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Such cases are oftenlinked to alleged gaps in nature—phenomena for which, it isclaimed, there can be no purely natural explanation, there being a gapbetween nature’s production capabilities and the phenomenon inquestion. It is simply not true that explanatory inferences cannotproperly extend beyond merely what is required for known effects. As avery general example, based on the few observations which humans hadmade during a cosmically brief period in a spatially tiny part of thecosmos, Newton theorized that all bits of matter atall times and in all places attracted allother bits of matter.
The “Botched” Human Body, Revisited - Discovery Institute
The “Botched” Human Body, Revisited.
Posted: Mon, 18 Jun 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
II. Contemporary resources A. Books
The argument from biological information, like the argument from biochemical complexity, seems incapable of standing alone as an argument for God’s existence. While the argument from irreducible biochemical complexity focuses on the probability of evolving irreducibly complex living systems or organisms from simpler living systems or organisms, the argument from biological information focuses on the problem of generating living organisms in the first place. Darwinian theories are intended only to explain how it is that more complex living organisms developed from primordially simple living organisms, and hence do not even purport to explain the origin of the latter. The argument from biological information is concerned with an explanation of how it is that the world went from a state in which it contained no living organisms to a state in which it contained living organisms; that is to say, it is concerned with the explanation of the very first forms of life.
2 Does Improbable Fine-Tuning Call for a Response?
"Poor design" is consistent with the predictions of the scientific theory of evolution by means of natural selection. This predicts that features that were evolved for certain uses are then reused or co-opted for different uses, or abandoned altogether; and that suboptimal state is due to the inability of the hereditary mechanism to eliminate the particular vestiges of the evolutionary process. The watch analogy simply states that if you were to look at a watch and examine its inner workings so perfectly put together, in synchronicity you would never claim it just created itself – he therefore asks how on this premise could you assert the same about a human being or the world as a whole. The fine tuning argument on its own can't prove divine providence, but it can lay the foundation for a further argument to build upon. It's still worthwhile and important to take the first step and show that by using science and philosophy we can know that God exists. The idea that underlies naturalness is that the phenomenadescribed by some physical theory should not depend sensitively onspecific details of a more fundamental (currently unknown) theory towhich it is an effective low-energy approximation.
The existence of GodThe design argument
Life or objects are described as "orderly" or "ordered", which shows that an intelligent designer has ordered them. However, in real life, there are examples of systems that are non-random or ordered simply because it is following natural physical processes, for example diamonds or snowflakes. In more recent times (1802), William Paley proposed his famous analogy, comparing the complexity of life to a watch. Just as one would never believe that a watch happened to emerge by chance without a skilled watchmaker, Paley argued that the same is certainly true for our entire universe which is much more complex than a single watch. This idea was very popular until Charles Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. Darwin showed how complex life forms could develop from simpler ones through natural processes like natural selection and survival of the fittest.
d. Guided Evolution
It is controversial, however, whetherthis idea can coherently be fleshed out in terms of any philosophicalaccount of probability. While Schlesinger is undoubtedly correct in thinking that we are justified in suspecting design in the case [of winning] three consecutive lotteries, it is because—and only because—we know two related empirical facts about such events. First, we already know that there exist intelligent agents who have the right motivations and causal abilities to deliberately bring about such events. Second, we know from past experience with such events that they are usually explained by the deliberate agency of one or more of these agents. Without at least one of these two pieces of information, we are not obviously justified in seeing design in such cases ...
The Problem with “Bad Design” Arguments - Discovery Institute
The Problem with “Bad Design” Arguments.
Posted: Tue, 08 May 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Every indicator of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Article 3, Question 2). In this context, it is also worth noting Paley’s view on extinction—namely that it does not happen. According to Paley, the classification of species into larger taxa would be rendered impossible by widespread extinction. In contrast, extinction was established as a common process in the history of life by Darwin’s time, and today it is acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of species that have existed no longer grace the Earth. In fact, the major divisions among extant lineages are now understood to exist precisely because so many ancestors and intermediate forms have perished.
