The bastardisation of scientific knowledge

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Fine tuning as I have cited it, has to do with the universe being fined tuned to permit life. It is not about GODs, humans, human significance, so your quotations are not relevant.

For you to keep arguing that he does not believe in fine-tuning ,because he does not believe in a GOD, shows me that you don't understand the concept of "fine tuning" as was quoted originally, and as the physicist Paul Davies is quoted as saying is broadly accepted among physicists and cosmologists.

The multiverse theory that Hawking believes in does support the outcome of fine-tuning. This is the counter argument to the Teleological argument. The principal of the multiverse is to say that within the infinite number of universes we will see randomness, thus we will see universes that are fined-tuned for life, and others that are not.

Stephen Hawking:
"The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers (i.e. the constants of physics) seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life". "For example," Hawking writes, "if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, stars would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would not have exploded. It seems clear that there are relatively few ranges of values for the numbers (for the constants) that would allow for development of any form of intelligent life. Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty."
http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48937152.html

From his book, "The Grand Design" .. ( the multiverse)
"The authors explain, in a manner consistent with M-theory, that as the Earth is only one of several planets in our solar system, and as our Milky Way galaxy is only one of many galaxies, the same may apply to our universe itself: that is, our universe may be one of a huge number of universes".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Design_(book)

This is because people are ignorant about the philosophical underpinnings of science, and not only that but what they do know they have only the patience to mentally apprehend, not comprehend (apprehension is the ability to recall data, comprehension is the ability to internalize data and put it in it's proper context).

Really, what we need the most in our education system right now is for basic courses in critical thinking as a requirement. If average people actually knew better when someone was using a basic and obvious fallacy, and if they at least basically knew what empiricism was about, if they at least had some real and substantial conception of how it is that ideas are supported without sophomoric arguments and appeals to emotion, they wouldn't be making statements like "the logic behind the scientific method is circular". The scientific method is based upon a number of arguably axiomatic observations made by empiricists.

Once again you demonstrate what this thread is all about, quoting a paragraph, placing the emphasis on the wrong areas, and not reading the whole book.Claiming Hawking shows scientific support for the teleological argument IS QUOTING HIM OUT OF CONTEXT. You have him so out of context I would expect him to win in a slander case against you.

As to the Teleological and Cosmological arguments of course I damn well understand them, I just was not aware you had discussed this elsewhere, my mind boggles as to the possibility of what you wrangled together in that thread.

You accuse me of name calling, well maybe intellectual simpleton is, but I rather think you are the first type, that is Grossly intellectually dishonest, this is not name calling, it is rather a description of your abuse of scientific studies, papers, theories and laws in trying to shoe horn them into your incredibly narrow world view.

You also suggest that I do not like getting my preconceived bias's challenged. NOTHING could be further from the truth, I read (well listen to audio books) constantly, I challenge what I see as common sense constantly, I check my "facts" before saying anything more than "I think, what if, maybe"etc. I revel in new concepts that come with clear evidence. Unfortunately for you it would appear that nothing you have posted in the last couple of months has challenged anyones preconceived ideas. For some reason you just don't get what we are trying to get through to you, that is, you are interpreting the studies incorrectly, you are taking parts of studies grossly out of context, and reading a few paragraphs in wikipedia rather than reading the whole book, paper etc then posting them as evidence of your claims is being dishonest.

If you had fully read any of Hawking's work you would realise why we are so aghast at your claims regarding his work. At least read in full Grand Design, and a Brief History of Time and do not assume he supports the teleological argument by the Books title. Here is the famous snippet from the last paragraph "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." This should give you a clue that you are citing the wrong person in your endeavours.

Quote mining is easy. You can make anyone support any position by not explaining their full views.

I believe it was Sean Carroll who noted that life as we know it appears to be quite fragile and rare so the "fine tuning" is relative. It's like suggesting that a car engine was fine tuned to support mold because there are a few specks on it. I can think of better mold growing environments if mold itself was the goal.

I never said he supported the Teleological argument. I stated several times on this thread and the other thread that 'fine tuning' is evidence for the Teleological argument. I even pointed out on my last post that he believes in the multiverse - the counter argument to the Teleological argument.

Even if you want to ignore his numerous statements, and ignore Wikipedia, then, inherently, mathematically, the multiverse tells us that some universes will be "fine-tuned" to support life. Thus, he does believe in fine-tuned universes.

