be something wrong with your combination of hypotheses.

As above. To get from bacteria to humans required all the 'non-human elements'.

DAVID’s comment (under "backwards retina":) Never question God's designs as wrong!

dhw: But we should constantly question interpretations of your God’s purposes and methods that are manifestly illogical, such as the special design of small galaxies in order to specially design one large galaxy capable of supporting life in order to specially design H. sapiens. Or the special design of the salmon’s migratory reproductive system so that the salmon may eat or be eaten until your God can specially design H. sapiens.

DAVID: See above. God creates and evolves. You have twisted this discussion from specific design to methods of creation. Shame on you. Off point of the retinal report.

dhw: The subject under discussion on this thread is not the efficiency of individual designs but why your always-in-total-control God should have created small galaxies (and the salmon’s migratory reproductive system) if his one and only intention was to create H. sapiens. I am not questioning the efficiency of the retina design, but am pointing out that it is completely irrelevant to the discussion we are having on your God’s motives and methods: the special design of all organs and organisms for the sole purpose of specially designing H. sapiens.

All parts of his evolutionary designs

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2984 views

DAVID: Your argument makes no sense. Since I believe God chose to evolve humans over time, the evolutionary tree/bush is His creation and therefore makes sense.

dhw: A complete non sequitur, because you keep telling us that the production of H. sapiens was your God’s one and only purpose. Why, then, did he specially design the rest of the non-human evolutionary bush, extant and extinct?

DAVID: You keep distorting my view: God had the goal of creating humans, bu t b y choosing the method of evolution, of course He had to create everything in advance.

There is no distortion. You simply keep leaving out the major question of why he “had to” specially design millions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct which have nothing to do with his allegedly one and only purpose of creating H. sapiens, every stage of which was, according to you, specially designed anyway.

DAVID: To get from bacteria to humans required all the 'non-human elements'.

Did it? Then once again, please explain why. And please don’t say they all had to eat or not eat one another until your God could specially design the only thing he wanted to design.

Under “Human evolution”
QUOTE: "'I think showing how rare and special our planet is only enhances the case for protecting it," Schwieterman said. "As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life.'"

DAVID’s comment: I'm not surprised. Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

Which again raises the question of why your God, whose sole purpose apparently was to specially design humans, specially designed the billions of galaxies that are incapable of sustaining life.

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3010 views

dhw: There is no distortion. You simply keep leaving out the major question of why he “had to” specially design millions of life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders extant and extinct which have nothing to do with his allegedly one and only purpose of creating H. sapiens, every stage of which was, according to you, specially designed anyway.

You claim to accept the idea that God had to right to choose to evolve life until He reached humans and then deny that He should have. Makes no sense.

DAVID: To get from bacteria to humans required all the 'non-human elements'.

dhw: Did it? Then once again, please explain why. And please don’t say they all had to eat or not eat one another until your God could specially design the only thing he wanted to design.

If God decided to create the bush of life to eventually create humans, that is what happened. You are saying God shouldn't have evolved humans

Under “Human evolution”
QUOTE: "'I think showing how rare and special our planet is only enhances the case for protecting it," Schwieterman said. "As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life.'"

DAVID’s comment: I'm not surprised. Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

dhw: Which again raises the question of why your God, whose sole purpose apparently was to specially design humans, specially designed the billions of galaxies that are incapable of sustaining life.

The response is obvious: we have a fine-tuned universe.

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DAVID: You claim to accept the idea that God had to right to choose to evolve life until He reached humans and then deny that He should have. Makes no sense.

He had the right to do whatever he wanted! What makes no sense is the claim that he specially
designed millions of life forms etc. extant and extinct although the ONLY thing he wanted to produce was humans, and he specially designed them anyway! You continue to ignore the fact that it is this COMBINATION of beliefs that is illogical. And yet you continue to agree that all the alternative hypotheses I offer you are logical.

DAVID: To get from bacteria to humans required all the 'non-human elements'.

dhw: Did it? Then once again, please explain why. And please don’t say they all had to eat or not eat one another until your God could specially design the only thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: If God decided to create the bush of life to eventually create humans, that is what happened. You are saying God shouldn't have evolved humans

Of course I’m not. What “happened” was a vast bush of life forms etc., with humans the last (or latest) to arrive. That is the only historical fact. You keep glossing over the crucial question of why a God whose sole purpose was to create H. sapiens would create 3.5+ billion years’ worth of non-human life forms etc. Once more: I have proposed several theistic explanations, all of which you agree fit in logically with the history of life as we know it, but you stick to a hypothesis which leaves you, in your own words, with “no idea” why your God would have chosen the purpose and method you impose on him.

Under “Human evolution”
QUOTE: "'I think showing how rare and special our planet is only enhances the case for protecting it," Schwieterman said. "As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life.'"

DAVID’s comment: I'm not surprised. Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

dhw: Which again raises the question of why your God, whose sole purpose apparently was to specially design humans, specially designed the billions of galaxies that are incapable of sustaining life.

DAVID: The response is obvious: we have a fine-tuned universe.

Do we? I thought we had a fine-tuned galaxy. In what way are/were the billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct fine-tuned?

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2990 views

DAVID: You claim to accept the idea that God had to right to choose to evolve life until He reached humans and then deny that He should have. Makes no sense.

dhw: He had the right to do whatever he wanted! What makes no sense is the claim that he specially
designed millions of life forms etc. extant and extinct although the ONLY thing he wanted to produce was humans, and he specially designed them anyway! You continue to ignore the fact that it is this COMBINATION of beliefs that is illogical. And yet you continue to agree that all the alternative hypotheses I offer you are logical.

We have simply repeated our same arguments. You cannot deny my simple point: God chose to evolve us. Humans were His endpoint. You argue He shouldn't have.

DAVID: To get from bacteria to humans required all the 'non-human elements'.

dhw: Did it? Then once again, please explain why. And please don’t say they all had to eat or not eat one another until your God could specially design the only thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: If God decided to create the bush of life to eventually create humans, that is what happened. You are saying God shouldn't have evolved humans

dhw: Of course I’m not. What “happened” was a vast bush of life forms etc., with humans the last (or latest) to arrive. That is the only historical fact. You keep glossing over the crucial question of why a God whose sole purpose was to create H. sapiens would create 3.5+ billion years’ worth of non-human life forms etc. Once more: I have proposed several theistic explanations, all of which you agree fit in logically with the history of life as we know it, but you stick to a hypothesis which leaves you, in your own words, with “no idea” why your God would have chosen the purpose and method you impose on him.

Repetition again. God chose to evolve us. His choice, and I don 't question His reasoning but you do.

Under “Human evolution”
QUOTE: "'I think showing how rare and special our planet is only enhances the case for protecting it," Schwieterman said. "As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life.'"

DAVID’s comment: I'm not surprised. Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

dhw: Which again raises the question of why your God, whose sole purpose apparently was to specially design humans, specially designed the billions of galaxies that are incapable of sustaining life.

DAVID: The response is obvious: we have a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Do we? I thought we had a fine-tuned galaxy. In what way are/were the billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct fine-tuned?

You are confused. it has always been seen as a fine-tuned universe.

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2971 views

DAVID: We have simply repeated our same arguments. You cannot deny my simple point: God chose to evolve us. Humans were His endpoint. You argue He shouldn't have.

We will go on repeating the same arguments so long as you continue to gloss over the separate conflicting hypotheses that you believe in. According to your concept of evolution, your God chose to specially design every single life form that ever existed, although he only wanted to specially design humans. I argue that this makes no sense. There is no should or shouldn’t. See “unanswered questions”.

DAVID: Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

DAVID: The response is obvious: we have a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Do we? I thought we had a fine-tuned galaxy. In what way are/were the billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct fine-tuned?

DAVID: You are confused. it has always been seen as a fine-tuned universe.

Then perhaps it’s time to look at it again. If you can’t explain how billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct are “fine-tuned”, then simply admit that as far as we know, only our own galaxy is fine-tuned for life.

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3009 views

DAVID: We have simply repeated our same arguments. You cannot deny my simple point: God chose to evolve us. Humans were His endpoint. You argue He shouldn't have.

dhw: We will go on repeating the same arguments so long as you continue to gloss over the separate conflicting hypotheses that you believe in. According to your concept of evolution, your God chose to specially design every single life form that ever existed, although he only wanted to specially design humans. I argue that this makes no sense. There is no should or shouldn’t. See “unanswered questions”.

As usual you are separating the process of evolution into separate parts. The concept of evolution that must folks recognize, is that life started with single cells and seamlessly developed into a bush of life, with humans at the top of the bush as evidenced by their complexity. I see God as the guiding engineer of the process, totally in charge. I see you viewing God as performing illogically.

DAVID: Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

dhw: Which again raises the question of why your God, whose sole purpose apparently was to specially design humans, specially designed the billions of galaxies that are incapable of sustaining life.

DAVID: The response is obvious: we have a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Do we? I thought we had a fine-tuned galaxy. In what way are/were the billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct fine-tuned?

DAVID: You are confused. it has always been seen as a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Then perhaps it’s time to look at it again. If you can’t explain how billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct are “fine-tuned”, then simply admit that as far as we know, only our own galaxy is fine-tuned for life.

Wrong again. The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere. All those other galaxies are just part of the whole universe and some folks consider they might bear life. Your view is too narrow.

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2886 views

Welcome back!

DAVID: Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

DAVID: The response is obvious: we have a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Do we? I thought we had a fine-tuned galaxy. In what way are/were the billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct fine-tuned?

DAVID: You are confused. it has always been seen as a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Then perhaps it’s time to look at it again. If you can’t explain how billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct are “fine-tuned”, then simply admit that as far as we know, only our own galaxy is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: Wrong again. The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere. All those other galaxies are just part of the whole universe and some folks consider they might bear life. Your view is too narrow.

Please explain to me how anybody knows the makeup of the entire universe, and how all the small galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not suitable for life are/were fine tuned for life, and please note the first quote in this exchange: you “suspect we are alone”.

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2866 views

Welcome back!

DAVID: Our planet has many fine-tuned and undoubtedly unique features. I suspect we are alone.

dhw: Which again raises the question of why your God, whose sole purpose apparently was to specially design humans, specially designed the billions of galaxies that are incapable of sustaining life.

DAVID: The response is obvious: we have a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Do we? I thought we had a fine-tuned galaxy. In what way are/were the billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct fine-tuned?

DAVID: You are confused. it has always been seen as a fine-tuned universe.

dhw: Then perhaps it’s time to look at it again. If you can’t explain how billions of non-life-bearing galaxies extant and extinct are “fine-tuned”, then simply admit that as far as we know, only our own galaxy is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: Wrong again. The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere. All those other galaxies are just part of the whole universe and some folks consider they might bear life. Your view is too narrow.

dhw: Please explain to me how anybody knows the makeup of the entire universe, and how all the small galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not suitable for life are/were fine tuned for life, and please note the first quote in this exchange: you “suspect we are alone”.

The entire universe has the same characteristics throughout the portion we can see with the CMB. There are arguments that other portions might be different in the multiverse theories. There are books that describe how fine-tuned he universe is, not at all confined to the Milky Way. Life is possible elsewhere, but requires the special characteristics of our Earth. I still suspect we are alone.

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2900 views

dhw: Please explain to me how anybody knows the makeup of the entire universe, and how all the small galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not suitable for life are/were fine tuned for life, and please note the first quote in this exchange: you “suspect we are alone”.

DAVID: The entire universe has the same characteristics throughout the portion we can see with the CMB. There are arguments that other portions might be different in the multiverse theories. There are books that describe how fine-tuned he universe is, not at all confined to the Milky Way. Life is possible elsewhere, but requires the special characteristics of our Earth. I still suspect we are alone.

The argument as I understand it is that if the universal laws of nature were not as they are, matter would be different, and therefore life as we know it could not exist. You might just as well say that if there wasn’t a universe, there would be no life. It’s a non-argument. At the same time we are told that if our sun were any different and our relationship to the sun were any different, there would be no life. This argues for fine-tuning of our galaxy, but not for fine tuning of billions of other galaxies extant and extinct. We do not know if there is life outside our own galaxy, or if there was life on galaxies that have disappeared. If you tell us that OUR galaxy is fine-tuned for life, it seems to me you have a case. If you tell us that every other galaxy is fine-tuned for life, you have no case until you can prove that there is life on other galaxies. In which case, it is absurd to say that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

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2875 views

DAVID: Wrong again. The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere. All those other galaxies are just part of the whole universe and some folks consider they might bear life. Your view is too narrow.

dhw: Please explain to me how anybody knows the makeup of the entire universe, and how all the small galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not suitable for life are/were fine tuned for life, and please note the first quote in this exchange: you “suspect we are alone”.

