The Great Universe Debate

[Wymsey]

What's the alternative to plastic, with it causing increasing issues particularly towards the ocean?

[Kopfkino]

41 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I'll be honest - this reads like someone trying to get intelligent design, a concept I have very little time for, in through the back door.

 

Interesting ideas and plausible, but equally plausible is the idea that this Universe developed in the way it did simply through chance.

 

Of course you have to sceptical of the author given the sponsorship of the article. Having read it, it's probably more useful to read his full length paper that this article is based on. Anyway I think it's a bit harsh to say it's window-dressing intelligent design.

 

I thought it was an interesting way of looking at things. As someone who couldn't really give two monkeys about any of the sciency stuff, reading different, if a bit weird, philosophical views is just more interesting. Tbh I see it as nonsense but most of philosophy is nonsense. 

[leicsmac]

7 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

 

Of course you have to sceptical of the author given the sponsorship of the article. Having read it, it's probably more useful to read his full length paper that this article is based on. Anyway I think it's a bit harsh to say it's window-dressing intelligent design.

 

I thought it was an interesting way of looking at things. As someone who couldn't really give two monkeys about any of the sciency stuff, reading different, if a bit weird, philosophical views is just more interesting. Tbh I see it as nonsense but most of philosophy is nonsense. 

Possibly so - I'd have to look at the full-length paper to get a better idea.

 

Also, as an economist, you're in no position to be calling any area of science nonsense.

[Benguin]

56 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I'll be honest - this reads like someone trying to get intelligent design, a concept I have very little time for, in through the back door.

 

Interesting ideas and plausible, but equally plausible is the idea that this Universe developed in the way it did simply through chance.

Do you place any particular bias on secular theories, that are plausible but have no substantive evidence, as opposed to theological views or else supernatural views that likewise are plausible but have no substantive evidence? Or do you have very little time for any view, regardless of its origin, if it does not have solid evidence?

 

I ask as I have gathered you are an atheist, or at the very least agnostic and I saw in another thread that you are well educated on the cosmos. It seems to me that anyone involved in this area of science, blindly follows theories that are secular and ignores theological ideas, even if the evidence is equal or better on the theological side, just because it is a theological theory.

 

Of course I'm not suggesting theological theories are worth your time being invested in however the same is true for a lot of secular theories, yet there is certainly a disparity in terms of where time, if any, is spent. 

[Buce]

42 minutes ago, Wymeswold fox said:

What's the alternative to plastic, with it causing increasing issues particularly towards the ocean?

 

http://bioplasticsinfo.com/alternatives-to-plastics/

[leicsmac]

6 minutes ago, Benguin said:

Do you place any particular bias on secular theories, that are plausible but have no substantive evidence, as opposed to theological views or else supernatural views that likewise are plausible but have no substantive evidence? Or do you have very little time for any view, regardless of its origin, if it does not have solid evidence?

 

I ask as I have gathered you are an atheist, or at the very least agnostic and I saw in another thread that you are well educated on the cosmos. It seems to me that anyone involved in this area of science, blindly follows theories that are secular and ignores theological ideas, even if the evidence is equal or better on the theological side, just because it is a theological theory.

 

Of course I'm not suggesting theological theories are worth your time being invested in however the same is true for a lot of secular theories, yet there is certainly a disparity in terms of where time, if any, is spent. 

Interesting questions and thanks for asking them!

 

I would say that the last of those in your first paragraph is true - evidence of whatever kind tends to be pretty key for me to believe something might be the case. Of course, with a lot of questions regarding the wider Universe, such hard evidence is very difficult to come by.

 

As a result of that (and I touched on this in my previous post), I would put equal plausibility on the idea of either chance or some kind of divine entity being responsible for the way the fundamental constants turned out - indeed, in my mind to speak of one may well be to speak of another, as such an entity would also govern what we know as chance and entropy, too.

 

FWIW I'm agnostic in that I'm willing to entertain the idea of a divine entity out there, but I also think that such an entity has zero bearing on our lives beyond the usual machinations of nature (which again it would govern) and would be indistinguishable from such, so I don't see the need to acknowledge and/or pay any kind of homage to it - why do so when such a being has no quantifiable targetted effect on those that do, other than to feel more at peace with yourself? I won't deny that there is often a strong secular/atheist bias within the scientific community regarding gestation and application of theories, but again I think this often down to people coming to the same conclusion as I - that there's zero distinguishable difference between the acts of a divine entity and that of what we'd call nature as far as humans can tell, so you may as well stick to the secular - Occam's Razor in effect.

