Between AMR and Maryann Spikes (now departed) it seems we are witnessing the birth of a new apologetic rhetorical technique: "Argument by incoherent blather." Sure, pretty well all apologetic arguments are incoherent when actually thought thru, but the current arguments put the incoherence up front in hopes that readers will confuse obscurantism with profundity. They seem to be misreading current cutting edge cosmological theorizing as giving them free license to make up whatever illogical scenarios they wish, so long as it can be construed to support the existence of their imaginary friend, and failing to recognize that hypotheses such as M- or string theory, as bizarre as they may seem, are nonetheless rooted in empirical observation and, more importantly, are being tentatively proposed in hopes of generating criteria by which they can be refuted or confirmed. This is not at all the same thing as concocting some absurdity like a "non physical, atemporal, supremely simple, intelligent, beneficent, uncaused cause" for no reason other than that you want such a thing to exist, then taking its existence as an absolute article of faith.

BTW, am I the only one who thinks it is extremely poor form to join a forum, immediately post a link to your own blog, stick around for a couple posts, then bugger off without contributing anything more?

xrayzed wrote:

But if you simply don't have anything further in the way of sources I guess that speaks for itself.

And what peer-reviewed papers do you have that show that life would be impossible if any of the constants were changed?

Do you really need peer reviewed papers to understand this by yourself ? Even atheists , like Stenger, and Dawkins, do not question this fact. But since you want to know something from authorities, here it goes :

from my personal virtual library :

http://elshamah.heavenforum.com/astrono ... se-t31.htm

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.”


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
(NASA astronomer)
“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.”


Stephen Hawking
(British astrophysicist)
“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? …

Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why?”


Alexander Polyakov
(Soviet mathematician)
“We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.”


Ed Harrison
(cosmologist)
“Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God—the design argument of Paley—updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one. Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument.”


Edward Milne
(British cosmologist)
“As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God].”


Barry Parker
(cosmologist)
“Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed.”


Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel
(cosmologists)
“This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with ‘common wisdom’.”


Arthur L. Schawlow
(Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics)
“It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life.”


Henry "Fritz" Schaefer
(computational quantum chemist)
“The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, ‘So that’s how God did it.’ My goal is to understand a little corner of God’s plan.”


Wernher von Braun
(Pioneer rocket engineer)
“I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.”

!	MODNOTE The report regarding this post has been dealt with and closed. Durro

Shrunk wrote:...... and failing to recognize that hypotheses such as M- or string theory, as bizarre as they may seem, are nonetheless rooted in empirical observation

please present that empirical observation .

Oh, dear, Jireh, a pile of quotes - many of them quotemines - and argumentum ad Verecundiam. Who cares if Barry Parker believed god was needed. The question is, what physical evidence did he give to support his belief ? No more evidence than you have given

I don't have time to wade into the misleading pile of crap you have just dumped here. But shame on you for doing it.

Jireh wrote:

Shrunk wrote:...... and failing to recognize that hypotheses such as M- or string theory, as bizarre as they may seem, are nonetheless rooted in empirical observation

please present that empirical observation .

Please demonstrate your competence to understand the relevant scientific papers before I waste my time posting the references.

After your post directly above, I don't trust you to understand even the simplest actual science. The level of understanding shown in those quotemines is the level of a cheating high school student.

Please, demonstrate that I am wrong here. If not, well your loss, I guess.

AMR wrote:
How magnanimous if you . From what I take from your line of argument it may classify as "Cosmic Theory #1"; actually your position seems somewhere between Fluke & Fecundity . . . but if you're going to get all pissy about it I see no reason to continue this increasingly repetitive debate.

What is repetitive about this debate is that I respond to your assertions in length and in depth, and you ignore all salient points and respond only to what you consider easy targets. You do it with me and you do it with others.

AMR wrote:
Oldskeptic: PS: BTW, if you could, include some citation for this unique pub micro organism I'd like to read the primary source.

I really wish that I could but unfortunately google is not helpful when it comes to piss pools behind ancient British pubs and their microscopic inhabitants.

