Discussion of Big Science Today, by an Important Member of the National Association of Scholars

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727

You accuse me of being “arrogant” because I am supposedly “dismissive” of a multiverse (though I didn’t “dismiss” it without giving reasons), but then you dismiss a point I made (with honest intellectual intentions) as “irrelevant.” Aren’t you, by your own standards, being “arrogant” for sweeping aside my point as “irrelevant,” when you could have said something more friendly, like: “Your point about tombs is correct as far as it goes, but does not affect my main contention.” Arrogance has to do with attitude toward other people, and I would say that when you reply to me, a certain arrogant attitude is present.

Gosh, this confidence is so uncharacteristic of you!

Again, arrogance in the tone. You’re losing all credibility as a moral advisor on how to converse.

So when you think an argument is poor, it’s OK to charge the person making the poor argument with arrogance? It’s not enough just to show the weakness; you have to layer on the emotively charged word?

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728

Why is it relevant that the intention of the Pyramid builders was to construct tombs? If the purpose had been something else - if they had been temples for instance, would it make any difference to the point?

I answered the point that we did not need to know the motives. If there is some reason why the specific motive matters, it is up to you to explain it.

And yet you still can’t refute my point. So it seems that my confidence is entirely justified.

No, I mention the arrogance to emphasise just how poor the level of argument was,

729

If I do, then Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Leibniz, Descartes, Spinoza, Newton, etc. are also naive.

But given your methodological stipulation, no future advance could ever permit design inferences regarding nature. So the apparent “openness” to future information you intimate is bogus. Nelson has isolated the key methodological point quite accurately.

730

That’s such a silly claim. @Eddie, do you really believe there can be no path to study the cosmos if a society cannot directly see the stars? Does one need to see stars directly to make inferences about gravity? To ask questions about atmospheres? To begin to understand planetary and solar dynamics?

Think about it, @Eddie - in this hypothetical world (a “subsurface enclosed or high pressure zones”), intelligent life would like have a much deeper understanding of the sun, owing to the nature of a hydrosphere and an atmosphere that block the stars and thus has different interactions, provides a more filtered and (pardon the pun) illuminating interaction, and leads to insights and directions that humanity never accessed. Understanding of chemistry and physics that could be as impactful as anything you imagine western science has given us.

This is one retort. Other have pointed out other flaws in Denton’s reasoning. It should be obvious that every one of Denton’s ad hoc assertions, in isolation or in any combination one can imagine, do not amount to much. One may elect to think that Denton’s amazement constitutes evidence, but the reality is much different.

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731

Why would that be?

What do you mean by “origins”. As I asked previously, isn’t the central understanding about origins that they come from God? How is the Big Bang relevant to that?

You ask me to imagine a technology completely alien to our own, and you implicitly suppose that there can be no such thing. This seems quite like Denton’s argument on other things: if things weren’t exactly as they are, they would be different, and things must be exactly as they are.

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732

You’re so modest!

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733

1025 is the estimated number of all planets in the entire universe.

300 million is the likely minimum number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy. As determined by empirical scientific investigation, not by some confused biochemist pulling random facts out of his ass in front of an audience of Young Earth Creationists.

Do try to pay attention, “Eddie”.

Is there any truth to the rumours that the DI rejected the title he originally suggested: "Some Thoughts I Had After I Fried My Brains With Meth?" You seem to have lots of inside poop…

734

Perhaps. I would have assumed that Newton was a pragmatist, at least when doing science.

What methodological stipulation? Are you referring to my comment about the need for testable hypotheses? Is this you way of admitting that ID doesn’t have any of those?

735

I suppose that the demand that evidence, when offered, be relevant and probative of the point for which it is offered could be said, in a certain sense, to be a part of the “structure” of an argument. But it’s fair to say that such a demand is not exactly unique to that argument in particular. Without those criteria, all we have is chaos.

If the speculations which the faithful seem to be engorged with after looking at these fine-tuning arguments are productive of insight, then surely we should be seeing those insights unfold all over the place, as these speculations generate valid and testable hypotheses and the nature and form of the designer(s) becomes clear. But these speculations are a dead-end. They terminate with speculations alone, and a confident “well, there you have it.”

