The money is all in the god racket.
Cambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6 million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe.
He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, the world’s richest individual scholarly research grant. Its initiator, mutual-fund investor Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (which is worth about $1.5 million) so the media would take it seriously.
…and it’s all for peddling a garbage interpretation of the anthropic principle. I’ve gotta wonder: would it be worth 1.6 million to get a lobotomy?
Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (which is worth about $1.5 million) so the media would take it seriously.
The crucial difference – that Nobels are awarded for work that’s already been done – seems to be lost on someone here…
As the infamous founder of scientology said, the way to get rich is to start a religion. Short of that, I suppose you could pander to the beliefs of the religious rich. I could do that research. It would be a fairly short research program, involving extensive travel and the purchase of lab equipment like convertibles, computers, and widescreen TVs. There would be absolutely no illegal drugs involved, although that might prove troubling, since it would reduce the probability of positive results.
This is great news!
It goes along with my macro-experiment on natural selection.
I’m glad to see that my red-state-oriented test subjects are spending their money on pseudo-science and sending their kids to ‘we don’t need no stinking science, we’ve got god!’ school.
It may take a generation or two, but my theory is that this is a self-correcting problem.
You know, if I were a really dishonest person I would be all over this intelligent design thing. Seriously. With what I know about evolution and information theory, I’m sure I could sit down and spew some really convincing BS and then make tons of money with book deals, speaking tours, and taking money from dorks like Howard Ahmanson.
I just have this ethical problem with lying to people and obscuring the human quest for knowledge for money.
But then again us heathens are not supposed to have any ethics since we don’t believe in a literal creation, so maybe I *am* in the wrong business. :)
God is dead! We are all absolutely free! I’m gonna go write me some creationist tracts and make the big money!
mark: you couldn’t do it. you have an ethical streak, i’m guessing. that’s the problem. if you didn’t, you’d already be doing it.
I could probably do well in the ID crowd. All I have to do is shout, “Quantum! Energy! Holistic!”… Oh, wait, that’s medical woo. Let me try again… “Complexity! Information! Mount Rushmore!”
Yeah, $1,600,000 of admiration, I’ll bet.
Garth spoils my fantasy of retiring early. Looks like I’ll be a Wal-Mart greeter after all.
You’re getting in on the game late, PZ; Sean Carroll (of blogs Preposterous Universe and Cosmic Variance) has been bashing the Templeton Foundation for a long time.
They really deserve it; aside from the rather sordid fact that they have awarded the Templeton prize to a member of their own advisory board (Charles Townes), their explicit agenda of “Discoveries about Spiritual Realities” and their enormous pile of cash make them the biggest john in the world of scientific prostitutes.
It’s a shame Templeton didn’t do something constructive with all that money.
David —
One potential problem with your macro-experiement. If I was going to be around, I’d be taking bets we don’t have “a genration or two.”
The rest of you —
Think again. Do the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities’ rules say you have to prove those realities? I mean, science leads us where it leads us doesn’t it?
And I’m announcing right now, I’ll only be asking you for a ….. 5% finders fee.
“You know, if I were a really dishonest person I would be all over this intelligent design thing. Seriously.” Yes, so would I. A creationist idea popped into my head one day that is, if I may say so, a real hoot, just repulsive self-parody worthy of Ted Haggard. Maybe I should actually write it and market it as fiction. Small print: “This is a work of fiction…” I’d hate anyone to actually believe it, though. I think I’ll stick it in a short story as a theory by one of my creationist characters, instead.
But on the bright side, consider that even Templeton’s ‘God prize’ goes to actual scientists nowadays (even if they’re sellouts), because no one in ID can get their act together:
http://tinyurl.com/czfrd
What. A. Surprise.
PS. If the universe is supposedly so amazingly finely tuned for life, why isn’t the actual life finely tuned at all, except by evolution?
This anthropic principle scenario is like someone built a huge aquarium with all the latest equipment just to watch some specks of algae grow. And if they are lucky, a few billion years later they get some of those tiny jumping bugs.
Personally, I don’t see how theology can be researched and tested scientifically. If I were the researcher, I wouldn’t even know where to start.
