To the consternation of atheists, not only is the universe fine-tuned for life, but the universe appears to be fine-tuned specifically for life like human life: As Eric Metaxas has recently pointed out in his NYTimes Bestselling book Miracles, the infamous Drake equation is a gross misrepresentation of the odds of finding another planet with advanced life on it in the universe: Carl Sagan – Cosmos – Drake Equation – video https://youtube/watch?v=MlikCebQSlY Sagan, using very ‘back of the envelope’ calculations for the Drake Equation, came up with 1 billion habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Astronomer Frank Drake himself (1930-present) proposed, in 1961, advanced life should be fairly common in the universe. Using his rather crude equation, he, like Sagan, plugged in some rather optimistic numbers and reasoned that ten worlds with advanced life should be in our Milky Way galaxy alone. At the time, this worked out to roughly one trillion worlds with advanced life throughout the entire universe. Much to the disappointment of Star Trek fans, the avalanche of recent scientific evidence has found the probability of finding another planet with the ability to host advanced life in this universe is not nearly as likely as astronomer Frank Drake had originally predicted. The main trouble with the ‘Drake Equation’ is, as Sagan admitted, we are dealing with several unknown factors. And as our knowledge has increased, the unknowns in the ‘Drake Equation’ have come back to haunt the atheist. The first hint, that I’m aware of, that the probabilities are not nearly as favorable for atheists as atheists imagine them to be, was elucidated in the book ‘Rare Earth’ by Ward and Brownlee: “If some god-like being could be given the opportunity to plan a sequence of events with the expressed goal of duplicating our ‘Garden of Eden’, that power would face a formidable task. With the best of intentions but limited by natural laws and materials it is unlikely that Earth could ever be truly replicated. Too many processes in its formation involve sheer luck. Earth-like planets could certainly be made, but each would differ in critical ways. This is well illustrated by the fantastic variety of planets and satellites (moons) that formed in our solar system. They all started with similar building materials, but the final products are vastly different from each other . . . . The physical events that led to the formation and evolution of the physical Earth required an intricate set of nearly irreproducible circumstances.” Peter B. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2000) Here are a few notes that support Ward and Brownlees contention: Compositions of Extrasolar Planets – July 2010 Excerpt: ,,,the presumption that extrasolar terrestrial planets will consistently manifest Earth-like chemical compositions is incorrect. Instead, the simulations revealed “a wide variety of resulting planetary compositions. reasons.org/compositions-extrasolar-planets Why so many ‘Earth-like’ planets wind up being bogus - Terrence McCoy - January 7, 2015 Excerpt: In June 2011, after several promising planets either proved to be figments or balls of heat and radiation, Harvard astrophysicist Howard Smith said we’re alone in the universe. “We have found that most other planets and solar systems are wildly different from our own,” he said. “They are very hostile to life as we know it…. Extrasolar systems are far more diverse than we expected, and that means very few are likely to support life.” washingtonpost/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/07/why-so-many-earth-like-planets-wind-up-being-bogus/?tid=hp_mm&hpid=z3 Dr. Hugh Ross, and his team, using currently available data, implement a much more extreme refinement of the Drake Equation here: Hugh Ross – Evidence For Intelligent Design Is Everywhere (10^-1054) – video metacafe/watch/4347236 Linked from Appendix C from Dr. Ross’s book, ‘Why the Universe Is the Way It Is’; Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1333 dependency factors estimate approx. 10^324 longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^45 Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1054 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles. reasons.org/files/compendium/compendium_part3.pdf And when one factors in the supposed naturalistic origin of life, the probabilities explode into even more gargantuan proportions: Does the Probability for ETI = 1? Excerpt: In another book I wrote with Fuz, Who Was Adam?, we describe calculations done by evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala and by astrophysicists John Barrow, Brandon Carter, and Frank Tipler for the probability that a bacterium would evolve under ideal natural conditions—given the presumption that the mechanisms for natural biological evolution are both effective and rapid. They determine that probability to be no more than 10-24,000,000. The bottom line is that rather than the probability for extraterrestrial intelligent life being 1 as Aczel claims, very conservatively from a naturalistic perspective it is much less than 10^500 + 22 -1054 -100,000,000,000 -24,000,000. That is, it is less than 10-100,024,000,532. In longhand notation it would be 0.00 … 001 with 100,024,000,531 zeros (100 billion, 24 million, 5 hundred and thirty-one zeros) between the decimal point and the 1. That longhand notation of the probability would fill over 20,000 complete Bibles. reasons.org/does-probability-eti-1 Of note: As far as calculations are concerned, determining how close a probability is to zero, only Penrose’s 1 in 10^10^123 calculation for the initial phase-space (Entropy) of the universe, is closer to zero, as far as I have personally seen. The Physics of the Small and Large: What is the Bridge Between Them? Roger Penrose Excerpt: “The time-asymmetry is fundamentally connected to with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: indeed, the extraordinarily special nature (to a greater precision than about 1 in 10^10^123, in terms of phase-space volume) can be identified as the “source” of the Second Law (Entropy).” How special was the big bang? – Roger Penrose Excerpt: This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123. (from