Paul Davies: "Are we to suppose that these laws were magically imprinted on the universe at the moment of the big bang for no particular reason and that the form they have has no explanation?"

Answer: Excluding the appeal to magic: yes.

Were apples to evolutionary develop consciousness and language and reason, they might ask how the Universe produced the warm climate, geographic location, appropriate altitude, nutritious soil, etc... that made it possible for their development on the tree they grow on. Was it pre-ordained and 'fine-tuned'?

Paul Davies rejects the ideas explaining the origin and life-giving order of the universe by invoking something greater outside itself, on the basis that they merely solve the mystery by creating a further mystery... (leading to an infinite regression of existences, which must end, whether ultimately or at once, in infinite existence itself). But he then takes as better the idea that the universe designed itself! Frankly, even a circularly-justified existence does not account for itself. Either there is a God, or we ARE 'god'. There is no escape from infinity.

nukeeular wrote:

The published results of many of these tests suggest that the initial intention of any experiment nets the intial desired conclusion. Meaning; you will find what you seek. In nearly all facets of quantum and astrophysics

Actually no, You cannot find whatever you seek - since what you can actually model physically will be constrained by the physical principles at work.

For example, I will never ever "find" a hollow star, since such an entity would controvert the principle of hydrostatic equilibrium that obtains for stars.

I will never find an anti-matter galaxy in the Local Group cluster.

I will never find a photon subject to Fermi -Dirac statistics rather than Bose-Einstein statistics.

I will never find an electromagnetic wave that travels faster than c, the speed of light, or which always displays a 90 degree polarization.

Note also, NO experiments however contrived will demonstrate ANY of the above.

There are some things we will never ever find, no matter how much we "intend" to!

"Of the remaining visible 7% most (6.5%) is hot plasma that exhibits no lasting order or design, nothing that can't be explained from basic thermodynamics and discrete principles (e.g. hydrostatic equilibrium in stars)."

Actually, the standard model of particle physics, as well as proposed theories to explain dark matter and dark energy, are based upon a highly symmetrical and ordered set of relationships that can reasonably be regarded as a kind of design. However, despite the attempts of Intelligent Design cultists to co-opt the word, it should be clear that when physicists (including Davies) use the word "design," they are in no way implying the existence of a "designer."

Any scientist who says that life could not have evolved if one factor were different because then X, should be ridiculed and ignored.

Without the ability to actually observe and experiment with that different universe, no one can know what would or wouldn't happen there. The laws of physics only describe *this* world, and tweaking individual factors might well change much more then expected. Even thinking about tweaking factors is scientifically silly.

Our knowledge is *still* pitiful.

AHHHHH! I can't help it. He's a moron! Nukeeuler says:

"The published results of many of these tests suggest that the initial intention of any experiment nets the initial [sic] desired conclusion."

This is called the Scientific Method. You always state your hypothesis before you conduct your experiment. You people are idiots. Ahhhh! I'm going to lose my mind. You're morons, and you're in charge.

Nukeeuler is also a liar. He says: "We all seem to become fixated on our own opinions. Frustrating." That is a lie! What you want is everybody to agree with you. Guess what: I don't agree with you. And I don't appreciate you casually dismissing so many valid opinions from posters like that. Read them and find specific points to cite and respond to. You god people sure get uncomfortable when the Facts begin to wash away your fantasies.

You can start with this: Nukeeuler says we need to discuss "what might be out there." I'll state for the record: We're alone! There's nothing out there! Can I prove that absolutely? I'll admit that I cannot. But based on what we do know, the odds are on my side.

Let me reiterate my challenge from my first posting: we must admit there is no god and no afterlife and bring everybody together to work for the common good of humanity. Isn't that something a nice guy might wish for? If it's not all for god, then watch the attackers line up. Instead of recommending some horrible book of theology that tracks the arguments of atheists (what a submitter recommended for me), I'm just going to recommend listening to John Lennon's Imagine. Except don't listen with ears trained to be dismissive.

(BTW: hats off to the Eagleton recommendation. Great book.)

What needs to be addressed by all the giant heads responding to this article is the 'nooks and crannies' of the Anthropic Priciple and what it means to any discussion of what "might" be out there. The fact of that matter is that the results of that which we endeavour are exactly what we intended from the outset. A good generalization would be the latest experiments involving the Bose-Einstein condensate: A cloud of super-cooled molecules frozen to a quantum state at near absolute zero degrees K.. The published results of many of these tests suggest that the initial intention of any experiment nets the intial desired conclusion. Meaning; you will find what you seek. In nearly all facets of quantum and astrophysics. What I'd like to see is a discussion that supercedes this principle. But it seems everyone has an "opinion" but nothing new to bring to the table. Paul Davies has done this in a nicely nuanced way, but still, we all seem to become fixated on our own opinions. Frustrating.

-nuke-

To believe we have been visited by UFO's you have to make these assumptions:

1. Intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe - likley it does, the odds dictate it, but we have no evidence....

you parse up a bunch of made up conditions (based on your prejudices), add them up and figure because there are at least 5 or 6, that therefore aliens are less likely than if there was 1 condition. Of course I do not need to explain that this is faulty thinking at its worst.

What prejudices do you harbor, you ask? Why is it a stretch to grant that the universe is probably littered with advanced life, for instance?

I have repeatedly stated in the past on these posts that I have personal first hand knowledge that aliens have been and continue to be around our neck of the woods due to my past association with a para-NASA research group. The luck of me, I got to see firsthand dozens of photos of structures on the moon and Mars. I also heard a lot of interesting info from people connected to the inteeligence communities. Some of the images I mention are out in the public domain, but the media lockdown on viewpoints other than bemused skepticism discourages people (save for the really curious and brave) from being curious enough to go dig these images up themselves. Really, there are several books to be written about mind control and mass hallucination and how it is being used to steer the average rube clear of the data that is floating out there even today. But that is neither here nor there. We could argue about this all millenium.

Short of being taken up in a ship yourself, I am sure you would deny any and everything about the field of alien life even though much of the scattered evidence out there would, if similar types of circumstantial evidence were applied to a crime in a court of law, would be enough to convict someone of said crime, whatever the crime may be.

Frankly I do find it funny how arrogant humans are in this regard. A mere 100 years ago, if someone said planes would cross the Atlantic in only hours within the next 50 years, they would have thought that person mad. Imagine if a society is 100 MILLION years more advanced, you STILL think they cannot cross from star to star?

I really do think the audacity of that reality, thatsomeone is so advanced, we seem like insects to them, is what scares the rubes into denial.

[Of all people, I myself am preparing to publish a new method by which we ourselves may be able to reach the stars within three decades, I am intending to soon field test the concept by posting a blog site to prove out the idea.]

The other thing that bugs me is a canard put forward by Carl Sagan himself, that since something seems amazing or ludicrous to us, it must be ludicrous to EVERYONE. For instance he said, 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. BY WHOSE FUCKING ARROGANT BELIEF SYSTEM?!? What is so extraordinary about the possibility of a universe teeming with life from end to end?!?

But really, keep parsing out those limiting conditions and adding them up to make yourself feel more comfortable in this big scary universe.