The anthropic principle is just a failure of imagination. Perhaps in some other universe the cores of stars are hospitable to some form of life. It’s specious reasoning to look at things as they are and claim that, because some tiny change would have prevented life as we know it from forming, a multitude of other possibilities don’t exist. The principle of evolution is such a powerful one that all sorts of self-replicating systems could play. Our universe might even be an unusually sterile one.
Or if there’s some form of multiverse of sufficiently large or infinite scale, then the improbability argument falls apart. Lots of possibilities.
(You know, I’d never looked at that url outside a text-based browser before, didn’t know how kooky it looked. I’d discovered him in a Best Science Writing collection.)
Uh-oh, looks like the magisteria are overlapping!
One of the first obvious questions that occur to anyone unfortunate enough to be raised as a theist is “If god made everything, then what made god?”. A simple question, but utterly effective. There is no non-bullshitting answer to it. Dr. Barrow does no better here — how can he apply one logical process (if X, then necessarily Y) to the universe, and then not apply that process to his deity?
Huh.
I submitted my grant for a soul-detecting machine to the Templeton Foundation and they didn’t even acknowledge receipt!
Perhaps I shouldn’t have included the data I collected with my soul-detector which showed that John Barrow didn’t have one.
Fyi, PZ — you don’t have one either, but we knew that already from your musical taste. ;)
I can see the prospect of a very large number of excellent research projects here. For example, one could study the cause of the Cause, followed by investigating the cause of the Cause of the Cause. Et cetera. This is real megascience.
You don’t fool me, S. C. Hartman. It’s causes all the way down.
Hmm…The lottery in my state always awards a cash prize greater than the Nobel committee’s.
Yet Powerball 3000 scratch cards still do not earn as much respect as Nobel Prizes in scientific circles! More evidence of scientism!
There seems to be some confusion (possibly on my part) over the use of the term anthropic principle in the article. Any time I’ve seen it used by someone who isn’t parroting IDist propaganda it refers to a non-design argument. Broadly speaking an anthropic principle simply means taking into account the bias the existence of an observer places on an observed system. There are questions about when and how strongly an anthropic principle is applicable but it is a counterpoint to the anthropic viewpoint that this planet/time period/universe must have been specially created to suit us.
What an embarrassment to the (normally) good name of the place.
Josh,
I think you exactly right. The anthropic principle, in all it’s variants, is especially not about the idea of a ‘first cause’ which the article goes on to say it fits with. In fact, since modern cosmologies doesn’t use a ‘first cause’, and Barrow is a cosmologist, it’s disingenious of them to write that.
Different anthropic principles have been proposed several times in science when other explanations were lacking. So far they haven’t been able to explain anything which wasn’t later replaced with other explanations, AFAIK.
Every time I’m subjected to the company of Kent Hovind, I can’t help but think that he’s thinking exactly that.
I’m gobsmacked, whatever that is.
Here’s a quote by the winner, from the article:
“So you begin to understand why it is no surprise that the universe seems so big and so old. It takes nearly 10 billion years to make the building blocks of living complexity in the stars and, because the universe is expanding, it must be at least 10 billion light years in size. We could not exist in a universe that was significantly smaller.
So the one who created the physical laws of the universe is also bound by them? The creator couldn’t, say, create a brnd-new universe that looked exactly like a 8-billion yr old universe formed in a big bang? Why not?
Wait, how does Barrow know that the universe is indeed 10-billion yrs old, and not just 2-billion years old? Because science says so?
There is just so much wrong here, even before getting to the part about the whole universe being created just so that the conditions in this one spot would be uniquely just so.
You guys can laugh all you want, but until you can explain the origin and purpose of the universe in a way that satisfies people, religion, theology, and metaphysics are going to continue to have a very big claim on them. You can’t replace something with nothing. It is not enough simply to be “right”.
James, is that the “better to be popular than to be correct” argument?
Actually, I don’t think you are really making that argument, but I do believe you misunderstand the goals of “you guys”.
The “you guys” frequenting this blog believe it is better, when we don’t have an answer to a question, to say “we don’t know” than it is to simply make shit up.
“The anthropic principle is just a failure of imagination. Perhaps in some other universe the cores of stars are hospitable to some form of life.”
