Feynman is a good egg.

Andrew L. wrote:Feynman is a good egg.

The problem is that the rules and bounds that Feynman sets for the natural sciences are STEPPED OVER on a routine basis in the natural sciences these days: example- cosmology. Scientific hybris.

His "god coming to earth/proportion" thing is good. He sums up the whole empiricist tradition in that stumble of words. Gold.

Then he trails off into this existential crap....."without any purpose..."........please. That is the most unscientific thing anyone can say: that things have no purpose or function.

Matthew has mistaken structure for plan. If I scatter dried beans on the floor, and then notice that ten of them have collected within an inch of each other, and the little grouping looks just like Snoopy in profile, it would be a mistake to assume that they were put there intentionally, even though the odds against them landing in this precise arrangement are nearly infinite.

Things happen to be this way, that's all. Nothing more. Nobody put the dried beans there by choice, they just ended up there. It doesn't matter that I discern a pattern after the fact.

steve wrote:Matthew has mistaken structure for plan. If I scatter dried beans on the floor, and then notice that ten of them have collected within an inch of each other, and the little grouping looks just like Snoopy in profile, it would be a mistake to assume that they were put there intentionally, even though the odds against them landing in this precise arrangement are nearly infinite.

Things happen to be this way, that's all. Nothing more. Nobody put the dried beans there by choice, they just ended up there. It doesn't matter that I discern a pattern after the fact.

But you have to admit, Steve, that this sort of thing that you describe would have to happen trillions upon trillions upon trillions of times...the mind reels at the number..........and happen juuuuuust RIGHT, mind you.......for there to be a cosmos (as I defined it) as there is today. You model falls short...way short.

Function and action also imply order. We can see that many biological things have very very specific functions. A spermatozoon, for example, has the function of uniting the incomplete genome of the father with that of the mother to instigate the formation of a new organism. Other than that there is no purpose for the spermatozoon.

matthew wrote:But you have to admit, Steve, that this sort of thing that you describe would have to happen trillions upon trillions upon trillions of times...the mind reels at the number..........and happen juuuuuust RIGHT, mind you.......for there to be a cosmos (as I defined it) as there is today. You model falls short...way short.

If some chance event in the past came out differently, the universe wouldn't cease to be, it would just be different than it is now. To look around you and say, "it couldn't have ended up like this by chance," is to mistakenly assume that nothing about the universe could have ever been any different than how we know it. Miami on Tuesday couldn't be any warmer than it was, not by one degree. That acorn couldn't have fallen one centimeter to the left... That is the scale of difference we're talking about being "chance," and I think it is perfectly reasonable, given that we observe it all around us.

Of course things could be different, but this is how they are. It is a mistake to assume that someone decided that it should be precisely like this.

steve wrote:

matthew wrote:But you have to admit, Steve, that this sort of thing that you describe would have to happen trillions upon trillions upon trillions of times...the mind reels at the number..........and happen juuuuuust RIGHT, mind you.......for there to be a cosmos (as I defined it) as there is today. You model falls short...way short.

If some chance event in the past came out differently, the universe wouldn't cease to be, it would just be different than it is now. To look around you and say, "it couldn't have ended up like this by chance," is to mistakenly assume that nothing about the universe could have ever been any different than how we know it. Miami on Tuesday couldn't be any warmer than it was, not by one degree. That acorn couldn't have fallen one centimeter to the left... That is the scale of difference we're talking about being "chance," and I think it is perfectly reasonable, given that we observe it all around us.

Of course things could be different, but this is how they are. It is a mistake to assume that someone decided that it should be precisely like this.

WTF?! Steve, I thought you turned back into a pumpkin after midnight?


At any rate, your points in this surprisingly long discussion are all very good and valid.

This is the kind of argument that I have to listen to everyday living in Oklahoma....


Have you ever read or seen anything by Richard Dawkins?
He expresses a lot of these ideas very well and he is very funny....

steve wrote:

matthew wrote:But you have to admit, Steve, that this sort of thing that you describe would have to happen trillions upon trillions upon trillions of times...the mind reels at the number..........and happen juuuuuust RIGHT, mind you.......for there to be a cosmos (as I defined it) as there is today. You model falls short...way short.

If some chance event in the past came out differently, the universe wouldn't cease to be, it would just be different than it is now.

However, there would still be an order albeit a DIFFERENT order.

To look around you and say, "it couldn't have ended up like this by chance," is to mistakenly assume that nothing about the universe could have ever been any different than how we know it.

Sure it could have different. There's no question. But it isn't. And if it were, there would still be order. I repeat myself.

Miami on Tuesday couldn't be any warmer than it was, not by one degree. That acorn couldn't have fallen one centimeter to the left... That is the scale of difference we're talking about being "chance," and I think it is perfectly reasonable, given that we observe it all around us[Matt's emphasis].

No, I don't think it is reasonable given the incredible specificity and order in, for example, the most basic biological structures and functions. The wind blowing one way or another or a forest fire opening up an acorn is one thing (were you watching that show about Yellowstone too?)......but for example RNA synthesis....that's something else.

Of course things could be different, but this is how they are. It is a mistake to assume that someone decided that it should be precisely like this.

I don't think it is. Why is it a mistake?

steve wrote:That something is unknown does not make it supernatural. Give me one reason to believe that there is anything other than the natural world. One reason. Seriouslly, if the unknown and the supernatural are immense and timeless, there must be some thing you can point to that would suggest it exists.

Isn't there anything? Nothing at all? I just have to believe in it so I can believe in it?

No can do. You've got to give me a reason.

They can't.
The idea of a supernatural universe, utopia, god, heaven is simply something that Plato brought to a conceptual level thousands of years ago and has been rehashed via ANY religion(I'll throw in communism here as well, i.e. Hegel's metaphysics and Marx's application of this in economic terms).
Aquinas was one of the only religious intellectuals/philosophers to come up with an explanation for god. He said god is that which cannot be given an identity (or defined). Religion is another means of evading reality and hoping something or someone else will help us understand this life and universe without our own only tool of grasping this universe-reason.
Of course there are things that ARE unknowable to man but not impossibly unknowable including quantum physics. Quantum physicists have never relied on faith. And I say that with the utmost confidence. I don't care what physicist from MIT or CIT or PiL says about having "faith" in their knowledge. It was the wrong word to use and somebody took that idea out of context to propel a malicious agenda against science. Like chemistry, quantum physics can, and will to a better degree predict behavior of the universe. Mayble ONLY 99% of the time but that 1% is not unknowable nor is it "god" or "allah".

jlamour wrote:They can't.
The idea of a supernatural universe, utopia, god, heaven is simply something that Plato brought to a conceptual level thousands of years ago and has been rehashed via ANY religion

This is cheap Nietzsche.

matthew wrote:

jlamour wrote:They can't.
The idea of a supernatural universe, utopia, god, heaven is simply something that Plato brought to a conceptual level thousands of years ago and has been rehashed via ANY religion

This is cheap Nietzsche.

Of course but Plato believed this obviously long before Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a Platonist.