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I just came across this article which is in part about Charles Babbage and his attempts to support the idea that God was a mathematician.-http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/christmas-trilogy-part-2-computing-mathematical-miracles/-It is surprising how these otherwise rational people like Babbage and Whewell could be diverted from their scientific work to try to justify their religious beliefs. Or were his arguments just tongue in cheek? This was before Darwin of course. -I suppose they were swept along by the Zeitgeist, just as later in the century many otherwise scientific thinkers were diverted by Spiritualism.

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GPJ

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George: I just came across this article which is in part about Charles Babbage and his attempts to support the idea that God was a mathematician.
> 
> http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2014/12/26/christmas-trilogy-part-2-computing-mathematical-... 
> It is surprising how these otherwise rational people like Babbage and Whewell could be diverted from their scientific work to try to justify their religious beliefs. Or were his arguments just tongue in cheek? This was before Darwin of course. 
> 
> I suppose they were swept along by the Zeitgeist, just as later in the century many otherwise scientific thinkers were diverted by Spiritualism.-George, very interesting. From the article:-"If God had created the world and all that was in it, how come the geological record clearly displayed the disappearance and appearance of different species over the ages. Whewell's solution was to invoke a caretaker God who popped in from time to time introducing new species to replace those that had died out these interventions being in the form of miracles. It is here that Babbage set out to demonstrate the superiority of a mathematical computing God.-"Babbage argued by analogy, he describes the possibility of a computer programme (not the terminology that Babbage uses by the way) that generates the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4,  up to and including 100,000,001 but then instead of producing the number 100,000,002 as expected jumps to 100,010,002, continuing the series 100,030,003; 100,060,004; 100,100,005; 100,150,006; 100,210,007  and so forth. Babbage states that the law generating the series has changed at the jump. The expected numbers being exceeded by the series 10,000, 30,000, 60,000, 100,000, 150,000  and so on this being the series of triangular numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15,  multiplied by 10,000.-"Babbage goes on to explain that the operator does not need to interfere with the calculating engine (he is of course thinking of his own Difference Engine) at this point but can pre-programme it from the beginning to make the change at the given juncture.-"Babbage was so pleased with his mathematical miracles that he included another account of them in his autobiography, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher originally published in London in 1864.-"Some readers might note a strong similarity between Babbage's argument, sketched here, for a divine pre-programmed replacement of species and the arguments of those modern Christians who accept the theory of evolution but state that this is God's method of creating the world."-It doesn't solve my dilemma, did God dabble or program from the beginning?

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It doesn't solve my dilemma, did God dabble or program from the beginning?-(Here I go again - it takes all kinds doesn't it?) -I personally do believe it is possible dabbling and programming was done from our beginning, but not by a God within the Quantum field, but by a race of beings much older than ourselves that's very familiar with Quantum Mechanics and as well as other technologies we can yet imagine. For me, there is more "evidence" for that theory than any other. And not only that, it explains the sudden appearances of this and that which will probably remain a mystery until it's not.-A technologically advanced race of beings tinkering with the flora and fauna of our planet, developing the human species (for their own purposes or whatever), until they got it right, makes way more sense to me than a mystical, unknowable God or a creative bored one. -How that older, advanced race of beings came into existence can probably be easily explained by those beings themselves because they probably remember their own origins, unlike the people of our planet who has to rely on stories from books or wait for a genius to come along, or greedy scientist to enlighten us, because we have very short term memories (a deliberate tinkering by our creators who didn't want to be remembered - thank you).

