Fine Tuning Of The Universe

[Guest]

This is a newer video I ran across from William Lane Craig. 7 minutes long. Very interesting. I've seen other videos on this topic. This covers everything quickly and is put together well. What are your thoughts?

https://youtu.be/UpIiIaC4kRA

Edited May 11, 2016 by Guest

[Era Might]

I think his argument and presentation tell us more about science than it does about a God. Is God a scientist, or as he puts it, a fine-tuner? He also assumes that the universe is not hostile to life, but even this fine-tuned universe is remarkably unconcerned about this nobody called man. We still get blasted with disasters, disease, catastrophe, etc. And we've only been part of the universe, in our present form, very briefly. If there is a God, I don't think seeing him as a scientist gets us any closer to knowing him. If he's such a fine-tuner, he sure goes about doing things the long and hard way.

[Guest]

Here's a rebuttal video by Martymer 81. There's one or two curse words in this video.

https://youtu.be/CJ62UoO0gw4

Just now, Era Might said:

If there is a God, I don't think seeing him as a scientist gets us any closer to knowing him.

I agree with this. I think we can only begin to know him through Jesus. I think the Jewish people in the Old Testament attempted to know him but were a ways off. Evidence for this was when Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery instead of letting her be stoned to death. When he told us to turn the other cheek when struck. Or him telling the Father to forgive the very people beating him and crucifying him. Although can God the Father be a scientist? I don't think it's impossible. And while seeing him that way might not initially lead people closer to knowing him it will show that he exist. Which is a big step in coming to know him.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Guest

[Era Might]

13 minutes ago, Josh said:

Here's a rebuttal video by Martymer 81. There's one or two curse words in this video.

https://youtu.be/CJ62UoO0gw4

I agree with this. I think we can only begin to know him through Jesus. I think the Jewish people in the Old Testament attempted to know him but were a ways off. Evidence for this was when Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery instead of letting her be stoned to death. When he told us to turn the other cheek when struck. Or him telling the Father to forgive the very people beating him and crucifying him. Although can God the Father be a scientist? I don't think it's impossible. And while seeing him that way might not initially lead people closer to knowing him it will show that he exist. Which is a big step in coming to know him.

Can God be said to exist? At least the mystical conception of God would be a God who is beyond existence. I would say the opposite...the only way to begin to know God is to show that he does not exist. It's the Cloud of Unknowing that we pass through to know God.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Era Might

[Guest]

Just now, Era Might said:

It's the Cloud of Unknowing that we pass through to know God.

Amen. I've experienced it firsthand.

[Guest]

"We take for granted how our mind puts everything together. When I woke up this morning, I was in the middle of a dream that seemed as real as everyday life. I remember looking out over a crowded port with people in the foreground. Further out, there were ships engaged in battle. And still further out to sea was a battleship with radar antenna going around. My mind had somehow created this spatio-temporal experience out of electrochemical information. I could even feel the pebbles under my feet, merging this 3D world with my “inner” sensations. Life as we know it is defined by this spatial-temporal logic, which traps us in the universe with which we’re familiar. Like my dream, the experimental results of quantum theory confirm that the properties of particles in the “real” world are also observer-determined.

 

Loren Eiseley once wrote: “While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors. ‘He doesn’t know,’ my friend whispered excitedly. ‘He’s passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He’s in another play; he doesn’t see us. He doesn’t know. Maybe it’s happening right now to us.’”

 

Like the moth, we can’t see beyond the footlights. The universe is just life’s launching-pad. But it won’t be rockets that take us the next step. The long-sought Theory of Everything was merely missing a component that was too close for us to have noticed. Some of the thrill that came with the announcement that the human genome had been mapped or the idea that we’re close to understanding the Big Bang rests in our innate human desire for completeness and totality. But most of these comprehensive theories fail to take into account one crucial factor: God is creating them. It’s the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things. And therein lies the great expanse of our oversight, that until now, science hasn’t confronted the one thing that’s at once most familiar and most mysterious – consciousness.

 

Reality is simply an information system that involves our consciousness. Until we understand ourselves, we will continue to blunder from light to light, unable to discern the great play that blazes under the opera tent."

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2016 by Guest

[Era Might]

3 minutes ago, Josh said:

"We take for granted how our mind puts everything together. When I woke up this morning, I was in the middle of a dream that seemed as real as everyday life. I remember looking out over a crowded port with people in the foreground. Further out, there were ships engaged in battle. And still further out to sea was a battleship with radar antenna going around. My mind had somehow created this spatio-temporal experience out of electrochemical information. I could even feel the pebbles under my feet, merging this 3D world with my “inner” sensations. Life as we know it is defined by this spatial-temporal logic, which traps us in the universe with which we’re familiar. Like my dream, the experimental results of quantum theory confirm that the properties of particles in the “real” world are also observer-determined.

 

Loren Eiseley once wrote: “While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors. ‘He doesn’t know,’ my friend whispered excitedly. ‘He’s passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He’s in another play; he doesn’t see us. He doesn’t know. Maybe it’s happening right now to us.’”

