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| | On the Anthropic Principle |  |
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أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 52644
العمر : 72
| | موضوع: On the Anthropic Principle السبت 14 أكتوبر 2023, 5:50 pm | |
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On the Anthropic Principle
In this section of “The God Delusion” the author discusses the so called “the anthropic principle” in astrophysics, cosmology and physics. He starts by stating that the perfect conditioning necessary for life in the system is not only a property of biological systems, but also – by necessity – of the physical cradle where natural life emerged: The Universe! He realizes – as every sane human being should – that life is the way it is not just because of genetic factors and biological processes, but because nature at large – too – is no other way but the way that it should be! In short, and simply put, the principle states that for life to exist, it cannot emerge the way we observe it under any different conditions or restraints from the way the Universe, the solar system and the Earth are! It‟s the acknowledgment that in order for us to live here the way we do, the universe has to be precisely the way that we find it to be. We do acknowledge – whether we like it or not – that we come to this world to find it – by all means – to be a perfectly prepared home for us!
Now before I start quoting and commenting, let me point to the fact that we humans have no choice but to follow this rationale in the way we observe the world around us! We know that we cannot – no matter how hard we try – come up with an alternative “design” for a carbon based intelligent life form
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that could live under any different conditions from what we see; and this is exactly what the Anthropic principle demonstrates!37 Our minds are built in such a way that we cannot escape seeing the mastery of this creation for the marvel that it really is! It is thus unthinkable that a scientist would still insist on holding on to atheism and Darwinism even as he raises his gaze from the microscope to the telescope, and sees the very same mastery and perfect accord, perfect balance and completeness exhibited in the way things are high above just as they are down below, at all levels and all scales! Yet they are bound to sabotage people‟s reasoning all the way to the end! They have no other way!
Here‟s an interesting quotation from two atheist authors that shows just how desperate those people are in their search for some rational justification to their position of stubborn denial!
Suppose that the universe was infinite and completely random in the large. Then our huge, apparently ordered universe could be just one infinitesimal part of a disordered whole. We would be living in a Humean world: we would have no reason to suppose that in the next
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37 It is to be noted here that some opponents of the Anthropic Principle argue that there is no limit to the possibilities of life forms emerging on different planets, not by necessity carbon-based, and not by necessity in any way like this form of life that we see on Earth. They would argue that every single one of those constants being the way it is, may be viewed as a necessary but insufficient condition for life to be the way that it is. Well first of all, we never said that a silicon-based life form – for example – is not possible! And yes indeed there is no limit to what life forms the creator may choose to create! But this does nothing at all to the premise that this particular universe is perfectly suited – as it is – to this particular structure of natural life of which we are part, in this earth that we call home! Yes every single one of those conditions is necessary and insufficient on its own, but that‟s exactly what makes the deduction of perfect tuning too obvious to demand arguing for! Those conditions are “irreducible” because every single one of them is necessary, and they have to be composed in exactly the way that they are for life to be the way that it is! To use the Darwinian rationale of probability, tell me my atheist reader; how likely is it that a single bang (a blind explosion with no creator) would yield this perfectly organized system, and by what reason could the process of purposeful creation and the necessary act of tuning be ruled out from such a magnificent event? Dawkins used the Boeing 747 parable to argue that it is far more unlikely for life to emerge from a single act of creation, than from a gradual “evolutionary” process of chance events, so I ask you now, what would be the outcome of applying this very same parable to the singularity that is called the big bang, as it brings together all those necessary conditions for life on this particular planet, the way that it quite obviously did? And how could any atheist continue to stick to arguments from improbability against creation, with this meaning in mind? As for the question of whether or not it would‟ve been better if we were (silicon-based) not (carbon-based) – for example - with all conditions set precisely for this structure of natural life; this judgment obviously demands a detailed knowledge of the exact purpose for which we were created, along with the rest of the universe, and that‟s certainly a kind of knowledge that cannot be sought in natural science, or in philosophy for that matter! You have to know what an “artifact” was made for before you could judge if it is made in the best possible makeup for its desired function! Do you claim to have this knowledge, my atheist reader?
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microsecond everything around us would not go into a total chaos rather like a puff of smoke. We of course would do well to suppose that the pseudo-laws, the temporary apparent regularities, would continue to operate. If they do not then no matter – nothing we do matters. But if they do continue to operate it is as well that we plan according to them.