DAVID: The entire universe has the same characteristics throughout the portion we can see with the CMB. There are arguments that other portions might be different in the multiverse theories. There are books that describe how fine-tuned he universe is, not at all confined to the Milky Way. Life is possible elsewhere, but requires the special characteristics of our Earth. I still suspect we are alone.

dhw:The argument as I understand it is that if the universal laws of nature were not as they are, matter would be different, and therefore life as we know it could not exist. You might just as well say that if there wasn’t a universe, there would be no life. It’s a non-argument. At the same time we are told that if our sun were any different and our relationship to the sun were any different, there would be no life. This argues for fine-tuning of our galaxy, but not for fine tuning of billions of other galaxies extant and extinct. We do not know if there is life outside our own galaxy, or if there was life on galaxies that have disappeared. If you tell us that OUR galaxy is fine-tuned for life, it seems to me you have a case. If you tell us that every other galaxy is fine-tuned for life, you have no case until you can prove that there is life on other galaxies. In which case, it is absurd to say that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

If the universal laws were different, that might be no matter at all. Our galaxy formed within the special parameters that made the universe, and seems to be a very special galaxy. There are many types of galaxies all appearing under the same rules. But all galaxies are under the same rules and diverse as they are individually. You are correct in that some special additional fine tuning applies to our galaxy and our Earth, all allowed under the general fine tuned rules of formation of our universe

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2868 views

DAVID: The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere.
[...]

dhw:The argument as I understand it is that if the universal laws of nature were not as they are, matter would be different, and therefore life as we know it could not exist. You might just as well say that if there wasn’t a universe, there would be no life. It’s a non-argument. At the same time we are told that if our sun were any different and our relationship to the sun were any different, there would be no life. This argues for fine-tuning of our galaxy, but not for fine tuning of billions of other galaxies extant and extinct. We do not know if there is life outside our own galaxy, or if there was life on galaxies that have disappeared. If you tell us that OUR galaxy is fine-tuned for life, it seems to me you have a case. If you tell us that every other galaxy is fine-tuned for life, you have no case until you can prove that there is life on other galaxies. In which case, it is absurd to say that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: If the universal laws were different, that might be no matter at all. Our galaxy formed within the special parameters that made the universe, and seems to be a very special galaxy.

Yes indeed. Some people say it is fine tuned for life, unlike other galaxies. That is why it is absurd to claim that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: There are many types of galaxies all appearing under the same rules. But all galaxies are under the same rules and diverse as they are individually. You are correct in that some special additional fine tuning applies to our galaxy and our Earth, all allowed under the general fine tuned rules of formation of our universe.

In other words, all galaxies are galaxies, but they are all different. And we cannot say all galaxies (i.e. the whole universe) are fine tuned for life. We can only say that of our own galaxy.

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2842 views

DAVID: The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere.
[...]

dhw:The argument as I understand it is that if the universal laws of nature were not as they are, matter would be different, and therefore life as we know it could not exist. You might just as well say that if there wasn’t a universe, there would be no life. It’s a non-argument. At the same time we are told that if our sun were any different and our relationship to the sun were any different, there would be no life. This argues for fine-tuning of our galaxy, but not for fine tuning of billions of other galaxies extant and extinct. We do not know if there is life outside our own galaxy, or if there was life on galaxies that have disappeared. If you tell us that OUR galaxy is fine-tuned for life, it seems to me you have a case. If you tell us that every other galaxy is fine-tuned for life, you have no case until you can prove that there is life on other galaxies. In which case, it is absurd to say that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: If the universal laws were different, that might be no matter at all. Our galaxy formed within the special parameters that made the universe, and seems to be a very special galaxy.

dhw: Yes indeed. Some people say it is fine tuned for life, unlike other galaxies. That is why it is absurd to claim that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: There are many types of galaxies all appearing under the same rules. But all galaxies are under the same rules and diverse as they are individually. You are correct in that some special additional fine tuning applies to our galaxy and our Earth, all allowed under the general fine tuned rules of formation of our universe.

dhw: In other words, all galaxies are galaxies, but they are all different. And we cannot say all galaxies (i.e. the whole universe) are fine tuned for life. We can only say that of our own galaxy.

Our galaxy seems very special, but the current scientific opinion among cosmologists is that our universe is at its basis fine-tuned for life to appear somewhere.

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2838 views

DAVID: The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere.
[...]

DAVID: If the universal laws were different, that might be no matter at all. Our galaxy formed within the special parameters that made the universe, and seems to be a very special galaxy.

dhw: Yes indeed. Some people say it is fine tuned for life, unlike other galaxies. That is why it is absurd to claim that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

dhw: In other words, all galaxies are galaxies, but they are all different. And we cannot say all galaxies (i.e. the whole universe) are fine tuned for life. We can only say that of our own galaxy.

DAVID: Our galaxy seems very special, but the current scientific opinion among cosmologists is that our universe is at its basis fine-tuned for life to appear somewhere.

If all galaxies among an infinity of galaxies are different, a cosmologist could argue that eventually one of them is sure to come up with the right tuning for life. Perhaps that is why so many scientists do not see any need for a designer.

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2833 views

DAVID: The entire universe is viewed as fine tuned for life everywhere.
[...]

DAVID: If the universal laws were different, that might be no matter at all. Our galaxy formed within the special parameters that made the universe, and seems to be a very special galaxy.

dhw: Yes indeed. Some people say it is fine tuned for life, unlike other galaxies. That is why it is absurd to claim that the whole universe is fine-tuned for life.

DAVID: There are many types of galaxies all appearing under the same rules. But all galaxies are under the same rules and diverse as they are individually. You are correct in that some special additional fine tuning applies to our galaxy and our Earth, all allowed under the general fine tuned rules of formation of our universe.

dhw: In other words, all galaxies are galaxies, but they are all different. And we cannot say all galaxies (i.e. the whole universe) are fine tuned for life. We can only say that of our own galaxy.

DAVID: Our galaxy seems very special, but the current scientific opinion among cosmologists is that our universe is at its basis fine-tuned for life to appear somewhere.

dhw: If all galaxies among an infinity of galaxies are different, a cosmologist could argue that eventually one of them is sure to come up with the right tuning for life. Perhaps that is why so many scientists do not see any need for a designer.

You have circled our discussion back to the anthropic principle.

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2832 views

DAVID: Our galaxy seems very special, but the current scientific opinion among cosmologists is that our universe is at its basis fine-tuned for life to appear somewhere.

dhw: If all galaxies among an infinity of galaxies are different, a cosmologist could argue that eventually one of them is sure to come up with the right tuning for life. Perhaps that is why so many scientists do not see any need for a designer.

DAVID: You have circled our discussion back to the anthropic principle.

A vague reference to the “anthropic principle” does not provide any enlightenment at all, I’m afraid. You claimed that the entire universe is fine tuned for life. I claim that the only galaxy we know of that is fine tuned for life is our own. That is why I keep asking why you think your God would have specially designed all the galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not fine tuned for life.

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2834 views

DAVID: Our galaxy seems very special, but the current scientific opinion among cosmologists is that our universe is at its basis fine-tuned for life to appear somewhere.

dhw: If all galaxies among an infinity of galaxies are different, a cosmologist could argue that eventually one of them is sure to come up with the right tuning for life. Perhaps that is why so many scientists do not see any need for a designer.

DAVID: You have circled our discussion back to the anthropic principle.

dhw: A vague reference to the “anthropic principle” does not provide any enlightenment at all, I’m afraid. You claimed that the entire universe is fine tuned for life. I claim that the only galaxy we know of that is fine tuned for life is our own. That is why I keep asking why you think your God would have specially designed all the galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not fine tuned for life.

There are many aspects of the universe that seem to confuse you. I just accept it as it is. Your questioning is like the previous criticisms of the backward upside down human retina. We have found the reasons that explain it. I have no idea why the universe is expanding like it is. Does that have a purpose? And then you might ask, if God made life, why will the Earth be destroyed in five billion years when the sun explodes? Perhaps another galaxy will have life by then. Applying human reasoning to God's reasoning doesn't work, but that is your constant attempt in your agnosticism.

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2871 views

DAVID: Our galaxy seems very special, but the current scientific opinion among cosmologists is that our universe is at its basis fine-tuned for life to appear somewhere.

DAVID: You have circled our discussion back to the anthropic principle.

dhw: A vague reference to the “anthropic principle” does not provide any enlightenment at all, I’m afraid. You claimed that the entire universe is fine tuned for life. I claim that the only galaxy we know of that is fine tuned for life is our own. That is why I keep asking why you think your God would have specially designed all the galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not fine tuned for life.

DAVID: There are many aspects of the universe that seem to confuse you. I just accept it as it is. Your questioning is like the previous criticisms of the backward upside down human retina. We have found the reasons that explain it. I have no idea why the universe is expanding like it is. Does that have a purpose? And then you might ask, if God made life, why will the Earth be destroyed in five billion years when the sun explodes? Perhaps another galaxy will have life by then. Applying human reasoning to God's reasoning doesn't work, but that is your constant attempt in your agnosticism.

I’m sorry, but I am applying my human reasoning to YOUR human reasoning. You tell us that the whole universe is finely tuned for life. The only life we know of is that which exists in our galaxy. I therefore maintain that the argument can only be that our galaxy is fine tuned for life. You tell us that your God designed the whole universe in order to create H. sapiens. I then ask why, in that case, would he design billions of non-life-bearing galaxies. You don’t know. So maybe it is your human interpretation of your God’s reasoning that is at fault! You don’t know his reasoning any more than I do, but because of your fixed beliefs you constantly attempt to impose your reasoning on him and object if I point out its unreasonableness.

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2826 views

DAVID: Our galaxy seems very special, but the current scientific opinion among cosmologists is that our universe is at its basis fine-tuned for life to appear somewhere.

dhw: If all galaxies among an infinity of galaxies are different, a cosmologist could argue that eventually one of them is sure to come up with the right tuning for life. Perhaps that is why so many scientists do not see any need for a designer.

DAVID: You have circled our discussion back to the anthropic principle.

dhw: A vague reference to the “anthropic principle” does not provide any enlightenment at all, I’m afraid. You claimed that the entire universe is fine tuned for life. I claim that the only galaxy we know of that is fine tuned for life is our own. That is why I keep asking why you think your God would have specially designed all the galaxies extant and extinct that are/were not fine tuned for life.

DAVID: There are many aspects of the universe that seem to confuse you. I just accept it as it is. Your questioning is like the previous criticisms of the backward upside down human retina. We have found the reasons that explain it. I have no idea why the universe is expanding like it is. Does that have a purpose? And then you might ask, if God made life, why will the Earth be destroyed in five billion years when the sun explodes? Perhaps another galaxy will have life by then. Applying human reasoning to God's reasoning doesn't work, but that is your constant attempt in your agnosticism.

dhw: I’m sorry, but I am applying my human reasoning to YOUR human reasoning. You tell us that the whole universe is finely tuned for life. The only life we know of is that which exists in our galaxy. I therefore maintain that the argument can only be that our galaxy is fine tuned for life. You tell us that your God designed the whole universe in order to create H. sapiens. I then ask why, in that case, would he design billions of non-life-bearing galaxies. You don’t know. So maybe it is your human interpretation of your God’s reasoning that is at fault! You don’t know his reasoning any more than I do, but because of your fixed beliefs you constantly attempt to impose your reasoning on him and object if I point out its unreasonableness.

Our galaxy was made under the primary rules that created the universe. The fine tuning applies to the whole universe according to the cosmologists. The Milk Way happens to have a special adaptation for the position of the Earth which also happens to be a very special planet, but life could not appear without the initial conditions of the universe which allow life. As for my conclusions about God being in charge. If I conclude, and I have, that God creates by evolution, as I've stated for the universe, for the Earth and for life, then He is seen by me as in charge, and the history of each evolution represents what God did. Your argument is then what God did was wrong. You are arguing with God, not me. I am consistent within my beliefs, starting with He runs things..

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2840 views

dhw: I’m sorry, but I am applying my human reasoning to YOUR human reasoning. You tell us that the whole universe is finely tuned for life. The only life we know of is that which exists in our galaxy. I therefore maintain that the argument can only be that our galaxy is fine tuned for life. You tell us that your God designed the whole universe in order to create H. sapiens. I then ask why, in that case, would he design billions of non-life-bearing galaxies. You don’t know. So maybe it is your human interpretation of your God’s reasoning that is at fault! You don’t know his reasoning any more than I do, but because of your fixed beliefs you constantly attempt to impose your reasoning on him and object if I point out its unreasonableness.

DAVID: Our galaxy was made under the primary rules that created the universe. The fine tuning applies to the whole universe according to the cosmologists. The Milk Way happens to have a special adaptation for the position of the Earth which also happens to be a very special planet, but life could not appear without the initial conditions of the universe which allow life. As for my conclusions about God being in charge. If I conclude, and I have, that God creates by evolution, as I've stated for the universe, for the Earth and for life, then He is seen by me as in charge, and the history of each evolution represents what God did. Your argument is then what God did was wrong. You are arguing with God, not me. I am consistent within my beliefs, starting with He runs things.

You have clearly forgotten that you have fixed beliefs, and these depend on faith. You simply cannot answer the question why your God would have created billions of small galaxies incapable of allowing life if his sole purpose was to create human beings, just as you cannot answer the question why he would have created millions of different, non-human life forms if humans were his one and only purpose. Your answer is always: that is what he did. If he exists, yes, the universe and the history of life are the result of what he did. But this does NOT fit in logically with the one and only purpose of creating humans! In both cases – if he exists – a logical explanation (as you keep agreeing) is either a free-for-all (let’s see what happens if...) or experimentation (I’d like to produce life...a being a bit like me that I might have a relationship with...). But your fixed beliefs won’t allow you even to contemplate such a God (see “Unanswered questions”), and so you insist that your reading of his mind, purpose and method is correct, even though you have “no idea” why he would choose such a method to fulfil such a purpose.

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2829 views

dhw: I’m sorry, but I am applying my human reasoning to YOUR human reasoning. You tell us that the whole universe is finely tuned for life. The only life we know of is that which exists in our galaxy. I therefore maintain that the argument can only be that our galaxy is fine tuned for life. You tell us that your God designed the whole universe in order to create H. sapiens. I then ask why, in that case, would he design billions of non-life-bearing galaxies. You don’t know. So maybe it is your human interpretation of your God’s reasoning that is at fault! You don’t know his reasoning any more than I do, but because of your fixed beliefs you constantly attempt to impose your reasoning on him and object if I point out its unreasonableness.

