Re: [asa] proving god

On Nov 24, 2007 11:54 PM, Merv <mrb22667@kansas.net> wrote:

>
> While Christians should always give thanks to God for both the amazing
> *and mundane* details of the universe, let the grandiloquent celebration
> of anthropic coincidence be here repudiated before Iain develops a
> full-fledged stomach ulcer. I think his description of painting the
> bulls eye around the arrow after the fact continues to apply well to
> many of these amazements.
>

I'm not sure I'm quite with you here. The Anthropic coincidence _is_ an
example of a low-probability event that requires an explanation, which is
why there is all the fuss about multiverses - as if billions of darts were
thrown at the wall and one of them landed in the very small area that
corresponded to "life-sustaining universe". That is why the first chapter
of "The Blind Watchmaker" is called "explaining the very improbable" -
Dawkins knows that the complexity of life is extremely improbable and that
it requires an explanation.

The criticism of painting the bulls eye round the arrow after the fact (of
anthropic coincidence) is only valid if you believe in the multiverse
theory. However, the fact of anthropic coincidence doesn't prove the
multiverse theory any more than it proves an Intelligent designer.

However, I guess there are some evidences of circle-drawing after the fact
that don't require speculation about multiverses in the paper, for example:

I. Life forms need an environment of approximately 0-100F to
survive. We have it. How does it happen??

One is really tempted here to ask the author if he knows how it happens that
people get to win large prizes in lotteries. There are billions of stars in
our galaxy and billions of galaxies in the universe. That's a lot of darts
thrown at the wall.

In general I was not impressed with the article, either in tone or in
content. To the scientific errors others have noted, I noticed "24
Chromosomes"? I may be wrong but I had always thought it was 23 (including
the X/Y chromosomes). No doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

The other big problem I had was in the tone of the article, and especially
in the use of multiple exclamation marks and multiple question marks (see
example above). This seems to me to be very patronising, and idicative of
bad writing. If one's point is sufficiently compelling, then one question
mark should suffice. So when I see something like:

Was this an accident???

then I'm assuming the author wants me to say "No", and yet looking at the
claim I'm thinking is it an accident that occasionally one gets a Royal
Flush in poker, or a Grand Slam in Bridge.

In short, the whole style is along the lines of the vicar whose sermon notes
contained the instruction "Argument weak - shout louder".

Agreed???!!! :-)

Iain

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Received on Mon Nov 26 04:32:41 2007