Is not this a chilling thought, that our huge and beautiful universe (as it seems to us) might be a mere speck, a mere infinitesimal random fluctuation into apparent orderliness in what is really an infinite chaos? The image of a monkey typing randomly on a typewriter to produce Shakespeare‘s Hamlet would pale into insignificance beside the awful reality.38
Just look at the very first phrase in this „mental masturbation‟ (for lack of a better word)! The authors start by making a preposterous assumption that has no grounds whatsoever, and go on to “chill” their reader by the bleakness of such an idea! I beg of my reader to be true to himself and judge this kind of literature for what it really is: An atheist‟s wet dream! What plausible reason does any sane human being who respects his own mind have to suppose that beyond this perfectly ordered universe that we observe everywhere, there is an infinite “chaos” rather than a perfectly capable creator who is everything we should expect of the maker of this perfect craft? How can we even begin to debate with such people?
Well they might as well start by saying: ―suppose the universe was just a tiny particle in the belly of a gigantic whale that swims in the ocean of infinity‖! Wouldn‟t that be a “chilling thought”? That‟s what we‟re getting here! Suppose whatever you wish to suppose; it‟s okay as long as you do not talk of “design” or a “creator”!
This is just what Dawkins attempts to do with this section: Do not be fooled, people of religion, just like we managed to make up an evolutionist “probabilistic” alternative explanation for the perfectness in biological systems, this perfectly conditioned universe where you live is – as well – not without an equally “imaginative” alternative that suits the Darwinian creed!
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38 J.J. C. Smart & J.J. Haldane (2003), Atheism and Theism, Second Edition, UK: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 21
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So typical indeed of a man of blind faith! It is not enough that it already took him a huge leap of faith to let go of creation and ride against the stream of human sense to accept natural selection as it is; he knows he has to have even more faith in Darwin‟s theory to take its basic concepts to other places where those concepts clearly have nothing to offer! To play the “plausible-alternative” game in every other field of human perception and reason where perfectness of creation is observed! It is not plausible, it is not even reasonable to begin with, yet they believe that with further explanation of their fiction and their corrupt reasoning, they are actually doing “science”!
Quote:
―What the religious mind then fails to grasp is that two candidate solutions are offered to the problem. God is one. The anthropic principle is the other. They are alternatives.‖ (The delusion p.136)
Says who? What makes it an alternative? It is you – atheists - who desire to make in into an alternative, when every sense in every reasonable man says otherwise! Even with the corrupt application of statistical reasoning that they use; it is next to impossible that all such conditions, both in natural life, and in the universe at large, would come to be in such a perfect balance and perfect harmony for the emergence of life on Earth, and for it to progress gradually all the way to conclude in the way we see it now! On what grounds could they dare reject creation as improbable? He says ―Life still has to originate in the water, and the origin of life may have been a highly improbable occurrence.‖ … May have been?
Just take a single cell and spread the map or the sheet of all chemical reactions that take place in it, and let‟s assume for a while that those reactions could have been added to one another gradually in an accumulative manner by pure chance until eventually we had what could be qualified as a living cell! (Of course let‟s blind ourselves for now about the question of what life is and what “chemical reaction” could have initiated it into the cell!)! It is known that for every single one of those reactions – not to mention the formation of the reactants themselves in the first place (chemical synthesis) – to take place initially from its original atoms; it
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demands a great deal of conditions that differ from one reaction to the other, like containment, heat conditioning, catalyst agency, etc. Now imagine how many different sets of conditions you are asking of this pointless aimless primordial lake to have been setting and resetting every time a random candidate for reaction was passing by, so that all by pure chance everything is all set and the reaction just takes place, and a new part is added!
And they speak of “improbability”!
Chemists may actually dream of a Nobel Prize for succeeding in the total synthesis of some naturally abundant organic compound in the lab! Robert Burns Woodward was notoriously awarded the 1954 Nobel prize in Chemistry for succeeding in designing the reaction that would synthesize “strychnine” in the lab (a complex compound commonly found in the seeds of a certain tree!); Just imagine the genius and precision of those conditions that have to be prepared for that single reaction! And those people speak of the probability of random composition of a living cell in a primordial lake?
