>> ^critical_d:

Odd how the scientific community seems to have more enthusiasm for exploring the oceans of Titan than our own. I read somewhere that the technological aspects of a dive like Cameron performed are as complex as a moon landing. I guess the thinking was that if something went wrong seven miles below then you are just as screwed as if you were in the Frau Mora Highlands. If the ultimate goal is to setup a colony on Mars or our own Moon, then we should practice in our own backyard first.


Firstly you make the mistake of assuming that all scientists COULD be working on deep sea exploration. There wasn't a scientist working on it but then a bloke pulled him away and asked him to do space instead. Not all of them enjoy marine biology, not all of them work in the correct or an analogous field.

Secondly, there is always the argument AGAINST directed research. That is, most of our most amazing discoveries happened through studying something else and often enough by accident, so why would directed research be any better? The cosmic background radiation was discovered at bell laboratories and they thought it was due to pigeon shit at first. You may as well go back in time and tell einstein to stop pissing about with light and help solve real world problems like in-car navigation. Then suddenly 50 years down the line we have no state of the art GPS system because he didn't go into relativity.

Thirdly, exploring deep sea trenches is, i believe, an engineering problem rather than a theoretical problem. Why would a scientist need to stop working on discovering things to help to either build or generate money for something?

Fouthly, if you think there's interesting stuff in the tiny amount of water that exists on our planet, you should read up on space.

Finally, at least some of the software tools developed by computational astrophysicists have been used to solve earth-bound problems such as climate change and weather systems, so if you study something else you may end up killing two birds with one stone.

Why the hell would anyone rather look at the ocean which is right next to us over the deepest reaches of space anyway? But if we find the key to faster than light travel down there, i'll be looking sheepish

>> ^messenger:

We don't hate rich people. We hate selfish profiteering rich people.
Or maybe that's too complicated for the average person. Yeah, let's just hate all rich people, including those who are paid well because they're really good at something they love, and have worked harder on than almost any of us have ever done on anything. Let's hate anybody who's wildly successful for any reason. Way to miss the point, idiot.


I don't think it matters how good you are at anything, getting paid thousands, sometimes a 100,000 + a week, is ridiculous. How much do scientists curing horrible diseases get? How much do the greatest psychotherapists making tortured souls lives livable get? Teachers, astrophysicists, soldiers etc etc.

You quote The Blind Watchmaker and The Origin of Species but I highly doubt that you’ve read them yourself. If you haven’t then you’re not better than someone who is contesting the bible without having read it. You quote a LOT of scientists that you say are hostile to your position but again, have you actually read the works that you’re quoting from in their entirety? I doubt it.

Well, I have read them and I think it's fairly obvious that I understand the subject matter.

Here are just two things that I read recently that I think are worth repeating:

...degree of thermodynamic disorder is measured by an entity called "entropy." There is a mathematical correlation between entropy increase and an increase in disorder. The overall entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. However, the entropy of some parts of the system can spontaneously decrease at the expense of an even greater increase of other parts of the system. When heat flows spontaneously from a hot part of a system to a colder part of the system, the entropy of the hot area spontaneously decreases! The ICR (Institute for Creation Research)...

....illustrate a fact, but they are not the fact itself. One thing is certain: metaphors are completely useless when it comes to the thermodynamics of calculating the efficiency of a heat engine, or the entropy change of free expansion of a gas, or the power required to operate a compressor. This can only be done with mathematics, not metaphors. Creationists have created a "voodoo" thermodynamics....

I never made the argument that entropy can never decrease in a system. I made the argument that even if you want to use the energy of the sun to explain why life is becoming more complex, you haven't explained the information that makes that possible. More energy does not equal more order. I also don't know why you keep bringing up articles from the institution of creation research and expect me to defend them. I am more than willing to admit that there are some terrible theories by creationists out there, just as there are terrible theories by secular scientists.

For myself, I am only a materialist because there isn’t any demonstrable, non-anecdotal, reproducible evidence for the existence of anything non-material. I hope you can understand that. There is the appearance of design and there is DNA, and we don’t know how everything got started but that’s not good enough for me to believe that it was designed, I need something more concrete because that is the criteria for which I will justify something as believable. I’d be very interested in some sort of evidence like that but it hasn’t happened yet and conjecture just doesn’t work for me so I’ll reserve judgment but maintain doubt and that’s all there is to it.

