Posts by Nickolas

122

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

by nicolaou in

it's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.

" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.

the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .

Nickolas

I understand the language you're speaking, bohm, but others may not.

Good night.

122

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

by nicolaou in

it's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.

" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.

the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .

Nickolas

Mere coincidence does not create or design anything, definitely no complex life systems.

And you are absolutely right.

I do perceive that you are an honest seeker, Hoffnung. Sometimes, and I know this from frequent personal experience, something can be staring me in the face and I cannot see it. I stare back at it while it patiently stares at me and it is still invisible to me. However, if I persist, over time I will almost always perceive a glimmer of it and then I am prodded on to see more. An outline forms and then comes basic understanding from whence greater understanding manifests itself. And then I invariably wonder why I was unable to see it in the first place.

Chance speaks to statistical probability. If one operates from the basic principle that it is very, very, very improbable that life spontaneously generated as a self replicating protein molecule, he is left with two options. Chance and God. If not God, then what is the probability that all the conditions of which you speak that are prerequisites for supporting life, let alone generate it spontaneously, could exist at all? The anthropic principle posits that that probability cannot be zero, since we are here. But we must acknowledge that it still must be a very, very small probability indeed. So, we ask ourselves the question are there sufficiently diverse states of matter in the universe, or even in a tiny portion of it like the Milky Way, such that that tiny probability just might be satisfied, and we have to answer yes. We may never be able to replicate those conditions in the laboratory, anymore than we can replicate the conditions of anything that requires the scale of a solar system to replicate.

It is correctly argued from a statistical perspective that chance, within the context of the evolution of living organisms, is not a feasible solution. It would be almost infinitely improbable, virtually zero. Nor, however, is God a feasible solution, because from a statistical perspective God redoubles the problem. If it is statistically improbable that a complete butterfly came into existence by chance, it is even more statistically improbable that God (who must be a very complex being, almost infinitely complex) came into existence by chance. The only feasible solution ever offered for the existence of complex life is slow evolution through natural selection, starting with very simple beginnings and the accumulation of small, slightly improbable, changes. I could almost capitalise those two words, Natural Selection, because here is where there is a glimmer of understanding to be found. The first thing that needs to be understood about natural selection is it is the very opposite of chance. Start there.

122

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

by nicolaou in

it's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.

" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.

the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .

Nickolas

A good teacher has the ability to simplify concepts to a level of understanding that is within reach of those he or she seeks to teach. I freely admit that I am a poor teacher. Your illustration of the anthropic principle is clear and simple, sizemik. Much better expressed than mine.

122

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

by nicolaou in

it's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.

" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.

the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .

Nickolas

Cogito ergo sum, but just because one thinks does not mean he understands.

One of the greatest constraints on perceiving probabilities in the billionth fraction or perceiving timeframes in the billions of years is the human brain is not built that way. The human brain is built to perceive exceedingly narrow ranges of probability, space and time and it is only through exceptional effort on the part of someone of even average intelligence that he or she can go beyond those ranges, and even then he will fall hopelessly short. It is more comfortable just to stay where you are, and that will be the default position.

The human condition is that some seek earnestly to understand what they do not yet understand, some seek to affirm or build upon their current understanding, some are incapable of understanding what they do not understand, some do not want to understand something different from their current understanding. I have learned from my various interactions with people who are comfortable with what they understand to be truth, and especially those who are dedicated to changing my mind on what I perceive, that more often than not they are incapable of hearing what I have to say. I may have been on their page in times past and have advanced well beyond where they are, but they still insist on trying to drag me back while I attempt to nudge them ahead. I've been where they are, saw things as they saw them, believed as they believed and have no interest in returning to that particular state of ignorance. Regardless of your perspective, if despite your best efforts you fail to improve someone's understanding of something, it is time to move on.

122

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

by nicolaou in

it's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.

" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.

the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .

Nickolas

I offer an excerpt from Dawkins' The God Delusion as an apropos addition to this conversation, with apologies in advance for the length:

"The anthropic principle was named by the British mathematician Brandon Carter in 1974 and expanded by the physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler in their book on the subject. The anthropic argument is usually applied to the cosmos, and I'll come to that. But I'll introduce the idea on a
smaller, planetary scale. We exist here on Earth. Therefore Earth must be the kind of planet that is capable of generating and supporting us, however unusual, even unique, that kind of planet might be. For example, our kind of life cannot survive without liquid water. Indeed, exobiologists searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life are scanning the heavens, in practice, for signs of water. Around a typical star like our sun, there is a so-called Goldilocks zone - not too hot and not too cold, but just right - for planets with liquid water. A thin band of orbits lies between those that are too far from the star, where water freezes, and too close, where it boils.