Quote:
―But the spontaneous arising by chance of the first hereditary molecule strikes many as improbable. Maybe it is - very very improbable, and I shall dwell on this, for it is central to this section of the book.‖ (The delusion p.137)
Very very improbable, he says! How much so, professor? More or less “improbable” than – for example – there being an intelligent agent (creator) who explicitly prepared the initial chemical conditions and maintained the balance onwards determinately? Can you possibly give us any statistical way of determining the estimate of the improbability so we could perhaps make a comparison?
Quote:
―The origin of life is a flourishing, if speculative, subject for research.‖ (The delusion p.137)
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| | | | أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 52644
العمر : 72
| | موضوع: رد: On the Anthropic Principle السبت 14 أكتوبر 2023, 5:51 pm | |
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Correction: The origin of life is a flourishing subject for fiction and myth in the name of science!
Quote:
―Again as with temperature, there are two hypotheses to explain what happened - the design hypothesis and the scientific or 'anthropic' hypothesis.‖ (The delusion p.137)
Again he makes the biased distinction between science and “design”, - argument from atheist faith - and forces unto the reader his subsequent philosophical position that the “Anthropic” conception is not in accord with creation, but an “alternative to it” building upon that as though it were a given fact! Now how high do people have to “raise their consciousness” so they could have this clear sign of perfectness and mastery in creation tagged as yet another “alternative of science” for creation the way he insists on rendering it, I have no idea; but it has to be too high indeed! Let‟s see how he will try to talk us into it.
Listen to this naive image of creation that he presents in a repulsive attempt to make people think less of it! I quote:
―The design approach postulates a God who wrought a deliberate miracle, struck the prebiotic soup with divine fire and launched DNA, or something equivalent, on its momentous career.‖ (The delusion p.137)
How funny indeed! The creator – praised be - has nothing to do with this cartoonish image that you have been soaked into believing throughout your entire adult life, professor! We do not postulate anything, and we have nothing to do with your mythological faith that holds life to have emerged by pure chance in a lake of dead proteins hanging around in abandon!
We, humans, cannot imagine a group of inanimate molecules, turning into living cells through some “chemical reaction”, no matter how complicated that reaction may really be! Chemistry is the discipline that studies the interaction between different forms of matter in nature! The construction of new bonds from old decomposed bonds between basic building blocks of
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matter, and the phenomena that such compositions and decompositions are parts of; this is – in simple words - what chemistry is about! So obviously, a “chemical reaction” has nothing to do with whatever it is that turned this group of building blocks of inanimate matter into living cells!
What is life, professor? How do you define life? Life is – as defined in English dictionaries – the sum of all factors that distinguish a living organism (animate matter) from dead matter! Chemistry – again – is the transformation of elements of matter to other elements of matter, regardless of the fact that such transformation may take place as part of the processes of life in a living cell. I say regardless because quite obviously, life is an additional power or governing force that runs (animates) dead matter and runs those organic reactions themselves; a force or a factor that distinguishes the living from the dead! So whatever that force may be, it‟s not chemical!
Furthermore, we are supposed to believe this reaction to have taken place by pure accident at the bottom of a lake where no medium of any sort was ever prepared for the purpose in advance, and no restrictive or conservative force whatsoever to guarantee for any of the essential initial conditions – whatever they may be – to remain restricted within the medium for the reaction, and for all elements of the reaction to take none but the exact course of motion they should be taking for the sake of this “miracle” of a reaction to take place, and for a simple amino acid to emerge!
One really fails to decide where to begin when he argues against such monumental nonsense! From language? From natural law? From basic reasoning? Well, it‟s your pick!
It is enough for now to say that if anybody even as much as tries to mimic this alleged “chemical reaction” in a lab, he is clearly fooling himself; because they do not believe it to have had any particular conditions prepared for it – unlike anything that we may recognize as a chemical reaction – or anything that might be called a reaction, anywhere in our labs or in nature -, so whatever preparations they make for the reaction in their labs, they are defeating the very purpose of the experiment while they least know it!
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In fact Dawkins does not even describe the experiment as chemists “mimicking”, he actually describes it as chemists “recreating”! Of course it is the same thing, but just look at the inevitable choice of words here! Can he not hear himself? Recreating! So it was indeed created, wasn‟t it?
