Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

Please Test This... Rebooted.


bornagainathiest

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, bornagainathiest said:
Posted October 31 By LimitedGrip
  On 10/31/2017 at 4:18 PM, sdelsolray said:

Premise 5 is shaky with regards to repeating patterns.  You have not demonstrated that time continues indefinitely, or the frequency of repetition within a temporal setting, or that patterns equally repeat themselves (compared to other patterns being repeated).

 

True, and since space is expanding, there is nothing to say that ALL patterns will repeat themselves. Indeed, at some point, wouldn't the energy in the universe be so spread out that stars, planets, and people cannot be formed? 

 

Good observation.  That seems to put a limit on pattern repetition.

 

Do repeating patterns have to be identical in all respects for intelligent carbon-based life to emerge more than once?

 

The answer is likely "no".

 

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-scientists-alternate-evolutionary-histories-tube.html#jCp

 

Here, scientists have demonstrated that many different evolutionary paths existed for the development of a certain critical protein found in carbon-based life.

 

The strong inference here is that exact repetition would not be needed for carbon-based life to emerge.  There were many different paths that would end up with the same result.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



Keeping this site online isn't free, so we need your support! Make a one-time donation or choose one of the recurrent patron options by clicking here.



True, and since space is expanding, there is nothing to say that ALL patterns will repeat themselves. Indeed, at some point, wouldn't the energy in the universe be so spread out that stars, planets, and people cannot be formed? 

 

Good observation.  That seems to put a limit on pattern repetition.

Do repeating patterns have to be identical in all respects for intelligent carbon-based life to emerge more than once?

The answer is likely "no".

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-scientists-alternate-evolutionary-histories-tube.html#jCp

Here, scientists have demonstrated that many different evolutionary paths existed for the development of a certain critical protein found in carbon-based life.

The strong inference here is that exact repetition would not be needed for carbon-based life to emerge.  There were many different paths that would end up with the same result.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sdelsolray,

 

LimitedGrip has a naive (but all too common) misunderstanding of inflationary theory. 

Inflation doesn't only describe the origin and evolution of this, our pocket universe.  It also describes the origin and evolution of many pocket universes.   So while he is correct about what will happen within our pocket universe - that matter and energy will become so spread out as to make pattern repetition impossible -  his comments do not not take into account the histories of these other pocket universes.  

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inflationary_Universe

 

p. 247.

 

After illustrating the beginning of the inflationary process with a simplified diagram, Guth goes on to explain further.

 

"The process does not stop here, but goes on forever, producing an infinite number of pocket universes at an ever-increasing rate."

"Thus a region of false vacuum [the inflating energy field] does not produce merely one universe, but instead produces an infinite number of universes!  In the cosmic shopping mall, an infinity of pocket universes can be purchased for the price of one.  Each pocket universe undergoes a big bang history, just as we believe the observed universe is doing.  Since each pocket universe goes through a process of inflation, it will become almost exactly flat.  For a period far longer than the 10 to 15 billion year history of our universe since the big bang, the evolution of each pocket universe will be indistinguishable from that of a flat universe."

 

The pattern of repetition I refer to in this thread is not a feature that we can observe within our pocket universe.

However, it is a feature of the evolution of the many pocket universes generated by inflation.  So LG is correct on a local scale, but incorrect across the wider scale of the inflationary multiverse.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perhaps a simple exercise in math will help?

 

Let's imagine that we can view the Inflationary process at work, from it's very beginning.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth

 

For the sake of ease, let's suppose that it takes one second for the very first pocket universe to be 'inflated'.  Since inflation proceeds exponentially, in the next second two pocket universes are inflated.  There are now three such universes in existence.  As the seconds tick by the rate of inflation accelerates, doubling and doubling and doubling... 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on.   Using a standard, 64-square chessboard as our guide and using a grain of rice to represent an individual pocket universe, how many pocket universes would be inflated in just 64 seconds?

 

 

Please note that the duration of this video is 120 seconds.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

Now, three more questions to expand your thinking.

