Far out cosmology: our galaxy is huge (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, November 16, 2020, 15:12 (1249 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "Over the course of its history, the Milky Way cannibalized about five galaxies with more than 100 million stars, and about fifteen with at least 10 million stars. The most massive progenitor galaxies collided with the Milky Way between 6 and 11 billion years ago."

DAVID: The Milky Way was carefully designed, as noted before, to create a galaxy big enough to hide out the Earth in a safe spot for life to survive.

dhw: So who do you think designed all the terrible dangers that would have threatened the Earth?

DAVID: God!!! The processes that make galaxies and stars and solar systems are all inherently dangerous to life with all the radioactivity required as part of the processes. Like the way biochemistry of life works resulting in molecular errors, God has to create the only way He can. One has to recognize God's knowledge of possible designs.

dhw" Once again, as with the evolution of life, my mind boggles at the thought that your God had to produce these vast numbers of stars/species in order to produce one planet/species. And how many millions of these stars and life forms disappeared before your God was able to directly design the only life form (plus food supply) he wanted to design?

Are you assuming there were living species before humans?

dhw: I can’t help wondering why this was the “only way” an all-powerful God could possibly create a single species. What is described here is, of course, history. But I can well understand why, given the fact that our galaxy is thought to be just one of between 100 and 200 thousand million galaxies, some folk reckon that chance is just as likely an explanation of life as a single, designing, sourceless mind that can fiddle with billions of stars as well as provide single cells with programmes for the whole of life's evolution. Can’t you?

No, logic tells me the extraordinary basis of reality in the complexity of quantum mechanics, and the exquisite engineering of cellular biology requires just such a mind as the one you doubt .

Under “killer asteroids”
QUOTE: "As news of a possible threat from Apophis arises, others have pointed out that the human race has made strides in protecting the planet from asteroid strikes. NASA's DART mission, for example, scheduled for 2022, will involve sending a spacecraft to an asteroid called Didymos and using it to alter the path of Dimorphos, one of its moons. [..] (David's bold)

DAVID: We've made real advances since we started to worry about asteroids striking the Earth, as shown in my bold. In the theodicy discussion this evil or danger was not noted but it is another issue for that topic. My only answer it that the solar system may have had to have those a steroid bodies present in its formation. At least we know different ways of moving them from their orbit, if dangerous.

dhw: You’re right: the massive scale of the universe, and the seemingly random comings and goings and dangers on a local, planetary and universal scale are an issue not only for theodicy but for the whole idea of a single mind consciously designing every galaxy and every earthly twiddly bit “as part of the goal of evolving [= directly designing] humans.” And your only answer is that it must have been the only way your God could do it.

Again you have reverted to faulting God's methods. Analysis through research of what He created will offer explanations and we are given the brains by Him to find them.