Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tex on September 11, 2008 at 10:44pm

Whether or not the claims are true, why must it follow that a 'god' must have done it?

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Permalink Reply by James on September 11, 2008 at 11:49pm

It doesn't, though it is an interesting question. As I've posted elsewhere, this is just another case of the god of the gaps which does not explain anything: what is God? through what mechanism does God cause/create? etc.

The first assertion has been refuted so far on another forum, though I haven't found any sources yet.

James

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Permalink Reply by Fizzy on September 13, 2008 at 3:53pm

Claim One: The universe as observed presents a great deal of matter and very, very little anti-matter. All human experiments produce matter and antimatter in equal quantities which (usually) annihilate quickly. Since we do have all this nice matter floating about, either A) there's a lot of antimatter segregated somewhere, or B) matter and antimatter did not occur at equal rates at whatever event formed the universe as we know it.

Assuming B, I can't think of any good reason why the specific overabundance of matter should be particularly important. Some constants might come out differently, but I don't know any reason why a universe with different constants would be impossible.

Claim Two: The rate of expansion of the universe, represented, more or less, by the Hubble constant does not actually appear to be 'constant'. I don't recall the specific suggested variance, but I'm reasonably sure it's greater than 0.00000000001. Again, I have no idea why any particular rate of expansion should be necessary.

Again, different universal compositions, which a different expansion rate would seem to reflect, could very well furnish different values for constants. Life as we know it might not be feasible given many or most of these alternate configurations, but they could very well give rise to different forms of life. This life might then eventually wonder why the universal constants have values that permit their own existence.

The simplest answer I know is: Because if they didn't, we wouldn't be able to ask the questions.

Cosmology is not my bag, so hopefully someone will come along to correct any mistakes I've made.

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Permalink Reply by gman on September 21, 2008 at 2:06pm

A) false claim. It should make perfect sense for there to be equal amounts, because it is coming from "nothing". It's like we are starting from the equation 0=0 I can then modify it pretty much any way I want:
+1-1=0
-55+55=0
so it's like the positives are matter and negatives are antimatter but it all still adds up to zero, which is why it can come from nothing, because the net sum is still nothing.

However, I have also heard that there are ways to achieve asymmetry in matter and antimatter. So either way, it doesn't require a god.


B) This claim is just plain false. It sounds a lot to me like the thing people say "if the earth was a few km off it's orbit life could never have occured" which I don't feel like getting into, but that is also a very untrue statement.

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Permalink Reply by Tortan on September 29, 2008 at 10:40am

Claim One: In order for the universe to have come into being, its balance of anti-matter to matter must have been accurate to one part in ten billion. Therefore, a god must existed to bring forth the universe.

Whether this exact measurement is true or not, I don't know, but if it is, so what? Is it not true that, through randomness, EVENTUALLY it would happen? We don't know how long the universe existed as a tiny dot smaller than an electron before the big bang happened, so maybe it's trillions of years? Either way, it doesn't really matter, because you don't need a god for this to happen.

Also, in reference to the other post about asymmetry in matter, if you read up on CP-Violation, you may learn some more. As I understand it, it is the very nature of the universe we exist in to be in flux. Little quantum particles are constantly popping in to existence out of nowhere, but immediately (in our terms of macroscopic time) eliminating themselves, because they are created in pairs and annihilate each other upon contact. However, it has been proven that there is such a thing called CP-Violation (Charge conjugation Parity), where the particles don't annihilate each other and are thus now part of the universe.


Claim Two: The universe would have been unable to sustain life had the expansion rate of the Big Bang been one billionth of a percent larger or smaller. Therefore, a god must have initiated the Big Bang.

Again, this claim doesn't make sense. Whether or not the claim made about the expansion rate is true, I cannot say, but if it is, I still don't see the point. What could have changed the expansion rate? If I drop a ball, will it not fall toward the center of gravity of the planet I am on? This is an inevitability. The Big Bang could be an inevitability just like dropping a ball. It is possible that there is only one way for a big bang to happen, just like there is only one outcome for dropping a ball and letting gravity take it.

Also, if the big bang is on a repeat cycle, or if there are many big bangs happening throughout the universe, then perhaps we are simply one of the successful ones that had the expansion rate correct. There are a lot of questions, but the fact that we exist is certainly not proof that there is a god, and they'll have to come up with some scientific evidence that is stronger than what we have to show they're right, rather than philosophical musings.

What creationists seem to lack the understanding of is, yes, a lot of things are incredible, but, as with humans, it is the successful outcome of the process. There have been other human like mammals before us, but they're gone because they weren't successful. There have been other animals, like the dinosaurs, but they happened to not have evolved well to survive the great cataclysm that destroyed most of them. The small dinosaurs that did survive are most likely the birds that populate our planet today. Every living thing we see right now is the outcome of a long process that gets specialized in each step of its advancement. Only the good outcomes survive in natural selection (it's important to make the distinguishing mark, because we do breed animals that would die without us), and it is simply a long building process that won't end, unless a planetary catastrophe decides to do it.

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Permalink Reply by Zeglr Almighty on October 18, 2008 at 5:34pm

This entirely assumes that there is only one universe, and that this universe has only existed for a finite time (not having infinitely gone through the cycle of big bang, then crunch). If it were so that the universe has existed for infinite time or there being infinite parallel universes then there would have been infinite chances for our present universe to form. Additionally, induction is flawed logically. The universe's current state could have been just a fluke, chance alone cannot prove anything for certain.

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Permalink Reply by Todd Settle on November 12, 2008 at 9:01am

This might help.. As Gravity is key to understanding the question you ask.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

In all seriousness, I wish you a successful research project!

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Permalink Reply by Pockets on November 13, 2008 at 4:11am

Although I realize this is an over simplification of the probability of the universe coming out "just right", here is a simple way that I heard it explained.

What is the probability of a well shuffled deck of cards being laid on the table in a definitive order? Its pretty small, but it still happens.

(I know I am not saying this completely correct and if you know a better way of saying it please let me know)

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Permalink Reply by Fox Anderson on November 29, 2008 at 11:30am

One of the things made possible in string theory is that in the 11th dimension branes could collide together and release great amounts of energy. This energy theoretically could be enough to create a universe, massive amounts of energy condensed to matter. And I personally think that since even regular matter can be collided and released into energy that if this happened in the past there is no longer a need for the matter anti-matter balance to have to persist to current day. There need be no god making any of this happen it is just the nature of existence for stuff to exist.

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer W on December 5, 2008 at 11:25pm

Creationism is hugely flawed. People who believe in it don't base it on science whatsoever. They have no objectivity whatsoever. Lack of evidence or no evidence is not evidence.

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Permalink Reply by Fox Anderson on December 7, 2008 at 12:10am

Not to mention no evidence to support their own claims.

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Permalink Reply by Pallando on December 15, 2008 at 3:09am

The first part of each claim is correct. The fundamental constants of physics are very finely tuned to the existence of intelligent life. If most of them were altered by a very small amount, we couldn't exist.

However, an intelligent creator specifically choosing those values is only one of the possible explanations.

1) There are multiple universes (successive or concurrent)

2) There is and has been only one universe, however we don't perfectly understand time and causality at a quantum level, and in fact there had to be an intelligent observer for the quantum wave form to collapse at all.

3) There is a heirarchy of universes and what we saw from the inside as the big bang was, from the outside, a pinching off of a small corner of space time.

or alternatively there is the Extropian view that we are actually living in a simulation designed by a Matrioshka brain, and physics parameters of the real universe are actually a lot more forgiving.

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