Chance vs Intelligent design

[Ella S.]

This isn't quite how probability works. The chance that I would be here to write this post in a godless universe is 100%, because I've done it. So it's certain that we would exist.

That's a far cry from the small likelihood you're implying.

 

[sun rise]

Chance or intelligent design

Are you asking about religion or science? "intelligent design" is a question of the spiritual realm not the scientific one.

 

[Twilight Hue]

There are approximately 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.

Our Milky Way has at least 100 billion planets.

The universe is 13.7 billion years old.

So...

Everything here on planet earth makes sense. Like, everything down to an atomic level works rather perfectly. One needs to only examine the human body to be amazed at all of the hundreds of thousands of inner and microscopic processes going on at once in our body.

Like, the whole world works. The whole universe works. It works rather perfectly it seems. Some might say, it works intelligently.

Perhaps it makes sense that this whole get up was designed by a higher intelligence.

But then we look at the stats listed at the top of the OP.

Not every planet supports life. Like perhaps just Earth works.

There are bazillions and bazillions of planets. And there has been plenty of time. Enough time and enough particles have slammed into each other and eventually life happened. There is so much space and time that it was bound to happen. Something was bound to work.

So it also makes sense that chance brought us here. It is reasonable.

Both sides are reasonable I think.

Im not trying to create another "evidence for god" thread. I'm trying to focus on a particular aspect of that argument. I'm just curious what you guys think is more reasonable.

Chance or intelligent design

And why?

Earth isn't going to be there forever.

It's going to be destroyed someday. So much for the chosen and divine engineering.

If our intelligence warrants preservation, the non existent God won't be there at all to save the day.


I think we live in a continuum, not a divine creation.

 

[George-ananda]

Chance or intelligent design

Intelligent design

And why?

The complexity of DNA for one thing. The mystery of Consciousness for another.

And the rest of the universe has its purpose too as life forms physical and non-physical all have their role. We think of the 'human type experience' or nothing. Maybe that's too narrow?

 

[RestlessSoul]

This isn't quite how probability works. The chance that I would be here to write this post in a godless universe is 100%, because I've done it. So it's certain that we would exist.

That's a far cry from the small likelihood you're implying.

You are invoking the anthropic principle - we observe the universe as it is because we exist to observe it - but while this is undeniably true, it is also a tautology, and avoids confronting the apparent statistical improbability of our existence - which has been calculated by at least one physicist, Lee Smollin, at 10^229/1.

The Life of the Cosmos

 

[Ella S.]

You are invoking the anthropic principle - we observe the universe as it is because we exist to observe it - but while this is undeniably true, it is also a tautology, and avoids confronting the apparent statistical improbability of our existence - which has been calculated by Lee Smollin at 10^229/1.

The Life of the Cosmos

There isn't a statistical improbability of our existence.

We use probability to determine what is most likely to happen when we have incomplete information. We don't have incomplete information in this case. We know that the probability of our existence is 100% because we exist.

We can calculate the general likelihood of unobserved planets developing life. We could even count how many planets have developed life and compare them proportionally to those that haven't. However, it remains a certainty that human life developed.

You're making an assumption that there might have been some other way that the universe could have unfolded when you try to calculate the probability of human life developing, but we don't know that that's the case. We don't have any other universes to observe as a comparison.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Both sides are reasonable I think.

Intelligent designer hypotheses no nothing to answer the question why there is something including a god rather than nothing. Nor would they answer why the universe is just the way we find it. The same arguments apply with gods. Why would they exist rather than nothing at all existing? What laws makes their existence possible and sustains their structural integrity, and why do those laws exist at all let alone just the way necessary to keep gods from dissipating like vapor.

Chance makes more sense from a scientific view point is what you are saying?

Others have commented on your use of that word. Unintended is a better word (ateleological).

It's not an act of chance that the pieces of earth came together and assembled themselves into a spheroid. It was the inevitable consequence of those pieces having enough mass in close enough proximity to coalesce. It was a directed process, directed by the qualities of gravity and matter. But it was unintended. Words like chance and random are ambiguous when they are understood to mean unconstrained rather than unintended. You've seen how the word chaos is treated - pghysical anarchy. And luck.

Right down to every atom, cell and seed, the universe is extremely finely tuned that it all has to be in perfect measure for life to exist at all.

The fine-tuning argument argues against an omnipotent god. It implies a reality in which life and mind could only have come into existence under a set of highly constrained conditions that implies an underlying intelligence, but what isn't stated is that this intelligence isn't actually creating anything, but rather, discovering the laws that it is constrained to obey.

Sometimes you hear people say that there is no need of a designer but that is a product of not having eyes to see the design and it is a lie from a scientific perspective since science cannot say that all this could have happened by itself.