Every time a Darwinian gives an analogy for how chance could be made part of an ongoing system, he forgets that it takes determinate planning and design to define the exact part where “chance” is to be involved in a system that is particularly designed for this purpose! Like we argued earlier, a system that involves “random” processes is a designed system of random generation; the generation of a result that is not particularly chosen by the designer, but is prepared as part of a set of different probable choices to which the generator is restricted by design! It is a designed system of selection in which each item of the designed set has an equal probability of being chosen, and only the right element stays in place. This is why whenever Dawkins makes an example to demonstrate the way random mutation works under natural selection; he forgets that a random generator is – in itself – a purposeful design!
A chemist will always do what a designer does in his lab whenever he prepares to mimic the alleged reaction in the so called primordial soup, even if the design is a random generator! He will restrict the elements he uses, define in advance each and every one of these elements, and hence prepare a set of given choices of equal probability, ones that are all restricted to the conditions and the medium that he prepared! This is by no means what is claimed to have taken place in the primordial soup!
Like I said in an earlier section some atheists argue that if you placed a monkey on a keyboard and asked him to type at complete random, there is no way you could end up with a book from Shakespeare, not in a billion years! However, if you had a system that would keep the right character in its place once it is hit there by chance (which he believes to be the work of natural selection in natural life), then in time long enough, the book will eventually be written! What they don‟t realize – or they probably neglect on purpose – is that they‟re actually talking about a particularly designed system that has the previous information of the desired letters and their
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places determined in advance, so that when a random generator sparks letters at random, once the right letter hits its place, it remains there! This again has nothing to do with the claim that natural selection has no previously designed code, not to mention the story of the primordial soup, because there is supposed – according to the very meaning they give to the word Chance - to be no previous design or code of right and wrong to keep anything anywhere at all!
Again he commits the very same crime against the rationale of statistical improbability when he says:
―If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefyingly improbable event would still happen on a billion planets.‖ (The delusion p.138)
In fact, if I were him, and I looked good enough, I would not be satisfied even with a one in a billion billion billion probability! The fact still remains that there is no statistical way to determine what estimate of chance is more likely, because quite simply, this is not the kind of event that could be submitted to statistical assessment in the first place, as I elaborated in detail in an earlier section! I just wanted to show the professor that he has no power of argument whatsoever in this conclusion that he is so happy to have come up with, even as we apply his own atheistic understanding of statistical improbability!
Though he does make this confession in the very next paragraph where he says:
―Any probability statement is made in the context of a certain level of ignorance. If we know nothing about a planet, we may postulate the odds of life's arising on it as, say, one in a billion. But if we now import some new assumptions into our estimate, things change.‖ (The delusion p.138)
And he still insists on arguing from improbability, nonetheless!
Yet he says:
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―I do not for a moment believe the origin of life was anywhere near so improbable in practice.‖ (The delusion p.138)
Well, believe whatever you wish to believe professor! What you believe is insignificant to the argument; it is what you can prove that matters!
―Even accepting the most pessimistic estimate of the probability that life might spontaneously originate, this statistical argument completely demolishes any suggestion that we should postulate design to fill the gap.‖ (The delusion p.139)
And whoever said that we – people of heavenly wisdom - accept any estimate or use of probability in this area to begin with? We don‟t! Statistical arguments on the subject matter are indeed a perfect example of arguments from wrong application of the scientific method itself, as is the case with every Darwinian argument in this book and in every other book!
He insists on approaching the problem of the very first origin of life armed with nothing but “statistical probability” though he does understand that it is not a problem of biology (and certainly not of chemistry, or even statistics as we elaborated earlier)! He then makes one of his boldest and most fallacious statements yet in this book when he says:
―Yet even so big a gap as this is easily filled by statistically informed science, while the very same statistical science rules out a divine creator on the 'Ultimate 747' grounds we met earlier.‖ (The delusion p.139)
How unbelievably arrogant indeed! This statement is but a multitude of outspoken fallacies accumulated over one another! At the very bottom is the false introduction (or should I say: Indoctrination) of “statistical jargon” itself into the argument, coupled with the ridiculous counter-logical image of “mount improbable” above which is laid the plainly corrupt analogy of the Boeing 747, together with the utterly false analogy of the origination of life from dead matter to the process of creating new chemical compositions from old ones! … An argument – in fact – couldn‟t possibly get any more corrupt!
