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God directed the evolution of this Universe a prioriDirected evolution of a Darwinian character has been modeled in biological laboratory experiments for more than two decades. There are three primary forms for directed evolution in which selected traits are multiplied within a given population. The paradigm of directed evolution may also be applied to cosmology and the boundary conditions given before the creation of this Universe.Voted for by GaryCGibson.
The anthropic principle entails selection criteria for physical constants in this universe given such that biological life forms like humanity can be made to exist. Physicists are aware that innumerable other values and configurations for the constants of this universe given to support life could have existed such that life would not exist.
In fact the odds are very high against everything physically being 'just so' that life could exist. The odds are instead better that a directed evolution and Universe designer choose and shaped the initial boundary conditions of this universe such that life could be made to exist.
The recent developments of multi-verse theory from super-string theory such as Tegmark has written about are sometimes used as methods to explain how this universe able to support human life forms could have come to exist through the chance of one such universe amidst millions and trillions of possible universes that have come to exist in alternate places/universes over time. That argument virtually stipulates the point that if only one universe exists then it must be a result of directed evolution or intelligent design by direct inference.
If there has been every possible universe configuration brought into existence over time it says nothing about the chance that directed evolution brought this particular universe into being or not. If every possible universe has existed or will existed then one must posit at least one such universe with beings capable of intelligently designing or directing the evolution of another universe, and nothing is said about the non-contingent Creator of all possible Universes at all. Instead one is left with the Bible for guidance and information about the Savior of all souls possible for salvation unto God.
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Kazrith
August 22, 2007
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Jackymania
August 23, 2007
God was created a posterior
Responding toGod directed the evolution of this Universe a priori by GaryCGibson
The existence of universe is prior to God.
Universe exists as a huge body of infinite space. space is relative. The notion and concept of space is formed in human mind - from the three dimensional structure we realise through our senses. Only a hundred years ago, did Man manage to fly across the Atlantic. While birds, and also insects may have flown around the globe from about say a million years ago. The distance as seen through the paradigm of space and limitation of mind/brain was long conquered by other living creatures. We also require time to know or actually experience space.
My theory is that Universe is much more vast or gigantous ( using the word for want of a similar word adjective that may truly mean a big big.... ntimes Universe) than where our latest telescopes or radioscopes can reach. The question is, can it be endless? Where everthing we imagine, think, see and comprehend has a boundary, we are inclined to believe that the space as we know it is bound somewhere.
If it is bound, then how and to what extent it is bound to. And if so, the possibility of being bound by a supernatural force is quite plausible.
But if Universe or space is not bound by anything, and is endless, than Man's imagination fails to stretch beyond a point ( since the paradigm of boundary is a constant psychological factor in our ability to comprehned Universe, in other words matter and Energy.) We then have to leave it to some ancient or distant alien race to come with inforamtion of such possible dimensions of the universe.
To give an example of the adventurous frog born in a pool, although cliched it serves my purpose here. If the frog jumps of the pool in which he was born, it may think that the pond is a big galaxy, if it then is adventurous to go to a lake nearby, it may think it is the Whole Universe, and if it lets itslef to be swept away by flow and swim along the river, he may think the displacement is towards something much larger. Once it survives to reach the sea it may be avirtual heaven for him, and but still the vastness of the ocean may delude his understanding because of the limited capacity of its vision and ability of comprehension. The frog does not have anything to compare the ocean with. So also i think is the case with humans.
The limitation of understanding the Wholeness of Universe can only be addressed by evolving into a better system of understanding. Intelligence thus drives the superior humans to collect and gather as much data as possible, just as the case was when for our security and food we used to collect fruits and food to survive - season by season.
Coming to the most inetresting part of your submission, and you quote: '.... The odds are instead better that a directed evolution and Universe designer choose and shaped the initial boundary conditions of this universe such that life could be made to exist.'
I say,......... The existence of the Universe is not subject to life. For, for the Ocean to exist, it is not necessary that the frog should exist.
The frog 'knows' only the Sea - a vast body of water where no land is seen nearby. The frog exists and knows the medium in which it now floats because of his adventurous travel and acquistion of knowledge triggered by an extra ordinary curious and information seeking mind. Why the frog exists should be a valid question to a third person or entity. On the other hand, why the ocean exists is not subject to the frog understanding. But, going by the anthropic principle, if one believes that teh Ocean exists for the frog itslef than it is merely a hypothesis, a theory but nowhere near a fact.