All of this could have happened by itself. That doesn't mean that it did, or even that that's actually possible. It just means that it's not known to be impossible, which makes it possible in a different sense. What do you call something that will later be shown to be impossible but is presently not known to be so? You call it possible - the same word you use for things that you do know can happen.

When it is said that there is no need for an intelligent designer, what is meant more precisely is that there is no apparent need for one. Design does not imply intelligence. Sand dunes are a design. Spiral galaxies are a design. Snowflakes are a design. If the word does imply intelligence to you, try a different word that doesn't, like pattern or regularity. It's the same verbal sleight-of-hand we see with words like creation, code, and law. If those words force you to invoke sentient creators, code-makers, and law-givers, find other words.

With atheism the big picture is that this sentence happened by chance.

With empiricism, the big picture is that is that perhaps nobody intended it to be thought or written until sentience emerged capable of using language, and no reason to believe otherwise until we have a compelling reason to do so, which would be an observation that requires that hypothesis to account for it. If one modifies these kinds of statements, he usually changes their meanings. The critical thinker doesn't say that those things happened, just that they might have, and maybe also probably did, although I'm not sure how we can decide even that. But none of this should be a problem for atheists. I'm content to say that I can't estimate the likelihood of gods existing and don't need to, that I have no reason to assume or believe that they do, and in accordance with Occam's parsimony principle, won't inset one into my worldview or mental map until I need one to explain some observation, without which, a god belief is a complication that adds no predictive power to that worldview.

 

[RestlessSoul]

There isn't a statistical improbability of our existence.

We use probability to determine what is most likely to happen when we have incomplete information. We don't have incomplete information in this case. We know that the probability of our existence is 100% because we exist.

We can calculate the general likelihood of unobserved planets developing life. We could even count how many planets have developed life and compare them proportionally to those that haven't. However, it remains a certainty that human life developed.

You're making an assumption that there might have been some other way that the universe could have unfolded when you try to calculate the probability of human life developing, but we don't know that that's the case. We don't have any other universes to observe as a comparison.

But you can still assess the value of a bet after it’s been settled; any gambler or bookmaker will tell you that*. A good value bet doesn’t become bad value, nor the reverse, after the event; and a 100/1 bet doesn’t become a retrospective certainty because it wins. The reason being that if the 100/1 price was generally right before the event, then replay it another 99 times and in all probability the 100/1 outcome will not be repeated. So that fact that life exists on earth says nothing at all about the probability of it ever having existed in the first place.

*One of the original pioneers of probability theory was 16th century astronomer, mathematician and gambler, Jerome Cardano. I can recommend “The Quantum Astrologers Handbook” by Michael Brooks, if you want to learn more about this extraordinary character.

 

[Ella S.]

But you can still assess the value of a bet after it’s been settled; any gambler or bookmaker will tell you that*. A good value bet doesn’t become bad value, nor the reverse, after the event; and a 100/1 bet doesn’t become a retrospective certainty because it wins. The reason being that if the 100/1 price was generally right before the event, then replay it another 99 times and in all probability the 100/1 outcome will not be repeated.

*One of the original pioneers of probability theory was 16th century astronomer, mathematician and gambler, Jerome Cardano. I can recommend “The Quantum Astrologers Handbook” by Michael Brooks, if you want to learn more about this extraordinary character.

The difference is that we know the different ways that, for instance, cards could be shuffled. We can observe a variety of different shuffled decks.

We don't know the different ways a universe can be.

 

[Alien826]

When does chance do anything?

It just made someone $1.3B richer. Before you say that's a bad example, the point is that having a low probability says two things. One is that it rarely happens. The other is that it does happen sometimes. And the OP demonstrates that there is a lot of universe with lot of things going on in it to give that improbable occurrence a "chance" to happen.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Intelligent design

The complexity of DNA for one thing. The mystery of Consciousness for another.

And the rest of the universe has its purpose too as life forms physical and non-physical all have their role. We think of the 'human type experience' or nothing. Maybe that's too narrow?

We have a very good explanation of why DNA is complex. ID people do not have such an explanation. "God done did it Cletus!!" is a claim.

And consciousness is something that quite a few animals have.

 

[Alien826]

There is no explanation in science for the order in the universe as expressed in the laws and theories of physics. It is a curtain science cannot look behind.

And if we posit some kind of creator, and we want to be consistent, it must be subjected to all the same objections that are used to suggest it's existence. In fact if we want to say it's intelligent it becomes even more unlikely than a pure force of nature, using the same arguments that are used against evolution. It had to have a creator itself.

If it is impossible that the universe came from nothing, where did the creator come from? If everything has a beginning, how can the creator have no beginning? If the creator has power and intelligence, how did that come about? If humans cannot be created by evolutionary forces, then neither can the creator. Is it really turtles all the way down?