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| | | | أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 52644
العمر : 72
| | موضوع: رد: On the Anthropic Principle السبت 14 أكتوبر 2023, 5:51 pm | |
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I do not think, at this point, that anything more needs to be said in comment on such a claim! And like I said earlier, the depth of corruption in the rationale upon which Darwinism and its doctrine of “science” is founded really leaves you wondering where to begin whenever you wish to criticize one of their arguments in terms of reason! I leave it for the reader to see for himself how blind devout followers of Darwin like this man really are!
Quote:
―The observed fact is that every species, and every organ that has ever been looked at within every species, is good at what it does. The wings of birds, bees and bats are good at flying. Eyes are good at seeing. Leaves are good at photosynthesizing. We live on a planet where we are surrounded by perhaps ten million species, each one of which independently displays a powerful illusion of apparent design. Each species is well fitted to its particular way of life‖ (The delusion p.139)
Unbelievable! What a sorry case of human demise! “We are surrounded by ten million powerful illusions”! Well, in fact he has no choice but to view all reality as an illusion! Otherwise how would he possibly pass through to his reader the position that God is a delusion? What on Earth can any sane man do to make this man see things around him for what they very obviously are, and quit betraying his very own senses, his mind and his tongue, turning everything upside-down in such a way? A powerful “illusion of apparent design”? How do those people really believe themselves? How do they even sleep at night?
It would be a waste of time now to exert any further comment on such a statement! I hope it speaks for itself; loud and clear!
Quote:
―The anthropic principle is impotent to explain the multifarious details of living creatures.‖ (The delusion p.139)
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Absolutely wrong! It is your own personal knowledge that is seriously impotent in this concern! Every set of living creatures is created for a purpose that serves – among other purposes - the exact mission of man on this Earth, so apart from the only true source where this knowledge is to be obtained, (The manual of mortal life so to speak: The Qur‟an) you can go on forever blowing soap bubbles in the air, making as many more arguments from incredulity as you wish! It will never take you anywhere near the truth!
See how he keeps reciting it to himself:
―We really need Darwin's powerful crane to account for the diversity of life on Earth, and especially the persuasive illusion of design.‖ (The delusion p.140)
We really need not count the number of times he praises Darwin and natural selection as he proceeds with the book, it is obvious enough! Well, I really would have no problem with that, if he ever managed – for once – to put forth between every two successive times that he does it, a single reasonable argument that makes it worthwhile! I mean, I – too – have praised my prophet and the body of knowledge that I claim to have been delivered to him from the creator himself, more than once, and I have no problem doing it over and over again as I proceed; but it is always in proper context and not for the effect of hypnosis; I am not using emotional effects and poor repetition of such statements, and I‟m not short of profoundly rational argumentation as I go on presenting my case!
A statement as such is obviously the empty attempt of a helpless man to convince himself of the validity of his chosen faith, and of the idea that everybody else who objects to it, is fooled and is incapable of properly understanding Darwinism! So typical indeed! If this is an argument, one really needs not say anything more in response to it than this: ―I find creation (design) to be far more persuasive indeed, and I find Darwinian evolution to be the only real illusion here”! So we rest our case there and the debate is over! Nothing further needs to be said! His own struggle to have himself convinced that Darwin‟s ideas could be more persuasive than – or at
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least as persuasive as - the rational default conception of creation, is really his own personal problem as a Darwinian, not ours!
Quote:
―We can deal with the unique origin of life by postulating a very large number of planetary opportunities.‖
Now this is how he seeks to get away will probabilistic argumentation in the subject matter! He is trying to make the impossible improbable, and hopefully less “improbable” than what he claims creation to be! By impossible I mean the blatantly irrational position that such an unparalleled perfect process of origination of life on Earth could come about by chance! So easy indeed is the claim that “we can deal” with the unique origin of life by supposing a multitude of other planetary “opportunities”! But on what grounds of reason is it plausible or even explanatory? This is how it works: Let‟s dream that there are indeed billions of other similar planets, many of which could host an initial event of origins of life, and we will feel much more secure about denying the creator in this one where we live! Easy now, isn‟t it?