 

Like the moth, we can’t see beyond the footlights. The universe is just life’s launching-pad. But it won’t be rockets that take us the next step. The long-sought Theory of Everything was merely missing a component that was too close for us to have noticed. Some of the thrill that came with the announcement that the human genome had been mapped or the idea that we’re close to understanding the Big Bang rests in our innate human desire for completeness and totality. But most of these comprehensive theories fail to take into account one crucial factor: We’re creating them. It’s the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things. And therein lies the great expanse of our oversight, that until now, science hasn’t confronted the one thing that’s at once most familiar and most mysterious – consciousness.

 

Reality is simply an information system that involves our consciousness. Until we understand ourselves, we will continue to blunder from light to light, unable to discern the great play that blazes under the opera tent."

 

 

 

Wow. Real talk. We are objects in our own observations, or actors in our own play. We can't imagine a world independent of our observation.

[Pia Jesu]

I was also reminded that even the most brilliant intellectuals cannot answer fundamental Who? What? Why? questions about the nature of reality, the origins of the Universe or life's meaning.  Craig's science-based analysis is not meaningless, however, but forces attention on the truth that explanations "in words" belong to thoughts and language and not to actuality.  Its (illusory) subjectivity comes no closer to revealing the great unified harmony that underlies all the phenomena of existence than the recent idea I had about pizza being able to satisfy the craving/hunger pains for actually eating one.  Furthermore, the analysis is essentially irrelevant in the attainment of spiritual freedom.  Final "answers" cannot be reached by way of argument or any so-called facts.  Thus, the "Cloud of Unknowing"--and basic tenets of my Zen Buddhist leanings--tell me that Reality is a condition that transcends all opposites.  In order to "grasp" it, we need to move beyond patterns of ordinary thought processes and break down familiar distinctions and differences.  Moving away from self-ness or temporary individuality might well help remove us as the "actors in our own play" Era describes.

 

[Guest]

[Pia Jesu]

Bragg's quote is provocative!  Similarly, Einstein wrote an excellent article on the intersection of religion and science.  See http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

He asks the question, "How can cosmic religious feelings be communicated from one person to another if it can give rise to no definite notion of God and no theology?  In my view, it is the most important function of art [interesting, eh?] and science [even more interesting!] to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it."

My great uncle was a French physicist and 1966 Nobel Prize Laureate for Physics.  His discovery and development of optical methods for studying Hertzian resonances in atoms (as part of optical and human spectroscopy) paved the way for laser eye surgery!  He, too, had a nearly poetic view of science.  He always considered himself a student, having something to learn and being excited by the process.  Deeply concerned about world peace, he--like Einstein--saw science and religion playing a critical role in guiding the conduct of human life. 

[Socrates]

On 5/11/2016 at 10:30 AM, Era Might said:

I think his argument and presentation tell us more about science than it does about a God. Is God a scientist, or as he puts it, a fine-tuner? He also assumes that the universe is not hostile to life, but even this fine-tuned universe is remarkably unconcerned about this nobody called man. We still get blasted with disasters, disease, catastrophe, etc. And we've only been part of the universe, in our present form, very briefly. If there is a God, I don't think seeing him as a scientist gets us any closer to knowing him. If he's such a fine-tuner, he sure goes about doing things the long and hard way.

Didn't have time to watch the video, but the whole idea of the "fine-tuning" argument isn't that we live in a paradise or best of all possible worlds (Christians believe the universe is effected by the evil of sin, though that's another topic), but the fact that the chance of all the physical laws of the universe being in such a way that the existence of any intelligent living creatures such as human beings is even possible is infinitesimally small.

Even atheist scientists will admit that fact, though they typically try to get around it by proposing such things as a "multiverse" of infinite universes somehow randomly popping into existence, though such hypotheses, at least imo, raise more problems than they solve.

On 5/11/2016 at 10:46 AM, Era Might said:

Can God be said to exist? At least the mystical conception of God would be a God who is beyond existence. I would say the opposite...the only way to begin to know God is to show that he does not exist. It's the Cloud of Unknowing that we pass through to know God.

God IS existence, though He exists in a different way than dependent finite creatures.  By God "not existing" most people would take that to mean that God there is no God.

[Era Might]

14 hours ago, Socrates said:

Didn't have time to watch the video, but the whole idea of the "fine-tuning" argument isn't that we live in a paradise or best of all possible worlds (Christians believe the universe is effected by the evil of sin, though that's another topic), but the fact that the chance of all the physical laws of the universe being in such a way that the existence of any intelligent living creatures such as human beings is even possible is infinitesimally small.

Even atheist scientists will admit that fact, though they typically try to get around it by proposing such things as a "multiverse" of infinite universes somehow randomly popping into existence, though such hypotheses, at least imo, raise more problems than they solve.

God IS existence, though He exists in a different way than dependent finite creatures.  By God "not existing" most people would take that to mean that God there is no God.

