Is ID on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough?

On the other hand she did agree to do it and hasn’t objected to the video remaining up.

2 Likes

I didn’t say it was fair. We don’t always get to choose our nicknames.

ID is the scientific breakthrough!! its existence changed everything about origin subjects. it gave a intellectual, not that YEC needed it but, front line to creationism ideas. every textbook in universitys , i understand, must address the ID revolution. I know in canada here they do.
This blog exists because of iD’s revolution and not because of YEC.
All origin conclusions have little claim to being scientific. This because its about past and gone events and processes. its more like history then science.
Remember how unlikely it is, in a probability curve, for a "scientific’ theory to withstand such constant long time skepticism.
ID/YEC mere endurance is a disaster for any theory its aimed at.
This would never happen/continue in actual science subjects like computer science or mechanisms or medicine .

What!?

I’m Canadian. @Robert_Byers is incorrect.

(Cough cough) Anti-vaxxers. Homeopathy. Naturopathic “medicine.” (cough).

Within some christian circles, ID did change a lot. However, it changed nothing on the science side.

The scientific method can be used to form testable hypotheses about past events. This is completely scientific.

There are still flat Earthers. That doesn’t call the spherical Earth into question.

5 Likes

The string landscape (which is not guaranteed in string theory) plus quantum mechanics plus inflation can generate eternal inflation in which infinite number of universes are formed with varying fundamental constants - some of these would be suitable for life. This solves the fine-tuned problem by the anthropic principle.

So if anything it’s the opposite: one evidence showing that the universe is fine-tuned is an experimental evidence that strings do not exist.

2 Likes

Yes, this makes more sense compared to the way @pevaquark phrased it initially, which was the reverse. However, string theory is just one ToE. If we rule it out, it’s likely that theorists will simply turn to other ToEs that can explain how the constants became fine-tuned as they are. The only way I can see fine tuning being “vindicated” is if there is some sort of experimental and theoretical proof of the “irreducibility” of the fine tuned constants - perhaps analogous to experimental tests of Bell’s inequality which showed that any hidden variable theory (of quantum mechanics) must be non-local. But I have no idea what that could look like.

2 Likes

I meant that in the sense that our current best ideas that explain where the fundamental constants come from that take on particular values that are deemed unnatural is a combination of the string theory landscape + eternal inflation. To really discuss the odds of fine-tuning then one would need to know the range of values which seems like it would require a more robust type of string theory (or other similar theory). Of course such a theory should also demonstrate that strings are in fact real. And one should have more robust evidence for inflation beyond what we presently have, starting with primordial gravitational waves. But even then it is a combination of extrapolations beyond the limits of our current understanding and experiments.

I’m not really sure how one even begins to define this. Typically such fine-tuning questions are questions of initial conditions or parameters for some model. And then one needs to determine the naturalness vs. un-naturalness of those initial conditions. If the initial conditions are natural then its not ‘fine-tuned’ but if they are unnatural then a fine-tuning problem arises.

1 Like

It’s just my strawmanning of the ID position: If they claim that various physical parameters are fine-tuned in the sense that their values are ordained by a designer, then they don’t want eternal inflation - as that can solve the fine-tuned problem without the need of a designer.

1 Like