Hey, that could be true in *this* universe! It’s occasionally been poked at in science fiction (Brin’s Sundiver, for example). Given that even many sunspots are big enough to drop the Earth into and lose it, and there are several stable layer boundaries with massive energy fluxes, there seems no reason there couldn’t be plasmoid life somewhere in there. (The lack of proper surfaces for catalysis sites might be a problem….)
James,
Science incidentally answer both of these questions of sorts, while it’s not been one of it’s goal.
Modern cosmologies have no ‘first cause’ (they typically embed bigbang in infinite time universes/multiverses) so there is no origin. Without origin, I don’t understand how you can argue purpose; it just is. It’s an observer bias; if it didn’t exist, we wouldn’t notice that. :-) So no purpose.
It takes nearly 10 billion years to make the building blocks of living complexity in the stars
Where does he get that number? Astronomers in the article below say “The window for life opened sometime between 500 million and 2 billion years after the Big Bang” when the first metal-rich stars formed.
http://www.atlasaerospace.net/eng/newsi-r.htm?id=1057
Would you reject the money if they offered it to you, PZ?
Barrow isn’t much of a nut, nor are most of the other winners. The Templeton Foundation seems fairly grounded, witness their openness to fund ID research proposals at one time, and their dismissal of the idea when no proposals came in.
Invite Barrow to the Morris Cafe Scientifique, or your local Drinking Liberally. Check him out. Maybe he’ll buy a round. Where’s the harm?
“…would it be worth 1.6 million to get a lobotomy?”
I couldn’t tell you, Dr. M. — but in the spirit of the just celebrated Purim holiday, may I suggest that in the spirit of experimental inquiry, you could get one and then assess its value.
As for “the anthropic principle,” I agree: it’s a just-so story, and (naturalistically speaking) mistakes effects for causes. Nobody should need to import revelation into science or v.v. to validate either.
Please forgive a humble grad student’s (and a Lit major at that!) questions, but what, exactly, kind of “research” is involved in Barrow’s project? What kind of observations will he make, and what is the nature of his data? Will he come up with a hypothesis subject to reliable experimental replication? And how come I can’t get a grant to prove the existence of God in Literature? That’s “research,” ain’t it?
Jim — there’s nothing to forgive. We’re all wondering about the same thing as you are.
We would be more deserving of your sympathy if we hadn’t
unleashed the Press Office about this award.
With my dreamy optimist’s hat on I could hope that he acts as a scientist. He would take the money, do the research and publish in a scholarly journal that he has found absolutely no evidence for a deity or any deity-shape hole in any contemporary physical theory. I wonder if they would ask for their money back.
ps: I’m speaking purely for myself in this comment.
So…if everyone got together and donated money until we could chip in an extra $200,000 (or even, say, an extra $100,001) for the Nobel Committee to add to each prize, would the media stop taking the Templeton Prize seriously?
Garbage interpretation of the anthropic principle? I was under the impression that a number of cosmologists favour this scenario. I’m not qualified to assess their arguments (and I doubt many contributors here are either), but to simply dismiss them as ‘garbage’ is totally unwarranted.
Its also worth pointing out that a multiverse explanation argues against the IDist view of cosmology, so he’s hardly on their side in this battle.
Barrow is also contributing to a number of interesting debates in the field of cosmology. His work on changing constants appears to particularly interesting and I would imagine groundbreaking, if confirmed. He is one of the most highly respected researchers in this area, has done a great deal to advance our understanding of the universe and has a commitment to informing the public about scientific research. He is rather admirable IMO>
This is a stupid thread PZ, way below your usual standard.
I was still seeing myself as part of the “we”. However, the fact that the press office is also an embarrassment isn’t really that surprising. Meanwhile, the publications side of things sold out a couple of decades ago and have been polluting themselves by even publishing creationist trash since then.
1.6 million to sit in your armchair and do philosophy? I should be so lucky.
The anthropic “fine-tuning” argument, coupled with the biological design argument, makes for a heads I win, tails you lose combination. If a property of the universe is favorable for the natural origin and development of life, then God did it. If a property of the universe is unfavorable for the natural origin and development of life, then God did it, by intervening to overcome the obstacle. – Because we know we live in a universe which contains life.
