Why Evangelicals Are Fooled Into Accepting Pseudoscience

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Free Thinker, Sep 23, 2011.

  1. jem

    jem

    you again punt on the difference between tuned and designed for our purposes.

    1. Explain it dipshit.

    If the universe is tuned or the universe is designed --- what is different?
    You are just following your bullshit troll tactics.

    2. Regarding what hawking said in 1988, you are so full of shit... you are using sentences out of context and leaving out the meaning.
    Put it in context shithead or shut up. then explain how what he said in 1988 trumps what he said in 2006.

    3. You keep acting like the writer of the article distorted something.
    Thats troll bullshit. Explain what he distorted.
    That is science and you can't accept it.

    --
    Here is more from the same article.


    "But the anthropic principle is mocked less frequently these days, if at all. For one thing, physicists have grown less confident that a TOE is imminent. And then, in 1998, a discovery was made which appears to give fine-tuning an astonishing boost.

    In that year astronomers discovered that the universe is not just expanding, but expanding at an accelerating rate. It was a baffling finding because they expected the expansion of the universe to be slowing down, as a result of the braking effect of gravity. What the acceleration seems to imply is that there is another force at work in the cosmos, one that is pushing matter apart and can overcome everything, even gravity. What is it? Physicists don’t know, and have called it the “dark energy”.

    There was one key candidate for this mysterious force, though. It came from quantum mechanics. In the strange world of the super-super-small, a vacuum is not all that it seems. In fact, it is not a vacuum. Rather, it is teeming with virtual particles that pop in and out of existence, only like the white noise on a digital radio, this mass of activity is so subtle that we don’t notice it. Physicists had known about the possibility of a quantum vacuum energy for some time. With the discovery of dark energy, they returned to it to calculate just how large it might be. Would it be right to match the acceleration of the universe?

    It was not just not right, it was catastrophically too large. The calculations indicated that the quantum vacuum energy was oversized by a factor 10120. That is an extraordinary large number. There are “only” 1090 atoms in the entire known universe. If the actual dark energy were that large, the universe would be expanding so fast that light wouldn’t have time to reach our eyes from the end of our noses before they both shot apart to be amongst the stars. Only, such a large dark energy would mean there couldn’t be any stars too, and so we wouldn’t be here at all.

    This new twist in the story of fine-tuning astonishes even the most atheistic of physicists. I spoke with Steven Weinberg, the Nobel-prize winner who has himself penned some witty lines mocking belief. On the telephone, from his office at the University of Texas at Austin, he said: “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident."
    http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=137

    some bible thumper... you are such a troll. there is another noble prize winner. .Your man Steven Weinberg... the person you quoted out of context earlier... "One fine tuning"...
     
    #391     Nov 14, 2011
  2. jem

    jem

    read that again troll... from the nobel prize winner you took out of context....

    "This new twist in the story of fine-tuning astonishes even the most atheistic of physicists. I spoke with Steven Weinberg, the Nobel-prize winner who has himself penned some witty lines mocking belief. On the telephone, from his office at the University of Texas at Austin, he said: “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident.""

    http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=137


    As I have been saying all along given our current science - our universe appears designed (or tuned) and to combat the conclusion some scientists are speculating there could be almost infinite universes.

    But, those infinite universes are just a guess.... there is no proof of even one other universe.
     
    #392     Nov 14, 2011
  3. jem in a nutshell:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba2h9tqNYAo&feature=feedwll&list=WL
     
    #393     Nov 14, 2011
  4. jem

    jem

    I just spent a few minutes listiening. What is your point. I have no problem with evolution after life began... the point I have made over and over on this subject is that there is no evidence life evolved from non life on earth.

    how many fricken times do we have to go over this...