DAVID: Our galaxy was made under the primary rules that created the universe. The fine tuning applies to the whole universe according to the cosmologists. The Milk Way happens to have a special adaptation for the position of the Earth which also happens to be a very special planet, but life could not appear without the initial conditions of the universe which allow life. As for my conclusions about God being in charge. If I conclude, and I have, that God creates by evolution, as I've stated for the universe, for the Earth and for life, then He is seen by me as in charge, and the history of each evolution represents what God did. Your argument is then what God did was wrong. You are arguing with God, not me. I am consistent within my beliefs, starting with He runs things.

dhw: You have clearly forgotten that you have fixed beliefs, and these depend on faith. You simply cannot answer the question why your God would have created billions of small galaxies incapable of allowing life if his sole purpose was to create human beings, just as you cannot answer the question why he would have created millions of different, non-human life forms if humans were his one and only purpose. Your answer is always: that is what he did. If he exists, yes, the universe and the history of life are the result of what he did. But this does NOT fit in logically with the one and only purpose of creating humans! In both cases – if he exists – a logical explanation (as you keep agreeing) is either a free-for-all (let’s see what happens if...) or experimentation (I’d like to produce life...a being a bit like me that I might have a relationship with...). But your fixed beliefs won’t allow you even to contemplate such a God (see “Unanswered questions”), and so you insist that your reading of his mind, purpose and method is correct, even though you have “no idea” why he would choose such a method to fulfil such a purpose.

You have forgotten I started out like you, an agnostic, but unlike you I was what I would call a soft agnostic, simply accepting what medical school taught me about living beings. And that included evolution as a natural occurrence. Once I delved into what I would call evidence, it became obvious to me God had to exist. I do not have the possibility of thinking of God as you do, partially humanized, and I think that is what partially keeps you as an agnostic. You want to understand God's personal thoughts as means of possibly accepting He exists while harboring extreme doubts. It is no wonder we do not come together. We are worlds apart in our individual thoughts. I've developed faith and you can't.

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2830 views

Dhw: You simply cannot answer the question why your God would have created billions of small galaxies incapable of allowing life if his sole purpose was to create human beings, just as you cannot answer the question why he would have created millions of different, non-human life forms if humans were his one and only purpose. Your answer is always: that is what he did. If he exists, yes, the universe and the history of life are the result of what he did. But this does NOT fit in logically with the one and only purpose of creating humans! In both cases – if he exists – a logical explanation (as you keep agreeing) is either a free-for-all (let’s see what happens if...) or experimentation (I’d like to produce life...a being a bit like me that I might have a relationship with...). But your fixed beliefs won’t allow you even to contemplate such a God (see “Unanswered questions”), and so you insist that your reading of his mind, purpose and method is correct, even though you have “no idea” why he would choose such a method to fulfil such a purpose.

DAVID: You have forgotten I started out like you, an agnostic, but unlike you I was what I would call a soft agnostic, simply accepting what medical school taught me about living beings. And that included evolution as a natural occurrence. Once I delved into what I would call evidence, it became obvious to me God had to exist. I do not have the possibility of thinking of God as you do, partially humanized, and I think that is what partially keeps you as an agnostic. You want to understand God's personal thoughts as means of possibly accepting He exists while harboring extreme doubts. It is no wonder we do not come together. We are worlds apart in our individual thoughts. I've developed faith and you can't.

You have forgotten that I have no problem with your faith in the existence of God, or with the argument for design. The entire problem in all these discussions is your fixed beliefs that although he is all powerful (no limitations), always knows exactly what he is doing, and is in total control of everything (except human free will), he specially designed every non-life-bearing galaxy and specially pre-programmed or dabbled every non-human life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, and he did so with the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens; you have no idea why he would have chosen this method of producing the only thing he wanted to produce, and you do not know of any theistic scientists, scholars or philosophers who insist on the above combination of fixed beliefs. I’m sorry, but my being an agnostic does not disqualify me from pointing out logical flaws in your arguments or from speculating (nobody can do more than that) on possible alternative theistic explanations of life’s history, none of which are any more or less “human” than your own.

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2820 views

Dhw: You simply cannot answer the question why your God would have created billions of small galaxies incapable of allowing life if his sole purpose was to create human beings, just as you cannot answer the question why he would have created millions of different, non-human life forms if humans were his one and only purpose. Your answer is always: that is what he did. If he exists, yes, the universe and the history of life are the result of what he did. But this does NOT fit in logically with the one and only purpose of creating humans! In both cases – if he exists – a logical explanation (as you keep agreeing) is either a free-for-all (let’s see what happens if...) or experimentation (I’d like to produce life...a being a bit like me that I might have a relationship with...). But your fixed beliefs won’t allow you even to contemplate such a God (see “Unanswered questions”), and so you insist that your reading of his mind, purpose and method is correct, even though you have “no idea” why he would choose such a method to fulfil such a purpose.

DAVID: You have forgotten I started out like you, an agnostic, but unlike you I was what I would call a soft agnostic, simply accepting what medical school taught me about living beings. And that included evolution as a natural occurrence. Once I delved into what I would call evidence, it became obvious to me God had to exist. I do not have the possibility of thinking of God as you do, partially humanized, and I think that is what partially keeps you as an agnostic. You want to understand God's personal thoughts as means of possibly accepting He exists while harboring extreme doubts. It is no wonder we do not come together. We are worlds apart in our individual thoughts. I've developed faith and you can't.

dhw: You have forgotten that I have no problem with your faith in the existence of God, or with the argument for design. The entire problem in all these discussions is your fixed beliefs that although he is all powerful (no limitations), always knows exactly what he is doing, and is in total control of everything (except human free will), he specially designed every non-life-bearing galaxy and specially pre-programmed or dabbled every non-human life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, and he did so with the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens; you have no idea why he would have chosen this method of producing the only thing he wanted to produce, and you do not know of any theistic scientists, scholars or philosophers who insist on the above combination of fixed beliefs. I’m sorry, but my being an agnostic does not disqualify me from pointing out logical flaws in your arguments or from speculating (nobody can do more than that) on possible alternative theistic explanations of life’s history, none of which are any more or less “human” than your own.

You refuse to accept that I think God chose to evolve each of His goals: a universe, the Earth, and life. That He made the choice is obvious. It is the history we see. As you don your theist hat, you suggest God did everything wrong. My conclusions are a constellation of ideas and observations of scientists and philosophers I have studied. It is clear that the ID scientists I follow believe God designed evolution, even if the word 'God' is never mentioned. Adler, Ed Fesser and other philosophers support my theistic views. There are no logical flaws in my thinking once I start with my initial statement that God chose his method of creation. What is present in our observations in no way negates that view. You humanized view of God is that He muddled his way along.

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dhw: You have forgotten that I have no problem with your faith in the existence of God, or with the argument for design. The entire problem in all these discussions is your fixed beliefs that although he is all powerful (no limitations), always knows exactly what he is doing, and is in total control of everything (except human free will), he specially designed every non-life-bearing galaxy and specially pre-programmed or dabbled every non-human life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, and he did so with the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens; you have no idea why he would have chosen this method of producing the only thing he wanted to produce, and you do not know of any theistic scientists, scholars or philosophers who insist on the above combination of fixed beliefs. I’m sorry, but my being an agnostic does not disqualify me from pointing out logical flaws in your arguments or from speculating (nobody can do more than that) on possible alternative theistic explanations of life’s history, none of which are any more or less “human” than your own.

DAVID: You refuse to accept that I think God chose to evolve each of His goals: a universe, the Earth, and life. That He made the choice is obvious. It is the history we see. As you don your theist hat, you suggest God did everything wrong.

No, no, no, no, no! I also believe in evolution, and so if there is a God, I also believe that he would have used evolution as his method to achieve his purpose! You simply refuse to acknowledge that the difference between us lies in your personal and disjointed interpretation of his purpose and method of achieving that purpose, as detailed above!

DAVID: My conclusions are a constellation of ideas and observations of scientists and philosophers I have studied. It is clear that the ID scientists I follow believe God designed evolution, even if the word 'God' is never mentioned. Adler, Ed Fesser and other philosophers support my theistic views. There are no logical flaws in my thinking once I start with my initial statement that God chose his method of creation. What is present in our observations in no way negates that view. You humanized view of God is that He muddled his way along.

These scientists support your view that there is a God who designed evolution. Once again, they do not offer any support to your combination of fixed beliefs that your God specially designed every single life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, and that he did so for the sole purpose of getting organisms to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens.

I do not have a single view of God. I offer different views, each of which you acknowledge fits in logically with the history. I don’t think you need me to repeat the list.

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2805 views

dhw: You have forgotten that I have no problem with your faith in the existence of God, or with the argument for design. The entire problem in all these discussions is your fixed beliefs that although he is all powerful (no limitations), always knows exactly what he is doing, and is in total control of everything (except human free will), he specially designed every non-life-bearing galaxy and specially pre-programmed or dabbled every non-human life form, lifestyle and natural wonder, and he did so with the sole purpose of producing H. sapiens; you have no idea why he would have chosen this method of producing the only thing he wanted to produce, and you do not know of any theistic scientists, scholars or philosophers who insist on the above combination of fixed beliefs. I’m sorry, but my being an agnostic does not disqualify me from pointing out logical flaws in your arguments or from speculating (nobody can do more than that) on possible alternative theistic explanations of life’s history, none of which are any more or less “human” than your own.

DAVID: You refuse to accept that I think God chose to evolve each of His goals: a universe, the Earth, and life. That He made the choice is obvious. It is the history we see. As you don your theist hat, you suggest God did everything wrong.

dhw: No, no, no, no, no! I also believe in evolution, and so if there is a God, I also believe that he would have used evolution as his method to achieve his purpose! You simply refuse to acknowledge that the difference between us lies in your personal and disjointed interpretation of his purpose and method of achieving that purpose, as detailed above!

If you accept that God did it the way He did, why is his method disjointed? I simply follow the history, and you cannot deny that the current endpoint product, humans, represents His purpose as it currently exists

DAVID: My conclusions are a constellation of ideas and observations of scientists and philosophers I have studied. It is clear that the ID scientists I follow believe God designed evolution, even if the word 'God' is never mentioned. Adler, Ed Fesser and other philosophers support my theistic views. There are no logical flaws in my thinking once I start with my initial statement that God chose his method of creation. What is present in our observations in no way negates that view. You humanized view of God is that He muddled his way along.

dhw: These scientists support your view that there is a God who designed evolution. Once again, they do not offer any support to your combination of fixed beliefs that your God specially designed every single life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, and that he did so for the sole purpose of getting organisms to eat or not eat one another until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens.

I do not have a single view of God. I offer different views, each of which you acknowledge fits in logically with the history. I don’t think you need me to repeat the list.

To repeat: the ID folks believe there was designer who designed everything in evolution. My theory is simply an extension of their declared belief. Since your knowledge of their writings is very second-hand, I cannot see how you can comment on their thoughts as you do.

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2803 views

dhw: No, no, no, no, no! I also believe in evolution, and so if there is a God, I also believe that he would have used evolution as his method to achieve his purpose! You simply refuse to acknowledge that the difference between us lies in your personal and disjointed interpretation of his purpose and method of achieving that purpose, as detailed above!

DAVID: If you accept that God did it the way He did, why is his method disjointed? I simply follow the history, and you cannot deny that the current endpoint product, humans, represents His purpose as it currently exists.

As always, you ignore the rest of your hypothesis, which is (a) that he started out with the intention of designing humans, and (b) that he specially designed billions of non--human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders before he specially designed humans. If his sole purpose was to design humans, why did he design the weaverbird’s nest plus the other billions of special designs? You can’t answer, so maybe he didn’t start out with the intention of designing humans, or maybe he didn’t design the weaverbird’s nest plus the rest.

DAVID: To repeat: the ID folks believe there was designer who designed everything in evolution. My theory is simply an extension of their declared belief. Since your knowledge of their writings is very second-hand, I cannot see how you can comment on their thoughts as you do.

I do not comment on their thoughts but on yours. I accept their argument and yours that the complexities of life favour the case for design. What do you mean by “everything” in evolution? Please enlighten me: which ID-er believes that your God started out with the sole intention of designing humans but specially designed billions of other life forms etc. so that they would eat or not eat one another before he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design? These are the illogical hypotheses I am commenting on, and you keep telling me that the ID-ers don’t deal with them!

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2807 views

DAVID: You refuse to accept that I think God chose to evolve each of His goals: a universe, the Earth, and life. That He made the choice is obvious. It is the history we see. As you don your theist hat, you suggest God did everything wrong.

dhw: No, no, no, no, no! I also believe in evolution, and so if there is a God, I also believe that he would have used evolution as his method to achieve his purpose! You simply refuse to acknowledge that the difference between us lies in your personal and disjointed interpretation of his purpose and method of achieving that purpose, as detailed above!

DAVID: If you accept that God did it the way He did, why is his method disjointed? I simply follow the history, and you cannot deny that the current endpoint product, humans, represents His purpose as it currently exists.

dhw: As always, you ignore the rest of your hypothesis, which is (a) that he started out with the intention of designing humans, and (b) that he specially designed billions of non--human life forms, lifestyles and natural wonders before he specially designed humans. If his sole purpose was to design humans, why did he design the weaverbird’s nest plus the other billions of special designs? You can’t answer, so maybe he didn’t start out with the intention of designing humans, or maybe he didn’t design the weaverbird’s nest plus the rest.

