A limit to understanding ?

@dalehileman,

And the rejoinder to that is why postulate a god at all then if not everything requires a creator ?

@dalehileman,

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if for instance the gravitational constant differed by half of one percent, life as we know it would be impossible

I doubt that very much. But even if it was true, more generally, that cosmological constants are conducive to the apparition of life on our planet, it doesn't mean anything. If some of these constants had been different (or perhaps "in other universes where they are different"), either nobody would be asking the question, or some rather different life form would be asking itself the question...

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@fresco,

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And the rejoinder to that is why postulate a god at all then if not everything requires a creator ?

Heck, why not, if it makes one feel good

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@dalehileman,

Would you feel good walking through the creationist museum which displays dinosaurs going into Noah's Ark ? Smile

http://creationmuseum.org/

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@Olivier5,

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if for instance the gravitational constant differed by half of one percent, life as we know it would be impossible

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I doubt that very much.

Only know what I read somewhere

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But even if it was true, more generally, that cosmological constants are conducive to the apparition of life on our planet,

Sure looks that way anyhow

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it doesn't mean anything.

That's really the big q needing to be addressed. If progress of the Universe from the black blob undergoing the Big Bang culminating in the physics of the present day is a form of evolution (which seems logical), what is it about the humanoid that makes his part so very important

On one hand then we have the theist supposing that the Whole Shebang would be pointless without us to the utter skeptic (Oliver?) who maintains it's all a big meaningless accident

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If some of these constants had been different (or perhaps "in other universes where they are different"),

I suppose that's an issue we ought to address. However, it seems unlikely, according to the practical observation that the less evidence for a phenom, the less likely it is, where no evidence at all is almost a disproof

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either nobody would be asking the question,

Seems most likely

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or some rather different life form would be asking itself the question...

Assuming the rules remain pretty much the same, what makes me doubt the "alternate life-form theory" is the extremely primitive form of life deprived of light, oxygen, etc

Of course one might posit an infinite number of simultaneous Universes varying from one another by a single quantum unit (whatever that means) but again, no evidence of any sort

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@fresco,

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Would you feel good walking through the creationist museum which displays dinosaurs going into Noah's Ark ?

Fres I don't have the foggiest idea. Why exactly do you inquire

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@dalehileman,

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if for instance the gravitational constant differed by half of one percent, life as we know it would be impossible

sounds like we have a fan of Dirac's Cosmology , and on Thanksgiving week yet!!

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@farmerman,

When Tom Finney missed the penalty that caused my father to meet my mother his trajectory was only half of one percent off what he intended. At most. Life as I know it would be impossible otherwise. Which applies to your responses to my posts as well.

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@spendius,

That's because your mom was your Dads Irena Adler. She was too smart for im.

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@farmerman,

Would we have courtesans under the aegis of the scientific methodologists?

They do charge rather a lot and surely the process is crying out for streamlining.

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@dalehileman,

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Only know what I read somewhere

Do you remember where you read it?

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what is it about the humanoid that makes his part so very important

Why would you assume our part is so important? Even if, for the sake of the argument, one assumes the constants are uniquely well tuned for life to appear on our planet (which again, I doubt very much...), one may wonder whether life was important enough to warrant such tuning, or if it's just a coincidence... but what's the connection with man??? Are the constants sooo finely finely tuned so that Homo sapiens as a species can appear??? Sounds quite goofy.

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the utter skeptic (Oliver?) who maintains it's all a big meaningless accident

I don't know really, but my 2 cents are that 1) the emergence of life on our planet remains unexplained - I believe in the meaningless accident theory but am aware there is no proof whatsoever, so it's a pure belief; 2) life, once it appeared, implies the possibility and even the necessity of intelligence. Even the most primitive life forms collect and manage information about their environment; that's part of what being alive means.

Given enough evolution time, the appearance of SOME smart species, like octopuses, parrots, dolphins or men, was bound to happen.

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@fresco,

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Would you feel good walking through the creationist museum which displays dinosaurs going into Noah's Ark ?

And why wouldn't YOU feel good about that? It's just another discourse, no?...

