Laetoli footprints (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 21:20 (5147 days ago) @ dhw

MATT: With what we DO know about the universe, if God exists and is a concentrated being of some sort, meaning, at some point in its continuity it can be said to possess planning and a long memory--then it is clear that he had no discrete goal with life on earth. It either didn't know what it was really doing (just tinkering) or it knew everything in advance.
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> If it knew everything in advance, then there's a great deal of things it either decided not to care about (our comfort being one of them) or he deliberately made them "wrongly." If its the first, why should we care back? If its the second, well, still--why should we care at all?
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> If someone claims intelligence, tell me about this intelligence, please!
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> There's no difference between us here. If God doesn't care about us, why should we care about him? But if our object is to find out the "truth" about how we got here, the nature of God can only come after the existence of God. That, if I've understood David correctly, is the point he has been trying to make: 1) Life's complexity = the result of intelligence. 2) We have no way of knowing the nature of that intelligence. My rider to that would be that at least we can speculate, based on the evidence of Life on Earth.
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> I asked you to name any human design that would not eventually break down, and I went on to say "that is the very nature of everything in the physical world that we know." You answered "Mathematics". I had actually meant a material design ... machinery, buildings, gadgets etc. ... because you were attacking the design of us as physical beings. Nice answer, though! (Literature and music would be two more for your list. Sadly, art and sculpture are more vulnerable.)
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> Putting on my sceptic's hat, I challenged your statement that only the Big Bang (as opposed to life) "smacks of intense planning and foresight". In your response you argue against David's belief that our universe is fine-tuned for life, and you say an infinite number of universes would solve the problem, as we would be guaranteed to get one like ours. How does this support the possible planning and foresight behind the Big Bang? Many physicists argue that the bang was the beginning of the universe and of time ... i.e. there was nothing before it. If that theory is correct, and since planning and foresight can only come before an event, again how could there have been even a "smack" of it? If anything, I'd have thought your only argument for planning and foresight would be the same as David's: that the universe IS fine-tuned. Maybe I've missed something in your line of thought here.-I think here it's just another example of my uncanny ability to take a bunch of threads and weave them with no thought. -1. If it is true that the universe is truly "finely tuned" for life, then this is a legitimate base to begin discussing a creator. -2. An argument against our universe being finely tuned can be found in those experimental physicists that have demonstrated that the chemistry necessary for life could exist in a universe drastically different from ours--in one where one of the fundamental forces doesn't exist. This strongly suggests that the... range of possibilities is greater than what at least David claims. -My general goal here is to firmly demonstrate that this part of the discussion lies at the very edge of physics, and despite David's harumphs, the further explanation of "Many Worlds" has yet to be nullified, even if it ranks as #2 in the list of favored interpretations. -Even if "many worlds" proves wrong, atheists can still simply rely on the argument that "even in a world of 10^150 possibilities, if the chances for event "x" to happen are within the scope of possibilities, than we just simply have to accept it--just like winning the lottery." I think Dawkins has mentioned something to that effect in the past. (Don't know, haven't actually read him.) Actually, the aforementioned paper concerning the lack of a fundamental force also demonstrates another "universe" of possibilities. (Pardon the pun!)-As to your comment about truth: As would be predicted, I'm ultimately of the opinion that in this question there is no truth to be found; the event is so far away that we shall never be able to truly answer for what happened--all we will have is mere speculation, however educated we may think it. -As to your comment about nothing existing before the Big Bang, few, if any, of the writings I've come across state this. What I've read is that the big bang was the beginning of our observable universe, a drastically different claim. For all intents and purposes it was the beginning, but there is no way to truly state that it was the beginning.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"