It really amazes me how such a line of (wishful-thinking) argumentation has come to gain considerable weight in atheistic literature, even in the writings of (full-time) academic philosophers, not laymen or amateur philosophers like Dawkins!
In his book (Arguing for atheism: an introduction to the philosophy of religion), author Robin Le Poidevin pushes the idea of „possible worlds‟ way too far indeed, as he argues in favor of atheism! He seems to apply this hypothetical concept in his argumentation based on a deeply confused conception of the idea of multiple worlds possibly existing in the same context that we call reality (though he asserts them not to be coexistent in space and time!) on one hand (the so-called modal realism), and the rhetoric presumption of different possible worlds (different possible realities of which only the current world – as it is - is the one that really exists and we legitimately call reality) on the other. The first hypothesis holds that reality is vast enough to include a countless number of other possible worlds
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(existing in parallel, one way or another), one of which only happens by pure chance to host our universe as it is! The other hypothesis of possible worlds that he uses repeatedly in his objections against both the cosmological and the ontological argument is the proposition of a totally different reality where things that we only think of as possibilities or necessities in this world, would be “realities” in at least one of those possible worlds! Though they are clearly two fundamentally distinct assumptions, the author keeps shifting from one of them to the other without any plausible justification, until eventually he argues that (modal realism) or the model of (many worlds in parallel), or rather the controversial nature of its proposition, ‗diffuses the fundamental questions of existence‘! What questions? And since when was the mere fact that a certain hypothesis has provoked “controversy” or debate among certain philosophers, evidence enough for any degree of plausibility to this hypothesis? Are we arguing from “controversy” now?
Well, whatever the case may be, one universe or a million; the creator is the only conceivable stop to the regress and is by necessity all that the human mind demands for explanation, and all that it needs as an ultimate source for the only reasonable answer to all other (first order questions) any man can think of! Furthermore, applying - at least - the principle of Ockham‟s razor here, such an “explanation” of many worlds shouldn‟t even stand a chance! Instead of having to account for the origins of a single world, you now have to explain (according to your conception of an explanation) an endless array of parallel worlds! So how does he even dare claim it to be a “trivial” explanation, or a “disappointingly simple” answer to the question?
Now I cannot claim to disagree with him on particular objections that he raises against Anselm‟s version of the ontological argument, or even the three versions that he discusses of the cosmological argument for that matter, but again the problem is with the way atheists draw conclusions from such partial objections as though by picking on the way this or that philosopher phrased his arguments for the existence of God, the rational necessity of the first cause would be inverted! This is not how a truth seeker should work his way through the subject matter, if indeed he is in search for the truth!
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Again I remind my reader that even the very meaning of truth itself could be questioned by such twisted forms of counter-argumentation! And indeed that‟s almost what we get in Le Poidevin‟s book (Arguing for Atheism), as he makes yet another appalling use of the “possible worlds” plot in trivializing even the natural urge to seek an “explanation” for the world being the way that it is, and for us being born in it!
Let me quote: 39
By this point we have become quite familiar with talk of possible worlds. I now want to show that such talk allows us to construct a very simple, indeed disappointingly simple, answer to our fundamental question, ‗Why does the universe exist?‘ However, to see how the explanation works, we have to rephrase our question as follows: ‗Why is the actual world one which contains a universe?‘ The ‗explanation‘ now goes as follows. The set of all possible worlds represents the full range of logical possibility. Anything that is logically possible will be true in some possible world or worlds. The existence of a universe is clearly possible, since it is actual. Consequently, some possible worlds contain a universe, even though many do not. Whenever the phrase ‗The actual world‘ is used by us, it denotes the world we happen to be in, just as whenever we use the word ‗here‘ it denotes the place we happen to be in. So the question ‗Why is this world one which contains a universe?‘ just means ‗Why is the world in which I am located one which contains a universe?‘, and that question hardly seems to deserve an answer. For, of course, the world in which I am located is bound to be a world which contains a universe. The very posing of the question presupposes the answer.
