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Hi Rab and
everyone else, Rab, would you please send me a copy of your paper so that I can look
at your arguments in detail? It was such
a thought-provoking and contentious paper. To add to David Saitch’s
puddle analogy, I agree that it is dangerous to assume that the world fits us
perfectly and therefore it is ours to play with. Again, the ‘unlikeliness’
of fine-tuning seems very suspect for two reasons: 1.
It is
said that if this fine-tuning had been different by an infinitesimally small
margin then our universe would not be able to exist and this is seen as so
‘unlikely’ that is it evidence for intelligent design of the universe. But surely it is only an illusion generated
by hindsight that makes it seem unlikely.
After all, if the tuning had gone some other way we would not be here
speculating on it, which means that there is 100% likelihood, given that we are here speculating on it, that the tuning would turn out
that way. It is as if I were to consider
the incredibly large number of sperm that were emitted by my father as making
it so very unlikely that the one that turned out to be me was the very one that
prevailed. Any one of those sperm might
have reached the ovum first or none of them might have done, and then I would
not have existed. This makes the
mystically-inclined say ‘I was meant to be’. 2.
If you imagine a trillion-sided die being
thrown, whichever side comes up there is a trillion to one chance against that
particular side coming up, but this is true of any
side that comes up. If you want to know
if a die is loaded you have to throw it several times, and only if you keep
getting the same answer then the probability
that it is loaded increases with every identical answer. Here we are suggesting that the throw of the
die that resulted in this fine-tuning is loaded on the basis of one throw. What does anyone else think? Hilary Easton -----Original
Message----- Rab, Next, you managed to use your mysteriously
garnered extra time to put together a thought provoking paper which we should
all discuss. I had a couple of initial thoughts
that I didn’t get a chance to make, so here they are, but I will put give it
the detailed thought it deserves. But first, I doff my hat to Douglas
Adam’s response to our idea that the universe has been designed for us. “It's rather like a puddle waking up one morning— I know they don't
normally do this, but allow me, I'm a science fiction writer— A puddle wakes up
one morning and thinks: "This is a very interesting world I find myself
in. It fits me very neatly. In fact it fits me so neatly... I mean really
precise isn't it?... It must have been made to have me in it." The sun
rises and it's continuing to narrate this story about how this hole must have
been made to have him in it. And as the sun rises, and gradually the puddle is
shrinking and shrinking and shrinking— and by the time the puddle ceases to
exist, it's still thinking— it's still trapped in this idea that— that the hole
was there for it. And if we think that the world is here for us we will
continue to destroy it in the way that we have been destroying it, because we
think that we can do no harm.” 1. Is the
Design Intelligent? Your analogy example of the secret
agent who miraculously survives a poison gas attack by the mysterious gathering
of the poisons at one end of the cabin while he remained safely ensconced in an
oxygen bubble made me doubt the design theory even more. Let me give you a counter example.
I become a star premiership footballer and I employ one of the world’s most
eminent architects to design a 55 bedroom mansion. But mysteriously he
fills the 23 reception rooms, the 14 marble bathrooms, the snooker room, dining
room, bar, and 54 bedrooms with noxious gasses, making them
uninhabitable. In fact, only one back bedroom is
inhabitable, but luckily it’s very nicely decorated. This would appear to be similar to
the job that the designer, should it exist, has done on the universe. That
strikes me as very unintelligent design! If I were to hold six dice in each
hand and roll them all simultaneously, and the all came up six, would we be led
to believe that the dice were loaded? I think we could conceive that they just
happened to come out that way – and in the same way I can still conceive that
the 12 constatns came out the way the did by chance and, luckily enough, that
gave the conditions for life to evolve. There are alternatives out there.
The brilliant physicist Lee Smolin’s interesting proposal that if evolution is
a phenomenon of nature then the Universe could have evolved stability is
certainly a fascinating idea. 2. What to
Teach Since the title of your paper stated
that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools as an alternative to
multiple universe theory, I thought I would make the point that, although it’s
some years since I did my physics A Level, I don’t believe that multi-universe
theory is taught in schools. It would be more likely to come under a
theoretical physics degree. So I
wondered under what subject you would teach it in school. If it forms part of the RE syllabus,
all well and good, though since you are postulating a scientific process I
would then expect RE to also include a robust case for non-ID. If not RE, where else would you
teach it? Physics? Biology? Chemistry? If you were to teach it as a
science, what exactly would you teach? Which prestigious University science
faculty has a body of Intelligent Design research? Where are the peer reviewed
papers that make up a body of knowledge that can be taught? Also, if you only taught fine tuning
to science classes, what about those pupils not studying sciences? Would we
have to have an ID section in every subject? This all seems very problematic to me. Could you forward me a copy of the
paper and I’ll give it some more detailed though. Cheers, David -- -- |