    http://web.mit.edu/rog/www/papers/does_origins.pdf

    We now know that the probability of life arising by chance is far too low to
    be plausible, hence there must be some deeper explanation that we are yet to
    discover, given which the origin of life is atleastreasonably likely. Perhaps we
    have little idea yet what form this explanation will take—although of course it
    will not appeal to the work of a rational agent; this is would be a desperate
    last resort, if an option at all—but we have every reason to look for such an
    explanation, for we have every reason to think there is one.
    In a detailed survey of the field, Iris Fry (1995, 2000) argues that although
    the disagreements among origin of life theorists run very deep, relating to the
    most basic features of the models they propose, the view sketched above is a
    fundamental unifying assumption (one which Fry strongly endorses). Some
    researchers in the field are even more optimistic of course. They believe that
    they have already found the explanation, or at least have a good head start
    on it. But their commitment to the thesis above is epistemically more basic,
    in the sense that it motivated their research in the first place and even if their
    theories were shown to be false, they would retain this basic assumption.
    3
    There is a very small group of detractors, whom Fry (1995) calls the “Almosta Miracle Camp” including Francis Crick (1981), ErnstMayr (1982),
    and Jaques Monod (1974), who appear to be content with the idea that life
    arose by chance even if the probability of this happening is extremely low.
    4
    According to Crick “the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a
    miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to been satisfied
    to get it going” (1981: 88); the emergence of life was nevertheless a “happy
    accident” (p. 14).
    5
    According to Mayr, “a full realization of the near impossibility of an origin of life brings home the point of how improbable this
    event was.” (1982: 45). Monod famously claimed that although the probability of life arising by chance was “virtually zero. . .our number came up in the
    Monte Carlo game” (1974: 137). Life, as Monod puts it, is “chance caught
    on a wing” (p. 78). That is, although natural selection took over early to produce the diversity of life, its origin was nothing but an incredibly improbable
    fluke.Does Origins of Life Research Rest on a Mistake? 459
    However, the vast majority of experts in the field clearly define their work
    in opposition to this view. The more common attitude is summed up neatly
    by J. D. Bernal.
    [T]he question, could life have originated by a chance occurrence of atoms,
    clearly leads to a negative answer. This answer, combined with the knowledge
    that life is actually here, leads to the conclusion that some sequences other than
    chance occurrences must have led to the appearances of life. (quoted in Fry 2000:
    153)
    Having calculated the staggering improbability of life’s emergence by chance,
    Manfred Eigen (1992) concludes,
    The genes found today cannot have arisen randomly, as it were by the throw of
    a dice. There must exist a process of optimization that works toward functional
    efficiency. Even if there are several routes to optimal efficiency, mere trial and
    error cannotbe one of them. (p. 11)
    It is from this conclusion that Eigen motivates his search for a physical principle that does not leave the emergence of life up to blind chance, hence
    making itreproducible in principle:
    The physical principle that we are looking for should be in a position to explain
    the complexity typical of the phenomena of life at the level of molecular structures and syntheses. It should show how such complex molecular arrangements
    are able to form reproducibly in Nature. (p. 11)
    According to Christian de Duve (1991),
    . . .unless one adopts a creationist view,. . .life arose through the succession of an
    enormous number of small steps, almost each of which, given the condition at
    the time had a very high probability of happening. . .the alternative amounts to
    a miracle. . .were [the emergence of life] not an obligatory manifestation of the
    combinatorial properties of matter, it could not possibly have arisen naturally.
    (p. 217)
    Not all theorists follow De Duve so far as suggesting that life’s emergence
    mustbe inevitable. While nota specialistin the area, Richard Dawkins (1987)
    captures the attitude that appears to dominate scientific research into life’s
    origin. According to Dawkins,
    All who have given thought to the matter agree that an apparatus as complex as
    the human eye could not possibly come into existence through [a single chance
    event]. Unfortunately the same seems to be true of at least parts of the apparatus
    of cellular machinery whereby DNA replicates itself (p. 140)460 NOUS ˆ
    In considering how the first self-replicating machinery arose, Dawkins asks
    “Whatis the largestsingle eventof sheer naked coincidence, sheer unadulterated miraculous luck, that we are allowed to get away with in our theories,
    and still say that we have a satisfactory explanation of life?” (p. 141) And
    he answers that there are strict limits on the “ration of luck” that we are
    allowed to postulate in our theories.
    6
    According to Dawkins, an examination
    of the immense complexity of the most basic mechanisms required for DNA
    replication is sufficient to see that any theory which makes its existence a
    highly improbable fluke is unbelievable, quite apart from what alternative
    explanations are on the table


    http://web.mit.edu/rog/www/papers/does_origins.pdf
     
    #394     Nov 14, 2011

  5. this is a false statement. it is only the opinion of one thiest with an agenda. similar to you.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo&feature=feedrec_grec_index
     
    #395     Nov 14, 2011
  6. how creationists,like jem, play games with numbers so they can slip their god in a gap in our knowledge:




    "I think I hate this graphic. It purports to calculate the odds of your existence, and concludes that the chance is 1 in 102,685,000: So the odds that you exist at all are: Basically zero. Now go forth and feel and act like the miracle that you are."