His strategic approach was deeply rooted in the conceptual frameworks of physics and the Brisker Method for Talmudic analysis. After an eleven-year career, Aaron retired and now channels his intellectual energy into studying various branches of knowledge, including the Talmud and physics. The most remarkable case of fine-tuning surfaced with the 1998 discovery that the cosmological constant (a number that determines the expansion rate of the universe) was fine-tuned to about 120 decimal places! If it was even a little bigger, then the early universe would have expanded too quickly and galaxies would never have been able to form.
Assuming the Design Hypothesis is true, the probability that the universe has the fine-tuned properties approaches (if it does not equal) 1. Assuming the Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis is true, the probability that the universe has the fine-tuned properties is very small—though it is not clear exactly how small. Applying the Prime Principle of Confirmation, Collins concludes that the observation of fine-tuned properties provides reason for preferring the Design Hypothesis over the Atheistic Single-Universe Hypothesis.
The Scientifically Legitimate Uses of Design Inferences
In fitness landscape terms, natural selection will always push "up the hill", but a species cannot normally get from a lower peak to a higher peak without first going through a valley. Brown, in his 1943 book ‘Footprints of God’, examined the ozone layer and how it is the exact thickness for its purpose. Examples of this could be the sky, the human brain, even emotions – the concept would say that if things exist they must have a designer. The second program incorporates a “cumulative-step selection mechanism.” It begins by randomly generating a 28-character sequence of letters and spaces and then “breeds” from this sequence in the following way. For a specified period of time, it generates copies of itself; most of the copies perfectly replicate the sequence, but some copies have errors (or mutations).
Maybe you were feeling inquisitive, and you opened the watch (it was an old-fashioned pocket watch). Considering the way that all the mechanical parts worked together toward the end/goal of telling time, you would be reluctant to say that the watch was not created by a designer. TheR-exhibiting things concerning which we knew whether theywere designed would be almost without exception human artifacts,whereas the phenomena to which the generalization was being extendedwould be things in nature. And, of course, the generalization inquestion could establish at best a probability, and a fairly modestone at that. For this reason, the confirmatory version of the fine-tuning argument, by itself, provides a weak reason for preferring the Design Hypothesis over the Atheistic Single Universe Hypothesis. Although Collins is certainly correct in thinking the observation of fine-tuning provides a reason for accepting the Design Hypothesis and hence rational ground for belief that God exists, that reason is simply not strong enough to do much in the way of changing the minds of either agnostics or atheists.
It is absurd to think that a thing does not happen for the sake of something if we do not see what sets it in motion deliberating. This is most clear when someone practices medicine himself on himself; for nature is like that. If we see a house,… we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had an architect or builder because this is precisely that species of effect which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But surely you will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect (Hume, Dialogues, Part II).
An intelligent creator is inconsistent with an infinite number of universes that are disordered (and in which order only appears by change in the infinite garbage. That god is infinitely powerful, yet not intelligent. It actually isn’t meant to; it’s meant to show that postulating multiverses doesn’t necessarily eliminate a Creator - as you say.If we could work out what the physics of an alternative universe was and create the same conditions artificially we could presumably open a “gateway” between universes. Whether such a thing is technically feasible - or would be safe to do if it were - is another matter. It is entirely possible that universes fine-tuned in different ways give rise to differently structured and functioning intelligent observers. That in itself does not mitigate against a Creator; the Creator may indeed have created variants of our universe.
In the absence of some further information about the probability that such an agent exists, we cannot legitimately infer design as the explanation of irreducible biochemical complexity. There are thus two features of a watch that reliably indicate that it is the result of an intelligent design. First, it performs some function that an intelligent agent would regard as valuable; the fact that the watch performs the function of keeping time is something that has value to an intelligent agent. Taken together, these two characteristics endow the watch with a functional complexity that reliably distinguishes objects that have intelligent designers from objects that do not.
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