 

1.  How old are you... in seconds?

 

2.  How old is the Earth... in seconds?

 

3.  How old is our pocket universe... in seconds?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BAA, I think you may be playing a little fast and loose with the numbers here.

 

Yes, the number of potential pocket universes is very large. Unthinkably large. But so are the number of variables in the patterns that you referred to in your original argument. For example, the pattern that I call "myself" would be slightly different if I had eaten something different for breakfast today, or in fact on any day of my life. The number of ways in which I could be different than I am is unthinkably large. Moreover, I would contend that this number probably can't be properly computed. I don't know whether or not the number of hypothetical pocket universes can be precisely calculated either. Do you know this number? But in the absence of even one of these two numbers, I'm not sure how we could actually state with any surety that any pattern will necessarily repeat itself over and over again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

BAA, I think you may be playing a little fast and loose with the numbers here.

 

Yes, the number of potential pocket universes is very large. Unthinkably large. But so are the number of variables in the patterns that you referred to in your original argument. For example, the pattern that I call "myself" would be slightly different if I had eaten something different for breakfast today, or in fact on any day of my life. The number of ways in which I could be different than I am is unthinkably large. Moreover, I would contend that this number probably can't be properly computed. I don't know whether or not the number of hypothetical pocket universes can be precisely calculated either. Do you know this number? But in the absence of even one of these two numbers, I'm not sure how we could actually state with any surety that any pattern will necessarily repeat itself over and over again.

 

Yes Disillusioned, I am playing fast and loose with the numbers.  Deliberately so.

 

I am massively understating them, for the sake of simplification and ease of understanding.

My wording was... "For the sake of ease, let's suppose that it takes one second for the very first pocket universe to be 'inflated'."  I used the interval of one second for two reasons.   Because the count of one second is easily understood by everyone and because I could post the video, which lasts for 120 seconds - an easily grasped length of time.  I had hoped to convey the idea that even using timescales that are easily understood, the number of pocket universes generated by inflation is so large that the repetition of patterns across the entire ensemble of them rapidly becomes realized.

 

I asked that we suppose it takes a second to inflate a pocket universe.  

But according to Inflationary theory, the actual interval in which this happens is a trillion, trillion, trillionth of a second.  An unimaginably short duration and one that the human mind finds difficult to grasp.  In the next trillion, trillion, trillionth of a second two pocket universes are inflated.  Then, using this doubling interval, the exponentially-accelerating cascade of pocket universe inflation follows the pattern we see in the video.   Hence the three questions about your age, the age of the Earth and the age of our pocket universe.  They are meant to get you thinking about how many pocket universes inflation would generate if it had been running at the artificially (and glacially) slow rate of one per second.

 

If inflation had started when you were born and has been exponentially accelerating since then, how many pocket universes would it have inflated by now?

If inflation had started when the Earth was formed and has been exponentially accelerating since then, how many pocket universes would it have inflated by now?

If inflation had started when our pocket universe came to be and has been exponentially accelerating since then, how many pocket universes would it have inflated by now?

 

But, both the Copernican Principle (CP) and General Relativity (GR) forbid us from assuming that inflation began here... with our pocket universe.

Both CP and GR explicitly require us to drop the notion of a fixed and absolute frame of reference, based upon only what we observe.  Once we drop that notion we cannot and must not assume that inflation began here, with us.  To do that would be to elevate our status (we are the first) above all other observers of the inflationary process.  The outcome of this is that we must conclude that the process of inflation began an arbitrarily long time before it caused our particular pocket universe to come into existence.  We must conclude that the count of time and the inflation of space did NOT begin 13.72 billion years ago, in what we now call our observable universe.  Instead we must conclude that inflation began exponentially accelerating an unimaginably long time before it inflated our particular pocket universe.  

 

Now I can move on to answering you, D.

Specifically, the point you make about the number of variables in just this one pocket universe.  About how this must be so high as to preclude the possibility of pattern repetition across the multiverse of pocket universes.  