Your version of my view of God does not recognize that I think God decided to create humans through the process of evolving them from bacteria. All the odd branches of the bush of life create econiches for food supply. Nothing illogical. You are simply disagreeing with what I think was God's methodology. You view of God is not my view.

DAVID: To repeat: the ID folks believe there was designer who designed everything in evolution. My theory is simply an extension of their declared belief. Since your knowledge of their writings is very second-hand, I cannot see how you can comment on their thoughts as you do.

dhw: I do not comment on their thoughts but on yours. I accept their argument and yours that the complexities of life favour the case for design. What do you mean by “everything” in evolution? Please enlighten me: which ID-er believes that your God started out with the sole intention of designing humans but specially designed billions of other life forms etc. so that they would eat or not eat one another before he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design? These are the illogical hypotheses I am commenting on, and you keep telling me that the ID-ers don’t deal with them!

They don't deal with my thoughts, which I have extrapolate from their beliefs. I've had a personal discussion with Behe, but we did not touch on these points.

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2802 views

DAVID: Your version of my view of God does not recognize that I think God decided to create humans through the process of evolving them from bacteria. All the odd branches of the bush of life create econiches for food supply. Nothing illogical. You are simply disagreeing with what I think was God's methodology. You view of God is not my view.

Your God, if he exists and if we accept common descent, would have decided in one way or another to create ALL life forms through the process of evolving them from bacteria, and indeed you have him specially designing them ALL by preprogramming or dabbling them. So in your version he says to himself: “I only want to specially design H. sapiens, and so I will specially design the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that they can all eat or not eat one another, and then I will specially design lots of hominins and homos before I specially design the only thing I want to design, which is H. sapiens.” And you find this logical.

DAVID: They [ID-ers] don't deal with my thoughts, which I have extrapolated from their beliefs. I've had a personal discussion with Behe, but we did not touch on these points.

Of course they don’t and you didn’t. You extrapolate your illogical theory from your belief in God and your very individual concept of his nature, purpose and method of fulfilling his purpose. You share the ID-ers’ belief that the complexity of life indicates the existence of a designer, and that’s all. And you still can’t find any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support the above interpretation of your God’s thoughts and deeds.

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DAVID: Your version of my view of God does not recognize that I think God decided to create humans through the process of evolving them from bacteria. All the odd branches of the bush of life create econiches for food supply. Nothing illogical. You are simply disagreeing with what I think was God's methodology. You view of God is not my view.

Your God, if he exists and if we accept common descent, would have decided in one way or another to create ALL life forms through the process of evolving them from bacteria, and indeed you have him specially designing them ALL by preprogramming or dabbling them. So in your version he says to himself: “I only want to specially design H. sapiens, and so I will specially design the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that they can all eat or not eat one another, and then I will specially design lots of hominins and homos before I specially design the only thing I want to design, which is H. sapiens.” And you find this logical.

DAVID: They [ID-ers] don't deal with my thoughts, which I have extrapolated from their beliefs. I've had a personal discussion with Behe, but we did not touch on these points.

dhw:Of course they don’t and you didn’t. You extrapolate your illogical theory from your belief in God and your very individual concept of his nature, purpose and method of fulfilling his purpose. You share the ID-ers’ belief that the complexity of life indicates the existence of a designer, and that’s all. And you still can’t find any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support the above interpretation of your God’s thoughts and deeds.

Note the entries of today:

Thursday, July 04, 2019, 20:38 and Thursday, July 04, 2019, 19:51 Their postion is quite clear and reflecting mine.

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Your God, if he exists and if we accept common descent, would have decided in one way or another to create ALL life forms through the process of evolving them from bacteria, and indeed you have him specially designing them ALL by preprogramming or dabbling them. So in your version he says to himself: “I only want to specially design H. sapiens, and so I will specially design the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that they can all eat or not eat one another, and then I will specially design lots of hominins and homos before I specially design the only thing I want to design, which is H. sapiens.” And you find this logical.

I haven't read the full discussion yet, but I would love to sink my teeth into this passage here, if I may. It's been a while and I'm rusty. :-P

For starters, I am assuming, for the sake of this argument, that God exists. I think designed, dabbled, perhaps even played with evolution, albeit carefully and wondrous attention to detail. Now, here is a subtle difference in the way I view the issue. There is no logical need for humans specifically to have been the end goal from the beginning, but that doesn't exclude them from having been planned for long before they arrived on the scene. I'm a designer. It's what I do, regardless of my day job. I design games, programs, businesses and business models. All sorts of garbage. I would never, ever, in a million years think of trying to implement something as complex as, say, Artificial Intelligence, without having practiced on something far, far less complex.

Perhaps we are seeing the result of the most cosmic learning curve imaginable, and we are part of it. You can hardly deny the symmetry in systems at scale. Our brains are incredibly similar to the universe in structure. Why is it not possible they are also similar in nature?

The idea of humans may not have been completely formed in the beginning, but when the time was right, the idea was developed into a reality, complete with start up bugs.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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Under “Theoretical origin of life”

DAVID: this essay from the ID community doesn't require much imagination or extrapolation to understand how they support my approach to the origin of life and to evolution by the intelligence of God. dhw constantly demands that I name names of ID folks. This piece is by Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon.
And:
DAVID: Tour, Axe, and Meyer should be enough names to silence dhw's demands for names and it should be clear ID is in full support of my theories.

As I keep saying, they support your theory that life had to be designed, an argument which I have never disputed. There is no support whatsoever for your theory that your God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens, that he preprogrammed or dabbled every other life form etc., and that he did so in order that they could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design. Please stop separating the different strands of your theory when you know it is the combination which I object to and for which you can find no support from the scientific, philosophical or religious community.

xxxxxxxx

dhw: Your God, if he exists and if we accept common descent, would have decided in one way or another to create ALL life forms through the process of evolving them from bacteria, and indeed you have him specially designing them ALL by preprogramming or dabbling them. So in your version he says to himself: “I only want to specially design H. sapiens, and so I will specially design the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that they can all eat or not eat one another, and then I will specially design lots of hominins and homos before I specially design the only thing I want to design, which is H. sapiens.” And you find this logical.

TONY: I haven't read the full discussion yet, but I would love to sink my teeth into this passage here, if I may. It's been a while and I'm rusty.

But you are welcomed back with a loud cheer. I do hope you and your family are well, and that life has returned to normal after the hurricane.

TONY: For starters, I am assuming, for the sake of this argument, that God exists. I think designed, dabbled, perhaps even played with evolution, albeit carefully and wondrous attention to detail. Now, here is a subtle difference in the way I view the issue. There is no logical need for humans specifically to have been the end goal from the beginning, but that doesn't exclude them from having been planned for long before they arrived on the scene. I'm a designer. It's what I do, regardless of my day job. I design games, programs, businesses and business models. All sorts of garbage. I would never, ever, in a million years think of trying to implement something as complex as, say, Artificial Intelligence, without having practiced on something far, far less complex.

This ties in with two of the hypotheses that David rejects: 1) Your God knew what he wanted (humans), but had to experiment in order to get it; 2) he “played with evolution” and eventually hit on the idea of humans. I note that you exclude the possibility that he deliberately installed an autonomous mechanism, enabling organisms to devise their own means of coping with or exploiting changing environmental conditions (and I wonder if you think he left these to chance or also controlled them).

TONY: Perhaps we are seeing the result of the most cosmic learning curve imaginable, and we are part of it. You can hardly deny the symmetry in systems at scale. Our brains are incredibly similar to the universe in structure. Why is it not possible they are also similar in nature?

I like this idea. If God exists, he learns as he goes along (akin to process theology); if he doesn’t, the whole universe including life is a product of pure chance (I don’t like this idea!) or is a product of zillions of intelligent blobs learning as they go along, combining into ever more complex forms and eventually producing you and me, and who knows what else is to come? If the theist me asks the atheist me where that intelligence came from, I will ask him where his God’s intelligence came from. If he says it was always there, I will say that blobs of intelligence were always there. The agnostic me doesn’t know what to believe.

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Under “Theoretical origin of life”

DAVID: this essay from the ID community doesn't require much imagination or extrapolation to understand how they support my approach to the origin of life and to evolution by the intelligence of God. dhw constantly demands that I name names of ID folks. This piece is by Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon.
And:
DAVID: Tour, Axe, and Meyer should be enough names to silence dhw's demands for names and it should be clear ID is in full support of my theories.

dhw: As I keep saying, they support your theory that life had to be designed, an argument which I have never disputed. There is no support whatsoever for your theory that your God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens, that he preprogrammed or dabbled every other life form etc., and that he did so in order that they could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design. Please stop separating the different strands of your theory when you know it is the combination which I object to and for which you can find no support from the scientific, philosophical or religious community.

Since you don't read ID material, you really can't comment on the full support I find, and from which I created my thoughts.

xxxxxxxx

dhw: Your God, if he exists and if we accept common descent, would have decided in one way or another to create ALL life forms through the process of evolving them from bacteria, and indeed you have him specially designing them ALL by preprogramming or dabbling them. So in your version he says to himself: “I only want to specially design H. sapiens, and so I will specially design the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that they can all eat or not eat one another, and then I will specially design lots of hominins and homos before I specially design the only thing I want to design, which is H. sapiens.” And you find this logical.

TONY: I haven't read the full discussion yet, but I would love to sink my teeth into this passage here, if I may. It's been a while and I'm rusty.

But you are welcomed back with a loud cheer. I do hope you and your family are well, and that life has returned to normal after the hurricane.

TONY: For starters, I am assuming, for the sake of this argument, that God exists. I think designed, dabbled, perhaps even played with evolution, albeit carefully and wondrous attention to detail. Now, here is a subtle difference in the way I view the issue. There is no logical need for humans specifically to have been the end goal from the beginning, but that doesn't exclude them from having been planned for long before they arrived on the scene. I'm a designer. It's what I do, regardless of my day job. I design games, programs, businesses and business models. All sorts of garbage. I would never, ever, in a million years think of trying to implement something as complex as, say, Artificial Intelligence, without having practiced on something far, far less complex.

This ties in with two of the hypotheses that David rejects: 1) Your God knew what he wanted (humans), but had to experiment in order to get it; 2) he “played with evolution” and eventually hit on the idea of humans. I note that you exclude the possibility that he deliberately installed an autonomous mechanism, enabling organisms to devise their own means of coping with or exploiting changing environmental conditions (and I wonder if you think he left these to chance or also controlled them).

TONY: Perhaps we are seeing the result of the most cosmic learning curve imaginable, and we are part of it. You can hardly deny the symmetry in systems at scale. Our brains are incredibly similar to the universe in structure. Why is it not possible they are also similar in nature?

dhw: I like this idea. If God exists, he learns as he goes along (akin to process theology); if he doesn’t, the whole universe including life is a product of pure chance (I don’t like this idea!) or is a product of zillions of intelligent blobs learning as they go along, combining into ever more complex forms and eventually producing you and me, and who knows what else is to come? If the theist me asks the atheist me where that intelligence came from, I will ask him where his God’s intelligence came from. If he says it was always there, I will say that blobs of intelligence were always there. The agnostic me doesn’t know what to believe.

Your position is well stated. Each of us has a different approach. Tony will add much needed fresh ideas.

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TONY: The idea of humans may not have been completely formed in the beginning, but when the time was right, the idea was developed into a reality, complete with start up bugs.

DAVID: Your God is not as purposeful as mine.

By which you presumably mean that Tony’s God was not limited from the start to the single purpose of specially designing H. sapiens!

dhw: As I keep saying, they [ID-ers] support your theory that life had to be designed, an argument which I have never disputed. There is no support whatsoever for your theory Please stop separating the different strands of your theory when you know it is the combination which I object to and for which you can find no support from the scientific, philosophical or religious community.

DAVID: Since you don't read ID material, you really can't comment on the full support I find, and from which I created my thoughts.

You keep telling us that ID-ers support your theory, and that is why I keep asking you which ID-ers propose “that your God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens, that he preprogrammed or dabbled every other life form etc., and that he did so in order that they could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design.” But all you keep coming up with is that, unsurprisingly, they support your theory of Intelligent Design, i.e. life is too complex to have come about by chance. And you tell us they don't even mention your God!

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2772 views

TONY: The idea of humans may not have been completely formed in the beginning, but when the time was right, the idea was developed into a reality, complete with start up bugs.

DAVID: Your God is not as purposeful as mine.

By which you presumably mean that Tony’s God was not limited from the start to the single purpose of specially designing H. sapiens!

dhw: As I keep saying, they [ID-ers] support your theory that life had to be designed, an argument which I have never disputed. There is no support whatsoever for your theory Please stop separating the different strands of your theory when you know it is the combination which I object to and for which you can find no support from the scientific, philosophical or religious community.

DAVID: Since you don't read ID material, you really can't comment on the full support I find, and from which I created my thoughts.

dhw: You keep telling us that ID-ers support your theory, and that is why I keep asking you which ID-ers propose “that your God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens, that he preprogrammed or dabbled every other life form etc., and that he did so in order that they could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design.” But all you keep coming up with is that, unsurprisingly, they support your theory of Intelligent Design, i.e. life is too complex to have come about by chance. And you tell us they don't even mention your God!

You obviously don't know much about ID. They play a game just as you note. They try to prove there is need for a designer, but never mention the designer as God. Part of their rules in trying to purposely keep religion out of their material.