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BELLA: I personally do believe it is possible dabbling and programming was done from our beginning, but not by a God within the Quantum field, but by a race of beings much older than ourselves that's very familiar with Quantum Mechanics and as well as other technologies we can yet imagine. For me there is more "evidence" for that theory than any other.[...]-How that older, advanced race of beings came into existence can probably be easily explained by those beings themselves because they probably remember their own origins, unlike the people of our planet who has to rely on stories from books or wait for a genius to come along, or greedy scientist to enlighten us, because we have very short term memories (a deliberate tinkering by our creators who didn't want to be remembered - thank you).-The problem for me is that this hypothesis adds yet another layer to the mystery. You say these "aliens" could probably explain their own existence, but you and I can still only speculate, so instead of speculating about David's UI or Tony's Jehovah, we'll have to speculate on where your aliens came from and how they themselves might have originated. You say there is "evidence" for the theory that they created us. I'm aware that there are many theories about aliens visiting Earth (and many authors who produce "evidence" of that) but perhaps you could give us a few examples that indicate they were our makers. -I'm very much inclined to believe that our ignorance of our origins has nothing to do with short-term memories, because I'm reluctant to oppose what seems to be a scientific consensus that we came relatively late on the scene, and we can hardly remember what happened before we existed. (In fact, I'd have thought the aliens would have had the same problem.) However, perhaps all this may tie in with much more complex hypotheses of yours that relate to our own multiple existences.

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I quite like Bella's version of the creation myth. After all in the original version of Genesis the word for the agent of creation was Elohim which is a plural.-And if the physical constants have to be right for life and humans to evolve then the idea that they were set to better values by a committee of scientists towards the end of a previous universe makes an interesting science fiction story. -Such ideas are after all the basis of Scientology which was the work of science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, and also the ancient ones of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. No doubt there are other such fantasies of more recent vintage that I've not kept up with.-But of course none of this speculation solves the problem of where whatever existed before came from in the first place. The only really satisfying conclusion to my way of thinking is that the universe came ultimately from nothing by a mixture of chance and necessity.

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GPJ

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George: I quite like Bella's version of the creation myth. After all in the original version of Genesis the word for the agent of creation was Elohim which is a plural.-According to the Hebrew scholar I use, Judah Landa, "In the Beginning Of", 2004, Elohim like many Hebrew words is generally used in the singular, but is also occasionally plural in some verses. It depends on the context of the verse; just as Yam is any body of water from a puddle to an ocean, and Yom is any length of time from an instant to an eon.
> 
> George: But of course none of this speculation solves the problem of where whatever existed before came from in the first place. The only really satisfying conclusion to my way of thinking is that the universe came ultimately from nothing by a mixture of chance and necessity.-I just cannot follow that line of reasoning, but that it what makes you and I differ. We are here, so something necessarily caused that fact. But 'chance' dealing with what substance to advance from nothing to something?

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Bbella: I personally do believe it is possible dabbling and programming was done from our beginning, but not by a God within the Quantum field, but by a race of beings much older than ourselves that's very familiar with Quantum Mechanics and as well as other technologies we can yet imagine.-Can you tell me your 'evidence'. All I can think of are the huge designs in Peru.-> Bbella: How that older, advanced race of beings came into existence can probably be easily explained by those beings themselves because they probably remember their own origins...-Are these aliens still alive and hanging somewhere?

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Melvin Bragg has a new series on History of Ideas. 
This is one of the questions: 
How Did Everything begin? -http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04xnczs-This is just an introductory piece (12 minutes).
The speakers are apparently going to follow up 
with their own take on the subject. -There's a Cosmologist, Theologian (Giles Fraser), 
Historian, and Creation Myth Scholar.

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GPJ

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Apparently some of the programmes in the series have already been broadcast-http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bwydw/episodes/guide-I've listened to Carole Mundell's one about what happened before the big bang, 
but she only presents the Roger Penrose theory of cyclic universes. -I've also listened to Giles Fraser and he thinks that cosmological arguments 
are just hubristic nonsense, and that God is far more than the Deist creator, 
and thinks metaphysics has got an undeserved bad name.-I'm still a fan of Stenger's simplistic view, though it needs more work of course to show why the constants take the values they do and provide verifiable predictions.
But that doesn't seem to be on their radar.