I can understand your position as a materialist, having formally been one. I did not see any evidence for God or spirit either, and it really rocked my world to discover that there was more, and that material reality is only a veil to a larger reality. It is mind blowing to discover that everything that you know is in some way, wrong.

I think there is some very good evidence pointing towards a Creator, but that isn't going to get you there necessarily. It seems to me though, after talking with you a bit, that if there is a God, you would want to know about it. Maybe you're not terribly interested in pursuing the subject at the moment but you now strike me as someone who is open to the truth. If He does exist, would you want to hear from Him? If He let you know, would you follow Him?

On the scope of evidence, I think the two of the most powerful arguments are the information in DNA and the fine-tuning of physical laws. There is no naturalistic process which can produce a code, and that is what DNA is. It is a digital code which stores information and is vastly superior to anything we have ever designed. It is a genetic language which has its own alphabet, grammar, syntax, and meaning. It has redudancy and error correction, and it is an encoding and decoding mechanism to transmit information about an organism. Biologists actually use linguistic analysis to decode its functions. You also have to realize that the message is not the medium. In that, like all information, you can copy the information in DNA to storage device like a hard drive, and then recode it later with no loss in information. This is a pretty good article on the information in DNA:

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/read-prove-god-exists/language-dna-intelligent-design/

The fine tuning evidence is also very powerfully because it is virtually impossible for the laws to have come about by chance. It's important to understand what fine tuning actually means. I'll quote Dr Craig:

"That the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is a pretty solidly established fact and ought not to be a subject of controversy. By “fine-tuning” one does not mean “designed” but simply that the fundamental constants and quantities of nature fall into an exquisitely narrow range of values which render our universe life-permitting. Were these constants and quantities to be altered by even a hair’s breadth, the delicate balance would be upset and life could not exist."

So it's not a question whether the Universe itself is finely tuned for life, it is a question of how it got that way. In actuality, the odds of it happening are far worse than winning the powerball lottery over 100 times in a row. Random chance simply cannot account for it because there are dozens of values that must be precisely calibrated, and the odds for some of these values happening by chance is greater than the number of particles in the Universe! For instance, the space-energy density must be fine tuned to one part in 10 to the 120th power, an inconceivably huge number. That's just one value out of dozens. Many scientists understand this.

Here are some quotes from some agnostic scientists, which a couple of Christians thrown in:

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming".

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose".

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory."

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."
Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance."

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it."

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine."

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." Note: Tipler since has actually converted to Christianity, hence his latest book, The Physics Of Christianity.

Just because the universe and life might have the appearance of design doesn’t mean it was designed. After all, we might all be brains in vats being experimented on by hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings and all of this is simply like the matrix. Maybe Déjà vu is evidence that it’s true but there simply isn’t any reason to believe it just like there isn’t any reason to believe in any gods.

But if that were true then the Universe is designed, and this is simply some kind of computer program. In any case, although we could imagine many scenerios I am talking about something very specific; That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He rose from the dead. Moreover, that you can know Him personally, today.

All of the concepts of god and gods have been moved back every time we discover naturalistic explanations where once those gods were accredited. What makes you think that it’s any different with these things? Just because we don’t know what’s behind the veil doesn’t mean that the idea of someone pulling the levers is a better explanation than a currently unknown natural, non-agency explanation. If we don’t know, then we don’t know and putting a god in the place of “we don’t know” isn't a good way of helping us learn more about our universe

The primary question is whether the Universe has an intelligent causation. You believe that Universes, especially precisely calibrated and well-ordered ones just happen by themselves. I happen to think that this is implausible to say the least. You're acting like it's not a valid question, and because we can describe some of the mechanisms we see that we can rule out an intelligent cause, which is simply untrue. You could describe every single mechanism there is in the Universe, but until you explain how it got here, you haven't explained anything. The real question is not how they work but why they work and that question can only be answered by answering why they exist in the first place.

It is also just a fallacy to say that because some peoples beliefs about God have been proven false, that means all beliefs about God are false. Scientists used to believe that there were only seven planets and that the Earth was flat. Does that mean that all ideas scientists have are false? No, and neither does it mean that all beliefs about God are false because people have had ridiculous beliefs about God.

The God I believe in is not ridiculous, and the belief in His existence has led to ideas that formed western civilization and propelled modern science itself. The idea that we can suss out Universal laws by investigating secondary causes is a Christian one, that came from the belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws.