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2765 views

dhw: You keep telling us that ID-ers support your theory, and that is why I keep asking you which ID-ers propose “that your God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens, that he preprogrammed or dabbled every other life form etc., and that he did so in order that they could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design.” But all you keep coming up with is that, unsurprisingly, they support your theory of Intelligent Design, i.e. life is too complex to have come about by chance. And you tell us they don't even mention your God!

DAVID: You obviously don't know much about ID. They play a game just as you note. They try to prove there is need for a designer, but never mention the designer as God. Part of their rules in trying to purposely keep religion out of their material.
And under “Panpsychism”:
DAVID: You are correct that ID declares there is a designer. I have never discussed my extrapolations with any of them, but mine are based on the need for and the existence of a designer.

If ID does what I say it does (argues the case for design) then why do you say I don’t know much about ID? The whole point is that ID-ers do not offer one jot of support for your theory that your God designed every single life form, life style, natural wonder etc., and did so in order that life forms could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was you and me. So please stop pretending that ID-ers support your theory!

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2779 views

dhw: You keep telling us that ID-ers support your theory, and that is why I keep asking you which ID-ers propose “that your God’s one and only purpose was to create H. sapiens, that he preprogrammed or dabbled every other life form etc., and that he did so in order that they could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design.” But all you keep coming up with is that, unsurprisingly, they support your theory of Intelligent Design, i.e. life is too complex to have come about by chance. And you tell us they don't even mention your God!

DAVID: You obviously don't know much about ID. They play a game just as you note. They try to prove there is need for a designer, but never mention the designer as God. Part of their rules in trying to purposely keep religion out of their material.
And under “Panpsychism”:
DAVID: You are correct that ID declares there is a designer. I have never discussed my extrapolations with any of them, but mine are based on the need for and the existence of a designer.

dhw: If ID does what I say it does (argues the case for design) then why do you say I don’t know much about ID? The whole point is that ID-ers do not offer one jot of support for your theory that your God designed every single life form, life style, natural wonder etc., and did so in order that life forms could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was you and me. So please stop pretending that ID-ers support your theory!

My interpretation of ID and yours widely differ. Their support of the design of everything allows me to extrapolate their views to my theory, using their supporting ideas.

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2772 views

DAVID: You obviously don't know much about ID. They play a game just as you note. They try to prove there is need for a designer, but never mention the designer as God. Part of their rules in trying to purposely keep religion out of their material.
And under “Panpsychism”:
DAVID: You are correct that ID declares there is a designer. I have never discussed my extrapolations with any of them, but mine are based on the need for and the existence of a designer.

dhw: If ID does what I say it does (argues the case for design) then why do you say I don’t know much about ID? The whole point is that ID-ers do not offer one jot of support for your theory that your God designed every single life form, life style, natural wonder etc., and did so in order that life forms could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was you and me. So please stop pretending that ID-ers support your theory!

DAVID: My interpretation of ID and yours widely differ. Their support of the design of everything allows me to extrapolate their views to my theory, using their supporting ideas.

You keep telling us that they do not even mention your God! Their thesis is that life is too complex not to have been designed. Yes or no? They offer no support to your theory that your God specially designed every individual life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, or that he did so in order that all the life forms could eat or not eat one another until 3.5 billion years had passed, or that his one and only purpose in designing life was to specially design H.sapiens. So I still don't know of any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support your theory.

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2764 views

DAVID: You obviously don't know much about ID. They play a game just as you note. They try to prove there is need for a designer, but never mention the designer as God. Part of their rules in trying to purposely keep religion out of their material.
And under “Panpsychism”:
DAVID: You are correct that ID declares there is a designer. I have never discussed my extrapolations with any of them, but mine are based on the need for and the existence of a designer.

dhw: If ID does what I say it does (argues the case for design) then why do you say I don’t know much about ID? The whole point is that ID-ers do not offer one jot of support for your theory that your God designed every single life form, life style, natural wonder etc., and did so in order that life forms could eat or not eat one another until he designed the only thing he wanted to design, which was you and me. So please stop pretending that ID-ers support your theory!

DAVID: My interpretation of ID and yours widely differ. Their support of the design of everything allows me to extrapolate their views to my theory, using their supporting ideas.

dhw: You keep telling us that they do not even mention your God! Their thesis is that life is too complex not to have been designed. Yes or no?

Yes.

dhw: They offer no support to your theory that your God specially designed every individual life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, or that he did so in order that all the life forms could eat or not eat one another until 3.5 billion years had passed, or that his one and only purpose in designing life was to specially design H.sapiens. So I still don't know of any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support your theory.

All of ID supports my theory. They think all was designed as I do.

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2759 views

dhw: They offer no support to your theory that your God specially designed every individual life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, or that he did so in order that all the life forms could eat or not eat one another until 3.5 billion years had passed, or that his one and only purpose in designing life was to specially design H.sapiens. So I still don't know of any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support your theory.

DAVID: All of ID supports my theory. They think all was designed as I do.

A perfectly acceptable argument, but do any ID-ers support your theory that it was your God who designed everything? Apparently they don’t say so, and I’d be interested to know if they reject Shapiro’s theory of natural genetic engineering, which also entails design. And do they say that in the context of life, your God designed every single life form so that organisms should eat or not eat one another, the sole purpose of this being that he should spend 3.5 billion years not designing the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens? If not, please don’t tell us that ID supports your theory.

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2747 views

dhw: They offer no support to your theory that your God specially designed every individual life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, or that he did so in order that all the life forms could eat or not eat one another until 3.5 billion years had passed, or that his one and only purpose in designing life was to specially design H.sapiens. So I still don't know of any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support your theory.

DAVID: All of ID supports my theory. They think all was designed as I do.

dhw: A perfectly acceptable argument, but do any ID-ers support your theory that it was your God who designed everything? Apparently they don’t say so, and I’d be interested to know if they reject Shapiro’s theory of natural genetic engineering, which also entails design. And do they say that in the context of life, your God designed every single life form so that organisms should eat or not eat one another, the sole purpose of this being that he should spend 3.5 billion years not designing the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens? If not, please don’t tell us that ID supports your theory.

But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

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2759 views

dhw: They offer no support to your theory that your God specially designed every individual life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, or that he did so in order that all the life forms could eat or not eat one another until 3.5 billion years had passed, or that his one and only purpose in designing life was to specially design H.sapiens. So I still don't know of any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support your theory.

DAVID: All of ID supports my theory. They think all was designed as I do.

dhw: A perfectly acceptable argument, but do any ID-ers support your theory that it was your God who designed everything? Apparently they don’t say so, and I’d be interested to know if they reject Shapiro’s theory of natural genetic engineering, which also entails design. And do they say that in the context of life, your God designed every single life form so that organisms should eat or not eat one another, the sole purpose of this being that he should spend 3.5 billion years not designing the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens? If not, please don’t tell us that ID supports your theory.

But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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2756 views

dhw: They offer no support to your theory that your God specially designed every individual life form, econiche, lifestyle and natural wonder, or that he did so in order that all the life forms could eat or not eat one another until 3.5 billion years had passed, or that his one and only purpose in designing life was to specially design H.sapiens. So I still don't know of any scientists, philosophers or theologians who support your theory.

DAVID: All of ID supports my theory. They think all was designed as I do.

dhw: A perfectly acceptable argument, but do any ID-ers support your theory that it was your God who designed everything? Apparently they don’t say so, and I’d be interested to know if they reject Shapiro’s theory of natural genetic engineering, which also entails design. And do they say that in the context of life, your God designed every single life form so that organisms should eat or not eat one another, the sole purpose of this being that he should spend 3.5 billion years not designing the only thing he wanted to design, which was H. sapiens? If not, please don’t tell us that ID supports your theory.

David: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

Tony: From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

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2755 views

David: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

Tony: From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

"Let us create man in OUR image."

Colossians 1: 15The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.…

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

Post reply

2761 views

David: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

Tony: From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

David: In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

Tony: "Let us create man in OUR image."

Colossians 1: 15The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.…

We are quoting differences in OT and NT.

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2735 views

David: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

Tony: From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

David: In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

Tony: "Let us create man in OUR image."

Colossians 1: 15The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.…

We are quoting differences in OT and NT.

The first quote IS OT, the second is NT. They are in harmony with each other.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

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2748 views

David: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

Tony: From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

David: In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

Tony: "Let us create man in OUR image."

Colossians 1: 15The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.…

David: We are quoting differences in OT and NT.

Tony: The first quote IS OT, the second is NT. They are in harmony with each other.

My Hebrew scholar disagrees with your interpretation of 1:26. God directly created AUDUM in His image, and 'our' image, which means to include His angels and assistants. That is what 'OUR' means. Sorry to quibble.

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2760 views

At the bottom of bodies of water:

http://nautil.us/issue/78/atmospheres/the-secret-history-of-the-supernova-at-the-bottom...

"Astronomers have searched the surrounding cosmos for clues, but the most compelling evidence for a nearby supernova comes—somewhat paradoxically—from the bottom of the sea. Here, a dull and asphalt black mineral formation called a ferromanganese crust grows on the bare bedrock of underwater mountains—incomprehensibly slowly. In its thin, laminated layers, it records the history of planet Earth and, according to some, the first direct evidence of a nearby supernova.

***

"But to understand just how supernovas affected life, scientists needed to link the timing of their explosions to pivotal events on earth such as mass extinctions or evolutional leaps. The only way to do that is to trace the debris they deposited on Earth by finding elements on our planet that are primarily fused inside supernovas.

"Fields and his colleagues named a few such supernova-forged elements—mainly rare radioactive metals that decay slowly, making their presence a sure sign of an expired star. One of the most promising candidates was Fe-60, a heavy isotope of iron with four more neutrons than the regular isotope and a half-life of 2.6 million years. But finding Fe-60 atoms scattered on the Earth’s surface was no easy task. Fields estimated that only a very small amount of Fe-60 would have actually reached our planet, and on land, it would have been diluted by natural iron, or been eroded and washed away over millions of years.

"So scientists looked instead at the bottom of the sea, where they found Fe-60 atoms in the ferromanganese crusts, which are rocks that form a bit like stalagmites: They precipitate out of liquid, adding successive layers, except they are composed of metals and form extensive blankets instead of individual spires. Composed primarily of iron and manganese oxides, they also contain small amounts of almost every metal in the periodic table, from cobalt to yttrium.

"As iron, manganese, and other metal ions wash into the sea from land or gush from underwater volcanic vents, they react with the oxygen in seawater, forming solid substances that precipitate onto the ocean floor or float around until they adhere to existing crusts. James Hein at the United States Geological Survey, who studied crusts for more than 30 years, says that it remains a mystery exactly how they establish themselves on rocky stretches of seafloor, but once the first layer accumulates, more layers pile on—up to 25 centimeters thick.

***

"Unlike the slow-growing crusts, however, supernova explosions happen almost instantly. The most common type of supernova occurs when a star runs out of its hydrogen and helium fuel, causing its core to burn heavier elements until it eventually produces iron. That process can take millions of years, but the star’s final moments take only milliseconds. As heavy elements accumulate in the core, it becomes unstable and implodes, sucking the outer layers inward at a quarter of the speed of light. But the density of particles in the core soon repels the implosion, triggering a massive explosion that shoots a cloud of stellar debris out into space—including Fe-60 isotopes, some of which eventually find their home in ferromanganese crusts.

***

" Based on the concentration of Fe-60 in the crust, Knie estimated that the supernova exploded at least 100 light-years from Earth—three times the distance at which it could’ve obliterated the ozone layer—but close enough to potentially alter cloud formation, and thus, climate. While no mass-extinction events happened 2.8 million years ago, some drastic climate changes did take place—and they may have given a boost to human evolution. Around that time, the African climate dried up, causing the forests to shrink and give way to grassy savanna. Scientists think this change may have encouraged our hominid ancestors as they descended from trees and eventually began walking on two legs.

"That idea, as any young theory, is still speculative and has its opponents. Some scientists think Fe-60 may have been brought to Earth by meteorites, and others think these climate changes can be explained by decreasing greenhouse gas concentrations, or the closing of the ocean gateway between North and South America. But Knie’s new tool gives scientists the ability to date other, possibly more ancient, supernovas that may have passed in the vicinity of Earth, and to study their influence on our planet. It is remarkable that we can use these dull, slow-growing rocks to study the luminous, rapid phenomena of stellar explosions, Fields says. And they’ve got more stories to tell."

Comment: No question. Exploding stars brought important elements to the earth. But they had to be far enough away so the radioactive blast did not harm the Earth. Fred Hoyle first showed how stars make carbon.

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dhw: […] please don’t tell us that ID supports your theory.

DAVID: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

Your theory is composed of several hypotheses. The only part of it that ID supports is the belief that life is the product of intelligent design. Every single theistic alternative that I have offered to your theory is also an extrapolation of that theory. But ID does not support the theory that a God designed an autonomous creative mechanism, or a God experimented in order to create H. sapiens, or a God only thought of H. sapiens late on in life’s history, or a God specially designed every life form because he enjoyed creating, or – your theory - a God created every life form because he “had to” spend 3.5 billion years getting them to eat or not eat one another until he designed H. sapiens, and H. sapiens was the only thing he wanted to design. So do please stop telling us that ID-ers support your theory (as opposed to every other theory).

Tony: From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

DAVID: In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

I’ll leave you both to squabble about the biblical account. Tony’s second point is entirely valid. Even if God exists, why assume that H. sapiens was fully conceived from the beginning, when the history of life shows no sign of humans until 3.5 billion years’ worth of non-human life forms have been and in most cases gone?