 

Your argument would be valid, but for one vital point.  Elapsed time here vs the elapsed time of the Inflationary Process.

If we take your breakfast as the pattern under investgation,  the key question we need to ask is this.  How long did it take our pocket universe to assemble it's matter and energy into that pattern?  Or, putting it another way, how much time has to elapse for the stars and galaxies of this pocket universe to forge the chemical elements needed to make your breakfast?  A sensible answer, based upon what we know about nucleosynthesis of the elements, the life cycle of stars, the formation of planets, abiogenesis and evolution, would be of the order of billions of years.  

 

So, that is the elapsed time it took our pocket universe to assemble the pattern of your breakfast.  Billions of years.

In the meantime, what has inflation been doing?  In the artificially slow example (one universe per second) I gave earlier, when inflation runs for just 64 seconds it inflates

18 ,446 ,744, 073, 709, 551, 615 pocket universes.  And that's also setting inflation running from a standing start.  As I mentioned above, both the CP and GR tell us not to even assume that inflation has been running for the 13.72 billion-year lifetime of our pocket universe.  Instead they require us to assume that it has been exponentially accelerating for much, much, much longer than that tiny interval of time.

 

No pocket universe can assemble the pattern of matter and energy that is your breakfast faster than inflation can make pocket universes.

 

Putting it another way, inflation can make more universes than the possible number of variables in any single pocket universe.

 

No matter how high the number of variables in any given pocket universe, the speed of exponential inflation will always exceed it.

 

It will exceed it to such a great extent that the patterns in any given pocket universe will be repeated across the multiverse.

.

.

.

Our Cosmic Habitat, by Martin Rees

Chapter 9 : The First Millisecond

Page 132
"Within about 10-36 seconds - a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second - a microscopic patch could have inflated large enough to encompass everything we now see, and to establish the fine-tuned balance between gravitational and kinetic energy."


Page 133  (Rees does not appeal to pocket universes, but instead simply postulates what would be if our pocket universe were infinitely large.) 
"In this expanse of space, far beyond the horizon of our observations, the combinatorial possibilities are so immense that close replicas of our Earth and biosphere would surely exist, however improbable life itself may be. Indeed, in a sufficiently colossal cosmos there would, somwhere, be exact replicas not just of our Earth, but of the entire domain (containing billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars) that lies within the range of our telescopes."

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks BAA for that clarification. There are a few issues that remain, however.

 

First, I want to apologise for the brevity of my previous post. I've been very busy in the past few weeks, and I haven't had the time to properly treat these issues. When I said that you were playing fast and loose with the numbers, I wasn't referring to the number of pocket universes. I was referring to the number of possible configurations of our universe. Let me explain what I mean. You stated in your previous post that in a 64 second interval, inflation can inflate 18 ,446 ,744, 073, 709, 551, 615 pocket universes. I understand that this was given as an extreme lower bound, and as it is, it is certainly a large number. Moreover, the true number is much larger than this. Fine. You also said the following:

 

Quote

No pocket universe can assemble the pattern of matter and energy that is your breakfast faster than inflation can make pocket universes.

 

Putting it another way, inflation can make more universes than the possible number of variables in any single pocket universe.

 

No matter how high the number of variables in any given pocket universe, the speed of exponential inflation will always exceed it.

 

It will exceed it to such a great extent that the patterns in any given pocket universe will be repeated across the multiverse.

 

 

I don't think that this is correct. Let's move from my breakfast to a slightly more illustrative example. I live in Ottawa, which has a population of about one million people. This is too large of a number for me to treat. I have family that lives in Kingston, about 2 hours drive away. Kingston has a population of a little more than 100 thousand people. A very small city, but it will serve to make my point.

 

At this moment in time, every person who lives in Kingston is in a specific location. We could think of them as being in a specific order. We might ask how many ways there are to arrange these people. The answer to this question would involve combinatorics. A brief digression for the benefit of any lurkers who are not familiar with discrete mathematics seems appropriate.