Presumably, too, a life-friendly orbit has to be nearly circular. A fiercely elliptical orbit, like that of the newly discovered tenth planet informally known as Xena, would at best allow the planet to whizz briefly through the Goldilocks zone once every few (Earth) decades or centuries. Xena itself doesn't get into the Goldilocks zone at all, even at its closest approach to the sun, which it reaches once every 560 Earth years. The temperature of Halley's Comet varies between about 47°C at perihelion and minus 270°C at aphelion. Earth's orbit, like those of all the planets, is technically an ellipse (it is closest to the sun in January and furthest away in July); but a circle is a special case of an ellipse, and Earth's orbit is so close to circular that it never strays out of the Goldilocks zone. Earth's situation in the solar system is propitious in other ways that singled it out for the evolution of life. The massive gravitational vacuum cleaner of Jupiter is well placed to intercept asteroids that might otherwise threaten us with lethal collision. Earth's single relatively large moon serves to stabilize our axis of rotation,68 and helps to foster life in various other ways. Our sun is unusual in not being a binary, locked in mutual orbit with a companion star. It is possible for binary stars to have planets, but their orbits are likely to be too chaotically variable to encourage the evolution of life.

Two main explanations have been offered for our planet's peculiar friendliness to life. The design theory says that God made the world, placed it in the Goldilocks zone, and deliberately set up all the details for our benefit. The anthropic approach is very different, and it has a faintly Darwinian feel. The great majority of planets in the universe are not in the Goldilocks zones of their respective stars, and not suitable for life. None of that majority has life. However small the minority of planets with just the right conditions for life may be, we necessarily have to be on one of that
minority, because here we are thinking about it.

It is a strange fact, incidentally, that religious apologists love the anthropic principle. For some reason that makes no sense at all, they think it supports their case. Precisely the opposite is true. The anthropic principle, like natural selection, is an alternative to the design hypothesis. It provides a rational, design-free explanation for the fact that we find ourselves in a situation propitious to our existence. I think the confusion arises in the religious mind because the anthropic principle is only ever mentioned in the context of the problem that it solves, namely the fact that we live in a life-friendly place. What the religious mind then fails to grasp is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives.

Liquid water is a necessary condition for life as we know it, but it is far from sufficient. Life still has to originate in the water, and the origin of life may have been a highly improbable occurrence. Darwinian evolution proceeds merrily once life has originated. But how does life get started? The origin of life was the chemical event, or series of events, whereby the vital conditions for natural selection first came about. The major ingredient was heredity, either DNA or (more probably) something that copies like DNA but less accurately, perhaps the related molecule RNA. Once the vital
ingredient - some kind of genetic molecule - is in place, true Darwinian natural selection can follow, and complex life emerges as the eventual consequence. But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable. Maybe it is - very very improbable, and I shall dwell on this, for it is central to this section of the book.

The origin of life is a flourishing, if speculative, subject for research. The expertise required for it is chemistry and it is not mine. I watch from the sidelines with engaged curiosity, and I shall not be surprised if, within the next few years, chemists report that they have successfully midwifed a new origin of life in the laboratory. Nevertheless it hasn't happened yet, and it is still possible to maintain that the probability of its happening is, and always was, exceedingly low - although it did happen once!

Just as we did with the Goldilocks orbits, we can make the point that, however improbable the origin of life might be, we know it happened on Earth because we are here. Again as with temperature, there are two hypotheses to explain what happened - the design hypothesis and the scientific or 'anthropic' hypothesis. The design approach postulates a God who wrought a deliberate miracle, struck the prebiotic soup with divine fire and launched DNA, or something equivalent, on its momentous career.

Again, as with Goldilocks, the anthropic alternative to the design hypothesis is statistical. Scientists invoke the magic of large numbers. It has been estimated that there are between 1 billion and 30 billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reasons of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate of the number of available planets in the universe. Now,suppose the origin of life, the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA, really was a quite staggeringly improbable event. Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets. A grant-giving body would laugh at any chemist who admitted that the
chance of his proposed research succeeding was only one in a hundred. But here we are talking about odds of one in a billion. And yet . . . even with such absurdly long odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets - of which Earth, of course, is one.

This conclusion is so surprising, I'll say it again. If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefyingly improbable event would still happen on a billion planets. The chance of finding any one of those billion life-bearing planets recalls the proverbial needle in a haystack. But we don't have to go out of our way to find a needle because (back to the anthropic principle) any beings capable of looking must necessarily be sitting on one of those prodigiously rare needles before they even start the search.