Despite the many, many accusations of "quoting out of context", not one person has provided any evidence to refute the quotations on Wikipedia made by Paul Davies or Stephen Hawking (note he is quoted many times on the cited wiki page). Somehow, I am told that they are being misquoted, yet, no one can provide a shred of evidence that the quotations are wrong. The likely answer is because the physics people who mange that wiki page are accurately quoting them.



I have bit my tongue a long time grinding through your deficits in reading comprehension, and name-calling, so I need to say this. You don't seem like a real person. It is like you do this for fun. You endlessly make mindless statements and possibly amuse yourself as people try to explain stuff to you - thinking that they are helping you understand. And for all their effort, they get more mindless statements.

In the real world, the big technology companies spend about one to two million dollars / year on rival lawyers that have to argue against me. You have called me an "intellectual simpleton" twice, as well as other insults on other threads. So I would wonder what exactly do you do for a living?

Regarding your alluded to occupation then I would have thought you could see that I did not call you an intellectual simpleton (well at least not in this thread) I implied that you might fit one of a couple of characterisations, in fact I was somewhat more explicit in suggesting that you are not. If I have characterised you as anything other than intellectually dishonest elsewhere on this forum, then I apologise.

My occupation has nothing to do with my thirst for knowledge, and acceptance of the evidence no matter how it impinges upon my personal bias. But maybe it does in regard to yourself, I am guessing that you are in the legal profession, and are used to spinning the "evidence" towards the conclusion that you require, this is what lawyers and barristers do, and it is up to a third party to decide who is correct. In other words evidence in your profession is often extremely subjective. You appear to be treating scientific evidence in much the same way, grabbing onto specific bits and trying to dismantle the rest of the evidence by removing them from context. Science does not work like the adversarial legal system.

To quote one of the giants of QM "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."

Richard P. Feynman


I see you appear to have somewhat changed tacts regarding Hawking. But you still do not appear to have grasped the concept that the "fine tuning" he talks of is anything but random chance, and therefore in no way supports the teleological argument. You write " atheists like Richard Dawkins and many others resort to the conjecture of the "multiverse" " I presume you are aware that Hawking is one of these atheists. I would ask you why given our expanding knowledge from believing that we were at the centre of space that consisted of 4 planets a sun and fixed stars, to the knowledge that we are part of a larger solar system in a galaxy which is amongst billions of galaxies in an almost infinite universe, why it is unreasonable to throw out the Axiom that this is the only universe? The multiverse "conjecture" explains the "fine tuning" with far more elegance and parsimony than the teleological argument,

The reason we are all saying you are taking Stephen Hawking out of context is because you are presenting only a narrow picture of what he understands to be the case and not the whole. Yes he does think that the universe is incredibly delicately poised enabling it to originate life and support life, but this needs to be taken along with his explanation of why.

As to Mindless Statements and lack of comprehension skills, I think this is somewhat rich coming from someone who tries to equate atheism with social darwinism not to mention the multitude of logical fallacies that you have presented in the past few weeks. If I were the only saying what I have said I would be beginning to wonder if I am missing something, but, as evidenced by the responses to your posts, I am far from alone. In fact it is you who would appear to be isolated in your views, not I.

DentArthurDent,

LNH is not a lawyer. She is a patent-worker.

I agree with what you're saying, that the multiverse explanation and the anthropic principle are much more parsimonious than intelligent design (and also the fact that the vast majority of the universe is actually quite hostile to life), but please stop trying to make guesses about the thinking of other posters.

Hey I only did this because she alluded to this, and I did say that I was making a guess based upon the vague interpretation and (to my way of thinking) deliberately deceptive description of her job as presented by her. I must say I am somewhat relived that she is not a high priced lawyer, as this would irrevocably diminish my faith in the legal profession. I can only hope she does not rise above patent clerk second class as this would be a great insult to a man who only reached this position after showing that time is not absolute, the speed of light is absolute, mass and energy are interchangeable and there is a fourth dimension.

Her postings on this subject clearly show what I am concerned about regarding the blending of science into mysticism using snippets of actual science. It is not just the religious who are doing this, the new age fraternity are positing all kinds of nonsense about Quantum Mechanics to sell their crap to unwary or vulnerable clients.