the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 – 1989) The book/movie The Privileged Planet also deals with the refinement of the Drake equation and, although not as extreme as the refinement of Dr. Rosss team, also finds the odds of finding a life supporting world in the universe to be, for all practicle purposes, nil: The Privileged Planet – video youtube/watch?v=JnWyPIzTOTw A Privileged Understanding of The Privileged Planet? Excerpt: In fact, in the book (Privileged Planet), a revised Drake equation (see Appendix A, on p. 337) is proposed to include additional factors that are now considered to contribute to the likelihood of civilized life existing in the universe. In the book, some of the particular factors are specifically discussed and shown that the actual probability is much smaller than 10% (p. 340-341). Since there is still much being learned in this area of cosmology, it is likely that many of the factors will be substantially less than 10%, and additional factors may need to be added. ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1403 And while, from a probabilistic point of view, that certainly turns the Drake Equation on its head, there is another point that Gonzalez and Richards drew out in their book to make the case that man is not as insignificant as atheists believe we are. That point is the correlation of habitability/livability and observability/discoverability The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole. – Jay Richards Privileged Planet – Habitability/Observability Correlation – Gonzalez and Richards – video metacafe/watch/5424431 The Privileged Planet – The Correlation Of Habitability and Observability “The same narrow circumstances that allow us to exist also provide us with the best over all conditions for making scientific discoveries.” “The one place that has observers is the one place that also has perfect solar eclipses.” “There is a final, even more bizarre twist. Because of Moon-induced tides, the Moon is gradually receding from Earth at 3.82 centimeters per year. In ten million years will seem noticeably smaller. At the same time, the Sun’s apparent girth has been swelling by six centimeters per year for ages, as is normal in stellar evolution. These two processes, working together, should end total solar eclipses in about 250 million years, a mere 5 percent of the age of the Earth. This relatively small window of opportunity also happens to coincide with the existence of intelligent life. Put another way, the most habitable place in the Solar System yields the best view of solar eclipses just when observers can best appreciate them.” – Guillermo Gonzalez – Astronomer - Privileged Planet pg 28 Dr. Robin Collins recently released a paper that verified the observability/habitability correlation to the fine-tuning argument for, among other things, the Cosmic Background Radiation being fit for observers like us: The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability – Robin Collins – March 22, 2014 Excerpt: The most dramatic confirmation of the discoverability/livability optimality thesis (DLO) is the dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) on the baryon to photon ratio.,,, …the intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio, (??b), which is the ratio of the average number of photons per unit volume of space to the average number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) per unit volume. At present this ratio is approximately a billion to one (10^9) , but it could beanywhere from one to infinity; it traces back to the degree of asymmetry in matter and anti – matter right after the beginning of the universe – for approximately every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particles of matter.,,, The only livability effect this ratio has is on whether or not galaxies can form that have near – optimally livability zones. As long as this condition is met, the value of this ratio has no further effects on livability. Hence, the DLO predicts that within this range, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers. According to my calculations – which have been verified by three other physicists — to within the margin of error of the experimentally determined parameters (~20%), the value of the photon to baryon ratio is such that it maximizes the CMB. This is shown in Figure 1 below. (pg. 13) It is easy to see that this prediction could have been disconfirmed. In fact, when I first made the calculations in the fall of 2011, I made a mistake and thought I had refuted this thesis since those calculations showed the intensity of the CMB maximizes at a value different than the photon – baryon ratio in our universe. So, not only does the DLO lead us to expect this ratio, but it provides an ultimate explanation for why it has this value,,, This is a case of a teleological thesis serving both a predictive and an ultimate explanatory role.,,, home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard%20Forum%20paper%20draft%20for%20posting.pdf Also of note to Dr. Collins work: We Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History (To see the Cosmic Background Radiation) – Hugh Ross – video vimeo/31940671 As well, Dr. Michael Denton has found that chemistry is not only fine-tuned for life, but is fine-tuned specifically for life like human life: The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis – Michael J. Denton – February 25, 2013 Summary (page 11) Many of the properties of the key members of Henderson’s vital ensemble —water, oxygen, CO2, HCO3 —are in several instances fit specifically for warm-blooded, air-breathing organisms such as ourselves. These include the thermal properties of water, its low viscosity, the gaseous nature of oxygen and CO2 at ambient temperatures, the inertness of oxygen at ambient temperatures, and the bicarbonate buffer, with its anomalous pKa value and the elegant means of acid-base regulation it provides for air-breathing organisms. Some of their properties are irrelevant to other classes of organisms or even maladaptive. It is very hard to believe there could be a similar suite of fitness for advanced carbon-based life forms. If carbon-based life is all there is, as seems likely, then the design of any active complex terrestrial