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GPJ

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Apparently some of the programmes in the series have already been broadcast
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bwydw/episodes/guide
> 
> I've listened to Carole Mundell's one about what happened before the big bang, 
> but she only presents the Roger Penrose theory of cyclic universes. 
> 
> I've also listened to Giles Fraser and he thinks that cosmological arguments 
> are just hubristic nonsense, and that God is far more than the Deist creator, 
> and thinks metaphysics has got an undeserved bad name.
> 
> I'm still a fan of Stenger's simplistic view, though it needs more work of course to show why the constants take the values they do and provide verifiable predictions.
> But that doesn't seem to be on their radar.-Thanks, George, for this second entry. I heard the broadcast and they briefly dug into all the points we cover here. Really didn't add anything, but I am pleased they are trying to introduce the public to this kind of debate.-I know your fondness for Stenger, but compared to the opinions of most cosmologists, he is a voice in the wilderness, and I'll stick with the others. I do believe God is more than a Deist creator.

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This blog from Shane McKee argues rather finely 
that the Fine Tuning Argument for God doesn't work-http://answersingenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-fine-tuning-case-against-theism.html-since it makes a theistic interventionist god unlikely, because his every additional interference in the mechanism becomes ad hoc and pointless.

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GPJ

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George:This blog from Shane McKee argues rather finely 
> that the Fine Tuning Argument for God doesn't work
> 
> http://answersingenes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-fine-tuning-case-against-theism.html&a... 
> George: since it makes a theistic interventionist god unlikely, because his every additional interference in the mechanism becomes ad hoc and pointless.-Only if Shane's version of God is the one the religions supply for him to make fun of.-I find his blog is lots of twisted logic, as philosophers like John Leslie ("Universes") would point out. And the intelligent design folks don't like theistic evolution for just the reasons the blog states. But they declare the universe was designed.-"However, in this little post I am going to take it as accepted that Fine Tuning is a real thing, however it is to be explained. And I am going to show that Christians who use the Fine Tuning Argument (FTA) are actually making a fundamental whopping error - they are undermining their own case substantially. By Christians, I mean those apologists who typically try to press the FTA into service as an argument for a personal God who intervenes in the world and impregnates virgins and sends his son to die for our sins and resurrects him and finds parking spots for believers and delivers nice weather for church barbecues. That sort of God. You know the type."-
His problem in this statement is he is presuming that Christian religions describe the true God. You see, I don't believe they can. I know I can't, but I am convinced there is a greater power. And fine tuning is one of my reasons. The dilemma I have is about intervention in evolution: either life and humans are coded from the beginning, or God had to intervene here and there. There is no way I can know which is correct. However, the evidence for design is so overwhelming I think there is a designer. Shane to the contrary.

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DAVID: His problem in this statement is he is presuming that Christian religions describe the true God. You see, I don't believe they can. I know I can't, but I am convinced there is a greater power. And fine tuning is one of my reasons. The dilemma I have is about intervention in evolution: either life and humans are coded from the beginning, or God had to intervene here and there. There is no way I can know which is correct. However, the evidence for design is so overwhelming I think there is a designer. Shane to the contrary.-As far as fine tuning is concerned, the whole argument seems to me as inconclusive as the so-called anthropic principle. We have life, so the conditions that have led to that life must be conducive to life. Whether other conditions might lead to other forms of life we don't know. We can say, "This is how it is", but we can't say, "This is how it had to be" because we have nothing to compare it with. -As for your dilemma, David, which relates to the subject of this thread, you have conveniently omitted the third element, which we have spent so long discussing. You don't know to what extent organisms have been left to themselves to direct the course of evolution. Our latest example of many is the weaverbird's nest, and your choice does not lie solely between pre-programming and intervention, because the third option is that the weaverbird worked out the design all by itself. You have tried to explain the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution (which includes the weaverbird's nest etc. etc.) as being due to the need to balance nature, but unless the weaverbird's nest is crucial to the balance of nature and/or the production of humans, this nebulous argument falls apart. So your dilemma is not nearly as straightforward as you make it seem - and that's without even considering the unlikelihood of the first living cells having to pass on the billions of programmes necessary to produce weaverbirds' nests etc. etc. and humans.

