I was listening to a late-night radio interview. Some guy was talking about Revelation. He tied the event called "Wormwood" to Chernobyl and the following event about the darkening of the skies to the time when Saddam burned the oil fields as he was leaving Kuwait. The next event in the book is a war that kills a third of the population. That could break out at any time, considering the nuclear powers, the aggression of the US/UK in business, the web of defense pacts that China has, etc.. so then there is yet another war after all that: Armageddon. The description is that a huge army of Russians, Chinese, and Middle Easterners marches on Israel and gets it's ass handed to it. The captured weapons are used as fuel. I always use Occam's Razor in my thinking, the argument with the least assumptions is more likely correct. It's similar to the idea that the machine with the least moving parts is more reliable. [Check out the Tesla S1]. So, there are various theories, about the weapons and their use as fuel but I'm going with the idea that the Armageddon armies' weapons are made of wood. It makes sense to me now, the next war will take a whole area of the world into the stone age. Eventually they regroup and march on Israel counting on sheer numbers. The leaders of the West are described as having a hands-off policy at that time, like they don't care about saving any lives or the outcome.. Our current leaders could be seen in that role, no?
Maybe the U.S. just won't be around for the end game. Maybe we will have been annihilated because we have to many stupid people pretending to be leaders today.
If you're going to use Occam's Razor, then why not go with the argument with the fewest amount of assumptions? Religion is false.
you can go even fewer and assume that you are making up the entire universe as you go along. Don't laugh, there are whole schools of thought devoted to that principle that are thriving in the third millennium..
how about this... the universe is designed because there is no way the laws of our universe (the constants) could be tuned to this many decimal places by luck.
First of all, religion =/= god or creator. Secondly, wouldn't it be more likely to believe in a creator if the constants were nice whole round numbers? We're the result and in the midst of an ongoing reaction that took place billions of years ago, plain and simple. Why did that happen? I don't know...but it certainly wasn't because of the "gods" portrayed in any religious texts I've ever read.
I agree fine tuned constants do not necessarily point to the Creator as described in our religions. but since your brought up the razor... I wanted to see how consistently you applied it. Most likely there was a big bang billions of years ago... That it resulted in a universe this finely tuned could not have been luck. How would you apply the razor to our fine tuned constants.
I just don't see how they're relevant. The constants aren't assumptions, they're measured and demonstrated facts due to the physical properties of the universe. What assumption are you referring to? Not to mention the Occam's Razor was part of the original argument, which is where I had originally applied it. This little debate is tangential to the original argument.
I would argue they're not fine tuned and that your paradigm is backwards. It seems you're saying they're fine tuned to us, this isn't the case - we're fine tuned to them.
Here's an example of how "science" works. Philosophers do all their thinking based on the idea that assumptions have to be proven. So they cannot bring a Bible into an argument. They scratch their heads, pull their beards, etc... for a generation or two and come out with the statement: "You can't prove the existence of God".. and that is easy to remember and easy to repeat so people get a lot of exposure to that idea. But then God gives us some prophecy that describes some events in the future as proof that He is outside of time and able to communicate to us. That fits with my love of Occam/simplicity, because, deep down, I'm no intellectual powerhouse, I was raised with Popular Science magazines, and I have a love for "what works" so I go with that. The rest of the story is that our great intellects take that "can't prove existence of God" thingy and parlay it into a prevailing worldview. In the discussion of origins they will, 100% of the time, present the debate as "Science vs Religion" which very strongly implies that they have proof and the religious people don't. They have proof when they stick to their science but everything they are saying about origins is not science, it's conjecture. They will buy into circular reasoning to prove their ideas and discard evidence that doesn't fit. A perfect example is the idea that the Geologic Column is calibrated by the Strata.. and somewhere else in the books it will say "the Strata is calibrated by the Geologic Column". When you examine those statements side by side you realize that nothing at all is calibrated! Not only that, the Strata and the Column can be wildly at odds with each other to an extent that makes a reasoning individual say "this stuff isn't working for me, I'm going to study engineering" or something like that.. These wonderful scientists will stick with that "fantasy calibration" though, boy are they loyal to their ideas.. they throw out all readings that don't fit the fantasy calibration. People have examined records of readings and found that about 70% of them are discarded because they don't fit the fantasy calibration. So what do I care if these people are weird assholes clinging to some ideas that are patently absurd? What do I care if they've successfully promoted that idiocy to the point where it's the prevailing world view? Personally I'm not terribly bothered by it, I'm Libertarian, think what you want, choose what path you like, "see 'ya at the finish line and I better not have to carry your sorry ass", that's pretty much my outlook on things.. I do like to explain this all from time to time however because it's just what a civilized person does. If the sign says "bridge out ahead" I don't tell people "it'll be ok, go for it". I tell them "the bridge is out, you might want to take that into consideration".