CHOOSING AMONG THE EXPLANATIONS
alschroeder on Sept. 28, 2014
Continuing down the list of six possible explanations for the “anthropic” coincidences in nature which allow intelligent life to evolve…largely inspired and derived from George F.R. Ellis' brilliant brief book, BEFORE THE BEGINNING. He is NOT responsible, though, for the liberties I've taken with his logic or how I've chosen to illustrate it.
Well.
Believe me, I respect and acknowledge any who might disagree with my conclusions. I freely acknowledge that science cannot distinguish between pure chance and design that works within the laws of nature–nor can I claim this is rock-solid unassailable proof. It is, as I said on the outset–a reasonable case.
But any who might be new here, go back in the archives and look at the various coincidences mentioned under Coincidence One, Two, etc…and start to add them up.
The sextillion times a sextillion figure was taken from Smolin's estimate on the chances of stars forming. I deliberately didn't use the larger estimates such as Penrose's or the estimates about the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant. This was enough for my purposes.
In my opinion only, the universe doesn't explain itself. Chance is logically unassailable (I can't PROVE that it didn't just happen to fall that way) but the specific constraints on the developement of life and especially intelligent life cries out for a “special explanation”.
Anyone who believes in pure chance as an explanation has much GREATER faith in chance than Thomas More, Mother Theresa, or C.S. Lewis had faith in God, in my opinion.
Many will have problems with the idea of an Originating Intelligence on the grounds that it is “Supernatural”, an emotionally-laden word. “Overnatural” might be better–that the laws of physics are a matter of deliberate choice, intelligent choice–by SOMETHING over natural law.
Note that a Designer MIGHT elect to work through any explanation–many-worlds, the Hartle-Hawking model, etc. (St. Augustine realized a Creator might work through any method. Notso many modern physicists, who are better at physics than philosophy.) But, in the words of Martin Gardner in the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, no less…
"The stark truth is that there is not the slightest shred of reliable evidence that there is any universe other than the one we are in. No multiverse theory has so far provided a prediction that can be tested. In my laymans opinion they are all frivolous fantasies. As far as we can tell, universes are not as plentiful as even two blackberries. Surely the conjecture that there is just one universe and its Creator is infinitely simpler and easier to believe than that there are countless billions upon billions of worlds, constantly increasing in number and created by nobody. I can only marvel at the low state to which todays philosophy of science has fallen.“
Next, we'll look at some objections to the Design theory–starting with Dawkins' recent ”Ultimate 747" argument next week, and then go onto the problem of evil–and see if we can find additional confirmation for our (admittedly tentative and slight) argument in favor of Design–in explaining additional phenomena.
This strip isn't over. But it's downhill from here. Thanks for sticking with me to this, the 50th strip.
alschroeder at 11:33AM, Sept. 28, 2014
Tupapayon: I'm with you when you get into stuff like Velkiovsky (who tried to explain every Old Testament miracle via really, really, REALLY unlikely science) or more recently, Frank Tipler, in his PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY and its follow-up, who tried to do ditto for Christianity. Both had theology as bad as their science.
alschroeder at 11:29AM, Sept. 28, 2014
Kimluster: traditional theology often talks about other realities; Heaven/Hell, Olympus/Tartarus, the nine worlds of Norse Mythology...I have nothing against Universality as a concept. I have everything against it as an EXPLANATION, explaining what we know by ten zillion things we can neither access nor be sure are there.
Nutster at 11:01AM, Sept. 28, 2014
Congratulations on winning the category. I have recommended this train of thought to a few people to review, including my brother, who is working on an alternate model of the universe that probably explains dark energy (depends on the math); don't know about dark matter yet.
tupapayon at 10:55AM, Sept. 28, 2014
I was thinking of giving my two cents... Anyone with change of a dollar? Need two pennies... No?... Anyways... I'm not good with science since I was introduced to calculus... But I do like the facts, discoveries, theories, and all those debates... But I find kind of annoying those who try to explain the Bible with science and science with the Bible... The Bible is about spirituality, mostly... I'm liking this work of art and information and opinion and whatever else...
KimLuster at 10:40AM, Sept. 28, 2014
Nice breakdown! Of course there's a possibility of both a Creator and Universality (hopefully much less than sextillion sextillion), but does that go against Occam's Razor even more? :)