 

The number of ways that there are to arrange n items in a specific order is called the number of permutations of n items. This number grows very very very quickly as n increases. It grows much more quickly than even an exponential function grows. For the sake of illustration, lets say I'm arranging the letters A, B, and C. There are 6 ways I can do this. They are delineated below:

 

ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA

 

The way to count how many ways there are to do this is to consider that first I have to choose where A goes. I have 3 options. Then I have to choose where B goes. I have 2 options. Finally I have to choose where C goes. By now I only have 1 option left. 3x2x1=6, the total number of options. 3x2x1 is called a factorial, and it is denoted 3!.  Similarly, if I have 4 items I have 4!=4x3x2x1 ways of arranging them. 4!=24. Still not very large, but if I go up to just 10 items, I'm already at 10! options, which is well over 3 million. If I go to 20, I have roughly 2.4x10^18 options. This is two and a half billion billion options, with just 20 objects. That is rapid growth.

 

Back to Kingston. Thinking of each person as an object, and asking how many ways there are to arrange them in a specific order, we need to calculate 100000!. This is not easy to do. Most calculators can't do it. The answer is roughly 2.8x10^456573. That is, 28 followed by 456572 zeros. The average single-spaced typed page contains about 3000 characters. That means that to write this number down, you would need over 150 pages. This number is big. Really big. Unthinkably big. Let's call the number Q for the sake of simplicity.

 

Now. Consider this: what are the odds of having all of the people in Kingston arranged precisely the way that the are currently arranged at this moment in time? It seems like, if everything is left to chance, the odds of this happening would be 1 in Q. But if an exact copy of the planet Earth is to be produced, then in that copy everyone in Kingston must be in the exact position that the are currently in, right now in our universe. Otherwise it would not be an exact copy. Statistically, we couldn't expect that to happen again until we had 2xQ pocket universes. Do we have that many? Maybe. But this is an extreme lower bound for the odds of reproducing an exact copy of Earth. There are about 8 billion people on Earth. 8 billion factorial is a number that is so large that I literally don't have a way of calculating it. I suspect you would need a supercomputer. But this webpage seems to indicate that the number of digits in 1 billion factorial is about 8.5 billion. Remember how 456000 digits took 150 pages to write down? Yeah.

 

And even this doesn't begin to describe what would be required to produce an exact copy of Earth. We're still only considering where people are located at this exact moment in time. For an exact copy, the locations of all people at all moments in time would have to be considered. And this is saying nothing about what they are wearing, what they ate for breakfast, how many hairs are on their heads, how long their last shower was...

 

...and we would also have to consider the animals, and the plants, and so on...

 

This is what I meant earlier when I said that I couldn't even begin to think about calculating the number of ways that I could be different than I am. The number of ways that the Earth could be different than it is is so unimaginably large that we literally can't calculate it. We don't have the means. And if I existed in a different Earth, then I would be a different person. So there is also no way to calculate the number of ways that I could be different.

 

This leaves us with at least one of the two quantities that are required for an estimate of the probability of repetition decidedly incalculable. I would posit that, since factorials grow faster than exponentials, it may even be larger than the potential number of pocket universes. It isn't the speed at which a particular arrangement was reached in this universe that matters, it is the total number of possible arrangements that could be reached. This is why I think that it very well might be the case that there are not enough potential pocket universes to allow for the conclusion that you want to obtain.

 

There are some other more philosophical issues that I want to raise as well, but that's unfortunately all I have time for at the moment. I will be back!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, disillusioned said:

...

The number of ways that there are to arrange n items in a specific order is called the number of permutations of n items. This number grows very very very quickly as n increases. It grows much more quickly than even an exponential function grows. For the sake of illustration, lets say I'm arranging the letters A, B, and C. There are 6 ways I can do this. They are delineated below:

 

ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA

 

The way to count how many ways there are to do this is to consider that first I have to choose where A goes. I have 3 options. Then I have to choose where B goes. I have 2 options. Finally I have to choose where C goes. By now I only have 1 option left. 3x2x1=6, the total number of options. 3x2x1 is called a factorial, and it is denoted 3!.  Similarly, if I have 4 items I have 4!=4x3x2x1 ways of arranging them. 4!=24. Still not very large, but if I go up to just 10 items, I'm already at 10! options, which is well over 3 million. If I go to 20, I have roughly 2.4x10^18 options. This is two and a half billion billion options, with just 20 objects. That is rapid growth.