Any probability statement is made in the context of a certain level of ignorance. If we know nothing about a planet, we may postulate the odds of life's arising on it as, say, one in a billion. But if we now import some new assumptions into our estimate, things change. A particular planet may have some peculiar properties, perhaps a special profile of element abundances in its rocks, which shift the odds in favour of life's emerging. Some planets, in other words, are more 'Earth-like' than others. Earth itself, of course, is especially Earth-like! This should give encouragement to our chemists trying to recreate the event in the lab, for it could shorten the odds against their success. But my earlier calculation demonstrated that even a chemical model with odds of success as low as one in a billion would still predict that life would arise on a billion planets in the universe.
And the beauty of the anthropic principle is that it tells us, against all intuition, that a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for the presence of life here. I do not for a moment believe the origin of life was anywhere near so improbable in practice. I think it is definitely worth spending money on trying to duplicate the event in the lab and - by the same token, on SETI, because I think it is likely that there is intelligent life elsewhere.

Even accepting the most pessimistic estimate of the probability that life might spontaneously originate, this statistical argument completely demolishes any suggestion that we should postulate design to fill the gap. Of all the apparent gaps in the evolutionary story, the origin of life gap can seem unbridgeable to brains calibrated to assess likelihood and risk on an everyday scale: the scale on which grant-giving bodies assess research proposals submitted by chemists. Yet even so big a gap as this is easily filled by statistically informed science, while the very same statistical science rules out a divine creator on the 'Ultimate 747' grounds we met earlier.

But now, to return to the interesting point that launched this section. Suppose somebody tried to explain the general phenomenon of biological adaptation along the same lines as we have just applied to the origin of life: appealing to an immense number of available planets. The observed fact is that every species, and every organ that has ever been looked at within every species, is good at what it does. The wings of birds, bees and bats are good at flying. Eyes are good at seeing. Leaves are good at photosynthesizing. We live on a planet where we are surrounded by perhaps ten million species, each one of which independently displays a powerful illusion of apparent design. Each species is well fitted to its particular way of life. Could we get away with the 'huge numbers of planets' argument to explain all these separate illusions of design? No, we could not, repeat not. Don't even think about it. This is important, for it goes to the heart of the most serious misunderstanding of Darwinism.

It doesn't matter how many planets we have to play with, lucky chance could never be enough to explain the lush diversity of living complexity on Earth in the same way as we used it to explain the existence of life here in the first place. The evolution of life is a completely different case from the origin of life because, to repeat, the origin of life was (or could have been) a unique event which had to happen only once. The adaptive fit of species to their separate environments, on the other hand, is millionfold, and ongoing.

It is clear that here on Earth we are dealing with a generalized process for optimizing biological species, a process that works all over the planet,on all continents and islands, and at all times. We can safely predict that, if we wait another ten million years, a whole new set of species will be as well adapted to their ways of life as today's species are to theirs. This is a recurrent, predictable, multiple phenomenon, not a piece of statistical luck recognized with hindsight. And, thanks to Darwin, we know how it is brought about: by natural selection."

The anthropic principle is impotent to explain the multifarious details of living creatures. We really need Darwin's powerful crane to account for the diversity of life on Earth, and especially the persuasive illusion of design. The origin of life, by contrast, lies outside the reach of that crane, because natural selection cannot proceed without it. Here the anthropic principle comes into its own. We can deal with the unique origin of life by postulating a very large number of planetary opportunities. Once that initial stroke of luck has been granted - and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us - natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck.

Nevertheless, it may be that the origin of life is not the only major gap in the evolutionary story that is bridged by sheer luck, anthropically justified. For example, my colleague Mark Ridley in Mendel's Demon (gratuitously and confusingly retitled The Cooperative Gene by his American publishers) has suggested that the origin of the eucaryotic cell (our kind of cell, with a nucleus and various other complicated features such as mitochondria, which are not present in bacteria) was an even more momentous, difficult and statistically improbable step than the origin of life. The origin of
consciousness might be another major gap whose bridging was of the same order of improbability. One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines. There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria, but only a fraction of these life forms ever made it across the gap to something like the eucaryotic cell. And of these, a yet smaller fraction managed to cross the later Rubicon to consciousness. If both of these are one-off events, we are not dealing with a ubiquitous and all-pervading process, as we are with ordinary, run-of-themill biological adaptation. The anthropic principle states that, since we are alive, eucaryotic and conscious, our planet has to be one of the intensely rare planets that has bridged all three gaps.