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dhw: […] please don’t tell us that ID supports your theory.

DAVID: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

dhw: Your theory is composed of several hypotheses.

My theory has one basic starting point: God chose to evolve humans by the process in historical evidence.

dhw: The only part of it that ID supports is the belief that life is the product of intelligent design.

And that can include design of all animal forms.

dhw: Every single theistic alternative that I have offered to your theory is also an extrapolation of that theory. But ID does not support the theory that a God designed an autonomous creative mechanism, or a God experimented in order to create H. sapiens, or a God only thought of H. sapiens late on in life’s history, or a God specially designed every life form because he enjoyed creating,

These theories of yours are simply humanized interpretation of God's intentions, not at all related to ID.

dhw: or – your theory - a God created every life form because he “had to” spend 3.5 billion years getting them to eat or not eat one another until he designed H. sapiens, and H. sapiens was the only thing he wanted to design.

Distortion: My view is God chose to evolve humans over time. Never 'had to'.

Tony: From a biblical perspective, many of the questions being asked are immaterial. It never claimed all things were created directly by God. Actually, the only thing mentioned being created directly by God was Christ, everything else was said to have been created at his direction using power granted by him. Additionally, why does the concept of humans, in our current form, have to have been fully conceptualized from the very beginning. Creating a self-aware caretaker may have been, but there is no need for that to have been the ultimate plan fully conceived right from the start.

DAVID: In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

dhw: I’ll leave you both to squabble about the biblical account. Tony’s second point is entirely valid. Even if God exists, why assume that H. sapiens was fully conceived from the beginning, when the history of life shows no sign of humans until 3.5 billion years’ worth of non-human life forms have been and in most cases gone?

Tony's view is process theology.

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DAVID: In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

dhw: I’ll leave you both to squabble about the biblical account. Tony’s second point is entirely valid. Even if God exists, why assume that H. sapiens was fully conceived from the beginning, when the history of life shows no sign of humans until 3.5 billion years’ worth of non-human life forms have been and in most cases gone?

Tony's view is process theology.

Not so certain of that. There are bits of Process Theology that I am not certain I agree with

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.

Post reply

2778 views

DAVID: In the OT Genesis says He created everything directly in six days, now as accepted by most scholars 'Yom' is to be literally translated to six eons.

dhw: I’ll leave you both to squabble about the biblical account. Tony’s second point is entirely valid. Even if God exists, why assume that H. sapiens was fully conceived from the beginning, when the history of life shows no sign of humans until 3.5 billion years’ worth of non-human life forms have been and in most cases gone?

David: Tony's view is process theology.

Tony: Not so certain of that. There are bits of Process Theology that I am not certain I agree with

But at least there is some suggestion of it.

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dhw: […] please don’t tell us that ID supports your theory.

DAVID: But it does, as it supports design by all God does, even though His name is not allowed to be mentioned. I remind, my theory is an extrapolation of their theory.

dhw: Your theory is composed of several hypotheses.

DAVID: My theory has one basic starting point: God chose to evolve humans by the process in historical evidence.

The basic starting point is (a) the existence of God, and (b) God’s purpose in starting life, which according to you was the creation of H. sapiens. But since you insist that (c) your God specially designed every single life form, lifestyle and natural wonder extant and extinct, I suggest that is also basic. I am happy to accept your argument that ID supports (a). It does not support (b) or (c).

dhw: The only part of it that ID supports is the belief that life is the product of intelligent design.

DAVID: And that can include design of all animal forms.

And as I pointed out, it can include every single alternative theistic hypothesis I offered you. But ID does not support any of them:
dhw: Every single theistic alternative that I have offered to your theory is also an extrapolation of that theory. But ID does not support the theory that a God designed an autonomous creative mechanism, or a God experimented in order to create H. sapiens, or a God only thought of H. sapiens late on in life’s history, or a God specially designed every life form because he enjoyed creating,

DAVID: These theories of yours are simply humanized interpretation of God's intentions, not at all related to ID.

I have just said that ID does not support these theories (“extrapolations” from the argument for design), and I finished off the list with your own unsupported theory:

dhw: or – your theory - a God created every life form because he “had to” spend 3.5 billion years getting them to eat or not eat one another until he designed H. sapiens, and H. sapiens was the only thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: Distortion: My view is God chose to evolve humans over time. Never 'had to'.

ID does not support “God chose to evolve humans over time” either. But I have been quoting your “had to” for weeks. For example: exchange on 28 June at 10.08:

DAVID: You are trying to deny God knew what He had to do to get from bacteria to humans.
dhw: I am trying to deny that your God “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms extant and extinct in order to specially design humans. Even you can’t tell us why he “had to” do it this way. So maybe there was another reason for designing them all, or maybe he didn’t design them all.

In any case, quite understandably, you have “no idea” why he would have “chosen” to fulfil his one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens by first specially designing millions of other life forms extant and extinct (= your interpretation of evolution). Or are you going to deny ever having said that too?

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2790 views

dhw: or – your theory - a God created every life form because he “had to” spend 3.5 billion years getting them to eat or not eat one another until he designed H. sapiens, and H. sapiens was the only thing he wanted to design.

DAVID: Distortion: My view is God chose to evolve humans over time. Never 'had to'.

dhw: ID does not support “God chose to evolve humans over time” either. But I have been quoting your “had to” for weeks. For example: exchange on 28 June at 10.08:

DAVID: You are trying to deny God knew what He had to do to get from bacteria to humans.
dhw: I am trying to deny that your God “had to” specially design millions of non-human life forms extant and extinct in order to specially design humans. Even you can’t tell us why he “had to” do it this way. So maybe there was another reason for designing them all, or maybe he didn’t design them all.

The 'had to' is not your interpretation. Mine: If God chose evolution as His method, He knew He 'had to create' everything else before He got to humans. Start with the thought that God chose to evolve! Once that is stated, everything falls into place.

dhw: In any case, quite understandably, you have “no idea” why he would have “chosen” to fulfil his one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens by first specially designing millions of other life forms extant and extinct (= your interpretation of evolution). Or are you going to deny ever having said that too?

Of course I have ' no idea' why He chose to create through evolution. I don't try to humanize his thinking, as you do.

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dhw: Your God, if he exists and if we accept common descent, would have decided in one way or another to create ALL life forms through the process of evolving them from bacteria, and indeed you have him specially designing them ALL by preprogramming or dabbling them. So in your version he says to himself: “I only want to specially design H. sapiens, and so I will specially design the whale’s flipper, the cuttlefish’s camouflage, the monarch’s lifestyle and the weaverbird’s nest etc. so that they can all eat or not eat one another, and then I will specially design lots of hominins and homos before I specially design the only thing I want to design, which is H. sapiens.” And you find this logical.

Tony: I haven't read the full discussion yet, but I would love to sink my teeth into this passage here, if I may. It's been a while and I'm rusty.

For starters, I am assuming, for the sake of this argument, that God exists. I think designed, dabbled, perhaps even played with evolution, albeit carefully and wondrous attention to detail. Now, here is a subtle difference in the way I view the issue. There is no logical need for humans specifically to have been the end goal from the beginning, but that doesn't exclude them from having been planned for long before they arrived on the scene. I'm a designer. It's what I do, regardless of my day job. I design games, programs, businesses and business models. All sorts of garbage. I would never, ever, in a million years think of trying to implement something as complex as, say, Artificial Intelligence, without having practiced on something far, far less complex.

Perhaps we are seeing the result of the most cosmic learning curve imaginable, and we are part of it. You can hardly deny the symmetry in systems at scale. Our brains are incredibly similar to the universe in structure. Why is it not possible they are also similar in nature?

The idea of humans may not have been completely formed in the beginning, but when the time was right, the idea was developed into a reality, complete with start up bugs.

Your God is not as purposeful as mine.

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2785 views

The edge is finally found:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-have-found-edge-milky-way-size

"Our galaxy is a whole lot bigger than it looks. New work finds that the Milky Way stretches nearly 2 million light-years across, more than 15 times wider than its luminous spiral disk. The number could lead to a better estimate of how massive the galaxy is and how many other galaxies orbit it.

"Astronomers have long known that the brightest part of the Milky Way, the pancake-shaped disk of stars that houses the sun, is some 120,000 light-years across (SN: 8/1/19). Beyond this stellar disk is a disk of gas. A vast halo of dark matter, presumably full of invisible particles, engulfs both disks and stretches far beyond them (SN: 10/25/16). But because the dark halo emits no light, its diameter is hard to measure.

"Now, Alis Deason, an astrophysicist at Durham University in England, and her colleagues have used nearby galaxies to locate the Milky Way’s edge. The precise diameter is 1.9 million light-years, give or take 0.4 million light-years, the team reports February 21 in a paper posted at arXiv.org.

"The measurement should also help astronomers tease out other galactic properties. For instance, the larger the Milky Way, the more massive it is — and the more galaxies there should be revolving around it, says Rosemary Wyse, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University who was not part of the new work. So far, there are about 60 known Milky Way satellites, but astronomers suspect that many more await discovery."

Comment: Its size makes plenty of room for a safe spot for the Earth. More massive galaxies are known.

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1722 views

The thick and thin discs are similar:

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-milky-unusual-astronomers.html

"The first detailed cross-section of a galaxy broadly similar to the Milky Way, published today, reveals that our galaxy evolved gradually, instead of being the result of a violent mash-up. The finding throws the origin story of our home into doubt.

"The galaxy, dubbed UGC 10738, turns out to have distinct 'thick' and 'thin' discs similar to those of the Milky Way. This suggests, contrary to previous theories, that such structures are not the result of a rare long-ago collision with a smaller galaxy. They appear to be the product of more peaceful change.

"And that is a game-changer. It means that our spiral galaxy home isn't the product of a freak accident. Instead, it is typical.

***

"'Our observations indicate that the Milky Way's thin and thick discs didn't come about because of a gigantic mash-up, but a sort-of 'default' path of galaxy formation and evolution," said Dr. Scott.

"'From these results we think galaxies with the Milky Way's particular structures and properties could be described as the 'normal' ones."

"This conclusion—published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters—has two profound implications.

"'It was thought that the Milky Way's thin and thick discs formed after a rare violent merger, and so probably wouldn't be found in other spiral galaxies," said Dr. Scott.

"'Our research shows that's probably wrong, and it evolved 'naturally' without catastrophic interventions. This means Milky Way-type galaxies are probably very common.

"'It also means we can use existing very detailed observations of the Milky Way as tools to better analyze much more distant galaxies which, for obvious reasons, we can't see as well."

"The research shows that UGC 10738, like the Milky Way, has a thick disc consisting mainly of ancient stars—identified by their low ratio of iron to hydrogen and helium. Its thin disc stars are more recent and contain more metal.

"(The sun is a thin-disc star and comprises about 1.5% elements heavier than helium. Thick disc stars have three to 10 times less.)

"Although such discs have been previously observed in other galaxies, it was impossible to tell whether they hosted the same type of star distribution—and therefore similar origins.Scott, van de Sande and colleagues solved this problem by using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe UGC 10738, situated 320 million light years away."

Comment: This tells us a galaxy like ours exist s and there must be others, and they could contain Earths. It doesn't disturb me if God is sponsoring life/humans in many places.

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1452 views

Latest findings:

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-milky-galaxy-spiral.html

"Magnetic fields in the spiral galaxy are aligned with the spiral arms across the entire galaxy—more than 24,000 light years across. The magnetic field alignment with the star formation implies that the gravitational forces that created the galaxy's spiral shape is also compressing the magnetic field. The alignment supports the leading theory of how the arms are forced into their spiral shape known as "density wave theory."

"Scientists measured magnetic fields along the spiral arms of the galaxy called NGC 1068, or M77. The fields are shown as streamlines that closely follow the circling arms.

The M77 galaxy is located 47 million light years away in the constellation Cetus. It has a supermassive active black hole at its center that is twice as massive as the black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy. The swirling arms are filled with dust, gas and areas of intense star formation called starbursts.

"SOFIA's infrared observations reveal what human eyes cannot: magnetic fields that closely follow the newborn-star-filled spiral arms. This supports the leading theory of how these arms are forced into their iconic shape known as "density wave theory." It states that dust, gas and stars in the arms are not fixed in place like blades on a fan. Instead, the material moves along the arms as gravity compresses it, like items on a conveyor belt.

"The magnetic field alignment stretches across the entire length of the massive, arms—approximately 24,000 light years across. This implies that the gravitational forces that created the galaxy's spiral shape are also compressing its magnetic field, supporting the density wave theory.

"'This is the first time we've seen magnetic fields aligned at such large scales with current star birth in the spiral arms," said Lopez-Rodriquez. "It's always exciting to have observational evidence like this from SOFIA that supports theories.'"

Comment: Making a giant spiral like the Milky Way is very complex, but its size and shape put the Earth in a very safe place two-thirds of the way out on the second arm.

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2363 views

Earth and Mars not at all like Jupiter and Saturn, and it matters. we have life:

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-solar-great-life-earth.html

"In a study published today in Nature Astronomy, researchers from the United States and Japan unveil the possible origins of our cosmic neighborhood's "Great Divide." This well-known schism may have separated the solar system just after the sun first formed.

"The phenomenon is a bit like how the Rocky Mountains divide North America into east and west. On the one side are "terrestrial" planet, such as Earth and Mars. They are made up of fundamentally different types of materials than the more distant "jovians," such as Jupiter and Saturn.

***

"Brasser and coauthor Stephen Mojzsis, a professor in CU Boulder's Department of Geological Sciences, think they have the answer, and it may just shed new light on how life originated on Earth.

