Posted: Jul 11, 2010 10:47 pm
Regarding ant biomass:
My information on the world population of ants comes from E.O. Wilson's own estimate and the man knows something about ants. He's made the comment several times in published interviews but specifically he writes on page 1 of Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration by Bert Hölldobler, & Edward O. Wilson:
(Hölldobler & Wilson 1994)
Also this informative link http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=536123
Given a sufficient expanse of time even a simple designer (as clichéd monkey's on keyboards) can achieve a remarkable creation. This is the process of evolution. However it's the cosmic substrate, the physical laws themselves which make this operation possible, that should be of real interest here. How could such a delicate interplay between all these extraordinarily precisely finely-tuned constants (e.g. strength ratios of gravity and electrical & nuclear forces, the triple-alpha process, the ratio of our universe's kinetic energy and gravity which allows for precision balance of inflation and homogeneity throughout crucial states in its development, to name but a few) combine to set the stage for a world that not only exists and lives but is aware of itself and contemplates its origins? The so-called anthropic principle just doesn't satisfy. This has led otherwise sober-minded scientists to invoke an evolutionary menagerie of multi-verses without the slightest observational evidence, which is I suppose the ultimate violation of Occam's razor principal entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. How is this in any way superior to a God hypothesis?
To invoke the theological implications of Claude Shannon's information theory and Chaitin-Kolmogorov complexity seems like dressing up a straw man argument in a fancy suit.
My information on the world population of ants comes from E.O. Wilson's own estimate and the man knows something about ants. He's made the comment several times in published interviews but specifically he writes on page 1 of Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration by Bert Hölldobler, & Edward O. Wilson:
"When combined, all ants in the world taken together weigh about as much as all human beings."
(Hölldobler & Wilson 1994)
Also this informative link http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=536123
Given a sufficient expanse of time even a simple designer (as clichéd monkey's on keyboards) can achieve a remarkable creation. This is the process of evolution. However it's the cosmic substrate, the physical laws themselves which make this operation possible, that should be of real interest here. How could such a delicate interplay between all these extraordinarily precisely finely-tuned constants (e.g. strength ratios of gravity and electrical & nuclear forces, the triple-alpha process, the ratio of our universe's kinetic energy and gravity which allows for precision balance of inflation and homogeneity throughout crucial states in its development, to name but a few) combine to set the stage for a world that not only exists and lives but is aware of itself and contemplates its origins? The so-called anthropic principle just doesn't satisfy. This has led otherwise sober-minded scientists to invoke an evolutionary menagerie of multi-verses without the slightest observational evidence, which is I suppose the ultimate violation of Occam's razor principal entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. How is this in any way superior to a God hypothesis?
To invoke the theological implications of Claude Shannon's information theory and Chaitin-Kolmogorov complexity seems like dressing up a straw man argument in a fancy suit.