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Like the Greek philosophers, the early modern scientists thought that nature exhibited an underlying order. Nevertheless, they thought this natural order had been impressed on nature by a designing mind with a will—the
they thought that the order in nature was the product not of logical necessity, but of rational deliberation and choice,
This transposition in thinking led to a different approach to the study of nature in the centuries following Tempier’s decree. Just as there are many ways to paint a picture or design a clock or organize the books in a library, there are many ways to design and organize a universe. Because it had been chosen by a rational mind, the order in nature could have been otherwise. Thus, the natural philosophers could not merely
deduce the order of nature from logical first principles; they needed to observe nature carefully and systematically.
As the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead argued, “There can be no living science unless there is a widespread instinctive conviction in the existence of an Order of Things. And, in particular, of an Order of Nature.”55 Whitehead particularly attributed this conviction among the founders of
modern science to the “medieval insistence upon the rationality of God.”
the monotheistic worldview of the ancient Hebrews suggested a reason to expect a single coherent order in nature and thus a single, universally applicable set of laws governing the natural world.
historians and philosophers of science, identified this belief in an order-loving monotheistic God as “the historical foundation for modern science.”
Yet whereas the Greeks conceived of these principles as logically necessary axioms inherent in (or internal to) nature itself, the scientists during the seventeenth century began to conceive of the laws of nature as contingent forms of order that were impressed upon nature from the
outside by a creator.51 Since the founders of modern science thought the laws of nature expressed the free will of the divine creator and sustainer of nature, they recognized that whatever order nature exhibits might well have been different had the creator chosen to create or order the natural world differently.52
“though these bodies may indeed persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first deriv’d the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws.” Thus, “this most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”
One prominent Enlightenment philosopher specifically appropriated the idea of the laws of nature as a reason to reject theistic belief.
The skeptical empiricist David Hume (Fig. 3.1) argued that the lawful concourse of nature precluded the possibility of miraculous intervention by a transcendent God. Miracles, he said, are impossible because they violate the laws of nature. He depicted these laws as autonomous entities rather than descriptions of how God normally chooses to order the material world, as Newton and earlier scientists had believed.
An infinitely old universe “would relieve us,” he said, “of the necessity of understanding the origin of matter at any finite time in the past.”32 A finite universe, by contrast, would force scientists to confront uncomfortable questions about the ultimate beginning of the material universe itself. It also raised the possibility that the universe had begun in something like a creation event produced by a cause that existed independently of matter, space, time, and energy.
acute challenge to any materialistic theory of the origin of the universe. Indeed, a singularity implies that not only space and time but also matter and energy first arose at the beginning of the universe, before which no such entities would have existed that could have caused the universe (of matter and energy) to originate.
As Longley explained, the anthropic design argument “is of such an order of certainty that in any other sphere of science, it would be regarded as settled.” He continued: “To insist otherwise is like insisting that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare because it might have been written by a billion monkeys sitting at a billion keyboards typing for a billion years. So it might. But the sight of scientific atheists clutching at such desperate straws
Indeed, dividing 1010101 by 1010123 just yields the number 1010123 all over again.
Whoops! He probably means subtract.
In other words, his calculated entropy implied that out of the many possible ways the available mass and energy of the universe could have been configured at the beginning, only a few configurations would result in a universe like ours. Thus, as Paul Davies observes, “The present arrangement of matter indicates a very special choice of initial conditions.”
This does not follow. Configurations are not equally likely. Surely pure symmetry configuration is special since it hss minimum entropy. Quantum fluctuations would then produce some early entropy.
To illustrate the fallacy behind the WAP, Leslie likened our situation in our finely tuned universe to that of a blindfolded man who has discovered that, against all odds, he has survived a firing squad of one hundred expert marksmen. Though his finding
himself still alive is certainly consistent with the fact that all the marksmen missed, it does not explain why the marksmen actually did miss. Instead, Leslie argues the prisoner should be surprised that he is still alive, because the marksmen are known to be excellent shots and the probability of all of them missing (if they had intended to kill him) is extremely small.
I love this argument
“Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.”27 Or as Christian de Duve explained, theories of prebiotic natural selection “need information which implies they have to presuppose what is to be explained in the first place.”28
He proposed as an “intriguing possibility” that an alien civilization evolved elsewhere in the cosmos and then “designed” and “seeded” the first life on earth.35
Not intriguing. It's the fucki ng obvious possibility. Much more likely than Jehovah.
Lipton’s detailed philosophical defense of this distinctive method broke new ground.
You must be kidding. This is just the likelihood principle.
succeed in producing life-relevant chemistry or information-rich molecules—in, for example, simulations of the RNA world—as the result of the interventions of intelligent origin-of-life biochemists, or “ribozyme engineers.”
(SETI) presupposes that specified information imbedded in electromagnetic signals coming from space would indicate an intelligent source.
As yet radio astronomers have not found any such information-bearing signals. But closer to home, molecular biologists have identified specified information-rich sequences and systems in the cell, suggesting, by the same logic, the past existence of an intelligent cause for those effects.
Pretty good argument it seems to me
Darwin depicted the history of life as a gradually unfolding,
I don't appreciate an ambiguous loaded word like gradually which depends on time scale. Surely a new life form like a mammal could take over quickly on a geological time scale.
the fossil record did not fit easily into his picture of gradual evolutionary change.
But fossil records a rare!! Most dead bodies disintegrate. We see random samples millions of years part. If course it looks discontinuous.
Significant changes to organismal form and function would thus require many hundreds of millions of years.
Seems logically false see previous comment.
Thus, random changes in sequence consistently degrade function or meaning. Indeed, no computer programmer wants random changes introduced into a program that he or she has written. Such changes will inevitably degrade and ultimately destroy the function of the existing program long before a new program would emerge through such a process. As Eden explained, “No currently existing formal language can tolerate random changes in the symbol sequences which express its sentences.
This argument is Fucking Garbage! We do not run software millions of times with random bugs and let them compete for rewards. Experiments where do are promising. Ask Kasparov.
is much more likely to be false than true.
Wrong. The conditional probability is reversed.
If so, would the explanatory power of such a God hypothesis provide a reason for favoring theism over other competing metaphysical hypotheses? At the time, I remember reflecting on this possibility. This chapter now begins to consider it.
The author lies throughout this book. He has believed in god frm the start and is only interested in finding an argument for his preconceived conclusion. His story of a young man searching for the truth is disgustingly dishonest.
Consider Ernan McMullin (Fig. 12.2), a prominent philosopher of science and theologian at the University of Notre Dame until his death in 2011.
Straw man shit argument from an unknown philosopher about to be refuted.
Or in philosophical language, theists conceive of God as the prime reality, the ontological basis of reality, from which everything else comes, including matter, energy, space, and time. Given this conception,
But this is nothing like Bloke with a beard who gives a damn if two men lie with each other. The whole book is a defense of jehovah. At best it is a defense of a intelligent creation. Note that creation does not imply Creator. Consciousness might create itself.