...

 

And that is only calculating in variable in one dimension (i.e., width).  Add other variables such as height, length, distance, radians, orientation, along with the atomic element composition , molecular formations, energy states and their locations as regards each person, etc. and the number becomes much larger.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many thanks for this input, guys!  :)

 

This is exactly the kind of rigorous testing I was hoping for.

Now, before I respond in any kind of detail to your words, let me just explain why the focus of my argument has been only on Inflationary theory.  There are two prime reasons.  First, it's the theory of choice for Christian apologists because it offers them something that other, rival cosmological theories do not.  A gap into which the Christian god can be inserted.  This gap is generated by inflation's inability to describe it's own starting mechanism.  It can explain what happens after the inflationary process is initiated, but it cannot say what initiates the process.

 

This paper is used by Christian apologists to generate the gap into which they insert their god.   https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012

A close inspection reveals that they are playing the same game with inflation's starting point as they are playing with the initial singularity from which the inflationary energy field is supposed to emerge at the beginning of time and space.  In both cases they take science's inability to describe the natural mechanisms involved as the signal to insert their supernatural mechanism of choice - the God of the Bible.  But a breakdown in science's ability to describe a natural phenomenon isn't that same as an actual ex nihilo beginning of the cosmos.  There is chicanery at work here.  (I'm still investigating the interface between Christian apologetics the physics of the initial singularity, btw.) 

 

A brief overview of other contending cosmological theories readily shows why the Christians do not use them.

Stephen Hawking's No Boundary theory offers a complete and entirely natural solution to the origin of the universe.  Steinhardt's Ekpyrotic theory is cyclic and fully eternal, totally removing the need for a creator.  This is also the case with Penrose's Conformal Cyclic theory.  Aguirre's modification of Inflation removes the incompleteness of it's past boundary, making it past and future eternal.   None of the above give the Christians what they need to reconcile Genesis with cosmology - a starting point.  Hence the intensity with which the apologists focus on and fight for Inflation.

 

The second reason I'm focusing only on Inflation in this thread is because I perceived that it offered me a way to demolish the Fine-Tuned Universe argument.

My reasoning went like this.  If I could validly argue that Inflation causes the duplication of patterns of matter and energy then I could employ that to demonstrate that the Fine-Tuned Universe argument - which is used to show Earth's uniqueness - when used in combination with Inflation, actually demonstrates the opposite.  That an inifinity of locations across the Inflationary multiverse MUST BE as finely-tuned as the planet Earth.  That an infinity of Earth's, populated by duplicates of ourselves, are the inevitable result of adding Fine-Tuning to Inflation.   

 

The end result of this infinite duplication, when taken in the context of Christian theology, leads to the following conclusion.

If Jesus died only once and only for the sins of the humans on this Earth, then God has created a infinite number of other Finely-Tuned Earth's that are all populated by humans like us, but whom God has predestined to damnation and eternal torment .  These others are born without hope of salvation because the savior has saved only us.  Also, these others are damned by,  not by the rebellion of their respective Adams and Eves of their respective Earths, by the rebellion of the Adam and Eve of this Earth.  Furthermore, since history unfolds on the other Earths in exactly the same way it unfolded here, these other humans will have the appearance of everything we have had here - but none of the substance.

 

Just as we were given the Law, the Prophets, the Messiah, the Apostles and the Bible, so they will also have all of these things.

But all the other Christs who die on all the other crosses of all these other Earths won't be THE one and only sacrifice for sin that God the Father requires.  That sacrifice happened only here.  Or did it?  Since Christianity functions on faith and not on evidence, how can we ever know if our Jesus Christ is the one who has the power to save people from hell?   The answer is that we can't know - we can only go by faith and believe we are saved. 