AMR wrote:
this site is supposed to be a forum for rational discussion not puerile straw man arguments. For example the obvious flaws in Oldskeptics' English urine screed above (immediately reposted by hotshoe in its entirety for some reason)

Instead of complaining about the quality of the arguments here maybe you should point out the obvious flaws in them rather than just claiming that there are obvious flaws.

AMR wrote:
1. there is no mystery to the origin or adaptations of micro organisms 2. micro organisms are not self-aware.

Unless this was an attempt to show the obvious flaws in my piss pool story. You missed the point by a wide margin. I wasn’t saying that it was a mystery nor that microorganisms are self-aware.

AMR wrote:
3. In fact I tend to be skeptical of the whole premise that a unique species evolved in said environment.

Why? There are unique organisms existing in very small isolated harsh environments all over the world. They are called extremophiles. They are usually archaea.

AMR wrote:
Bacteria and micro-flora and fauna live almost everywhere within Earth's biosphere there would be nothing special or noteworthy about a particular colony living outside a pub;

What is note worthy about it is that this genetically unique colony of piss eating microorganisms does not exist in a pool of piss that was fine-tuned for their existence. They, through rapid evolution, are “designed” to exist in the pool of piss that they find themselves in.

AMR wrote:
and the idea that it has been evolving for centuries in that particular location is absurd.

Why is it absurd? They are single celled organisms that reproduce by division and population grows exponentially with generations lasting minutes not days, months, or years. Evolution for bacteria and archaea is not something foreign to them. It is, or can be, a daily experience under rapidly changing environments.

Anyway, that was just a small digression from the discussion that I felt needed to be done because you seem to be calling me out on the existence of the piss eating British microorganisms and whether they could evolve in only centuries.

The point is this question: Why do living things exist where they do? You could take what I consider to be a backasswards approach and say that environments were designed and created specifically for the purpose of life to exist within them. Or you could say that life evolves and adapts to the available environments.

Do lizards and cacti exist in deserts because deserts were designed and created for them?

Do polar bears and penguins exist at the frigid poles because artic environments where designed and created for them?

Do specific thermophiles exist in Prismatic Spring because this gigantic hot spring was designed and created for them?

Taking this fine-tuning “argument” to its logical end you would have to accept that every environment was designed and created specifically for the life forms that exist in them, and then that the life forms were designed and created for the purpose of inhabiting these environments.

Now I know that this is not a problem for creationists. In fact it fits their hypothesis perfectly, but there is a problem here with anyone that wants to go meddling about with science to support this hypothesis. The problem is that it does not work that way. It becomes very problematic when someone tries to use scientific observations/findings/opinions to support unscientific assertions.

Unless you accept the principle/idea that we are here because we can be, and that it is us that are “designed” to fit the place that we find ourselves in you are no different than Douglas Adams’ puddle wondering why the pothole that it exists in fits it so well.

AMR the penguin: “You know that if it was warmer we wouldn’t have all this ice to live on and we would overheat and die, and if it was a colder everything would be ice and we couldn’t go swimming and catch fish. I am oh a so happy that God designed the artic just for us, and gave us flippers instead of wings“.

Oldskeptic the penguin: “Possibly you are unaware of the fact that our flippers used to be wings, and that they became flippers because it is really cold and so all of the food around here is under water. It was swim or starve, and given that there are no predators here except those under water it was swim very well or die, and flying off isn’t going to help feed us or escape being eaten.”

AMR the penguin: “Yeah, but if it was warmer …I mean what are the chances that penguins like us ended up in the Arctic? That is just too much of a coincidence to ignore."

hotshoe wrote:Oh, dear, Jireh, a pile of quotes - many of them quotemines - and argumentum ad Verecundiam. Who cares if Barry Parker believed god was needed. The question is, what physical evidence did he give to support his belief ? No more evidence than you have given

I don't have time to wade into the misleading pile of crap you have just dumped here. But shame on you for doing it.

obviously, you have nothing on hand. Nobody has empirical evidence of what happened beyond the Big Bang.