What a cheap trick! How is any man who respects his mind supposed to even go through such kind of arguments and give them any degree of credibility? It is supposed to be readily sufficient that he describes this so-called ‘explanation’ as trivial, for us to not even bother reading it to begin with! And yet he maintains that it could suffice as an explanation in the place of (God), or at least challenge it, because according to him, if – a
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39 (Robin Le Poidevin (1996), Arguing for Atheism: an introduction to the philosophy of religion, USA: Routledge Publishing, pp. 34-35)
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| | | | أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 52644
العمر : 72
| | موضوع: رد: On the Anthropic Principle السبت 14 أكتوبر 2023, 5:52 pm | |
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big “if” indeed – we were to view the world in the context of all other possible worlds, we would not need to ask the question why this world has a universe while others do not! Now not only is this mode of thinking laughably unjustifiable and meaningless, it kills the very meaning of “explanation” that we are compelled to seek in this context, by giving you virtually nothing at all! It‟s like saying to someone who asks you: “why are you here?”; “Well, the question of why I‟m here is meaningless, because by virtue of logical possibility, I could be in an endless number of places right now! But since of all places I actually happen to be here, then this question hardly seems to deserve an answer!”!
Quite brilliant indeed!
Just look at the analogy he gives for this toy of “possible worlds” he enjoys playing with in this literature!:
A simple analogy may help to make this argument intelligible. Imagine that you are sitting in one of a hundred rooms in some office building. Some of these rooms are occupied, some not. Reflecting on this, you ask yourself, ‗Why is this room an occupied room?‘ The answer is not hard to find. Consider the meaning of ‗this room‘. Which room is referred to by ‗this room‘ obviously depends on the location of the speaker. As we might put it, ‗this room‘ just means ‗The room where I am located‘. So the question ‗Why is this room occupied?‘ just means ‗Why is the room in which I am located an occupied room?‘ and the absurdity of the question is at once apparent. Any room in which I am located is ipso facto an occupied room, so in that sense the fact that this room is occupied needs no explanation beyond a brief summary of what is meant by the phrase ‗this room‘. Similarly, the fact that the actual world contains a universe is answered quite trivially, by a summary of what is meant by ‗the actual world‘.‖
Well how about asking: Why do you happen to occupy this room and not another one? Or even better: What on earth are you doing in this building at all? Doesn‟t this sound more relevant to what the fuss is all about?
Instead of treading around in the meaning of the term “this world” which is obviously irrelevant to the question that asks about the world we know in
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particular not some fancy array of other possible worlds (!), a sane man who respects his mind and who is honestly in a quest for the truth, should rather examine the meaning of the word “why” here, and the nature of the explanation it is seeking! Even now one will not fail to argue against this author here that we still need to know why he happens to be in one of the possible worlds where a universe exists (i.e. why he began to exist at all) rather than otherwise!
So what is this really, if not a hopeless attempt to just blast a smoke bomb in the minds of those who find themselves naturally compelled to hold the only reasonable answer to the question of origins and purpose of the universe (which is the only acceptable meaning of “why” in this context as should be clear from the outset)? One could easily write volumes with loads of such senseless objections and manipulative assumptions to fume the clear truth, or to – at least – convince atheists that it is questionable and vulnerable to all kinds of objections there can be; but then he would only be fooling himself, wouldn‟t he?
The thing that really gets on your nerves is that right after this joke of an argument, the author admits that this trivial explanation is “suspicious”, because obviously those other rooms do exist, some of which are occupied while others are not, whereas the assumption of other possible worlds is only imaginary! Well then what is the point or the value or even the relevance of raising such a silly and utterly vacuous hypothesis of “possible worlds” at all in the first place? A pathetic attempt by a stubborn atheist to forge all forms of philosophical escapes from the grasp of the clear truth, even if he had to trivialize or „diffuse‟ the very question itself! That‟s all it really is! That‟s all you really get out of atheistic literature! Some authors (philosophers) are only more experienced and better trained with this hideous craft than others!
In short, the scheme of “possible worlds” or “parallel worlds” or whatever you wish to call it, boils down to this: Assume that there are other worlds where all other logical possibilities do take place, and you will see that the creator is not logically necessary and is not even an “explanation”! So please tell me my respectable reader, does this even qualify for an argument?
399
Now, bouncing back to Dawkins‟ version of the „possible worlds‟ arguments (which is basically another form of his argument from improbability), we find that he speaks of “planetary opportunities”. It must be clear by now that no matter how many “opportunities” you postulate for the conditions necessary for the origination of life taking place elsewhere in the universe, the basic problem remains the same! This is why we keep saying that probability is out of the question!