 

Anyway, that was how I'd aimed my argument to run.

Thanks to the testing it's receiving here it looks as if it might not pan out.  But that's just fine by me.  There's little point in putting something up for testing if one's not prepared for it to fail the test.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, regarding your input about factorials vs exponentials and the variables that seem to make duplication impossible.

 

Before I go ahead I must fess up to falling short of providing an adequate response.

Here, an 'adequate response' would where I take your points and respond to them, using my understanding of why duplication is realized and explaining why this is so.  Sadly, I cannot do that.  My understanding of why this is so is not up to the task.  I can't do the math and I don't have the smarts to understand why cosmologists and theoretical physicists tell us that duplication would happen.  All I can do is report what they have declared to be so and then leave you to pick through the cited material for yourselves.  Yes, I do see that I'm now in danger of committing the fallacy of appealing to authority.  As an amateur astronomer delving into exotic stuff like cosmology, that was always going to be a reef that the ship of my argument could easily run aground on.  So be it.  That's the price one pays when putting an argument up for testing.

 

Having made this declaration, I'll now take some time to collate the materiel I intend to cite.

 

Thank you for your patience.  

 

BAA.

 

 

 

p.s.

I will be joining a science forum in the near future, with the aim of expanding my understanding of cosmology.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh and btw, these verses from Romans 8 are relevant to my attempted argument.  

 

Romans 8:19-23 New International Version (NIV)

 

19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 

20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 

21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 

23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 

                                                                        

 

This page... http://biblehub.com/interlinear/romans/8.htm 

...and the meanings given for the Koine words ktiseos and ktisis here... 

http://biblehub.com/greek/strongs_2937.htm 

...and here... http://biblehub.com/greek/2937.htm ...prompt me to think along these lines.

 

1. 

If the whole of creation is in bondage to decay (because of sin) then this would surely mean ALL of these duplicate Earths are in bondage too and their inhabitants can only be liberated and redeemed by Jesus Christ.  But since scripture also says that his sacrifice was made once only, whichever Earth this applies to is the only one where God's grace has the power to save.  Therefore, God's grace is supremely impotent and ineffectual across the infinite sweep of His creation.  He can only save the inhabitants of one Earth, because that is the only location where He incarnated Himself as His own Son, to sacrifice Himself to Himself and to satisfy His own inflexible requirement for blood.

 

2.

But if scripture means that only this pocket universe and only this Earth is in bondage to sin, decay and death, then are all of these other Earths untouched by sin?  

Is our world the only one of many planets to fall, as per the Earth in C.S. Lewis' space trilogy?  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Trilogy

 

3.

If Christian apologists happily add the Fine-Tuned Universe argument to Inflationary theory, then they can't cherry pick from the consequences of their decision.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, once the Inflationary process begins, it never ends.  In the parlance of cosmology, it is future eternal.  For the Christians this has two very unpalatable consequences.   If God's grace does extend to every other Earth and not just this one, then Jesus' sacrifice needs to be made not just once, but an infinite number of times, forever onward.  Which would make the final chapters of Revelation apply only to this particular pocket universe.  Here God is worshiped in glory in the New Jerusalem, having finished His work here, once and for all.   Meanwhile, He's also increasingly busy across the Multiverse sacrificing Himself to Himself on an infinity of other earths.  

 

Or, if His grace is only good for one Earth, then even when He winds things up here, He's still using Inflation to create an infinite supply of damned humans to feed the flames of hell.   Having saved just one Earth,  He chooses not save any others.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BAA, I appreciate your intellectual honesty. I'm looking forward to seeing the material that you cite regarding the duplication hypothesis. I'm not really up on cosmology myself, so this is a learning opportunity for me as well. I always appreciate the effort that you put into your posts.

