Stephen T-B

One of our BBC radio programmes this morning (“Devout Sceptics”) involved an interview with the physicist Professor Paul Davies who said (I paraphrase roughly) that everything in the physical universe fits together so neatly and is consequent upon a set of fundamental principles which are so precise, so consistent and so “just right” that he is able to believe they were laid down by a Designer which we might call god.
He considered, nevertheless, the notion of this “god” interfering with the natural order and changing the rules so as to produce miracles to be grotesque, for that would be to contradict the very essence of orderliness, universitality and predictablity which make our physical existence possible and which he, the professor, is in such awe of.
This “God of the Fundamental Principle” which set all Creation in motion is something I once thought I could believe in. But since it wasn’t an entity which I could imagine had any interest in me as an individual, its relevance to my life seemed negligible. I certainly wasn’t going to say prayers or sing hymns of praise to it, yet to my surprise, Davies said that many theologians with whom he discussed these matters had said God and this vague, impersonal “designer” he had in mind were one and the same thing.
Am I missing something in wondering why they think this entity warrants anything more from us than supreme indifference?

sakrilege

<a href="http://jeromekahn123.tripod.com/enlightenment/id10.html" target="_blank">Cosmoligical constants</a>

From this web site...
A wide range of numbers would suffice to produce a universe where life could develop. Thus there is no need for a god to set the constants of physics so as to make conditions suitable for life in to develop; it could develop in any of a number of possible universes!!!

Stephen T-B

That web site refers to "anthropic coincidence" papers, one of them by Davies, 1982.
I wonder if this is the same Davies I heard on the radio?
I must say I was quite surprised to hear a "physicist" talk about Design and fine tuning.
Now I'm not so surprised.

Proxima Centauri

If you want to study the secular side of the fine-tuning argument there is a list of links at this website which is part of Infidels.org.

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/design.html" target="_blank">www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/design.html</a>

Happy reading. There are regular discussion threads about fine-tuning in the EXISTENCE OF GOD Forum and a few in SCIENCE Forum.

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: B.Shack ]</p>

Wyz_sub10

It is. Davies isn't just a physicist. He's also a professor of natural philosophy. He's won the Templeton Pize (religious advancement) and has combined religion in a lot of his science books ("The Mind of God","God and the New Physics").

But Davies is quite a good writer. He has the ability to take complex concepts and translate them well into laymans' terms. "About Time" is a joy to read and does not address (IIRC) the issue of God.

I admire the way he tries to take science to the common man, even if I do not always agree with his "bent".

Stephen T-B

Thank you, B.Shack and thank you Wyz for that useful information.
Infidels is contributing greatly to my education - a bit late in the day for a 59-year old, but I’ve always been on the slow side (except when going down a steep hill peddling a 130.5 ins. gear and yelling “Geronima!”)
I have to say, I’ve never really had much sympathy for the “fine-tuning-by-God--accounts-for-human-life” thing.
If a thing exists, it does so because circumstances combined to make its existence possible; may be, even inevitable.
I can go along with that.
So, I drop a rock into a pond, and as the ripples spread out, my brother drops in another one. The ripples from that rock spread out and merge with the ripples created by mine, and because of some extremely freakish event at the molecular level, in one tiny zone of those coinciding ripples a conscious entity comes into existence for about one-millionth of a second. Its philosophers, considering their unique situation, posit the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing deity which deliberately created the conditions which would give rise to their existence.
But all over the pond, coinciding ripples have produced equally freakish events at the molecular level, and in millions of tiny zones, unconscious entities have come into existence for about a millionth of a second.
Not having philosophers, however, they are unable to posit the existence of anything. But they exist, nevertheless.

My question is, why am I more the result of a deliberate “creative” effort than is the speck of dirt which didn’t get washed off the lettuce leaf I’ve just eaten and is now stuck between my teeth?

Wyz_sub10

My two cents is that you're not (nor am I). But many people consider the thought of our natural evolution to be repugnant.

Most educated (and usually rational) people I know who support design admit that they do so because the cannot accept that life has no grand purpose.

missus_gumby

Well, I never. I got "The mind of god" out of the library today! What a coincidence. Or perhaps there is a god.