    Graphic, and why it's bullshit, below the fold.

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/11/a_very_silly_calculation.php

    It's a very truthy list of calculations. Sure, you can multiply out the probabilities of all the many events that led directly to you after the fact, but this wasn't a process that began with the goal of making you. You are a contingent product of many chance events, but so what? So is everything else in the universe. That number doesn't make you any more special than a grain of sand on a beach, which also arrived at its precise shape, composition, and location by a series of chance events.

    It's simply making the lottery fallacy. The odds of winning the Minnesota state Powerball lottery are 1 in 195,249,054 — why, it must be a miracle that anyone wins!

    It also gets remarkably silly early on where it calculates the odds that "every one of your ancestors lived to reproductive age" as 1 in 1045,000. Wait. What? I think the odds of my being here if even one of my ancestors had failed to reach reproductive age is zero…therefore, I must not exist.

    If the odds that I exist are basically zero, and those are the same odds for each and every person on the planet, doesn't that mean that 7*109 (the number of people on the planet) * 1*10-2,685,000 (the probability that each person exists) imply that the population of planet Earth is actually basically zero? Nice to know. The price on real estate should be dropping fast.

    So while the odds that the concatenation of chance events that led to me are really low, that's not the same as saying that the odds of a person, or something, being here are low. You are one of 7 billion people, occupying an insignificant fraction of the volume of the universe, and you aren't a numerical miracle at all — you're actually rather negligible. Maybe you should go forth and feel and act like you aren't any more special than anyone else on Earth.
     
    #396     Nov 14, 2011
  7. jem

    jem

    you are a fricken idiot troll now too.

    so this nobel prize winner (quote below) does not understand probabilities...
    are you that stupid? And these guys do not understand science either... rees, or susskind or hawking who all propse a multiverse to explain the tunings... when they could just a saw we got lucky..

    you can lead an et atheist to science but you cant make him think...

    --

    "This new twist in the story of fine-tuning astonishes even the most atheistic of physicists. I spoke with Steven Weinberg, the Nobel-prize winner who has himself penned some witty lines mocking belief. On the telephone, from his office at the University of Texas at Austin, he said: “This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme, far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident.""
    http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=137
     
    #397     Nov 14, 2011
  8. we have exposed how you lie to put words in their mouth so you can slip your god into gaps in our knowledge many times already. it is getting rather tiring. this isnt sunday school class. i think you suffer from..................cognitive dissonance — the intellectual crisis that occurs when a failed belief system or philosophy is confronted with proof of its implausibility. ...



    The Cognitive Dissidents
    By Barry Ritholtz - November 14th, 2011, 7:30AM I have frequently referenced the idea of Cognitive Dissonance. This has been traditionally described as the “uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.”

    Many others refuse. Facts be damned, they double down, sticking with their beliefs, regardless of all evidence to the contrary.

    I have a new name for these folks: They are Cognitive Dissidents. They will continue to dissent from reality for as long as it takes to get everyone else to believe as they do, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

    If you engage with a Cognitive Dissident, it is futile to try to use facts or data, for theirs is a belief based upon Faith. You cannot convince a person of a fact if it conflicts with their deeply held, nearly religious convictions.

    Thus, when confronted with someone who has a fervent belief based not on evidence or reason or data or logic, do not waste your time convincing them the earth is not flat; their cognitive facilities simply will not allow them to recognize the world is round.
    A farmer — or was it Robert Heinlein? — once passed along this slice of wisdom; I repeat it now for your benefit: Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
     
    #398     Nov 14, 2011
  9. jem

    jem

    you area an asshole... a complete asshole.
    And now I suspect you are Stu.

    I present quotes and videos... you present bullshit.
     
    #399     Nov 14, 2011
  10. bullshit. now that is funny coming from you.
     
    #400     Nov 14, 2011