Summations Only

First Caroline Crocker was censored. Except she wasn't.Then Dawkins was in denial. Except he wasn't.Then Eugenie Scott claimed science was "limited to direct observations of events occurring in nature or under controlled laboratory conditions." Except she didn't.DT, could you please stop making new misstatements before correcting the old?--Percy

Is this as specific as you're going to get, or are you going to tell us what predictions?--Percy

Hi DesignTheorist,Let me begin where you ended: I have not as yet made any false assertions about you, only true ones. I have called to your attention three occasions on which you made false assertions. The reason we can know that my assertions are true and yours are false are that mine are corroborated by facts from reality while yours are contradicted by them. Addressing your false assertions one at a time:

1. Caroline Crocker:
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   First Caroline Crocker was censored. Except she wasn't.

   I happened to have lunch with Caroline a couple of months ago at a science conference. Yes, she suffered because of her views.
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   But your claim was that she was censored, not that she suffered. Since you failed to address the actual arguments from my Message 79 (or respond to the message at all) I shall make them again. Carolyn Crocker's contract was likely not renewed because she had demonstrated incompetency in the classroom. For example, in one of her lectures she stated, "No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in a laboratory," as a criticism of evolution. In reality this is not only a misrepresentation (because evolution not only doesn't think this should happen but absolutely thinks it should not) but is also horribly confused and simpleminded. This view of what is wrong with evolution would never make it into a scientific journal or conference simply because it not only has no scientific support whatsoever but even worse shows the claimant to be at best horribly confused and at worst terribly ignorant.
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   Even worse, the statement about a dog turning into a cat is standard creationist claptrap with no standing whatsoever within science. It has no business in a science classroom.
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2. Richard Dawkins:
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   Then Dawkins was in denial. Except he wasn't.

   Not true. Did you watch the video clip?
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   Yes. And I provided the relevant excerpts from the video in Message 92, and people have been looking at the video and telling you it doesn't support your claims. At around the nine minute mark Venter says, "I'm not so sanguine here as some of my colleagues that there's only one lifeform on this planet."
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   Davies responds, "We've got the same genetic code, we've got a common ancestor."
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   To which Venter replies, "Well, you don't have the same genetic code. In fact, the Mycoplasmas use a different genetic code that would not work in your cells. So there are a lot of variations on the theme."
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   Davies responds, "But you're not saying it belongs to a different tree of life from me, are you?"
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   And Venter avoids a direct response to the question: "Well, the tree of life is an artifact of some early scientific studies that aren't really holding up. There may be a bush of life."
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   So what did Venter mean, exactly? Is he arguing for a bush of life, about which there is little debate? Or is he arguing for more than one independent origin of life?
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   And so Dawkins attempts to ask Venter if he means that some life on the planet is unrelated to other life on the planet: "I'm intrigued at Craig saying that the tree of life is a fiction. I mean...the DNA code of all creatures that have ever been looked at is all but identical. And surely that means that they're all related."
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   The moderator then moves the discussion on, so we never get to hear what Venter actually meant. But to the extent that Venter's comments were congruent with Koonin's work regarding a bush of life, clearly Dawkins wasn't asking about that. It was relatedness that was his concern, not a tree versus a bush.
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   I googled about looking for any direct comments Dawkins might actually have made about Koonin or the bush of life. The closest thing I could find is this comment Dawkins made in 2003, quoted in several places but not cited in such a way that I could track down a reference:
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   Dawkins writes:

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   "For there is, after all, one true tree of life, the unique pattern of evolutionary branchings that actually happened. It exists. It is in principle knowable. We don't know it all yet. By 2050 we should -- or if we do not, we shall have been defeated only at the terminal twigs, by the sheer number of species."
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   There's no hint here whether he would find a bush of life equally acceptable as a tree of life, but it should be noted that bushes are just small trees. There's no pedagogical difference between them. The concept that a bush is meant to invoke is branches separating and coming back together and/or joining with other branches, something not very common in most trees and bushes. This is an example from the February, 2000, issue of Scientific American of what people actually have in mind when they say "bush of life":
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   I doubt very much that Dawkins has any problem at all with this.
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3. Eugenie Scott:
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   Then Eugenie Scott claimed science was "limited to direct observations of events occurring in nature or under controlled laboratory conditions." Except she didn't.

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   Again, this is not true. Eugenie was quoted correctly. I think if she had time to really think through her answer, it would have been different - but she was accurately quoted.
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   As you've now finally conceded, Eugenie Scott was not quoted correctly, and the paraphrase did not accurately capture what she actually said. The reason so many people realized that Eugenie would never have said that is because "direct observation" is a creationist catchphrase. Any paraphrase of an evolutionist's comments that includes creationist catchphrases cannot, by definition, be anywhere close to accurate.

So let's sum up:

1. Counter to your claim, Caroline Crocker wasn't censored, but you haven't conceded this yet..
2. Counter to your claim, Dawkins isn't in denial about Koonin's work so far as anyone can tell, but you haven't conceded this yet.
3. Counter to your claim, Eugenie Scott was not quoted accurately, but you still claim the paraphrase accurately captured her meaning, so you haven't conceded on this one yet, either.