Frankly, the best solution is to say we don't know, and maybe if we want gods to look for them within the universe.

 

[Alien826]

Just to be clear, what are things that are not "made"? Can you give examples?

That smell came from nowhere. It wasn't me.

 

[RestlessSoul]

The difference is that we know the different ways that, for instance, cards could be shuffled. We can observe a variety of different shuffled decks.

We don't know the different ways a universe can be.

For sure. Lack of information means we can only speculate about the probability of this or that outcome - we cannot obtain definite probabilities because there are any number of variables we aren’t even aware of, let alone able to calculate. Even with example of the decks of cards, there may be factors - such as the possibility of a deck leaving the factory with a card missing or duplicated - which will not have occurred to us at all.

Does that make any effort to weigh up the probability of existence a completely vain exercise? I don’t think so, and neither it seems did Lee Smollin, who didn’t just pull his one in 10^239 figure out of nowhere - although it’s worth noting that the odds change dramatically, in the event that there may be anything up to an infinite number of universes for life to evolve in. Which appears to be one reason why various multiverse theories, from both QM and from cosmology, are given more credence than one might otherwise expect.

 

[exchemist]

And if we posit some kind of creator, and we want to be consistent, it must be subjected to all the same objections that are used to suggest it's existence. In fact if we want to say it's intelligent it becomes even more unlikely than a pure force of nature, using the same arguments that are used against evolution. It had to have a creator itself.

If it is impossible that the universe came from nothing, where did the creator come from? If everything has a beginning, how can the creator have no beginning? If the creator has power and intelligence, how did that come about? If humans cannot be created by evolutionary forces, then neither can the creator. Is it really turtles all the way down?

Frankly, the best solution is to say we don't know, and maybe if we want gods to look for them within the universe.

Well, we are certainly into metaphysics certainly. I think it comes down to personal subjective feeling, aesthetic preference, tradition, etc. But it's outside science anyway.

 

[George-ananda]

We have a very good explanation of why DNA is complex. ID people do not have such an explanation. "God done did it Cletus!!" is a claim.

I am not the ID person of the Christian use of that term. I take an Eastern (nondual) view but I am saying complex life from totally nonthinking processes seems hard to fathom (but not impossible I'll grant). An intelligence can be argued to have fostered the process.

And consciousness is something that quite a few animals have.

I agree, but how does that consciousness come from atoms moving around. It is considered still a mystery even to science.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I am not the ID person of the Christian use of that term. I take an Eastern (nondual) view but I am saying complex life from totally nonthinking processes seems hard to fathom (but not impossible I'll grant). An intelligence can be argued to have fostered the process.
I agree, but how does that consciousness come from atoms moving around. It is considered still a mystery even to science.

How would an intelligence create another intelligent being? Forget the easy way of getting a woman pregnant since that only supports me. Your question is just an argument from ignorance. It does not help your side at all.

 

[George-ananda]

How would an intelligence create another intelligent being?

The answer is that ultimately there is only One Conciousness/God/Brahman.

In Nondual (God and creation are not-two) philosophy; Infinite Consciousness/God/Brahman creates this play/drama of the universe where He separates Himself from Himself in Act I and returns Himself to Himself in Act II. The universe is a great thought-form of God/Brahman in this philosophy.

A spark of this infinite one Consciousness animates all finite living things. And through the eons these sparks/ray will eventually realize that Oneness again.

It is actually the opposite of the materialist philosophy you are likely coming from:

Materialism: Matter is primary, and consciousness is a derivative of matter.

Nondualism: Consciousness is primary, and matter is a derivative of Consciousness/Source/God/Brahman.

 

[exchemist]

I am not the ID person of the Christian use of that term. I take an Eastern (nondual) view but I am saying complex life from totally nonthinking processes seems hard to fathom (but not impossible I'll grant). An intelligence can be argued to have fostered the process.
I agree, but how does that consciousness come from atoms moving around. It is considered still a mystery even to science.

The details of neural processes in the brain are not well understood, it is true. But I don't think there is anything special about consciousness. I'm with Pigliucci in thinkng the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness is not a problem at all: https://philpapers.org/archive/PIGWHP.pdf

 

[George-ananda]

The details of neural processes in the brain are not well understood, it is true. But I don't think there is anything special about consciousness. I'm with Pigliucci in thinkng the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness is not a problem at all: https://philpapers.org/archive/PIGWHP.pdf

I understand there are the materialists but then I think the paranormal evidence trumps the materialist view of consciousness requiring a physical brain. And then the materialist will deny all that evidence as anecdotal and then......

I've looked at the evidence and chose my side. And I would assume you your side.