The problem I have with "probability" as an argument is that it could be applied to anything. The probability that, among all the gods and mystics and miracle-workers (pagan, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, etc.) that one of them happens to be the true one...that's not a high probability. It's more of a probability (well, I'm not sure how this could be quantified, but for the sake of argument) that they are all phenomena of something common in our experience as organisms and how we mediate our interaction with our environment (through language, through symbols, through stories, through ritual, through hero-saints, etc.). This is what someone like Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell attempted to show, the commonality of our psychic experience through myths. The probability that the gods of the pagans are devils, and Christianity is the real truth...not highly probable. Probability is an argument of a scientific worldview which has nothing to do with revealed faith, and to try to use it to that end, is not convincing to me...and not just not convincing, but I think it is a contradiction with the idea of God (at least, the mystical God...scientists had their own God, like the Deists).

Re: God's "existence," I don't think it's accurate to say that God exists (granted, there is no "accurate" language). I'd suggest Plotinus' Enneads where he discusses his mystical conception of the One, which is not the sum of the parts, but something wholly Other. Plotinus writes at length about Real Being, which we do not have, because for something with Real Being (e.g., Platonic Ideas) existence is fulfilled in itself, whereas human beings do not have Real Being because we are matter, and so are always becoming, subject to change. For God to "exist," even if it were an existence of Real Being, would mean that he existed as some idea, something with a purpose that is realized in his Being. And I think that's essentially what we have with all our religions, we have many different kinds of God who exists as an idea, an idea which changes even within the same religions. If God exists, then he exists in our image and likeness, not the other way around. So even if I were speaking as a Christian, I think it would be truer to say that God does not exist, and to say he does is blasphemy. He is not existence, because for God to be existence would mean God is our reality...he is not, he is completely transcendent even of reality and existence.

Edited June 1, 2016 by Era Might

[xSilverPhinx]

William Lane Craig is not credible in any scientific field as he is not a scientist, nor does he know anything about science. His creationist videos for example are full of nonsense. 

[Guest]

I'm guessing you didn't even watch the 7 minute video? He's not even in it. And Mr. Craig has done very well in debates against militant atheists.

[Socrates]

On 6/1/2016 at 1:09 PM, Era Might said:

The problem I have with "probability" as an argument is that it could be applied to anything. The probability that, among all the gods and mystics and miracle-workers (pagan, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, etc.) that one of them happens to be the true one...that's not a high probability. It's more of a probability (well, I'm not sure how this could be quantified, but for the sake of argument) that they are all phenomena of something common in our experience as organisms and how we mediate our interaction with our environment (through language, through symbols, through stories, through ritual, through hero-saints, etc.). This is what someone like Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell attempted to show, the commonality of our psychic experience through myths. The probability that the gods of the pagans are devils, and Christianity is the real truth...not highly probable. Probability is an argument of a scientific worldview which has nothing to do with revealed faith, and to try to use it to that end, is not convincing to me...and not just not convincing, but I think it is a contradiction with the idea of God (at least, the mystical God...scientists had their own God, like the Deists).

It seems you either missed the point, or else deliberately evaded it by changing the subject.  The so-called "anthropic principle" or "fine-tuning" argument is that the physical laws and conditions governing the universe must be so precisely "tuned" that even the slightest change in any of them would mean a universe in which material beings could exist at all could not exist (for instance, the universe would collapse in on itself, or immediately dissipate into nothing, etc.).  The odds of these conditions all being "correct" by pure dumb luck are not just extremely improbable, but essentially statistically impossible.  For instance, the acclaimed mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has calculated that the odds of this happening to be one in [a number so huge that it would be impossible to ever write out in standard notation, and in scientific notation it has far more zeros than I have time to count out.]  In other words, the probability that the laws of the universe came about randomly is basically nil.

No, such a percentages could not "be applied to anything," and your comparison to the question of which religion is true frankly makes no sense at all. I don't claim such mathematical observations about the universe in themselves prove the truth of the Christian Faith, but they do create very serious problems for the atheistic notion that the creation of the universe was a purely random physical event, and does point towards an intelligent, immaterial Creator.  Whether you tend to believe in God or not, it's stupid and irrational to simply blow off such mathematical facts off-hand.  It seems to me that you disregard them simply because they are inconvenient to the atheistic ideology you have chosen to follow.

It appears you reject not only revealed faith, but reason as well ("scientific worldview" - can't trust that darned math!).  If you reject reason, then it's a waste of time to attempt to reason any further with you.  It seems that, in true postmodernist fashion, rejecting both faith and reason, you're left with simply an irrational self-absorbed nihilism that recognizes nothing higher than your own personal feelings and opinion.  I'm afraid only prayer and fasting is the only answer here.

7 hours ago, xSilverPhinx said:

William Lane Craig is not credible in any scientific field as he is not a scientist, nor does he know anything about science. His creationist videos for example are full of nonsense. 

Ad hominem.