Natural selection works because it is a cumulative one-way street to improvement. It needs some luck to get started, and the 'billions of planets' anthropic principle grants it that luck. Maybe a few later gaps in the evolutionary story also need major infusions of luck, with anthropic justification. But whatever else we may say, design certainly does not work as an explanation for life, because design is ultimately not cumulative and it therefore raises bigger questions than it answers - it takes us straight back along the Ultimate 747 infinite regress.

We live on a planet that is friendly to our kind of life, and we have seen two reasons why this is so. One is that life has evolved to flourish in the conditions provided by the planet. This is because of natural selection. The other reason is the anthropic one. There are billions of planets in the universe, and, however small the minority of evolution-friendly planets may be, our planet necessarily has to be one of them. Now it is time to take the anthropic principle back to an earlier stage, from biology back to cosmology.

We live not only on a friendly planet but also in a friendly universe. It follows from the fact of our existence that the laws of physics must be friendly enough to allow life to arise. It is no accident that when we look at the night sky we see stars, for stars are a necessary prerequisite for the existence of most of the chemical elements, and without chemistry there could be no life. Physicists have calculated that, if the laws and constants of physics had been even slightly different, the universe would have developed in such a way that life would have been impossible. Different physicists put it in different ways, but the conclusion is always much the same. Martin Rees, in Just Six Numbers, lists six fundamental constants, which are believed to hold all around the universe. Each of these six numbers i finely tuned in the sense that, if it were slightly different, the uiverse would be comprehensively different and presumably unfriendly to life.

122

Refuting the ARGUMENT BY DESIGN.

by nicolaou in

it's tiresome and it doesn't add up but it's one of the most popular arguments for god's existence, "the argument by design.

" jehovah's witnesses and other believers point out a wonder of nature like the eye and compare it to a 'lesser' mechanical wonder of human design like a camera.

the supposed conclusion is that this natural wonder is evidence of creation by a powerful designer; god.. .

Nickolas

Hoffnung, it is conservatively estimated on the strength of the fossil record alone that 98% of all unique species that have ever existed have been driven to extinction largely as a consequence of being unable to adapt to changes in the environments in which they lived. So, yes, a change to an ecosystem will cause species to die out but such changes will also cause other species to develop and thrive, until the next change. How you have arrived at this as an indication that the chances of a species just evolving without a designer is not clear. It is precisely because of the changes that species evolve and no designer is needed. Please do some deeper research into natural selection. Dawkins has written some good stuff that is easy for a non-scientist to understand. Your words also indicate that you might have no familiarity with the anthropic principle. Worth looking into, if only to broaden your horizons.

47

Info For Newbies and Current Jehovah's Witnesses! Please Read!

by mentallyfree31 in

example: gravity is real.

because if 607 bce is wrong, then so is 1914 and 1918 and 1919. very simple.

so if we cannot trust secular research, then we can definitely discard the date of 607 bce.

Nickolas

Something I just scanned from "Captives of a Concept".

47

Info For Newbies and Current Jehovah's Witnesses! Please Read!

by mentallyfree31 in

example: gravity is real.

because if 607 bce is wrong, then so is 1914 and 1918 and 1919. very simple.

so if we cannot trust secular research, then we can definitely discard the date of 607 bce.

Nickolas

"We need to examine, not only what we personally believe, but also what is taught by any religious organization with which we may be associated ... If we are lovers of the truth, there is nothing to fear from such examination." The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life, 1968, p. 13.

30

"Banned in Brooklyn"

by Quendi in

i hope this thread generates some discussion as well as some amusement.

i want to talk about "banned books".

back in the middle ages, the roman catholic church issued its index librorum prohibitorum, the list of prohibited books.

Nickolas

Back in the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church issued its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the List of Prohibited Books.

Back in the Middle Ages? The Roman Catholic Church routinely banned books and movies and posted the list just inside the entrance of the church up until the time I stopped attending mass, which was the mid-1960's. I distinctly remember seeing "Peyton Place" and "Valley of the Dolls" on that list. I had no idea I was so old.

6

Stuck in a Movement post turned into Video

by cantleave in

i was so inspired by siam's illustration of the city, i nicked the idea and script for a video (with his permission).

my own conclusions are at the end.. i hope i have done it justice.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5kd-0rn4c.

Nickolas

Nice job.

The competent city manager would close the intake valve of the water processing plant and the exit valve of the reservoir then set up an emergency response team to handle communications. No-one would be poisoned. I get your point, though.