"The duo suggests that the early solar system was partitioned into at least two regions by a ring-like structure that formed a disk around the young sun. This disk might have held major implications for the evolution of planets and asteroids, and even the history of life on Earth.

"'The most likely explanation for that compositional difference is that it emerged from an intrinsic structure of this disk of gas and dust," Mojzsis said.

"Mojzsis noted that the Great Divide, a term that he and Brasser coined, does not look like much today. It is a relatively empty stretch of space that sits near Jupiter, just beyond what astronomers call the asteroid belt.

"But you can still detect its presence throughout the solar system. Move sunward from that line, and most planets and asteroids tend to carry relatively low abundances of organic molecules. Go the other direction toward Jupiter and beyond, however, and a different picture emerges: Almost everything in this distant part of the solar system is made up of materials that are rich in carbon.

"This dichotomy "was really a surprise when it was first found," Mojzsis said.

***

"For years, scientists operating an observatory in Chile called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) had noticed something unusual around distant stars: Young stellar systems were often surrounded by disks of gas and dust that, in infrared light, looked a bit like a tiger's eye.

"If a similar ring existed in our own solar system billions of years ago, Brasser and Mojzsis reasoned, it could theoretically be responsible for the Great Divide.

"That's because such a ring would create alternating bands of high- and low-pressure gas and dust. Those bands, in turn, might pull the solar system's earliest building blocks into several distinct sinks—one that would have given rise to Jupiter and Saturn, and another Earth and Mars.

"In the mountains, "the Great Divide causes water to drain one way or another," Mojzsis said.

"It's similar to how this pressure bump would have divided material" in the solar system.
But, he added, there's a caveat: That barrier in space likely was not perfect. Some outer solar system material may still have climbed across the divide. And those fugitives could have been important for the evolution of our own world.

"'Those materials that might go to the Earth would be those volatile, carbon-rich materials," Mojzsis said. "And that gives you water. It gives you organics."

"The rest is Earth history. "

Comment: The Earth remains as very unusual and it has life. Chance? Not likely

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2372 views

Not explained and not understood, but described sort-of:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/09/17/this-is-why-neutrinos-are-the-s...

"Every form of matter that we know of in the Universe is made up of the same few fundamental particles: the quarks, leptons and bosons of the Standard Model...the rules governing these particles explains everything we've ever observed.

"Except, that is, for the neutrino. This one particle behaves so bizarrely and uniquely, distinct from all the others, that it's the only Standard Model particle whose properties cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model alone. Here's why.

"Imagine you have a particle. It's going to have a few specific properties that are intrinsically, unambiguously known. These properties include:
mass,
electric charge,
weak hypercharge,
spin (inherent angular momentum),
color charge,
baryon number,
lepton number,
and lepton family number,

***

"Based on the properties of the particles produced by a neutrino interaction, we can reconstruct various properties of the neutrinos and antineutrinos that we see. One of them, in particular, stands out as incongruent with every other fermion in the Standard Model: spin.

"Remember how there was a 50/50 shot that an electrons would have a spin of either +½ or -½? Well, that's true for every quark and lepton in the Standard Model, except the neutrino.
All six of the quarks and all six of the antiquarks can have spins that are either +½ or -½, with no exceptions.

"The electron, muon, and tau, as well as their antiparticles, are allowed spins of either +½ or -½, with no exceptions.

"But when it comes to the three types of neutrinos and the three types of antineutrinos, their spins are restricted.

***

"All of the neutrinos and antineutrinos we've ever detected are extraordinarily high in energy, meaning that they move at speeds so high that their motion is experimentally indistinguishable from the speed of light. Instead of behaving like electrons and positrons, we find that all neutrinos are left-handed (spin = +½) and all antineutrinos are right-handed (spin = -½). (my bold)

***

"From the neutrino oscillation data, we can determine that at least one of these three neutrinos has a mass that can be no less than a few hundredths of an electron-volt; that's a lower limit.

***

"On the other hand, brand new results from the KATRIN experiment constrain the electron neutrino's mass to be less than 1.0 eV (directly), while astrophysical data from the cosmic microwave background and baryon acoustic oscillations constrain the sum of the masses of all three types of neutrino to be less than about 0.17 eV. Somewhere between these upper limits and the oscillation-informed lower limit lies the actual masses of the neutrinos.
Our Universe, as we understand it today, is full of puzzles that we cannot explain. The neutrino is perhaps the only Standard Model particle whose properties have yet to be thoroughly uncovered, but there's a tremendous hope here. You see, during the earliest stages of the Big Bang, neutrinos and antineutrinos are produced in tremendous numbers. Even today, only photons are more abundant. On average, there are around 300 neutrinos and antineutrinos per cubic centimeter in our Universe.

"But the ones that were made in the Universe's hot, early stages are special: as a result of being around for so long in our expanding Universe, they now move so slowly that they're guaranteed to have fallen into a large halo encompassing every massive galaxy, including our own. These neutrinos and antineutrinos are everywhere, with minute but finite cross-sections, just waiting to be explored. When our experimental sensitivity catches up to the physical reality of relic neutrinos, we'll be one step closer to understanding just how, exactly, our Universe came to be. Until then, neutrinos will likely remain the Standard Model's greatest puzzle."

Comment: All we can do is wait for answers.

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1922 views

Small spherical galaxies orbiting the Milky Way feel its effects and give up gas to us:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/milky-way-little-dwarf-galaxies-gas-stars

"Some 60 known galaxies orbit the Milky Way. About a dozen of these satellite galaxies are dim dwarf spheroidals, which each emit just 0.0005 to 0.1 percent as much light as the Milky Way. Their few stars are spread out from one another, giving the galaxies such a ghostly appearance that the first one found was initially suspected to be only a fingerprint on a photographic plate.

"But these ghostly galaxies once sparkled with young stars. A new study finds that most of these galaxies lit up when they first crossed into our galaxy’s gravitational domain as fresh stars arose. But then, in most cases, the little galaxies stopped making stars soon afterward, because the Milky Way stripped the dwarf galaxies of gas, the raw material for star formation.

***

"Dwarf galaxies that kept their distance also kept their gas longer, the researchers found. The galaxies that came closest to the Milky Way’s center, such as Draco and Leo I, ceased all star formation soon after crossing the Milky Way’s frontier. However, the galaxies that entered our galaxy’s domain but remained farther out, such as Fornax and Carina, fared better.

“'Those two galaxies kept their interstellar gas inside them, so that the star formation still continued,” Chiba says. Both galaxies managed to eke out new stars for many billions of years after crossing into the Milky Way’s realm. Today, however, neither galaxy has any gas left."

Comment: This all makes good sense. The Milky Way is a giant which allows the Earth to find a place two-thirds of the way out on the second spiral arm, safely distant from all the galaxies' fireworks.

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1790 views

A whole new approach using particles, not strings:

https://phys.org/news/2020-11-gravity-theory.html

"For decades, most physicists have agreed that string theory is the missing link between Einstein's theory of general relativity, describing the laws of nature at the largest scale, and quantum mechanics, describing them at the smallest scale. However, an international collaboration headed by Radboud physicists has now provided compelling evidence that string theory is not the only theory that could form the link. They demonstrated that it is possible to construct a theory of quantum gravity that obeys all fundamental laws of physics, without strings. They described their findings in Physical Review Letters last week.

"When we observe gravity at work in our universe, such as the motion of planets or light passing close to a black hole, everything seems to follow the laws written down by Einstein in his theory of general relativity. On the other hand, quantum mechanics is a theory that describes the physical properties of nature at the smallest scale of atoms and subatomic particles. Though these two theories have allowed us to explain every fundamental physical phenomenon observed, they also contradict each other. As of today, physicists have severe difficulties to reconcile the two theories to explain gravity on both the largest and smallest scale.

***

"...a new demonstration by theoretical physicists at Radboud University now shows that string theory is not the only way to do this. "We show that it is still possible to explain gravity using quantum mechanics without using the laws of string theory at all," says theoretical physicist Frank Saueressig. "We demonstrate that the idea that everything consists of point particles could still fit with quantum gravity, without including strings. This particle physics framework is also verified experimentally, for example, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN."

"'For scientists, this alternate theory is attractive to use because it has been extremely difficult to connect string theory to experiments. Our idea uses the physical principles that are already tested experimentally. In other words: nobody ever observed strings in experiments, but particles are things that people definitely see at LHC experiments. This lets us bridge the gap between theoretical predictions and experiments more easily.'"

Comment: Hurray!!! At last someone is doing critical thinking outside 40-50 year-old dead- end strings.

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1792 views

Another fossil galaxy is found in the central Milky Way:

https://phys.org/news/2020-11-astronomers-fossil-galaxy-deep-milky.html

"Scientists working with data from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys' Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) have discovered a "fossil galaxy" hidden in the depths of our own Milky Way.

***

"The proposed fossil galaxy may have collided with the Milky Way ten billion years ago, when our galaxy was still in its infancy. Astronomers named it Heracles, after the ancient Greek hero who received the gift of immortality when the Milky Way was created.

"The remnants of Heracles account for about one third of the Milky Way's spherical halo. But if stars and gas from Heracles make up such a large percentage of the galactic halo, why didn't we see it before? The answer lies in its location deep inside the Milky Way.

"'To find a fossil galaxy like this one, we had to look at the detailed chemical makeup and motions of tens of thousands of stars," says Ricardo Schiavon from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) in the UK, a key member of the research team. "That is especially hard to do for stars in the center of the Milky Way, because they are hidden from view by clouds of interstellar dust. APOGEE lets us pierce through that dust and see deeper into the heart of the Milky Way than ever before."

***

"'Of the tens of thousands of stars we looked at, a few hundred had strikingly different chemical compositions and velocities," Horta said. "These stars are so different that they could only have come from another galaxy. By studying them in detail, we could trace out the precise location and history of this fossil galaxy."

***

"Stars originally belonging to Heracles account for roughly one third of the mass of the entire Milky Way halo today—meaning that this newly-discovered ancient collision must have been a major event in the history of our galaxy. That suggests that our galaxy may be unusual, since most similar massive spiral galaxies had much calmer early lives.

"'As our cosmic home, the Milky Way is already special to us, but this ancient galaxy buried within makes it even more special," Schiavon says."

Comment: We have to be a giant galaxy to find a safe place for the Earth to avoid all the nastiness of radioactive waves that can destroy life.

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1769 views

Some stars are not acting like they should, theories have to adapt:

https://www.universetoday.com/148850/some-of-the-milky-ways-oldest-stars-arent-where-th...

"One of the ways we categorize stars is by their metallicity. That is the fraction of heavier elements a star has compared to hydrogen and helium. It’s a useful metric because the metallicity of a star is a good measure of its age.

***

"Since we can determine the metallicity of a star by observing its spectrum, we know the overall metallicity of stars, both in our galaxy and others. We can therefore group stars into metallicity “populations.” This is done by defining the hydrogen to iron ratio, [Fe/He], on a logarithmic scale setting our Sun as the zero point.

***

"Using Australia’s SkyMapper Southern Survey, the team identified 475 stars with a [Fe/He] ratio less than one-thousandth that of our Sun. We would expect them to be halo stars, but when the team calculation the positions and orbits of these stars using data from Gaia they found that 11% of them orbit within the galactic plane. Their orbits are also very circular, similar to the orbit of the Sun. This is surprising and goes against predictions of current galactic evolution models.

"Large sky surveys of our galaxy are certain to revolutionize our understanding of the Milky Way. As even these early results show, it is clear we still have much to learn."

Comment: Lesson is that we still have lots to learn, which really means today's thoughts about how and/or why God did what He seems to have done may be entirely off the mark.

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1766 views

More is recently discovered:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-new-history-of-the-milky-way-20201215/

"Astronomers raced to download the dynamic star map, and a flurry of discoveries followed. They found that parts of the disk, for example, appeared impossibly ancient. They also found evidence of epic collisions that shaped the Milky Way’s violent youth, as well as new signs that the galaxy continues to churn in an unexpected way.

"Taken together, these results have spun a new story about our galaxy’s turbulent past and its ever-evolving future. “Our picture of the Milky Way has changed so quickly,” said Michael Petersen, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh. “The theme is that the Milky Way is not a static object. Things are changing rapidly everywhere.”

***

"In the days following Gaia’s data release, he extracted the 42 ancient stars from the full data set, then tracked their motions. He found that most were streaming through the halo, as predicted. But some — roughly 1 in 4 — weren’t. Rather, they appeared stuck in the disk, the Milky Way’s youngest region. “What the hell,” Sestito wondered, though he used a different four-letter term. “What’s going on?”

"Follow-up research confirmed that the stars really are long-term residents of the disk, and not just tourists passing through.

***

'How did those ancient stars get into the disk? Simply put, they were stellar immigrants. Some of them were born in clouds that predated the Milky Way. Then the clouds just happened to deposit some of their stars into orbits that would eventually form part of the galactic disk. Other stars came from small “dwarf” galaxies that slammed into the Milky Way and aligned with an emerging disk.

***

"The complications don’t end there. With Gaia, astronomers have found direct evidence of cataclysmic collisions. Astronomers assumed that the Milky Way had a hectic youth, but Helmer Koppelman, an astronomer now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, used the Gaia data to help pinpoint specific debris from one of the largest mergers.