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@Olivier5,

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Only know what I read somewhere

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Do you remember where you read it?

Nah sorry Oli. Later maybe I'll Google it

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what is it about the humanoid that makes his part so very important

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Why would you assume our part is so important?

I'm subject to flights of the imagination. However, it might be pertinent that some pretty sharp folk consider the humanoid the most complex object in the Universe, suggesting a sort of importance don't you think

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one may wonder whether life was important enough to warrant such tuning,

Maybe not life so much as intelligence. Merely speculating

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or if it's just a coincidence...

Could well be. However, intuitively the Universe seems such a pointless, random exercise without us….

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but what's the connection with man???

Dunno, that's what's so puzzling. Seems like might have to do with intelligence, that its entire purpose is to be appreciated and examined by the humanoid

Not trying to prove anything of course, just the old intuition ruminating

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@dalehileman,

One idea is that the question is meaningless, since you and I wouldn't be here to ask it if the universe was radically different. This is my stance, at least for the moment.

Another is that there exists a multiverse composed of all possible universes, in parallel. We just inhabit a hospitable universe but there also exists non-habitable ones.

Another idea which got traction among mystics, is that the universe wanted to see itself in a mirror so to speak. Conscience is the result of a sort of 5th force: negentropy - the universe tends to (or favours/supports/facilitates) information and complexity build up, at least locally. And this complexity build up, over billions of years, ends up creating intelligence or self-conscience. We're the soul of the universe.

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@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

... However, it might be pertinent that some pretty sharp folk consider the humanoid the most complex object in the Universe...

I don't know where you get this stuff Dale. Do you even know? Which sharp people said that?

Human beings don't have the most complex DNA. And our brain structure isn't all that different from Dolphins, so it certainly isn't appreciably more complex. I just can't imagine who might have said that humanoids are the most complex object in the Universe or why.

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@fresco,

I really wish they would teach the scientific method and process better in school. Our opinions have nothing to do with whether something is true or not. It's the gathering of evidence over a long period of time and the accumulation of experimental (experiments capable of being replicated by other scientists) results supporting the Big Bang (or anything studied for that matter like plate tectonics, or the atomic theory) that matter. Only after 1000's of scientists have conducted experiments and gathered evidence that all support a hypothesis does it become a scientific theory. It matters not what you think about the Big Bang. All of the evidence supports the theory. Just like it doesn't matter whether or not you like atomic bombs or not, nuclear fusion releases energy according to the equation E= MC^2. If the evidence supported the steady state universe, which Einstein initially believed, than that would be the accepted theory of the Universe.

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@fresco,

This is really two different topics and I wish you would have kept them that way. Like I said, your nor my opinion about ToE is very important. Do you understand the mathematics and the physics of relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory? I don't and I doubt you do either. It could very well be that we will never figure out the mathematics required to discover the ToE, but it may also be that we do figure it out. What basis do you have for saying it is futile, other than old philosophy. I would be more impressed with your opinion if you could demonstrate with physics or mathematics why you think it is futile.

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@fresco,

As I said, The Big Bang has significant evidence to be called a theory so I doubt it will ever be overturned. All of the evidence points to the fact that universe is expanding and therefore had a beginning. What happened before the Big Bang, why or what caused the Big Bang is still up for debate (as far as I know) so it's definitely good to be skeptical of the hypotheses until they can be sufficiently proven scientifically. My advice is if you want to understand the Big Bang Theory and the ToE better, start reading scientific journals and literature rather than philosophy.

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@timur,

"Like the chicken and the egg, I've never been able to ascertain" Not to be a wise guy, but the chicken or the egg debate has been solved it had to have been the egg first. All evolutionary changes come from mutations, so the ancestor of the modern egg, laid an egg that, because of a mutation, contained the DNA to create the first chicken. Sorry, for being a wiseguy, but I thought I'd share that because I do find it interesting.

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@fresco,

I definitely think ones lexicon has an effect on their view of the world. For instance, I read somewhere that some languages have many more words to describe certain nuanced slightly different variations of a color than ours. Therefore they are more likely to notice those variations than we are.
SOMEONE tell me how to Quote someone and have the box around their quotation please.

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