As a matter of fact, keeping up with his probabilistic reasoning, I can say with confidence that the exact opposite to his conclusion will be achieved from that, just as we argued earlier in this literature on the rationale of “mount probable” in natural selection! That is, if it is improbable, highly improbable, that only a few of those perfectly organized conditions for the emergence and preservation of life could be harnessed together in one planet in the universe and configured as such all by chance; then how much more improbable do you think it would be that those conditions may be gathered on a few other planets (not to mention a billion planets!) elsewhere in the universe, also by pure chance? Exponentially far more improbable I should say!
Think about it! Suppose it could happen only once in a billion that a single planet becomes as perfectly conditioned for life as planet Earth, then it could happen only once in a billion billion that two planets become as perfectly conditioned for life as planet Earth! So what is it that he thinks the Anthropic principle is doing for his case?
In all cases, one can‟t help wondering, billion billion what exactly? Universes? Or cases where a universe came to exist from the same “random origin” as ours and ended up with a planet like ours? Billion billion similar solar systems? Planets? What is your sample space for probability here and how do you define it in the first place?
Inverse reason my kind reader is indeed a sickness to the human mind that needs to be cured; not a privilege of “consciousness raising”, and most certainly not the way “Science” should work!
400
It is amazing how he proceeds from there, giving examples of what he believes are gaps in the origins of life that are even far more improbable than the reactions in the alleged prebiotic lake; he makes the example of the origin of the eukaryotic cell, the origin of consciousness, and so forth, saying that this should actually render the process far more improbable! Now at this point, one would expect the man to recoil to commonsense and start refuting the „Chance‟ event principle that he believes in!
Far from it! Instead he dives even deeper in his “inverse rationale”!
He says:
―One-off events like this might be explained by the anthropic principle, along the following lines. There are billions of planets that have developed life at the level of bacteria, but only a fraction of these life forms ever made it across the gap to something like the eucaryotic cell.‖
So instead of solving the problem of improbability, he so merrily floods it out, making it billions of times larger! How he could possibly fail to realize this meaning is really beyond me! He feels that he needs to assume – totally unjustifiably - a really huge number of “Attempts” at originating life in the universe, so he could fool himself – for lack of a better word - into believing that the fact that it only happened on Earth alone in this way in a lucky sequence of random events, among billions of similar cases where things didn‟t work out; is no big deal! This is the stance of someone who just insists on denying the obvious, and plunging into an infinite world of imaginary nonsense; there really is no point in debating with such a mentality, is there?
Here‟s your probabilistic argument professor: (Fallacy) x (Fallacy) x (Fallacy) x … = Fallacy that is too false to refute!
Just listen to him as he says:
―Maybe a few later gaps in the evolutionary story also need major infusions of luck, with anthropic justification.‖
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This composition “anthropic justification” – not to mention the archetypal problem of “luck” - is used here in an absolutely opposite connotation to the very meaning the word (anthropic) should convey! That is, for a justification to be “anthropic”, it is by definition one that explains things in a way that favors (or appears to favor) man, and shows everything to be exactly the way it is on Earth for the sake of man (anthropos)! The universe can be in no better way for man to live and prosper! Again, be my guest and look it up in any dictionary!
The “Anthropic principle” as first suggested in 1973 by astrophysicist Brandon Carter meant just this: That man is privileged on Earth, and that everything seems to be working in his favor as a species! 40
Yet again Dawkins battles his way against the stream and again produces a composition that applies language and even scientific jargon in the exact opposite direction to the very meanings that it is supposed to give!
He then concludes with this:
―But whatever else we may say, design certainly does not work as an explanation for life, because design is ultimately not cumulative and it therefore raises bigger questions than it answers - it takes us straight back along the Ultimate 747 infinite regress.‖ (The delusion p.141)
Again, he runs and runs and keeps falling back to the very same objection against creation that he thinks makes plausible grounds for his faith: that „design‟ raises bigger questions than it answers; namely, the corrupt argument from “infinite regress”! It turns out that all he really has to hold on to, and would keep repeating over and over as a basis for his position in rejecting the creator; is his irrational belief in the infinite regress and the stupid question “but who created God?”!
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40 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropicprinciple)
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