In such a vast Ocean of loneliness and incomprehensibilty, if the frog imagines of a GOd like creator (made in teh image of the frog), the frog saves himslef from insanity. If Ocean is seen as an Effect, than God can be seen as a Cause. Thus God was created a posterior. It accompanies only human life.
Thanks & regards
nanoinfinity
August 23, 2007
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Excellent thesis. I very much wish other people could think as clearly as you.
Because Jacky has dealt well with the notion of a god, I wish to address this line of thought:
"Physicists are aware that innumerable other values and configurations for the constants of this universe given to support life could have existed such that life would not exist. "
I object to this line of thought because it is weak and bounded by egotistical human thought processes. Yes, on the surface if seems fine - we exist as life, after all, and we probably wouldn't exist if anything was changed.
However, inductive reasoning is not the right sort of reasoning to use in this argument. Making a generalisation (about life and how it exists) from a specific example (us) is a lazy sort of way to do it.
If you went up to one of these physicists and said, "Why is it that life can only exist how we know it?" they would have no real answer. I would then reccomend a few science fiction anthologies to these physicists in hopes that it would widen their universal view to accept that, if THEY accept evolution as the truth, live could arise anywhere, in any time, even if the universe in which it arose was drastically different than our own.
There's probably life elsewhere in this universe saying, "Well, of course life could not arise anywhere else in this universe! The probability of an exact arrangement such that methane-breathing, infera-red sensing, current-gliding, (etc.) life could arise is trillions to one!"
... and all the logical fallacies we experience flows form that statement, including the creation of a god and the egocentrism associated with being "The only intelligent life in the universe."
GaryCGibson
August 23, 2007
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Thanks for your comments
God exists before everything was created. One can of course invent their own meaning for the tem and be wrong. Boundary conditions for the universe has a term differing from what Jacky believes it has as well in this use. Boundary conditions refers to the initial values of the pre-inflation universe that let it become what it is...not the present size of the universe.http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast123/lectures/lec19.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
I believe in intelligent design yet my meaning of the term differs from that of simplistic Creationist use...
I am not very enthusiastic about irreducible complexity. Philosophically I do not know why God would need to create a bifurcated universe with a simple base part and fancy complex overlays to create life so His signiture would be evident...I think he is above that and would go for streamlined simplicity and elegance in craftwork.
I was recently interested in theistic evolution, and now have turned my attention to directed evolution. I got that concept from a 1999 or 1992 Scientific American and realized it applies to cosmological arguments as well. I believe the Universe is itself an example of a directed evolution.
Here is a reference to an article by Stephen Hawking on the boundary conditions of the Universe...did he have blue eyes? I'll bet not. (ref. article on blue-eyed brilliance)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982ac...proc..563H
Kazrith
August 24, 2007
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charles darwin.
this i whole heartedly agree with.
GaryCGibson
August 24, 2007
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More thoughts about Directed Evolution
God is male so far as contingent being goes I think. Using the paradigm of Plotinus and The One, from which emanations arise, the Universe is a place that is receptive comparatively. It is useful to consider that in sexual reproduction gender differentiation accomplishes the purpose of distributing those 99,000 human genes approx. in such ways as to permit ongoing valuable adaptation to space-time alterity. God is above all that for-himself and pre-determined the form and content of this Universe and what happens within it. The Triune God is mysterious, yet it is something akin to the relativity of relationships humanity has to God for-others. Too many people on Earth make the mistake of interpreting the theological characteristics of God from a naive, empirical reference criterion.Intelligent design has several meanings it’s useful to recollect. I appreciate wikipedia articles on meanings sometimes... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design yet in this lead article they oppose intelligent design to natural philosophy seemingly, and that I disagree with. Theistic evolution is more of a way of saying that God evolved the Universe...a point I was making in my book C&C.
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/directed-evolution.html Directed evolution is an actual process developed in biochemistry...it isn't just a theoretical tool to model evolution over millions of years. Directed evolution means that scientists can actually select and screen certain desirable characteristics and have them repeated en mass. It’s a brilliant analogy for applications potentially in macro and micro-physics as well. People use that directed evolution screening for themselves in innumerable ways sociologically, from infanticide and abortion to arresting drunk drivers or graduating people from high school with a passing grade point so no child is left behind.