It is also not a brake to doing science to believe that God created the Universe. Some of the greatest scientists who have ever lived believed in God. People like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Max Planck, Mendel and Einstein. It certainly didn't stop them from doing great science.

Also, as I have explained, it is not a God of the gaps argument when God is a better explanation for the evidence.

We know that the universe, space-time, matter had a finite beginning but we can’t say anything at all about that beginning with any certainty. We can’t even say that whatever was that caused the universe is spaceless, or timeless. We just don’t know. This is the god of the gaps argument that started this whole thing. You’re putting a god in as the explanation for what is effectively a gap in our knowledge without anything solid to go off of. It would not be a god of the gaps argument if we eventually could know with a high degree of certainty that there is a god there fiddling with the controls but we don’t. That is the crux of this whole debate. That is why “I don’t know” is a better answer than “A god did it” because it’s absolutely verifiably true where as a god is not.

The ultimate cause of the Universe must be timeless because it must be beginningless, according to logic. I'll explain. You cannot get something from nothing, I think we both agree on that. So if the Universe has a cause, it must be an eternal cause, since you cannot have an infinite regress of causes for the Universe. The buck has to stop somewhere. This points to an eternal first cause, which means that cause is timeless. If it is timeless it is also changeless because change is a property of time. If it is changeless it is also spaceless, because anything which exists in space must be temporal, since it is always finitely changing relation to the things around it. It's timelessness and spacelessness makes it immaterial, and this also makes it transcendent. I think it is obvious that whatever created the Universe must be unimaginably powerful. So we have something which already closely describes the God of the bible, and we can deduct these things by using logic alone.

We just don’t know if the universe is entirely regressable into some sort of endless loop which folds in on itself, or something else, or even if there is a god or not. Furthermore, I hope you look into what physicist mean by “out of nothing” because it doesn’t mean what I think you think it means. It took me a while to understand what it meant and to be honest, it is a bit of a deceptive word play but it’s only that way because there isn’t another way to describe it. I don't actually believe that the universe came from "nothing". I don't know how it all started, so therefore, I have no belief. I don't need an answer to the big questions. I can say "I don't know" just fine and leave it at that.

“A proponent of the Big Bang Theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” Anthony Kenny

British physicist P.C.W. Davies writes, “The coming-into-being of the universe as discussed in modern science…is not just a matter of imposing some sort of organization or structure upon a previous incoherent state, but literally the coming-into-being of all physical things from nothing.”

Physicist Victor Stenger says “the universe exploded out of nothingness the observable universe could have evolved from an infinitesimal region. its then tempting to go one step further and speculate that the entire universe evolved from literally nothing.

In the realm of the universe, nothing really means nothing. Not only matter and energy would disappear, but also space and time. However, physicists theorize that from this state of nothingness, the universe began in a gigantic explosion about 16.5 billion years ago.

HBJ General Science 1983 Page 362

the universe burst into something from absolutely nothing - zero, nada. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. How is that possible? Ask Alan Guth. His theory of inflation helps explain everything.

discover April 2002

I think we can both agree that it is better to know than not to know. That's been one of your primary arguments against the existence of God, that we simply cannot rest of the laurels of God being the Creator because that will lead to ignorance. I have already demonstrated that there is no actual conflict with belief in God and doing good science, so your argument is invalid, but I think it's ironic that on the other side of it, you are arguing that ignorance is a good thing and leads to better science. That you're even intellectually satisified with not knowing. I hope you can see the contradiction here.

The reason why I personally don’t find the whole god argument all that interesting, and the reason why I don’t actually care about it, is because it makes a heck of a lot of claims regarding the nature of god and it’s properties which just can’t be verified. There is nothing that we can concretely discover about god and no predictions that we can make which could eventually be verified meaningfully. How can we possibly know if creator is timeless, or spaceless, unimaginably powerful, transcendent, unembodied, etc? Is it rational to believe that; do you have an equal ratio of evidence to belief? What predictions can we actually make about this god(s). All we have are books and stories written and passed down throughout history. Everything else is just unjustified belief to me.

As I explained above, we can make several predictions about God based on the evidence. Belief in God is rational and can be justified. However, I understand that until you have a personal experience, it is probably going to be unconvincing to you, since this is way you see the world. You demand evidence, and lucky for you, God provides evidence. If you asked Him to come into your life, He would demonstrate it to you. He provided evidence to me, and I know you He will provide to you, especially if you take a leap of faith ask Him for it.