being would have to closely resemble our own. Indeed the suite of properties of water, oxygen, and CO2 together impose such severe constraints on the design and functioning of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems that their design, even down to the details of capillary and alveolar structure can be inferred from first principles. For complex beings of high metabolic rate, the designs actualized in complex Terran forms are all that can be. There are no alternative physiological designs in the domain of carbon-based life that can achieve the high metabolic activity manifest in man and other higher organisms. bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.1/BIO-C.2013.1 As well, there are geometric considerations that overturn the notion that the earth, and therefore humans, are insignificant. Radio Astronomy reveals a privileged position for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe: Why is the solar system cosmically aligned? BY Dragan Huterer – 2007 The solar system seems to line up with the largest cosmic features. Is this mere coincidence or a signpost to deeper insights? Caption under figure on page 43: ODD ALIGNMENTS hide within the multipoles of the cosmic microwave background. In this combination of the quadrupole and octopole, a plane bisects the sphere between the largest warm and cool lobes. The ecliptic — the plane of Earth’s orbit projected onto the celestial sphere — is aligned parallel to the plane between the lobes. www-personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf Of note: The preceding article was written before the Planck data (with WMPA & COBE data), but the multipoles were subsequently actually verified by Planck. A Large Scale Pattern from Optical Quasar Polarization Vectors – 2013 arxiv.org/pdf/1311.6118.pdf Testing the Dipole Modulation Model in CMBR – 2013 arxiv.org/pdf/1308.0924.pdf Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky? – Ashok K. Singal – May 17, 2013 Abstract: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies (directionally dependent observations), which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic\cite {20,16,15}. The latest data from the Planck satellite have confirmed the presence of these anisotropies\cite {17}. Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR catalogue, one of the oldest and most intensively studies sample of strong radio sources\cite{21,22,3}. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. Further, even the distribution of observed radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. Two pertinent questions then arise. First, why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon. arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4134.pdf Of related interest: The Scale of The Universe – Part 2 – interactive graph (recently updated in 2012 with cool features) htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white The preceding interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality (not just ‘nearly’ in the exponential center!). i.e. 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle; As well there is also the ‘Anthropic Inequality’ which gives weight to the belief that humans are not as insignificant as atheists believe we are. Hugh Ross – The Anthropic Principle and The Anthropic Inequality – video metacafe/watch/8494065/ Anthropic Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity By Hugh Ross Excerpt: Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term “anthropic principle” (1974), noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years “preparing” for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).,, Carter and (later) astrophysicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for virtually any conceivable intelligent species under any conceivable life-support conditions. Roughly 15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of “just right” conditions reflect miraculous efficiency. Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth’s rotation period lengthens, Earth’s plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth’s atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now. christiangodblog.blogspot/2006_12_01_archive.html Moreover, the foundation of the universe itself, much contrary to Dawkins’ assertion of ‘blind, pitiless, indifference’,,, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Richard Dawkins - River Out of Eden , instead of pitiless indifference, we find that the foundation of the universe that at bottom ‘seems to care’: The Galileo Affair and Life/Consciousness as the true “Center of the Universe” Except: I find it extremely interesting, and strange, that quantum mechanics tells us that instantaneous quantum wave collapse to its ‘uncertain’ 3D state is centered on each individual conscious observer in the universe, whereas, 4D space-time cosmology (General Relativity) tells us each 3D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. These findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by a omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time. These findings certainly seem to go to the very heart of the age old question asked of many parents by their children, “How can God hear everybody’s prayers at the same time?”,,, i.e. Why should the expansion of the universe, or the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe, even care that you or I, or anyone else, should exist? Only Theism, Christian Theism in particular, offers a rational explanation as to why you or I, or anyone else, should have such undeserved significance in such a vast universe. [15] https://docs.google/document/d/1BHAcvrc913SgnPcDohwkPnN4kMJ9EDX-JJSkjc4AXmA/edit Psalm 33:13-15 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works. All in all, I would have to say we have come a long way from Drake, Sagan, and Dawkins’ simplistic notions that man is insignificant in the universe: Verse and Music: Isaiah 45:18-19 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.” How Great Is Our God (World Edition) [feat. Chris Tomlin] – video youtube/watch?v=vg5qDljEw7Q&feature=c4-overview&list=UU--bRDxn5YWEiqs3p8zzvlw
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 11:50:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015