Just as a comment on the Templeton bunch– I proposed a project to them some years ago, to develop & teach a course on design arguments and scientific explanation. The proposal emphasized some important worries about design arguments– in particular, ‘God of the gaps’ concerns, empiricist worries about the evidential force of explanation, regress worries & the scientific/philosophical notion of a self-explainer. I never heard back from them…
James Gambrell, your question has an illegitimate presupposition. Please demonstrate that the universe (and not the local hubble volume) has an origin, never mind a purpose.
Jason Stokes: A good philosophy coheres with a scientific world view. (Or rather, there is no dividing line between the two.) Hence …
SteveF. Said:
This is a stupid thread PZ…
Yeah, I’m an atheist that has been studying the AP for a number of years now in an effort to explain the structuring of our universe from first principles, since we have no mechanism for this, and I have to say… the commentary in this forum reflects utter cluelessness that I commonly find among antifanatics who ignorantly jump on whatever anticreationist bandwagon happens to be rolling.
It’s more ideologically motivated than ID.
“Please demonstrate that the universe (and not the local hubble volume) has an origin, never mind a purpose.”
umm, look around you? Saying that something “has no origin” is just as illogical as saying it was coughed up by mummy-frogs.
Furthermore, all of the scientific cosmological scenarios offered thus far (infinite multi-verse, finely-tuned universe, infinite-looping-verse, evolving universes) are pretty incomprehensible. Maybe some people are just forced to beleive in “turtles all the way down” because its something they can kinda-sorta understand?
Ottnott: actually I think it could be better to make shit up, and here’s one reason:
“Nurture your spiritual self. For many people, faith provides a support community, a reason to focus beyond self, and a sense of purpose and hope. Study after study finds that actively religious people are happier and that they cope better with crises.”
David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness (Avon Books, 1993)
James,
You have a point. Science has come up with a hell of lot of answers in the last couple of hundred years (certainly better and more satisfying answers than I have ever heard from religion) on such things as who we are, and why are we here, and how do we work, and basis of our morality. But most people dont take the time to find out just what has been found out. Neither does science have the social support network of a church.
Maybe what we need to do is mystify science. Start an exclusive science movement, and stop making research open to all. You have to join the church of science and little by little the reasons for your being and where you came from will be revealed by wise old teachers. We can call it the wisdom of the moderns.
No, it isn’t illogical; it’s just counterintituitive.
There’s an enormous difference between saying that each individual thing (apparently) has a cause and saying that the totality of everything, viewed as a “thing,” must likewise have a cause.
Empirically and inductively, we can guess that each particular thing has a cause.
(Maybe modulo quantum randomness, but I think that’s a red herring—each of the possibilities has a cause, and the forcing of a choice has a cause, even if a particular quantum choice between possibilities is uncaused.)
In the normal sense of causation, each particular thing has a cause (which may be a combination of causes), which is distinct from itself. That’s part of the normal idea of causation.
The totality of everything can’t have a cause distinct from itself. The existence of everything cannot be explained in the same way we explain particular things within the “universe” of everything, because there is no thing “outside” of (distinct from) “everything” to cause it.
From this we know that everything can’t have a cause in the normal sense. Something is wrong with the commonsense notion of a “thing,” or with viewing everything as “a thing,” or with the notion of universal causation, or some combination of those.
Turtles-all-the-way-down is not illogical. And it’s certainly no more illogical than saying that there’s an uncaused or self-causing First Cause.
When it comes down to the ultimate question of origins, i.e., “why is there something rather than nothing at all?” we’re not going to get an answer that makes sense in the same way that we explain particular things. (That’s always by explaining things within the totality of everything in terms of other things within that totality.)
It’s very natural to guess that things have causes, and we’re apparently evolved to do that. It’s intuitive to think that for any X, you can reasonably ask the question “why X?”.
Logically, though, we know that the rule must break down somewhere short of X being everything. We may be evolved and conditioned to think it’s always a valid question, but logically, we can prove it’s not.
Logically, there must be some exception to the rule of universal causation that excludes at least everything.
This is just as big a problem for God theories as for no-god theories; positing a God just pushes the question back a step and muddies the waters.