[Buce]

3 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Interesting questions and thanks for asking them!

 

I would say that the last of those in your first paragraph is true - evidence of whatever kind tends to be pretty key for me to believe something might be the case. Of course, with a lot of questions regarding the wider Universe, such hard evidence is very difficult to come by.

 

As a result of that (and I touched on this in my previous post), I would put equal plausibility on the idea of either chance or some kind of divine entity being responsible for the way the fundamental constants turned out - indeed, in my mind to speak of one may well be to speak of another, as such an entity would also govern what we know as chance and entropy, too.

 

FWIW I'm agnostic in that I'm willing to entertain the idea of a divine entity out there, but I also think that such an entity has zero bearing on our lives beyond the usual machinations of nature (which again it would govern) and would be indistinguishable from such, so I don't see the need to acknowledge and/or pay any kind of homage to it - why do so when such a being has no quantifiable targetted effect on those that do, other than to feel more at peace with yourself? I won't deny that there is often a strong secular/atheist bias within the scientific community regarding gestation and application of theories, but again I think this often down to people coming to the same conclusion as I - that there's zero distinguishable difference between the acts of a divine entity and that of what we'd call nature as far as humans can tell, so you may as well stick to the secular - Occam's Razor in effect.

 

Going back to the article, I think the line of reasoning against Intelligent design (ie the presence of evil) was somewhat spurious. It is making the assumption that whatever entity may have designed the universe in such a way that it was conducive to life is a Deity in the religious sense. Accepting the possibility of Intelligent design is one thing - purporting to know what its intentions were is something entirely different.

[leicsmac]

8 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Going back to the article, I think the line of reasoning against Intelligent design (ie the presence of evil) was somewhat spurious. It is making the assumption that whatever entity may have designed the universe in such a way that it was conducive to life is a Deity in the religious sense. Accepting the possibility of Intelligent design is one thing - purporting to know what its intentions were is something entirely different.

 

This is a point I've made all along and before.

 

If we knew the will of a deity we'd all be deities ourselves, what makes us think we could possibly understand the machinations of such a being or even distinguish its actions from that of what we'd call nature?

[sylofox]

I want to know of Leicsmac's posts are infinite and what comes after them?

[The Doctor]

Tbh the fine tuning argument is a load of old crock, designed for the "magnets, you can't explain that" crowd. It's an unappealing answer but the reason the universe seems fine-tuned for life is because those are the conditions of the universe. Life developed to fit the constraints placed on it - like how if you were to freeze a puddle and cut it out of a pothole, why does it have that shape? Because that's the shape of the pothole it formed in, had it formed in a different pothole it's shape would be different.

[leicsmac]

7 hours ago, The Doctor said:

Tbh the fine tuning argument is a load of old crock, designed for the "magnets, you can't explain that" crowd. It's an unappealing answer but the reason the universe seems fine-tuned for life is because those are the conditions of the universe. Life developed to fit the constraints placed on it - like how if you were to freeze a puddle and cut it out of a pothole, why does it have that shape? Because that's the shape of the pothole it formed in, had it formed in a different pothole it's shape would be different.

I think the key thing here is often people underestimate how much time life and the Earth has had to adapt to the aforementioned constraints.

 

A little over 550 million years for complex life, and a little over four billion years for simple life...when you compare that to a single human lifetime, it's difficult to comprehend. Over that kind of timescale, it's not really difficult to see how life would change, given that we see it on a microscopic level (hello, antibiotic resistant-bacteria) over a much shorter timeline.

[Guest]

On 10/02/2018 at 07:03, The Doctor said:

Tbh the fine tuning argument is a load of old crock, designed for the "magnets, you can't explain that" crowd. It's an unappealing answer but the reason the universe seems fine-tuned for life is because those are the conditions of the universe. Life developed to fit the constraints placed on it - like how if you were to freeze a puddle and cut it out of a pothole, why does it have that shape? Because that's the shape of the pothole it formed in, had it formed in a different pothole it's shape would be different.

And we see that directly.

This is precisely how evolution works.

Just look at the creatures that reside near deep sea vents compared to creatures that live in deserts, compared to creatures that live in typical rain forests. All adapted to their environments.

Then look at variants of the same species that live in different ecosystems and the adaptations specific to them.