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> dhw: As far as fine tuning is concerned, the whole argument seems to me as inconclusive as the so-called anthropic principle. We have life, so the conditions that have led to that life must be conducive to life. Whether other conditions might lead to other forms of life we don't know. We can say, "This is how it is", but we can't say, "This is how it had to be" because we have nothing to compare it with.-Fair enough, but when one looks at the required exactness, against the thought that the universe appeared by chance, your line or reasoning falls apart.
> 
> dhw: As for your dilemma, David, which relates to the subject of this thread, you have conveniently omitted the third element, which we have spent so long discussing. You don't know to what extent organisms have been left to themselves to direct the course of evolution.-But giving the organisms an IM is just a subsection of the design theory.-> dhw:unless the weaverbird's nest is crucial to the balance of nature and/or the production of humans, this nebulous argument falls apart. So your dilemma is not nearly as straightforward as you make it seem --I gave you weaverbirds' nests as an example of life's inventiveness. Look at the amazing diversity of life's inventions. For no reason or for purpose? I see purpose. It is the diversity I look at, not one lone form of nest. Big picture, forest, not trees.

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dhw: As far as fine tuning is concerned, the whole argument seems to me as inconclusive as the so-called anthropic principle. We have life, so the conditions that have led to that life must be conducive to life. Whether other conditions might lead to other forms of life we don't know. We can say, "This is how it is", but we can't say, "This is how it had to be" because we have nothing to compare it with.-DAVID: Fair enough, but when one looks at the required exactness, against the thought that the universe appeared by chance, your line or reasoning falls apart.-We don't know if life requires this exactness, since our conditions and our form of life are the only ones we know. There is no line of reasoning to fall apart. We don't have the knowledge to make claims either way. -dhw: As for your dilemma, David, which relates to the subject of this thread, you have conveniently omitted the third element, which we have spent so long discussing. You don't know to what extent organisms have been left to themselves to direct the course of evolution.
DAVID: But giving the organisms an IM is just a subsection of the design theory.-The origin of a possible IM is a different subject. We are dealing here with the course of evolution and your conviction that it had to be preprogrammed by your God or influenced by his dabbling. The IM hypothesis is a third option, regardless of its source.-dhw: ...unless the weaverbird's nest is crucial to the balance of nature and/or the production of humans, this nebulous argument falls apart. So your dilemma is not nearly as straightforward as you make it seem...
DAVID: I gave you weaverbirds' nests as an example of life's inventiveness. -No you didn't. You asked: Why do all weaver birds' nests look so much alike? Set plans for the species. DHW seems to want the weaverbirds to have worked this out bit by bit until they got it right. Your evolutionary scenario is based on your God planning everything right from the start or intervening, and when I challenge you on the relevance of the weaverbird's nest to the production of humans - which you insist was God's purpose all along - you resort to the nebulous argument of balance of nature. When I ask whether nature would be unbalanced without the nest, you leap to diversity:
 
DAVID: Look at the amazing diversity of life's inventions. For no reason or for purpose? I see purpose. It is the diversity I look at, not one lone form of nest. Big picture, forest, not trees.-I keep asking you what that purpose is, but the only purpose you come up with is the production of humans. I then point out that this does not fit in with the diversity, and I suggest that maybe the diversity is due to the first cells possessing an inventive mechanism (possibly God-given) which gave them the ability to do their own inventing, e.g. the weaverbird designing its own nest. And on a Monday you will agree that an IM is possible, but on a Tuesday you will revert to preprogramming and/or dabbling. Your big picture is full of holes in the form of non sequiturs.