Obviously, you're not ashamed of yourself for quotemining, distorting, and lying for Jesus.

hotshoe wrote:Obviously, you're not ashamed of yourself for quotemining, distorting, and lying for Jesus.

Or indeed of passing off that list as his being from his "own personal virtual library", when he'd copy/pasted it from here: http://www.y-origins.com/index.php?p=quotes
(...which is itself quotemining, distorting, and lying for Jesus.)

DaveD wrote:

hotshoe wrote:Obviously, you're not ashamed of yourself for quotemining, distorting, and lying for Jesus.

Or indeed of passing off that list as his being from his "own personal virtual library", when he'd copy/pasted it from here: http://www.y-origins.com/index.php?p=quotes
(...which is itself quotemining, distorting, and lying for Jesus.)

Thanks for the link. Reported Jireh for plagiarism.

Darn, hate it when that happens !

@ Jireh:

You posted a list of quotes originally compiled by Y-origins.com. A sight that is so backwards and misinformed that it still claims that a partial eye is of no benefit to any organism at all.

I like that they began with Fred Hoyle though. The genius crackpot of the past century. Contributed dramatically to our understanding of nucleaosynthesis concerning the formation of carbon. All well and good but then along comes big bang theory, a name for the theory that has stuck, but that Hoyle did not mean politely when he himself coined it.

Hoyle was against big bang theory for one reason: He was an atheist of the most rabid kind, and would not accept a theory that included the beginning of the universe because it supported Christian apologetics.

But then even though he died still clinging to his stable state universe, he also disputed that organic life could arise from inorganic material. Hoyle went from rabid atheist to confused deist.

Hoyle made a famous statement about 747s, junk yards, and high winds. But what he was talking about was something that he did not understand at all. Hoyle was talking about an organic cell suddenly jumping out of the “primordial soup” fully formed, and if this was what anyone was talking about he would have been correct in saying how improbable it was, but no one was saying that.

Hoyle wouldn’t accept that life evolved on earth because of the supposed improbabilities, but he supported a hypothesis that life evolved in outer space and was ceded from there to earth.

Hoyle is like the crazy uncle that is clever enough to sound reasonable until you think about what he is actually saying.

I am not going to go through every one of the Y-origins.com quotes, but I will point out that with Hoyle they got off to a bad start.

Is it just me or does anyone else notice that the concept of intellectual honesty/dishonesty seems to be something that many Christian apologists do not understand? I do not post quotes out of context, in fact I don’t post quotes unless I am sure that they are pertinent and within context. But this does not seem to be a consideration of apologists. It is win at whatever cost or use any strategy that needs to be used. The evidence and what anyone really said be damned. I guess all things are justified in the defense of God. But it is not even a defense of God that is being usually presented here now is it? It is more like someone’s personal opinion and conviction of what their god is like; What it is made of or not made of. What God cares about. What god can and cannot do, that sort of thing.

I have no quarrel with anyone that wants to create and have their own personal god. Just don’t try telling me that your personal god created the universe.

Designer gods are not designing gods. You can have and believe in whatever is the current fashion in gods, but it is in the end only a fad and it will go out of style eventually.

Don’t believe me! Check out God in Genesis and Exodus. Follow God through the rest of the Old Testament. Even the name changes. Then see God as the New Testament describes God.

Times change, fashions change, gods change. So much for the immutable God of Christianity that designed and created this wonderful spot for us to evolve from.

Great post, Oldskeptic. The intellectual dishonesty really gets me, and it's especially puzzling because it's counter to their own tradition. Christians are used to quoting scripture, and they almost always give the chapter and verse. If they're not sure, they almost always go look it up to be sure they quote it correctly. So, they have plenty of practice in verifying the actual quote and crediting the specific source.

Why are they (in general) so dishonest here ? I assume it's something about needing to win battle with us atheist evilutionists -- but battle is NOT the time to get slipshod. A person like Jireh, or Polanyi, will get his suspension over plagiarism/quotemining, when if he just followed his own christian habit of "chapter and verse" he could remain on the forum without ever getting a warning. If he wants to win the argument, why give me an easy excuse - in fact, an obligation - to report him to the mods for his theft of someone else's work ? It would have been so easy to give credit where needed.

