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Author Topic:   We know there's a God because...
cavediver
Member (Idle past 3670 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 58 of 256 (458488)
02-29-2008 9:11 AM
Reply to: Message 56 by ICANT
02-29-2008 8:54 AM


Re: Re-World around Us
Hawking states, "If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size."
Odds of this happening by chance 10^128.
If the gravitational force were altered by 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent, neither Earth nor our Sun would exist.
Odds of this happening by chance 10^128.
For physical life to exist, the mass density of the universe must be fine-tuned to better than one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.
Odds of this happening by chance 10^128.
As ever, this is all completely wrong...
But let's save time and assume it's correct.
It seems like anyone could look at that kind of scientific data and come to the conclusion that there was something other than chance at work.
Hmmm, you mean like the String Landscape, perhaps? That gives rise to essentially an infinite number of Universes with all possible parameter values - and thus the probablity of our Universe coming into being was about 1 in 1.
But I suppose to many those odds would not matter because that would point to something higher than man which is unacceptable.
Perfectly acceptable to me as I'm a theist - it's just that those extremely erronious probabilities of yours do not point to "something higher than man". They point to deeper physics.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 56 by ICANT, posted 02-29-2008 8:54 AM ICANT has replied

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 Message 59 by ICANT, posted 02-29-2008 9:49 AM cavediver has not replied

  
cavediver
Member (Idle past 3670 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 188 of 256 (458888)
03-02-2008 3:35 PM
Reply to: Message 175 by RAZD
03-02-2008 1:27 PM


Re: Problems from the start.
How would gravity be different in a created universe versus one that came about in the absence of a god? One could argue that in a chance formed universe that things would behave according to simple basic laws that could be easily determined, like Newtonian gravity, while in a created universe the closer you looked the more mystery was involved.
That's an interesting concept of 'simple' - based upon layman understanding of the surface of concepts? How exactly is Newtonian gravity simple? It's immensely complex, with fun things like transfinite singularities and no reasonable causal structure. Where-as the whole of GR was written down over breakfast by Hilbert in the astonishingly beautiful
One could argue that in a chance formed universe that things would be formed of simple particles, particles that are stable over time and different from energy, while in a created universe one can become the other at whim, and the closer you looked the more mystery was involved.
Your simple universe is the "God's plaything" universe I envisage in Genesis 1-2. Don't foget that your mystery is our "oh, of course. How simple, how aesthetic. Now we know, how could we have ever thought otherwise?"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 175 by RAZD, posted 03-02-2008 1:27 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 189 by RAZD, posted 03-02-2008 4:21 PM cavediver has replied

  
cavediver
Member (Idle past 3670 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 190 of 256 (458896)
03-02-2008 4:30 PM
Reply to: Message 189 by RAZD
03-02-2008 4:21 PM


Re: Problems from the start.
The point is that you can't argue that a created universe would be different from what you see, because you don't know whether it was created or not.
What it comes down to, is that any "predictions" of what the other kind of universe would be like, are all strawmen.
I have no disagreement with this.
Ah, we can all go home now, job done. No more mysteries. Well done.
Huh?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 189 by RAZD, posted 03-02-2008 4:21 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
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