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> dhw: We don't know if life requires this exactness, since our conditions and our form of life are the only ones we know. There is no line of reasoning to fall apart. We don't have the knowledge to make claims either way. -But the experts claim we do know. For our type of carbon-based life the parameters must be exactly as found. You are correct in implying however, that other types of life will require different constants. 
> 
> dhw: As for your dilemma, David, which relates to the subject of this thread, you have conveniently omitted the third element, which we have spent so long discussing. You don't know to what extent organisms have been left to themselves to direct the course of evolution.-> DAVID: But giving the organisms an IM is just a subsection of the design theory.
> 
> dhw: The origin of a possible IM is a different subject. We are dealing here with the course of evolution and your conviction that it had to be preprogrammed by your God or influenced by his dabbling. The IM hypothesis is a third option, regardless of its source. -But in my pattern of thought, the only source of an IM is God.-> 
> dhw: I keep asking you what that purpose is, but the only purpose you come up with is the production of humans. I then point out that this does not fit in with the diversity, and I suggest that maybe the diversity is due to the first cells possessing an inventive mechanism (possibly God-given) which gave them the ability to do their own inventing, e.g. the weaverbird designing its own nest. And on a Monday you will agree that an IM is possible, but on a Tuesday you will revert to preprogramming and/or dabbling. Your big picture is full of holes in the form of non sequiturs.-And that is because I have my dilemma. I am convinced humans are the purpose for all the reasons I have given. I look at what God has produced and I try to work backward to explain what I see, and your questioning has helped me come to some conclusions that you don't like, because we are working from opposite conclusions. I have accepted a God-guided evolutionary process. You accept the possibility, but keep hopping back and forth over the picket fence as the good agnostic should. -This infers a God who cannot or would not simply will stages of life into being on the spot. The Christian ID folks don't like this way of thinking. It infers God is limited in power. Well, we really don't know how powerful God is. I don't use religious teachings. Balance of nature is present, therefore it is part of the plan. Humans are present against all odds, therefore they are part of the plan. Evolution is life starting (how?), then bacteria who are still here, no real evolution until Cambrian multicellularity, and finally humans with enormous brain capacity. And you propose molecule-trading cells did all this after life got them started. There is too much planning and information required to do this. Still only chance or design. Unicellular organisms cannot invent the information necessary to create all that has been created, after the initial input of information in the start of life.

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dhw: We don't know if life requires this exactness, since our conditions and our form of life are the only ones we know. There is no line of reasoning to fall apart. We don't have the knowledge to make claims either way. 
DAVID: But the experts claim we do know. For our type of carbon-based life the parameters must be exactly as found. You are correct in implying however, that other types of life will require different constants. -That is my point. It is like saying God planned to have the mosquito bite me so that I would meet my wife. Life as we know it is the result of the conditions we know. If I hadn't been bitten, I might have married someone else. If conditions hadn't been the way they are, there might have been a different form of life. You work backwards from the result and assume it all HAD to happen that way. -dhw: The IM hypothesis is a third option, regardless of its source. 
DAVID: But in my pattern of thought, the only source of an IM is God.-In this context I am not arguing about the source but am presenting an alternative (possibly theistic) option that removes the anomalies from your rigid concept of God's methods and purpose.-dhw: I keep asking you what that purpose is, but the only purpose you come up with is the production of humans. I then point out that this does not fit in with the diversity, and I suggest that maybe the diversity is due to the first cells possessing an inventive mechanism (possibly God-given) which gave them the ability to do their own inventing, e.g. the weaverbird designing its own nest. And on a Monday you will agree that an IM is possible, but on a Tuesday you will revert to preprogramming and/or dabbling. Your big picture is full of holes in the form of non sequiturs.
DAVID: And that is because I have my dilemma. I am convinced humans are the purpose for all the reasons I have given. I look at what God has produced and I try to work backward to explain what I see, and your questioning has helped me come to some conclusions that you don't like, because we are working from opposite conclusions. I have accepted a God-guided evolutionary process. You accept the possibility, but keep hopping back and forth over the picket fence as the good agnostic should. -Unlike you, I do not work from a conclusion. The incongruities of your own are epitomized by the weaverbird example. You believe your God preprogrammed the nest, plus billions of other innovations and lifestyles which have no conceivable connection to the all-important goal of producing humans. Even you don't believe that humans would not have appeared or would disappear without the weaverbird's nest, or that nature would be unbalanced. However, you cannot stand the idea that maybe the diversity is the result of the free-for-all which marks the whole history of evolution. That doesn't fit in with your preconceived notion of God, who must have planned everything because his purpose was to create humans. 
 