I agree that many people find the God theory satisfactory, and that that’s a problem. I’m just saying that they only find it satisfactory because it obscures the deep weirdness of the question. Positing a god doesn’t solve the apparent paradox of existence; it just gives people an excuse to accept a boring non-answer and stop thinking.
“Saying that something “has no origin” is just as illogical as saying it was coughed up by mummy-frogs.”
No. it’s the other way around. It has turned out that ‘first cause’ or an ‘origin’ doesn’t work as a physics principle, which is why modern cosmologies have mechanisms without it. It will never again be a base for a cosmology, so you have better get used to it.
“turtles all the way down”
You can’t look at an infinity like that; if you start counting normally you will never cover the whole structure.
“The anthropic principle is just a failure of imagination.”
That is how it has worked so far, but I’m not so sure you can describe all of it’s variants like that. Some forms are tautological, some observer bias, some stronger.
BTW, I don’t agree with Steve and island, since the misuse of the anthropic principle is a legitimate concern, especially among biologists who combat and debunk ID pseudoscience. Unfortunately they have to answer stupid and endless questions about other areas, like universe ‘origins’ or creationist ideas about various anthropic principles.
AFAIK, physicists like Sean Carroll at the Cosmic Variance blog has refused to take Templeton’s money since it seems to be a christian apologist organisation. (OTOH, he recently participated in an interview in a paper that are supported by Templeton. But it was critical towards injecting religion into science.)
Also, when looking at island web site ( http://www.geocities.com/naturescience/index.html ), it is clear that he is a crackpot with an anthropic agenda.
“what, exactly, kind of “research” is involved in Barrow’s project?”
I will have to find out more, but some form of the anthropic principle or its close relatives pop up now and then in physics of late. Recently, string theory has been shown to have a large or possibly infinite number of solutions, the “Landscape”. The AP has been suggested as a principle that choosed ‘our solution’, due to current lack of other ideas that works. This ties in with cosmology.
The same goes for the endless inflation multiverse scenarios, that may be what Barrow is working on. But here there _are_ other ideas that works.
Barrow’s and Templetons religious and financial interests overlap, which is why he can do this. As Steve implies, the results will hardly satisfy creationists if one do a sane interpretation. The problem is that the result will be used by Templeton and others in their special interpretation.
“Also, when looking at island web site”
Well now, that is wrong, isn’t it? I can’t make such a judgement based on the web site alone, as long as it’s fairly coherent, and it is. But, IIRC, island has been behaving crackpottish on the Not Even Wrong and Cosmic Variance blog, ie pounded his ideas indefinitely, even after being showned wrong. If I’m wrong about that too, I’m sorry.
My point is just as easily covered by noting that island has invested a lot in the AP, so his judgement about PZ’s thread isn’t impartial.
“BTW, I don’t agree with Steve and island, since the misuse of the anthropic principle is a legitimate concern, especially among biologists who combat and debunk ID pseudoscience. Unfortunately they have to answer stupid and endless questions about other areas, like universe ‘origins’ or creationist ideas about various anthropic principles.”
Misuse of the anthropic principle might indeed be a concern. However I don’t think there is any suggestion that Barrow has committed such an offence. He appears, along with other cosmologists to be attempting to answer (in a non ID fashion) critical questions in this particular research area.
My point was not specifically about the Templeton foundation, rather it was about PZ referring to garbage interpretations (unfair) and lobotomies (moronic) and other posters attacking Barrow. Clearly he does not deserve such treatment. This kind of behaviour makes our side like bigoted and hysterical.
“Over the past 75 years,” John Barrow says, “astronomers have illuminated the vault of the heavens in a completely unexpected way.”
One good test of the benefit and honesty of any significant research venture, is the extent to which valuable findings are uncovered that were not anticipated, or even central to the original objective. Congratulations to Barrow on his award. However, if the end result of his research is merely a highly circumscribed answer to the original hypothesis, and there are no new or unexpected findings, and no new questions that need to be explored, then I would be highly suspect and disappointed in his endeavors.
Let’s see where he goes, and how he approaches his investigations, and how he informs us of his progress, and to what extent his intermediate work is offered for review and criticism.