 

A thought that I'm currently having is to question whether or not actual duplication is necessary in order to combat the essence of the fine-tuning argument. I'm not sure that it would really be necessary to have an exact copy of planet Earth to show that our universe has not been "fine-tuned". Perhaps it would suffice to show that conscious life in some form must have emerged multiple times. This would not be as strong of a rebuttal, but it seems to me that it might rest on a stronger footing.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

38 minutes ago, disillusioned said:

BAA, I appreciate your intellectual honesty. I'm looking forward to seeing the material that you cite regarding the duplication hypothesis. I'm not really up on cosmology myself, so this is a learning opportunity for me as well. I always appreciate the effort that you put into your posts.

 

A thought that I'm currently having is to question whether or not actual duplication is necessary in order to combat the essence of the fine-tuning argument. I'm not sure that it would really be necessary to have an exact copy of planet Earth to show that our universe has not been "fine-tuned". Perhaps it would suffice to show that conscious life in some form must have emerged multiple times. This would not be as strong of a rebuttal, but it seems to me that it might rest on a stronger footing.

 

Thanks, Disillusioned.

 

Yes, I see what you're saying.

However, the Christian apologists who employ the fine-tuning argument have a strong rebuttal that they'll have no hesitation in using...  'What conscious life is there but us?"  

But if it can be shown that the very science they use to make their fine-tuned argument inevitably leads to their duplication on duplicate Earths...?

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok Disillusioned,

 

I plan to break up the material I cite into posts dedicated to the particular scientists material that I cite .

On Wednesday I quoted from Martin Rees' book, Our Cosmic Habitat.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/435161.Our_Cosmic_Habitat  I haven't read this, so the quote I lifted from it came from elsewhere.  (Sorry, can't quite recall the whereabouts.)  Now, there appears to be a contradiction between my Wednesday quote and what the GoodReads page says.  

 

 Page 133  
"In this expanse of space, far beyond the horizon of our observations, the combinatorial possibilities are so immense that close replicas of our Earth and biosphere would surely exist, however improbable life itself may be. Indeed, in a sufficiently colossal cosmos there would, somewhere, be exact replicas not just of our Earth, but of the entire domain (containing billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars) that lies within the range of our telescopes."

 

GoodReads quote about Our Cosmic Habitat

 

 Rees explores the notion that our universe is just a part of a vast ''multiverse, '' or ensemble of universes, in which most of the other universes are lifeless. What we call the laws of nature would then be no more than local bylaws, imposed in the aftermath of our own Big Bang. In this scenario, our cosmic habitat would be a special, possibly unique universe where the prevailing laws of physics allowed life to emerge.

 

I'm sorry D, but not having read this book I can't make an informed explanation for this apparent contradiction.

I don't know quite why Rees says there would exact replicas of Earth, whereas GoodReads describe him saying that there are special and unique habitats in the cosmos.  These seem to be mutually-exclusive statements.  Perhaps the only information I can offer to resolve this relates to the different types of multiverse that have been proposed.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse  

 

If Rees is using Tegmark's or Greene's classification, then that might explain the apparent contradiction. 

A Tegmark type 1 multiverse does yield infinite replication.   As does Greene's Quilted Multiverse.   Both are the simplest kind, being infinitely-large extensions of the conditions that hold within our own observable universe.  If the GoodReads summary is referring to another kind from Rees' book, that might account for the contradiction.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • Moderator

I'm bumping this to scour over Mark's arguments some more. This last post was literally written shortly before his passing. I'm sure he'd be happy to know that some of us are very interested in his perspective and would like to see it live on. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Moderator
On 11/19/2017 at 4:54 PM, bornagainathiest said:

 

Thanks, Disillusioned.

 

Yes, I see what you're saying.

However, the Christian apologists who employ the fine-tuning argument have a strong rebuttal that they'll have no hesitation in using...  'What conscious life is there but us?"  

But if it can be shown that the very science they use to make their fine-tuned argument inevitably leads to their duplication on duplicate Earths...?

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

 

 

This is all seems true enough. The apologist's can't have it both ways. They can't try and utilize scientific theory to suggest the universe is fine tuned and then reject the implications that stem from the same theoretical avenue that they themselves have taken. It seems foolish and silly to even get into how something like a multiverse would apply to the christian mythology and jesus. But Mark was just doing here something similar to what he and I did about the issue of freewill verses determinism, framed against the IRP. 