DAVID: Evolution is life starting (how?), then bacteria who are still here, no real evolution until Cambrian multicellularity, and finally humans with enormous brain capacity. And you propose molecule-trading cells did all this after life got them started. There is too much planning and information required to do this. Still only chance or design. Unicellular organisms cannot invent the information necessary to create all that has been created, after the initial input of information in the start of life.-As usual you fall back on chance or design, and although you admit that we don't even know how powerful God is, you reject the possibility that he might deliberately have provided an autonomous, information-gathering, inventive mechanism which set in motion the higgledy-piggledy free-for-all that appears to characterize life's history. I'm afraid you're stuck with your weaverbird: once and for all, do you accept the possibility that it might have designed its own nest?

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> dhw: The IM hypothesis is a third option, regardless of its source. -> DAVID: But in my pattern of thought, the only source of an IM is God.
> 
> In this context I am not arguing about the source but am presenting an alternative (possibly theistic) option that removes the anomalies from your rigid concept of God's methods and purpose.-But a 'possibly theistic' IM for me is just part of initial programming. I see the possibility of God allowing semiautonomous inventions.-> 
> Unlike you, I do not work from a conclusion.... However, you cannot stand the idea that maybe the diversity is the result of the free-for-all which marks the whole history of evolution. That doesn't fit in with your preconceived notion of God, who must have planned everything because his purpose was to create humans.-Right, I don't see a free-for-all. I simply see life's ability given by God to diversify as part of His plan.
 
> 
> dhw: As usual you fall back on chance or design, and although you admit that we don't even know how powerful God is, you reject the possibility that he might deliberately have provided an autonomous, information-gathering, inventive mechanism which set in motion the higgledy-piggledy free-for-all that appears to characterize life's history.-I've admitted above as I have over and over, a God-given IM, as a semiautonomous mechanism, may well be part of God's plan. Why all the diversity? It may well be part of His plan.-> dhw: I'm afraid you're stuck with your weaverbird: once and for all, do you accept the possibility that it might have designed its own nest?-Frankly, I have no idea how it happened, but the weaverbird is not likely to have accomplished the entire form and design.

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dhw: The IM hypothesis is a third option, regardless of its source. 
DAVID: But in my pattern of thought, the only source of an IM is God.
dhw: In this context I am not arguing about the source but am presenting an alternative (possibly theistic) option that removes the anomalies from your rigid concept of God's methods and purpose.
DAVID: But a 'possibly theistic' IM for me is just part of initial programming. I see the possibility of God allowing semiautonomous inventions.-I shall dealt with the totally unsatisfactory concept of semi-autonomy under Panpsychism. (Sorry to be dodging around, but our threads are now overlapping.)-dhw: Unlike you, I do not work from a conclusion.... However, you cannot stand the idea that maybe the diversity is the result of the free-for-all which marks the whole history of evolution. That doesn't fit in with your preconceived notion of God, who must have planned everything because his purpose was to create humans.

DAVID: Right, I don't see a free-for-all. I simply see life's ability given by God to diversify as part of His plan.-Life does not have an ability to diversify. Only living organisms can diversify. I am suggesting to you that a free-for-all could have been God's plan (if he exists), as opposed to a programme geared to the production of humans, which as it unfolded sort of did and didn't include the nest of the weaverbird.
 
dhw: I'm afraid you're stuck with your weaverbird: once and for all, do you accept the possibility that it might have designed its own nest?
DAVID: Frankly, I have no idea how it happened, but the weaverbird is not likely to have accomplished the entire form and design.-You can just imagine God saying to the weaverbird (or the monarch or the plover or the spider or the beaver or the bee or the millions of other creatures you believe to be incapable of doing their own designing): Here's a plan for the first half. Now see what you can do with the second half. For general comments on semi-autonomy, again see my post under Panpsychism.

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