When Richard Dawkins’ River Out of Eden was published in 1995, John Gribbin remarked “It deserves to sell as many copies as Hawking’s book, but I doubt that it will – there are, alas, no million dollar prizes for authpors who show that there is no evidence that God exists.” If Prof. Barrow’s research is helping people find their spiritutal side, that’s good for them. The whole rationale behind the Templeton prize surely IS suspect, but the anthropic principle itself surely CANNOT be dimissed in one sentence. It’s a huge topic, and Barrow himself devoted a huge book to it, with Frank Tipler, back in 1986 (the Anthropic Cosmological Principle).
Perhaps people are so used to dealing with ID-creationists that they stamp on any philosophy that sounds even remotely like ID-ist nonsense, no matter how strong the logic, no matter how sensible the assertions. It’s like having an overactive immune system that overreacts to harmless entities. And overreacting immune systems can lead to autoimmunity – self-damaging allergic reactions.
A lot of reasoning along anthropic principle lines IS garbage, because it tries to validate design inferences, purpose, or deities. But NOT ALL OF IT. Just like a lot of evolutionary psychology IS racist and sexist and politically-motivated. But NOT ALL OF IT.
The anthropic principle isn’t just another way of saying “God did it”, like ID creationism. It is a logically-coherent philosophical argument. It just tries to explain the dozens of amazing ‘coincidences’ or contrivances that have been discovered in nature. And there isn’t just one principle, there are at least three: the weak (not in the derogatory sense, but in the sense that its claims are less sweeping) anthropic principle asserts that “the universe is composed (NOT necessarily ‘ was created’) in such a way that eventually, life and consciousness (human or otherwise) will evolve in it”. The strong anthropic principle asserts that “the species Homo sapiens was bound to evolve” (which is surely daft). A third thread is that “the universe was composed to produce ME” (a kind of solipism, an anthropic METAprinciple).
Overall, only the first has any real coherences. Evolution is a fact, yes. But what kind of universe will allow life to evolve and become self-aware? Will any old universe, with any old collection of laws etc. convert simple initial condiitons into complex final states? Will any old hodgepodge of laws do? Can you throw anything into the cosmic sausage machine and get self-aware complexity out at the bottom? No. That’s the anthropic principle’s argument: the universe is self-organising and it requires highly specific laws and constants to produce anything interesting at all. Change the strength of Newton’s G constant, or Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism, or the masses of the proton or the electron, just a tiny bit, and consciousness can’t happen. Change the strength of the strong force, and an overabundance of helium gets produced early on in the cosmic history, leaving no hydrogen for water or stable stars, as Freeman Dyson pointed out. Change the quantum resonace, and you can’t synthesise life-giving carbon in stars, by the triple-alpha capture, as Fred Hoyle pointed out. Given the laws of physics and chemistry, and the constants of nature, and enough time, it MAY be that life and mind are inevitable. This says NOTHING about gods, or religion, or what to eat on Sundays, but DOES hint that the universe has some purpose. We aren’t simply the universe’s way of “killing time”!
People interpret these mountains of evidence differently: some say “I knew it! God designed it all for us!” Very few scientists would be happy with that. Another response is to say “So what? If it wasn’t like that, we wouldn’t be here to make these silly arguments. Would a puddle think it’s amazing that it fits its hole ‘exactly’? I don’t care if you think it’s amazing. Why not just accept it as brute fact?” A third POV is to invoke the “many-worlds” idea, used by some interpretations of quantum theory: “What if there are zillions of universes, all budding off from each other from a “multiverse” or “brane world”, and this is one of the few ones that have just the right conditions for life and consciousness to evolve? After all, we obviously inhabit the ‘best’ planet in our solar system, so what if we could apply that logic to this?”
None of those 3 responses is logically impossible. As far as I know, none can be disproven, or invalidated. We should just keep learning, and enjoy the ride,so to speak.
Pete K.: Very nicely done.
For an interview with Freeman Dyson where he discusses the anthropic principal and a lot more, go to http://www.meaningoflife.tv .
If you can explain how that wouldn’t prevent you from calculating the improbability of the conditions of the universe, given that we have only one universe to observe, by all means fill us in.
It’s not whether they responses are impossible. It’s whether or not your argument is fallacious. If so, then piling on all the evidence in the universe doesn’t make it nonfallacious.