 

When did it all begin? 

 

There's no fixed answer. Being that there's no fixed answer, we can assume that nothing is happening for the first time. This experience may not be unique nor a one off event. Along with that would come ramifications if we assumed for a moment that the NT was true and jesus was one fixed historical personality as presented in the bible. He too would be nothing more than a replication of past events, whether divine or mundane. 

 

Oh, but isn't this just theoretical?

 

Obviously, but just as obviously so is the fact that it's the apologist's themselves who have tried stepping into the theoretical domain of science to try and make religious claims. Which is the very point at the base of this thread. Science, and theoretical science is precisely fair game and there's no reason to shy off or pussy foot around that fact, IMO. If they want to take their deceptive games to the theoretical cosmological model arena, then let them play by the rules of that arena, and fall flat there.....

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure that the universe even is fine tuned.  I've seen a number of arguments on youtube that suggested it's an illusion.  When a raindrop hits you during a rain storm that raindrop wasn't fine tuned.  We can calculate astronomical odds of a raindrop starting from an origin miles in the sky and landing on a 1 mm by 1 mm target based on all the forces being unknown.  But the forces all had values in the moment of time when they were influencing the raindrop.  From the raindrop's perspective there was only one place it could have landed with all those exact forces applied to the fall.  Yet no mind was in control or planed for it.

 

Going back over BAA's original argument I think I see what he was getting at.  (Though he was a detailed-oriented person while I have always been big-picture oriented, so I apologize in advance if I flub this.)  Our universe ended up with specific ways that physics operate.  We call those the "laws of physics".  Believers also call them "God fine tuning our universe".  Multiverse theory means the dice were thrown many times and we ended up in just one of those random events.  I don't know enough about cosmology to comment on multiverse theory (though I do love one one version) but I don't think it matters if we live in the only universe or just one out of trillions.  That the laws of physics came out one way does not imply that a mind made that happen any more than a raindrop would need to be flown by a mind in order to hit you.

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderator
22 hours ago, mymistake said:

Going back over BAA's original argument I think I see what he was getting at.  (Though he was a detailed-oriented person while I have always been big-picture oriented, so I apologize in advance if I flub this.)  Our universe ended up with specific ways that physics operate.  We call those the "laws of physics".  Believers also call them "God fine tuning our universe".  Multiverse theory means the dice were thrown many times and we ended up in just one of those random events.  I don't know enough about cosmology to comment on multiverse theory (though I do love one one version) but I don't think it matters if we live in the only universe or just one out of trillions.  That the laws of physics came out one way does not imply that a mind made that happen any more than a raindrop would need to be flown by a mind in order to hit you.

 

Yes, I think that's the gist of it. 

 

Mark seemed to be pointing out that what the apologist's are claiming is fine tuned, is simply the natural order according to how the cards fell. He could establish that. And then he could move forward and show how what is natural, but the apologist's claim is fine tuned, is something that more than likely didn't just start with our universe and wouldn't stop with our universe either. So the special and privileged aspect of their apologetic's takes another big hit. Further down the line, one could imagine how that relates to something like the bible stories and jesus. Neither the first time taking place, nor a one off event, per the same science the apologist's are leaning on in order to try and appeal to a fine tuned argument. 

 

It looks to me like one more of those all too common issues where an apologist will start digging themselves into a hole that only gets deeper and deeper as they go along. 

 

I just can't get over the fact that Mark started formulating this argument and then suddenly died in a random car crash about 10 days later. It's certainly left unfinished as of his last post. So perhaps the more valid or useful aspects of the argument can be used going forward and some advancements may be made in completing what he started here. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 I just can't get over the fact that Mark started formulating this argument and then suddenly died in a random car crash about 10 days later. It's certainly left unfinished as of his last post.  

 

 

BAA was always in the middle of formulating something.  If he had felt this project was finished he would have started a new one.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.