You go on to make an interesting point about "fashions" in god-type. I wonder if one of the resident theists will pick that up and go anywhere with it.

Jireh wrote:
obviously, you have nothing on hand. Nobody has empirical evidence of what happened beyond the Big Bang.

I do! See there was this little sparkle of energy that existed before the big bang. It was so little that no one actually saw how big it really could be some day. One day the sparkle got a tummy ache, it upset her system and the next thing that happened was all out of proportions with tummy aches. The sparkle began to expand and for billions of years she has kept expanding,.

Empirical evidence provided by Hubble’s observations have confirmed this expansion.

hotshoe wrote:Great post, Oldskeptic. The intellectual dishonesty really gets me, and it's especially puzzling because it's counter to their own tradition. Christians are used to quoting scripture, and they almost always give the chapter and verse. If they're not sure, they almost always go look it up to be sure they quote it correctly. So, they have plenty of practice in verifying the actual quote and crediting the specific source.

Why are they (in general) so dishonest here ? I assume it's something about needing to win battle with us atheist evilutionists -- but battle is NOT the time to get slipshod. A person like Jireh, or Polanyi, will get his suspension over plagiarism/quotemining, when if he just followed his own christian habit of "chapter and verse" he could remain on the forum without ever getting a warning. If he wants to win the argument, why give me an easy excuse - in fact, an obligation - to report him to the mods for his theft of someone else's work ? It would have been so easy to give credit where needed.

You go on to make an interesting point about "fashions" in god-type. I wonder if one of the resident theists will pick that up and go anywhere with it.

is it that atheist get that desperate with their lost case, that they frequently find no other better argument, and accuse us of being dishonest ? i mean, come on, that's simply ridiculous. Evidence for God's existence got that overwhelming with progress of scientific research, i am wondering why atheist are not getting really ashamed for holding such a irrational, and ridicoulous position, of no God existing.

So, no apology for your dishonest refusal to give credit to the website you stole those quotes from ?

Right. And we're the ones who should be ashamed of ourselves.

Right.

hotshoe wrote:So, no apology for your dishonest refusal to give credit to the website you stole those quotes from ?

Right. And we're the ones who should be ashamed of ourselves.

Right.

what is your point ? the link to the origin of the website is given at my forum. I give the source of all sites, i quote mine.

Jireh wrote:

hotshoe wrote:So, no apology for your dishonest refusal to give credit to the website you stole those quotes from ?

Right. And we're the ones who should be ashamed of ourselves.

Right.

what is your point ? the link to the origin of the website is given at my forum. I give the source of all sites, i quotemine.

There, fixed that for you!
The link on your website should have been posted here. Not putting it here tends to indicate untrustworthyness.

Jireh wrote: i quote mine.

We know that already.

Jireh wrote:
[Why] is it that atheist get that desperate with their lost case, that they frequently find no other better argument, and accuse us of being dishonest ? i mean, come on, that's simply ridiculous.

It is not ridiculous when you are found out to be dishonest.

Jireh wrote:
Evidence for God's existence got that overwhelming with progress of scientific research, i am wondering why atheist are not getting really ashamed for holding such a irrational, and ridicoulous position, of no God existing.

I must have missed this overwhelming scientific evidence for God’s existence, Can you provided me with a link or two? Or even a coherent explanation in your own words.

Actually, Jireh, I'd like to make a deal. It would be a win for all of us.

For your part, you need to use google (or search engine of your choice) and find a link to every single one of the quotes you copied, in a source which displays them in their original context - not a creationist compilation. So, maybe they're all available in google-books by their respective authors, maybe not. You could find them quoted in essays which display them in full context even if we don't get the whole page they were extracted from.
Then edit your post to include the link to the original source next to each quote you copied.
If you can't find a valid source, then edit that quote out of your post because it's inadmissable.

Once you've completed that, for my part of the deal, I promise to write a serious post examining the empirical underpinning for M/string theory that you asked for.

Deal ?