Congratulations for consistency regarding false assertions.--Percy

Your link to the Roger Penrose video doesn't work. Please fix.I assume you're referring to this Penrose quote about the low entropy condition of the early universe: But he said this back in 1981. Given that as recently as 2010 he was proposing that the Big Bang may have been preceded by an earlier universe, have you considered the possibility that he doesn't today and never did view has work from 30 years ago as precluding natural causes?There's a couple things I don't understand, one specific and one general.Specific to fine tuning, given that we don't know everything and never will, how can we know that the value of a universal constant isn't demanded by other natural laws of which we're not yet aware.And general to this thread, how come the five minor tests that you claimed would play a key role in actual discussion of the evidence (see Testing Theories of Origins) have seen no mention here?--Percy

I doubt Penrose ever changed his mind. As is his wont, DesignTheorist has claimed something that has no support in fact. He has claimed that Roger Penrose proved that the Big Bang could not have had a naturalistic cause when it is very, very much in doubt that Penrose believed he ever proved any such thing. Penrose probably thought, and still thinks, "What incredibly low entropy! How on earth could that have happened?" He never thought, "My God, what incredibly low entropy! This could not possibly have had a natural cause."No doubt most scientists, Penrose certainly among them, view the cause of the Big Bang as yet another puzzle for which we don't yet have firm answers, only hypotheses. I'm sure very, very few scientists have concluded that the cause was non-natural.--Percy

It is believed that virtual particles (quantum fluctuations) flit in and out of existence continuously everywhere throughout the universe, including the nearly empty expanse of space between galaxies and at the time of the Big Bang. The Casimir effect is just the most easily detectable example of this phenomenon.--Percy

You're reading too much into my choice of words. It's a scientific belief based upon evidence, otherwise known as an accepted theory. Supporting evidence is what differentiates virtual particles from creationist ideas.You seem to have a strong skepticism of what is now a well studied and well known phenomenon, so I suggest you read the Wikipedia article on Virtual Particles. It should be easier to have a discussion about your other questions once you're convinced that virtual particles and quantum fluctuations that happen everywhere and every time are not something we're making up.--Percy

How do you tell the difference between a single universe with physical constants specifically chosen for life on Earth, and a zillion universes each with random constants of which the one we occupy happens to have physical constants just perfect for life on Earth?This is the same point people keep making to you, but you have to think about it before you can grasp it. It's easy to think you've found fault with arguments you don't understand. If you do the work yourself you'll see the point, and then this argument will make sense to you.--Percy

Except that, yes, we do know that the phenomenon is happening everywhere all the time. You still have a very strong skepticism toward what is a well known and well established phenomenon. That's why I pointed you at the Wikipedia Article on Virtual Particles, because it will be a lot easier to answer your other questions once you understand that we're not making it up.But obviously you didn't even glance at the Wikipedia article, because if you had you would have seen the list, under Manifestations, of many ways virtual particles manifest themselves in addition to the Casimir effect.So in order that your doubts about virtual particles don't get in the way of our attempts to answer your questions, why don't you just give the Wikipedia article a read. We could discuss virtual particles here in this thread, but "Why Virtual Particles are Real" isn't the topic.--Percy

If you check out the Wikipedia article on the Multiverse in the section under Criticism you'll see several ways described in which the multiverse might be detected, and it even addresses the Paul Davies quote.Will your discussion of the scientific merits of the RTB hypothesis ever include a description of it along with a presentation of its scientific support? You know, like evidence or something? Because I think the lack of scientific discussion you complain about derives from the fact that you haven't really introduced anything scientific to discuss. For instance, in Message 190 you say: But what evidence would that be? All you do is keep quoting scientists, which isn't evidence and for the most part these scientists don't seem to agree with you that the appearance of design constitutes evidence of design.So is there some telltale evidence hidden in the CBR? Does pi have a message for us after the gazillionth decimal place? Or is your only "evidence" that if the universe were different we wouldn't be here.--Percy

Here's a link to the paper: Viability of Carbon-Based Life as a Function of the Light Quark Mass--Percy

Your link is comparing the strong force to the electric force.In section 7.2 Stenger is comparing the gravitational force to the electric force, and only for the specific situation of two particles with Planck mass and unit electric change. Stenger may have chosen that particular situation for effect because it produces the same ratio as between the strong and electric forces. He's making the point that gravity is not the weakest force in all situations, that where it is weaker and where it is not varies from situation to situation.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Here's a link to Barnes paper: The Fine-Tuing of the Universe for Intelligent LifeHere's the relevant passage in more complete form, you were right, he was talking about tidal forces: You respond that Barnes is correct that "gravity is not fictitious exactly as in centrifugal force", but isn't it? Isn't Barnes stretching Einstein's elevator analogy by assigning it a second observer who he claims is inside the same inertial frame when in reality two independent observers can never be in the same inertial frame? Isn't the observer in Einstein's elevator really a point observer? And determination of one's presence in a gravity field by observation of other inertial reference frames doesn't mean gravity is not a fictitious force?--Percy

But by definition, isn't an inertial reference frame restricted to a region of space small enough to have a negligible curvature? Wasn't that the intent of the Einstein thought experiment, that the person in the closed room couldn't tell whether he was in a gravity field or experiencing acceleration? That if you start giving him the means to detect the difference by extending his room (his frame) in size so that he can measure variance in acceleration then wouldn't that be a different thought experiment?--Percy

You appear to be right. I couldn't find Einstein's original wording, but I think I found a fair description of it in a chapter in book by John Norton titled Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy (Thought Experiments in Einstein's Work). On page 137 he has Einstein referring to a "homogenous gravitational field."So doesn't that render Barnes comments about tidal forces moot?Anyway, according to Norton (if you read on from page 137), Barnes' objections are not original. They were raised way back when Einstein first proposed the general theory almost a hundred years ago. But aren't these objections also beside the point? What does it matter if gravity manifests itself in the real (rather than ideal) world in a way that allows us to tell the difference between gravity and acceleration. When you simplify the issue down to the core, the two types of forces cannot be distinguished. That is what is important for a mathematical theory, and that is why gravity is legitimately indistinguishable from a fictitious force. That relativity has passed so many tests gives us great confidence in this interpretation.--Percy