***

"The group named the incoming galaxy Gaia-Enceladus

***

"The galactic wreckage was everywhere. Perhaps half of all the stars in the inner 60,000 light-years of the halo (which extends hundreds of thousands of light-years in every direction) came from this lone collision, which may have boosted the young Milky Way’s mass by as much as 10%. “This is a game changer for me,” Koppelman said. “I expected many different smaller objects.”

***

"In August, Kruijssen’s group published a merger lineage of the Milky Way and the dwarf galaxies that formed it. They also predicted the existence of 10 additional past collisions that they’re hoping will be confirmed with independent observations.

***

"All these mergers have led some astronomers to suggest that the halo may be made almost exclusively of immigrant stars. Models from the 1960s and ’70s predicted that most Milky Way halo stars should have formed in place. But as more and more stars have been identified as galactic interlopers, astronomers may not need to assume that many, if any, stars are natives, said Di Matteo.

***

"The sliding of the disk against the halo undermines a fundamental assumption: that the Milky Way is an object in balance. It may spin and slip through space, but most astronomers assumed that after billions of years, the mature disk and the halo had settled into a stable configuration.

***

"Even after 14 billion years, mergers continue to sculpt the overall shape of the galaxy. This realization is just the latest change in how we understand the great stream of milk across the sky."

Comment: This research doesn't tell us how different we are from other galaxies. but we are huge and gobbling up whatever we can.

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1743 views

Another set of findings:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/milky-way-galaxy-origins-merger-collision-star-age

"The Milky Way as we know it today was shaped by a collision with a dwarf galaxy about 10 billion years ago. But most of the modern galaxy was already in place even at that early date, new research shows.

"Ages of stars left behind by the galactic interloper are a bit younger or on par with stars in the Milky Way’s main disk, researchers report May 17 in Nature Astronomy. And that could mean that the Milky Way grew up faster than astronomers expected, says study author Ted Mackereth, an astrophysicist at the University of Toronto.

“'The Milky Way had already built up a lot of itself before this big merger happened,” he says.

***

"The team selected about 95 stars that had been observed by NASA’s exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope, which ended its mission in 2018 (SN: 10/30/18). Six of those stars were from Gaia-Enceladus/Sausage, and the rest were from the Milky Way’s thick disk. By measuring how the brightnesses of those stars fluttered over time, Mackereth and colleagues deduced ages with about 11 percent precision.

"The Gaia-Enceladus/Sausage stars are slightly younger than the Milky Way stars, but all were pretty close to 10 billion years old, the team found. That suggests that a large chunk of the Milky Way’s disk was already in place when Gaia-Enceladus/Sausage came crashing through. It’s still possible that the incoming galaxy sparked the formation of some new stars, though, Mackereth says. To tell how much, they’ll need to get ages of a lot more stars."

Comment: Not surprising news. The Milky Way is big and very old and grew by gobbling up smaller galaxies. What is amazing is how much we can learn now by startgazing.

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1511 views

A recent research finding on one black hole:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-identify-the-engine-powering-black-hole-energ...

"Both images show the glowing plasma around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, whose giant jet rises outside the frame. Unlike in the first photo, the ring in the new image has stripes, indicating that the light is strongly polarized.

"Experts say the spiral pattern of the stripes results from a strong, orderly magnetic field around the M87 black hole, and that this represents the first significant empirical evidence in favor of a popular 44-year-old theory of jet launching, known as the Blandford-Znajek process.

***

"...the new observations point to one of two rival versions of the Blandford-Znajek process that have been developed and explored in hundreds of computer simulations in recent decades, known as the MAD and SANE jet-launching scenarios. These competing ideas paint opposing pictures of a black hole’s milieu and, in particular, the origin and strength of its magnetic field.

"SANE models, which assume weaker fields, were long considered more plausible. But the strongly polarized light in the Event Horizon Telescope’s new photo points to strong magnetic fields, and therefore to the MAD version of events. The new image “seems to heavily favor MAD models,” said Alexander Chen, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Colorado who is not part of EHT.

***

“'The black hole in M87 is about the size of our solar system,” Issaoun said, yet it produces a 5,000-light-year-long current of white-hot plasma. That’s like the Statue of Liberty popping out of a marble. Some 3 trillion trillion trillion joules of energy flow up the jet each second — 500 trillion times more energy than the entire human population burns in a decade. “How could something so tiny be so powerful?”

***
"With Kerr’s equations in hand, Blandford and Znajek showed that when magnetic field lines from the accretion disk fall onto the spinning hole, the black hole’s rotation will wind the field lines into a helix oriented along the hole’s rotation axis. Magnetic fields in motion generate a voltage, so a current of electrons and positrons will start flowing through the helix away from the black hole in both directions. This is the jet.

***

"But the Event Horizon Telescope’s new image of polarized light from around M87’s black hole points firmly in the MAD direction. Polarized light vibrates in a single plane, typically after reflecting off a surface or when emitted by charged particles whose paths are curving uniformly in a magnetic field. The spiral pattern in the photo conveys that the light’s plane of vibration rotates as you look at different places around the ring, exactly as expected if particles radiating the light are gyrating around magnetic field lines that themselves have a coherent spiral pattern.

***

"Studying the particles may be necessary for working out the jets’ overall structure and their effect on the galaxies and intergalactic space they pierce through. Many jets are thin and bright all along their length. “How does it shine? How do we see it?” Chen wonders. In the case of M87’s jet, “we see it very clearly in the sky. Sometimes it breaks into knots, and sometimes it’s continuous, but it’s remarkably straight and thin. Understanding that will definitely help us understand how it interacts with the galactic and intergalactic medium — how it transfers energy to the galaxy, for example.'”

Comment: Our massive universe contains some massive fireworks. dhw has wondered in the past why God created all these events when all He wanted was humans. I don't know and I don't wonder. I assume God did this for His own reasons and they are a reasonable part of the process.

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1482 views

Recent bursts have extreme energies, sources unknown:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/light-energy-record-gamma-ray

Extremely energetic light from space is an unexplained wonder of astrophysics, and now scientists have spotted this light, called gamma rays, at higher energies than ever before.

The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory, LHAASO, spotted more than 530 gamma rays with energies above 0.1 quadrillion electron volts, researchers report online May 17 in Nature. The highest-energy gamma ray detected was about 1.4 quadrillion electron volts. For comparison, protons in the largest accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider, reach mere trillions of electron volts. Previously, the most energetic gamma ray known had just under a quadrillion electron volts.

In all, the scientists spotted 12 gamma ray hot spots, hinting that the Milky Way harbors powerful cosmic particle accelerators. In order for gamma rays to reach such energies, electromagnetic fields must first rev up charged particles, namely protons or electrons, to immense speeds. Those particles can then produce energetic gamma rays, for example, when protons interact with other matter in space.

Scientists aren’t yet sure what environments are powerful enough to produce light with energies reaching more than a quadrillion electron volts. But the new observations point to two possibilities. One hot spot was associated with the Crab Nebula, the turbulent remains of an exploded star (SN: 6/24/19). Another potential source was the Cygnus Cocoon, a region where massive stars are forming, blasting out intense winds in the process.

LHAASO, located on Haizi Mountain in China’s Sichuan province, is not yet fully operational. When it is completed later this year, it is expected to find even more energetic gamma rays.

Comment: as with yesterday's entry, it shows the universe is filled with dangerous activity. And luckily where we live the Earth is tucked into a safe spot in our galaxy. I still presume God knows what He is doing and don't question it.

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1475 views

A new study describes quark gluon plasma beginning:

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-reveals-microsecond-big.html

"We have studied a substance called Quark-Gluon Plasma that was the only matter, which existed during the first microsecond of Big Bang. Our results tell us a unique story of how the plasma evolved in the early stage of the universe," explains You Zhou, Associate Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen.

"First the plasma that consisted of quarks and gluons was separated by the hot expansion of the universe. Then the pieces of quark reformed into so-called hadrons. A hadron with three quarks makes a proton, which is part of atomic cores. These cores are the building blocks that constitutes earth, ourselves and the universe that surrounds us," he adds.

The Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) was present in the first 0.000001 second of Big Bang and thereafter it disappeared because of the expansion. But by using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, researchers were able to recreate this first matter in history and trace back what happened to it.

"The collider smashes together ions from the plasma with great velocity—almost like the speed of light. This makes us able to see how the QGP evolved from being its own matter to the cores in atoms and the building blocks of life," says You Zhou.

***

"For a long time researchers thought that the plasma was a form of gas, but our analysis confirm the latest milestone measurement, where the Hadron Collider showed that QGP was fluent and had a smooth soft texture like water. The new details we provide is that the plasma has changed its shape over time, which is quite surprising and different from any other matter we know and what we would have expected," says You Zhou.

***

"Every discovery is a brick that improves our chances of finding out the truth about Big Bang. It has taken us about 20 years to find out that the Quark-Gluon Plasma was fluent before it changed into hadrons and the building blocks of life. Therefore our new knowledge on the ever changing behavior of the plasma, is a major breakthrough for us," You Zhou concludes.

Comment: We are coming closer and closer to understanding how the Big Bang went on to form the universe we have today. This theory assume the inflation theory is correct,

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1498 views

Measurements of size hints at composition:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/squishy-neutron-star-setback-dampens-hopes-of-exotic-mat...

"In the known universe, there is nothing quite like a neutron star. Born from supernovas, these objects contain a star-size mass in a city-size space. This unique trait has led scientists to believe that some extreme physics might take place in their innards — perhaps even the dissolution of neutrons themselves into a softer goo known as quark matter.

"Yet we cannot peer inside neutron stars, so we must rely on the characteristics we can measure, namely their mass and size. Quark matter should be more compressed by the star’s gravity than intact neutrons, so if neutron stars are full of nuclear goo, they should not only be small, but grow smaller as their masses increase.

***

"But then in 2019, NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope installed on the International Space Station two years prior, measured the size of a 1.4-solar-mass neutron star called J0030, which is 1,000 light-years from Earth, to be about 26 kilometers across. Now, using NICER data, two independent teams have performed the same analysis for another neutron star, J0740, located 3,000 light-years from Earth.

"The results are surprising. With 2.1 solar masses, J0740 is the most massive known neutron star — about 50% more massive than J0030. Yet the two are essentially the same size — the two teams arrive at 24.8 or 27.4 kilometers across for the former, with uncertainties of several kilometers. The results, which are not yet peer reviewed, were each posted to the online preprint site arxiv.org earlier this month.

"The finding implies that neutron stars may be bizarre, but not so bizarre that they obliterate neutrons themselves. “It might suggest these very exotic states of matter may not be realized in the core of a neutron star,” said Jorge Piekarewicz, a theoretical physicist at Florida State University.

"Neutron stars are formed when a giant star between about eight and 20 times the mass of our sun exhausts its fuel at the end of its life. With no outward pressure to push against the star’s gravity, it collapses. The outer shells explode outward as a supernova, leaving only the dense core behind — the neutron star — packed into a volume the size of Manhattan.

***

"The results suggest that neutron stars form quark matter at some point beyond 2.1 solar masses, or perhaps never. Instead, protons and neutrons may simply persist even at the most extreme scales. “It certainly looks like the most squishy models are ruled out,” said Watts.

***

"The NICER results are still in an early stage. They will need to be checked and the uncertainties refined. The radius of a third neutron star is in the process of being measured, which could play a large role in confirming or refuting the findings. “We expect we’ll be able to announce [its size] later this year,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, the science lead on NICER at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “And then maybe a few more beyond that.”

"But so far, the results are pointing toward something intriguing. Even neutron stars, the densest collections of matter in the universe, might not be dense enough to produce some forms of exotic matter. “This is the first strong evidence against a dramatic phase transition in the core of neutron stars,” said Piekarewicz. And if it doesn’t happen in neutron stars, can it happen anywhere else? “I’m afraid not.'”

Comment: What is most amazing is measuring a neutron star's diameter at such distances. We still do not understand why the universe must have such weird objects, one of dhw's worries.

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From a weather site I follow:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/28/magnetized-threads-weave-spectacular-galactic-ta...

Source images:

https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2021/gcenter/more.html

"Threads of superheated gas and magnetic fields are weaving a tapestry of energy at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. A new image of this new cosmic masterpiece was made using a giant mosaic of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.

"The new panorama of the Galactic Center builds on previous surveys from Chandra and other telescopes. This latest version expands Chandra’s high-energy view farther above and below the plane of the Galaxy — that is, the disk where most of the Galaxy’s stars reside — than previous imaging campaigns. In the image featured in our main graphic, X-rays from Chandra are orange, green, blue and purple, showing different X-ray energies, and the radio data from MeerKAT are shown in lilac and gray. The main features in the image are shown in a labeled version.

"One thread is particularly intriguing because it has X-ray and radio emission intertwined. It points perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy and is about 20 light years long but only one-hundredth that size in width.

"A new study of the X-ray and radio properties of this thread by Q. Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suggests these features are bound together by thin strips of magnetic fields. This is similar to what was observed in a previously studied thread. (Both threads are labeled with red rectangles in the image. The newly studied one in the lower left, G0.17-0.41, is much farther away from the plane of the Galaxy.) Such strips may have formed when magnetic fields aligned in different directions, collided, and became twisted around each other in a process called magnetic reconnection. This is similar to the phenomenon that drives energetic particles away from the Sun and is responsible for the space weather that sometimes affects Earth."

Comment: spectacular!!!

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As thought before, more isotopic evidence of a big collision about 4.5 byo:-http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/05/when-worlds-collide-study-says-our-moon-was-formed-by-a-collision-with-planet-sized-body/#more-110876

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Cosmology: milky way size is enormous

Cosmology: milky way size is enormous

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Cosmology: milky way size is enormous