>> ^IAmTheBlurr:

But yes, Neil cannot be blamed for not knowing that our genome is not 99% similar to chimps. After all, as an astrophysicist he is not used to studying anything even remotely as complex as genetics.

Feinman's Quantum ElectroDynamic theory is one of the most successfully predictive theories in the history of science, but my point is that it will eventually be superseded (actually, built upon) by another--more concise--theory. Paradigm shifts are always occurring in science, that's why science is so powerful: it's self-correcting.

Thanks for the complement, but I don't even have an advanced degree.
>> ^Mcboinkens:

>> ^Boise_Lib:
I need a model of how I fucked this comment up. Any takers?

I kind of sensed that you were trying to troll me. But yeah, I mean that statement isn't completely true. We are getting a pretty good idea about the fundamentals now. Virtual particles causing electromagnetic fields and so on. Do you teach a class or something?

...if it really exists. a control study by another science team with the same data came to the conclusion that there is no real evidence for another planet around gliese, that the signals taken as gravitational effects of a passing planet are so weak in fact that they easily could be just background noise. don't get me wrong, i'm all about hoping to be able to freeze my brain someday and have my mind transferred to a superhuman android travelling space someday but it could well be that this is just some giant ego trip of a small team of astrophysicists.

[redacted]

>> ^Mcboinkens:

Not exactly, but I have taken two years of physics and am in an Astronomy class here at a university, so you could say I might know something about it.
<div><div style="margin: 10px; overflow: auto; width: 80%; float: left; position: relative;" class="convoPiece"> Boise_Lib said:<img style="margin: 4px 10px 10px; float: left; width: 40px;" src="http://static1.videosift.com/avatars/b/Boise_Lib-s.jpg" onerror="ph(this)"><div style="position: absolute; margin-left: 52px; padding-top: 1px; font-size: 10px;" class="commentarrow">◄</div><div style="padding: 8px; margin-left: 60px; margin-top: 2px; min-height: 30px;" class="nestedComment box">Do you?
</div></div></div>
<div><div style="margin: 10px; overflow: auto; width: 80%; float: right; position: relative;" class="convoPiece"> Mcboinkens said:<img style="margin: 4px 10px 10px; float: right; width: 40px;" src="http://static1.videosift.com/avatars/m/Mcboinkens-s.jpg" onerror="ph(this)"><div style="position: absolute; margin-top: 1px; right: 52px; font-size: 10px;" class="commentarrow">►</div><div style="padding: 8px; margin-right: 60px; margin-top: 2px; min-height: 30px;" class="nestedComment box">He has no clue what magnetic fields are...
</div></div></div>

Good answer.

Yes, I was laying a trap for you. I expected an answer wherein you pontificate on magnetic fields by parroting what you have been told to believe. In truth no human "knows" what a magnetic field is--we can only describe the effects on our reality of the things we call magnetic fields. Even many scientists don't remember that all of science is building models to explain effects we observe--then we change models when needed. The most needed--but seldom used phrase in science is, "as far as we now know."

[redacted]

>> ^Mcboinkens:

He has no clue what magnetic fields are...


Do you?

There's the Chinese space program which might push America into another space race. And there is of course a good chance that commercial space flight will be developed when he grows up. Maybe he can pilot the next generation orbital Virgin Galactic craft.
>> ^harry:

He'll have to grow up fast if he wants to become an astronaut. ISS will be deorbited in 2020. And I don't really see anyone developing any kind of new manned space missions.

>> ^ForgedReality:

"I love being told what to say and then my parents editing out the part where they told me to say it!"


I agree completely. It's so obvious. If his knowledge surpassed her own, then she wouldn't be recording obscure things like "Eris". Not that it's a bad idea to teach your kids about the universe but this is called "living vicariously".

>> ^RadHazG:

Compared to the sickening insanity of Jesus Camp? Wow. Such a bright kid, can only hope we get more like him.


I upvoted this comment (back to zero).

So... someone downvoted--from hiding--because they LIKE the indoctrination into mindlessness that is Jesus Camp?

He'll have to grow up fast if he wants to become an astronaut. ISS will be deorbited in 2020. And I don't really see anyone developing any kind of new manned space missions.>> ^ant:
A smart ginger! Does he want to be an astronaut when he grows up?