Intelligent Design, and the Fine-tuned Universe
OMG. Our planet is so perfect. If the earth were to move only a bit closer or farther from the sun, life would not be possible! This really proves intelligent design.
Akay. First, there are 70 sextillion stars in the visible universe. Many of these stars have exoplanets. Let’s wrongly assume that all these exoplanets are unhabitable because they are either too far or too close to their suns. That means that out of 70 sextillion stars (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) only one star (the Sun) has a planet which is in the habitable (Goldilocks) zone. That is some real intelligent design.
That’s like, go to a beach. All the sands there are white, but suddenly you find a pink sand and you say, holy shit this whole beach is so intelligently designed or fine-tuned. Improbability does not mean design. The fact that only 1 out of billions of planets are inhabitable just goes on to prove how fine-tuned for life this universe is.
Another thing is this. Life evolved in the universe, so actually, life is fine-tuned for the universe, not the other way round. And isn’t it a bit arrogant to say that the whole bloody universe was created just for us?
By the way, I just found out that Bebo members (yeah, wtf, Bebo) beamed “A Message from Earth” to the planet Gliese 581d, an exoplanet in the Goldilocks zone of a star, in the constellation Libra (go, Libra!). Well, like the aliens are going to understand human. I hope they also remembered to beam an English Dictionary, haha.
Ray Comfort Food
Wouldn’t you be making the assumption that the Intelligent Designer
1. Would even want life on more than one planet and/or
2. That there is no possible purpose for creating the other planets/stars?
And wouldn’t these be assumptions that you cannot prove?
What I cannot prove isn’t science. My point ultimately is that Intelligent Design (ie. creationism in a cheap tuxedo) does not belong in the science classroom.
Hey Tim,
We both have our phrases, links, and one liners we could use. We both have things we could spout off, copy and paste, or videos we could show. Perhaps you are not wanting to talk to any believers, and if that is the case then let me know, but I’d rather talk it out.
Now you can say that what you cannot prove isn’t science and so you don’t really need to talk about it. That’s fine if you limited your blog to that I suppose, but you are the one who said “isn’t it a bit arrogant to say that the whole bloody universe was created just for us?” I asked those questions in response to the unscientific statement that you made.
The problem with God is that you could make him out to be whatever you want him to be. I could accuse him of anything and you would be able to defend it. Because, after all, he is God, and we’re just men and he’s not for us to fully comprehend. Which brings me to my second point:
The problem with intelligent design is that it assumes that if we can’t explain something, then it must be designed. Like the bacterial flagellum. This is a dangerous assumption, because — for example, primitive people could not understand the nature of fires, so they immediately invented a fire god. You can see how this is not a constructive assumption at all.
Of course, if you had been born in Afghanistan, you wouldn’t be defending Yahweh, rather you’d be defending Allah. Religion is purely cultural. It bases itself on zero evidence and is dangerous because it stops many people from thinking, and for that reason I am against it.
Justin, I can’t respond on Holyfire’s site. It appears that I’ve been blocked, or maybe my internet is just being cranky. So this is my response to you.
——
Hi Justin,
I could easily respond with another link http://www.pocm.info/getting_started_pocm.html but I doubt that throwing links around is constructive.
I think the telephone game is a clear demonstration of how facts can be distorted. And given the nature of how utterly superstitious people were back then, I am not surprised that some people wrote of Jesus’ life and resurrection as though it were 100% factual.
My point remains that your so-called Jesus miracles are extremely common in ancient mythology prior to Jesus. I have no reason to believe that the Buddha walked on water therefore I have no reason to believe that Jesus did either.
PS: http://timcooley.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/show-me-the-evidence/
I didn’t block you. If you continue to have problems posting on my blog, shoot me an e-mail or something and I will address the problem.
In response to your most recent comment, it wasn’t just Jesus’s disciples who witnessed His works. Jesus’s life was witnessed by people who hated Him, thought He was crazy, and did not believe He was God. The interesting thing is, their stories corroborate with those sympathetic towards Jesus. Plus, if Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again, there would be writings proclaiming just that. Yet we find nothing that goes against the assertions that Jesus rose from the dead. We only find corroborative evidence.
Other gods, like Buddha and Allah, do not have this. The prophet Muhhamed claims to have received a revelation from the angel Gabriel about Allah. Over the course of the rest of his life, Muhhamed would receive additional revelations wich were then recorded. These records make up the modern day Quran. What is different between Allah and Muhhamed, and God and Jesus?
There is no evidence that Gabriel ever appeared to Muhammed. All we have is Muhhamed’s claims. Nobody witnessed it, it is unprovable. It’s the same as if I told you a pink horse appeared in my room when I was alone, and he took me to Neverland where we conquered Captain Hook. How would you go about proving that? Nobody else witnessed it. You have nothing but my promise that it happened. By any standards, that is a weak argument.
Jesus, on the other hand, gave evidence. He claimed to be God and when He was asked to cough up the proof, He did so by healing the sick and ultimately trancending the very laws of life and death. All of these events were witnessed and have been recorded extensively. They can easily be cross-referenced and confirmed. This cannot be said for Muhhamed, Buddah, Zeus or any other god. Jesus is the only one who can provide solid evidence for His claims. This is evidence that has been confrimed, and repeatedly tested. To deny it would be to do so on the basis of an opinion
I have repeatedly said that, I never claimed that Jesus was not real. I am only skeptical about his miracles and resurrection. There will be people who would be willing to debate with you on the historical (in)validity of Jesus. That person is not me.
Fair enough. I hope you have a great day!
Tim, you said “The problem with intelligent design is that it assumes that if we can’t explain something, then it must be designed.”
Do you agree that their are properties of design that are used rather than simply saying we don’t understand how so it is designed?
What about information? How does meaningful information come about without an intelligent designer?
“Do you agree that their are properties of design that are used rather than simply saying we don’t understand how so it is designed?”
Scientists are very fond of using the word “design” – eg. “the ant’s jaw is designed for… , etc”. However, that doesn’t mean that they believe some supernatural designer “designed” it. They use the word just because it’s convenient. No, I don’t agree that there are properties of “design” used at all, keeping in mind that when something “looks designed”, it doesn’t have to be “designed by a designer”. A beach looks designed — with all the sands collected in one place (which is statistically improbable to have come by chance, and no one is saying that it did) — but we can explain a beach’s formation in purely natural terms. The reason why animals appear so suited to their environment is because they have adapted and evolved to live in that particular environment. Biologists would know that the taxonomy of life makes incredible sense in the light of evolution and common descent, not to mention there is so much evidence that evolution happened you would be daft to ignore it. Life, in essense, is self-duplicating information, and evolution merely is the change of frequencies of alleles. Plus, 99% of all the species on earth are extinct, which just goes on to tell you how designed nature is. Nothing supernatural here.
Information is stored at the DNA level, which scientists have good reason to believe evolved from the RNA, a single-helix configuration of the DNA. “How does meaningful information come about without an intelligent designer?” This quite answers your question:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/
Abiogenesis – The origins of life made easy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8nYTJf62sE << Watch this video, please.
“Other gods, like Buddha and Allah, do not have this.”
No, Holyfire, the Buddha was not a god, and he never called himself one.
A Movie called Creation is coming out this week. It is about Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. I made a blog post about it. Check it out at http://whatsnextgod.com
Very true Tim. Thank you for pointing that out.
You’re welcome.