I found my post on this subject was listed at allphilosophy.com http://allphilosophy.com/topic/4005
Here is a more technical artificial on a more recent strategy in directed evolution http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/03_01/Directed_evolution.shtml
These people used three different evolution strategies, and the idea of three paradigms for filtering traits seems to be the broadest application of directed evolutionary procedures in microbiology.
The anthropic principle isn't an intraUniverse paradigm, its is an interUniverse concept or paradigm derived from the boundary conditions by which life can exist. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rossuk/c-anthro.htm
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/teleo.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
http://www.anthropic-principle.com/
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/design.shtml
On this point you seem to be using the intrauniverse reference criterion instead of the macro-physics and cosmology criterion. Physical 'laws' of the Universe are what physicists consider, that is presently how the four primary forces flowed from the inflaton and Higgs field in theory, how and why those constants have changed and the history and future of the Universe as comprehended by human cosmology researches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
Each potential universe could have different physical laws. There is a sum-over-histories paradigms for the existence of universes analogous to that of quantum mechanical uncertainty and those particle-wavelet-strings that travel every possible world-line and 'download' into existence as either position or momentum when sampled.
I like reading logic. I read Sommer's 'The Art of Reasoning' again before I left Alaska. Reviewing class logic and term logic. I don't think I have used any of the logical fallacies nor put together a bad syllogism. There are 256 possible forms of syllogisms and only 23 are valid, yet I was relearning the dictum de Omni and other rules of inference. I reread that book whenever I can in order to avoid making logical errors.
The appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
In accord with the anthropic principle and the existence of this universe I have noted that the odds of it existing are greater in opposition than for it. It is as if one walked into a casino in Las Vegas the first time in one's life and put a dollar in the million dollar machine, pulled the handle once and one a million dollars. It’s improbable, and scientists like to consider the probable, orderly, contiguous and rational when possible. Sure there could be a hurricane in Anchorage tomorrow-yek that's improbable, the odds are against it and I don't think it is so.
The uncreated Creator is aetemporal. Space-time after all is theoretically reversible; it is just that the complexity of reversing time and space together with the mass and energy returning to a lower entropy state is improbable. The cyclical universe such as Stephen Hawking postulated doesn't do anything to controvert or moderate the anthropic principle, and makes it even more interesting in fact. I had considered Nietzsche's idea of the eternal recurrence for some time, and researched it rather well I think...I finally decided it was a perceptual dysfunction of cognition. Nietzsche had syphilis and first became the philosopher of the eternal recurrence one night while walking along the shore of Lake Lucerne I think...he kicked a bolder at had this 'I have done this forever' sort of been here before, done that infinitely. Nietzsche used to take the 'cure; at health resorts in Switzerland.
I've written a little about this topic too, I'll see if I can find and repost it here. http://allphilosophy.com/topic/3993
Jackymania
August 27, 2007
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I have very limited knowledge of basic and frontier sciences. Going by your last post in here, i express my views as follows:
1) Your quote: Too many people on Earth make the mistake of interpreting the theological characteristics of God from a naive, empirical reference criterion.
>>>> agreed.
2) Your quote: The anthropic principle isn't an intraUniverse paradigm, its is an interUniverse concept or paradigm derived from the boundary conditions by which life can exist.
>>>> The proposition of 'inter Universe' is very interesting. I frankly have not studied much on this concept. will get back latter on this.
3) Your quote: The appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
>>>> true.
4) Your quote: In accord with the anthropic principle and the existence of this universe I have noted that the odds of it existing are greater in opposition than for it.
>>>> can you clarify the it in 'odds of it existing' ....does it means the multiverse or are you referring to the D E or the anthropic principle.
reading further the same passage, on probability theory, we have to contrast that with the uncertainty principle. One should remember, that human ideas or thoughts can fall into traps of logical fallacies, and into the myths and legends as is evident by our past history.
The probability of both science and spirituality (read metaphysics) taking our collective consciousness to a mythification of facts by way of interpretation is high. My position is to take each claim of scientists and spiritualists from a skeptical angle. I think it is safe and sound principle.
Directed Evolution appears to me as an attempt to give some respectability and reasonability to the Designer. It is to be appreciated. Evidence of evolution taking (or had taken) place is overwelming. If God is directing this play of events on the stage called Earth than it definitely is a respectable position to take. However, the probabilty that such a director exists is remote according to me.
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