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736

No. Let me put it this way. Based on what you have said, inferences such as Denton’s could never, even in principle, be scientific inferences. No matter what future information scientists gather. Is that correct, that fine-tuning arguments to a designer, in your view, could never rise to the level of science? If so, then Paul Nelson has characterized the debate correctly. You and Paul Nelson are not having an intra-scientific disagreement. You’re having a meta-scientific agreement. And one can’t settle a meta-scientific agreement by science itself.

Ah, I see. I misread your original number as pertaining to “potentially habitable” planets. But that does not affect my calculation of the total number of potentially habitable planets. And 3 x 10^18 would be about 70 million times smaller than the total number of the planets, which would mean that the ratio of potentially habitable planets to total planets would be 1 in 70 million. In other words, the combination of conditions that make a planet potentially habitable are relatively rare. Which would fit perfectly with the arguments Denton makes in his books.

Your witty, high-class retort about the Fire-Maker book will surely place you up with immortals, Shaw, Wilde, etc.

737

“Planetary and solar dynamics?” Studied by people who don’t know they live on a “planet” and don’t know what a “sun” is?

I’m still waiting for John Harshman to tell me what his mer-men in volcanic fissures are going to use for his neutrino detector.

738

No, the desired understanding is that we are the output of a (speaking somewhat metaphorically) gigantic cosmic computer program (cosmic, chemical and biological evolution) designed to produce beings (one day) who will understand the workings of the gigantic cosmic computer program that produced them. The Big Bang (according to current science) is an essential part of that computer program. And if the intelligent beings go beyond understanding the program, and ask, “where did this program come from”? and reason from that to some Designer, and call that Designer God, well, that’s permissible, too, and not at all an irrational further step of reasoning. Whether Denton’s God is a personal God who wants worship is a secondary question on which Denton expends no words, as far as I know.

So you have to know something about the heavens to know your ultimate origin, given Denton’s picture of the history of the universe.

Would a neutrino detector require any refined metals, in however small a quantity? If so, then you have to say how your people refine metals underwater. If not, then how might it work? By magic? And would they even know what they had detected, without a whole science of atomic physics in which “neutrino” makes sense? Would they even be looking for such particles, let alone building devices to capture them? You’re engaging in free-floating speculation without anchor or rudder. I prefer to relate things to known facts of nature and known facts about the history of scientific development. I’m not against science-fiction, but it must be distinguished from fantasy.

739

Indeed. I could think of few things more compact to say against your position.

740

Is that all Denton is saying? That of the 1025 planets in the universe, there are, to quote Sagan, “billions and billions” of them that could support life?

So, sorry, exactly how does that point to “design” rather than mere chance?

741

If they produce testable hypotheses, and if the tests show that they make better predictions than the evolution hypothesis, then they would be accepted as science.

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742

I did not say that “that”, by itself, would warrant a design inference. There are many other things supporting the inference. But you will never know them, because you won’t read what he writes.

Notice also that “could” support life is not “does” support life, and that “life” does not automatically include “intelligent life.”

And note also that I have not agreed to any of these numbers you have provided; they may be quite wrong. But if they are accurate, they are compatible with his view.

743

So, intelligent people won’t care to explore the hydrosphere? Won’t wonder what that mysterious light source is? Won’t explore the atmosphere? …

It’s easy to mold stories like Denton’s into something when you rule out beforehand (for no reason) all of the confounding scenarios that can be reasonably suggested.

Which is another reason why Denton’s stories are stories, not evidence.

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744

Why would anyone set up a universe with the purpose of eventually producing something that would understand this computer program? It sounds like the old gag machine: you turn a switch, and a hand comes out of the machine and turns off the switch. Is that all we’re supposed to be? Weird.

I don’t know and neither do you. Besides, who says these folks are necessarily underwater. What about that dense atmosphere we were also talking about?

And thus you restrict yourself to a planet much like earth and a species much like humans, in a universe just like our own. It’s Texas sharpshooters all the way down.