“My point was not specifically about the Templeton foundation, rather it was about PZ referring to garbage interpretations (unfair) and lobotomies (moronic) and other posters attacking Barrow. Clearly he does not deserve such treatment.”
I think we need to split the difference here. PZ and I are suggesting his alliance with christian apologist creationists will create a garbage interpretation from the latter, and that Barrow is setting himself up to present a split worldview by proxy. We are not suggesting he will do garbage research.
“None of those 3 responses is logically impossible. As far as I know, none can be disproven, or invalidated.”
I’m not sure what is meant by “quantum resonace [sic!]” here, but while some of these interpretations are obvious and unfalsifiable (tautological and observer bias), the others are suggested whenever we find no other principles that work. That doesn’t make them true. In fact they have always been refuted by better theories, which suggest to me that they may be theories without real explanatory powers.
“”What if there are zillions of universes, all budding off from each other from a “multiverse … ?”
Yes, what if? AFAIK. the default theory in endless inflation is that the universes with parameters that maximises universe production will be very common. There is no need for the anthropic principle unless you first show that the maximum condition is incompatible with the universe we see today. Otherwise you are making the observer bias mistake.
If what I read was true about Hubbard last nite regarding cashola, he was quoted as saying he would like to start a religion because that was where the money was- and llok at what he created- a cash cow! Some days after reading you and Respectful Insolence, and a few other blogs I figure that IF I was to lose all my morals and marbles, I should come up with some great “cure” for something- and just sell it. Whether it be special water with healing properties and extra hydrogen, or some canola oil with lavender to help soothe lifes pains, mixed with some wholistic hoop de do….Somebody out there would by into my most unethical quest for cash. Jazz it up with a few scientific words and soothing music and there you are. Write a book, and you have more converts. Pretend to be too busy to conduct trials because you are so busy saving people and you look like a hero, instead of a lying slacker.
Unbelievable….
The Templeton prize is awarded For progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities so, fascinating as the details of fine-tuning physics may be, the pivotal aspect of the thread is that something that “says NOTHING about gods, or religion, or what to eat on Sundays” is apparently good enough to win ~ $1.4M from people who view it as doing just that.
Thanks Norman :-). I think I came across that page once, ages ago. It looks familiar.
Wamba: yes, good points. People can interpret “spiritual realities” any way they like. Everyone’s spiritual reality is subjective and in their minds. So the prize is meaningless.
Torbjorn: Quantum resonance is a sharp peak in the efficiency of a reaction rate: nuclear reactions vary as a function of energy, and jumps occur at some particular critical energy. A resonance was hypothesized by Fred Hoyle to account for why there is so much carbon in the universe. Carbon requires that 3 helium nucleii (alpha particles) fuse together simultaneously, which is otherwise very rare.
Apparently, this amplification of carbon producion is also encouraged by another resonance, which prevents the freshly-made carbon getting sythesized into into oxygen, in the next step.
When Hoyle hypothesized this, no-one knew about the crucial nuclear resonance. Experimental nuclear physicists hadn’t yet detected it. So Hoyle made a weak-anthropic prediction: “I’m a conscious observer, carbon-based. Based on the known physics, there HAS to be a resonance, in these specific places in the sequence, otherwise, I wouldn’t be here to make these puzzle over this, and make these predictions.”
The nuclear physicists looked, and they found the resonances. So, the anthropic principle CAN be used to make very precise scientific predictions. We can understand why Hoyle, when investigating these coincidences, remarked, “The universe is a put-up job”
But of course, any coincidences, no matter how many, don’t constitute evidence for intelligent design. As people such as Dawkins have pointed out, the physicists’ Deistic god is a world away from the god(s) believed in by most ordinary believers, past and present. PZ is certainly right to call THAT garbage, and needy of lobotomy.
Actually, PZ’s writing style reminds me of Barrow’s – pithy and sharp…
Ah, you mean _a specific_ resonance, for the triple alpha process.
Yes, that’s an application of an obvious variant of the anthropic principle, that phenomena need to be consistent (“a put-up job”) with that we exist, the tautological weak one. It’s a general type of prediction that we obviously can make use of whenever we find it advantageous, to make our observations.
It didn’t explain the value of the resonance in the theory, which is the prediction that we are really interested in when we speak of predictions from theory.