David Sloan

Even eminent scientists can make mistakes. Sir Fred Hoyle christened the "Big Bang" as part of his attempt to belittle it, preferring his own (now pretty much discredited) steady-state view of the universe. Looking at the universe from "our end" is rather like looking at a deck of cards after it has been dealt out at random. The odds against dealing out the cards in that way again are huge but that doesn't stop the original arrangement from being a simple matter of chance. God's existence/non-existence cannot be proved either way. Those of faith who object that they see no way in which the universe could have originated spontaneously must face the problem that those who do not believe (a group to which I am happy to belong) have yet to see a satisfactory explanation of how an all-powerful creator came into being either. The anthropic principle/fallacy really doesn't help either way. It is the principle that since we came into existence in this universe tuned with these conditions, the questions we ask are necessarily about the precise tuning of the universe that formed us. Had the tuning been otherwise then we would not have been there to ask, although maybe some hydrogen-based life-form would have been. However even if we accept the premise that the physics was consciously tuned, you have not proved the existence of any supernatural being that you could pray to, only of something that willed a particular conclusion and had the ability to tune the physical constants to obtain it.

I've often pondered how human thought evolved. What was first to evolve the synapse, the dendrite, nervous system the enormously complex way the human brain lays down proteins on a dendrite (I think) neurons blah blah. Which was the first genetic deviation and how did it offer an advantage. Why would the first evolutionary synapse offer an advantage? At what point did the eye start to transmit information to the brain presumably not all at once and prior to the actual event what competitive advantage was there. Being organic material I don't suppose there is any real evidence. I wish Dawkins, Toynbee et al wouldn't do this kind of thing. They are silly and trivial. This country Portugal has a fantastic resource in every community with an army of volunteers ready to do good work. A place for a moment’s piece in the madness of the world all at risk over the definition of God. Beautiful architecture, beautiful buildings a place for all at risk because a bunch of comfortable middle class prats have to poke and prod. I wonder if Dawkins know more about the scriptural God than he does about doubting Thomas - I'm not sure, doubting Dawkins probably hasn't got many doubts at all - about anything. A pointless depressing argument that Polly Toynbee et al will win because if modernity knows anything it knows that in the end of you throw enough mud at something some of it sticks.

This book is all about the cart before horse I'm afraid. Let me explain...

- Science could ask the question - If looking from outside, where in this universe would we expect to find life?

The answer would be...

- somewhere where it wasn't too hot, or too cold for carbon based lifeforms;

- somewhere with a suitable mix of elements to support such life;

- somewhere which will retain these properties for long enough to allow for abiogenesis and evolution;

- etc., etc., etc.

So it is really NO surprise at all that we find life in exactly this point in the universe. If we were to develop anywhere, it would be here - and it is.



So really this "fine-tuning" argument is actually bollocks.

And the nail in the coffin? Why - if the universe is so "finely tuned" is it only "finely tuned" in one tiny tiny TINY part of it? Why is it completely unsuitable for life in 99.999999999% of the universe? Fine-tuned my arse.

What if I said a computer is fine-tuned for use as a drinking vessel because if I spilt some water on the keyboard, then tipped it up, I could drink it.

This books lacks a chapter on the existence of God (with proofs). To me these speculations are a waste of time even if they based on physics. I would rather suggest that in order to do rigorous science, we must rely on unprovable assumptions. We are able to extend the frontiers of our knowledge as much as we can (and we definitely should do this) but we will never be able to answer the question of "why is there something rather than nothing". There is evidence that we can't do this, provided by Gödel's theorems of incompleteness or by Turing's negative answer to the Entscheidungsproblem. Hilbert, who reformulated the Entscheidungproblem in the late twenties, believed that there would be no such thing as an unsolvable problem. Gödel and Turing proved him wrong. Since some 80 years ago we know that there are unsolvable problems in science. In the light of these proofs the scientism of the Dawkinsian provenience seems pretty naive if not plain wrong.… (altro)