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745

Can you explain why Denton gives lectures supposedly representing his arguments that do not actually represent his arguments? Exactly why would he lie about that?

Or did I just misunderstand that lecture? Others here have watched it. What am I missing if anything?

No, of course not. But I understood Denton to be saying that all these factors he mentions are so unlikely to occur on their own in a single planet that it could only happen if God did it. If there are billions upon billions of planets that have similar conditions just by chance, then that argument collapses.

I’m beginning to suspect you don’t actually understand Denton’s argument at all.

By all means, let the SETI Institute know you think they messed up, and why you think they did. Explain what error you have detected with your extensive background in “natural theology.” Let us know how they respond. Here’s their contact information:

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746

How many extraterrestrial intelligences have been confirmed since the start of SETI?

When you first mentioned neutrino detectors, you mentioned them in connection with underwater beings. Here is what you wrote:

So I was responding to that.

I don’t deny that once you’ve got these intelligent beings (and I’m guessing you have in mind multicellular, articulated complex animals of some sort), they might want to explore their environment. But I’m very fuzzy about how you imagine one-celled creatures living near ocean vents evolved into these intelligent mer-people. What in their relatively simple environment (very few digestible food materials, very few other species of animals to compete with, no normal range of plant life because no sunlight) would drive such complex evolution? Also, I’m told (by people who supposedly know deep ocean life) that some fish, when brought up from the deep ocean, rupture in the air because they are used to living at high pressure and the outward counter-pressure generated by their bodies destroys them in low-pressure settings. If that’s the case, then these hypothetical mer-people, living under a couple of miles of water, would need to build pressure-adjusting suits or vehicles to explore the higher levels of the ocean, and to get up high enough to where the sunlight penetrates, before they’d have any idea what a sun or solar system or galaxy was. So what do they use to build these pressure-adjusting garments or vehicles? Torches and metals? Where are they going to get refined metals? Etc.

Look, you guys: I love science-fiction as much as you do. I grew up reading stories about all kinds of weird intelligent aliens with physiologies wildly different from the human. They were all over the comic books I read, and of course they are all over the place in Star Wars and Star Trek. I’d dearly love to believe that higher intelligence can reside in billions of different forms across the universe. I’m not opposed to the idea in principle. I have no religious objection to “the image of God” being found in different material forms on different planets. But after reading Denton, I think that such diversity of intelligent life forms in the universe is most unlikely.

He explicitly criticizes science fiction notions in making the argument that higher life forms will tend to be similar across the universe. He doesn’t insist that intelligent life everywhere must be exactly alike, and he doesn’t insist that higher intelligent forms will be exactly like humans. But he says they will tend to be much like the higher forms of life we know on earth, probably vertebrates, probably warm-blooded, most likely bipedal, with the necessary anatomical features to build fires, grasp tools, etc. And his argument for that is built on the fundamental laws of physics, chemistry, geology, biochemistry, biology, etc. So he doesn’t think you are going to find cephalopods or giant cockroaches piloting space ships or swinging light sabers, as we see in films like Star Wars. He doesn’t think that slugs are going to evolve into an intelligent race like that of Jabba the Hutt. He thinks that the basic laws and constants tend to push both the inorganic and organic worlds in certain rough directions, and thus that, though local conditions on other planets will inevitably produce variety, the range of intelligent beings will not be nearly so great as our science-fiction stories would have us imagine.

I’m inclined to think he is right. I don’t claim any proof that he is right, but his arguments, when put together, make sense. But “put together” is the key word. He has a whole book on water, a whole book on light, a whole book on fire-making, a whole book on the cell, etc. All the arguments converge and reinforce one another.

I’m not saying I find every single argument he makes in the books to be convincing. I’m not saying the books are beyond criticism. I am saying that he constructs a plausible overall argument. And here I’m not talking about his argument for design, but his argument that higher intelligent forms will tend to be similar across the cosmos. I don’t like his conclusions, because I want to believe that somewhere out in space we will one day meet colorful aliens like those from my days of comic books and sci-fi. But I think his conclusions are most likely correct.

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