Comments on: Science as a “Faith”

By: casey

casey — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:37:21 +0000

Anthropic principle II:

“Particular puddle of water?” You mean there are other possible puddles? But surely they wouldn’t exist unless there also existed potholes especially designed to hold them.

By: casey

casey — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:30:41 +0000

Ah, the anthropic principle:

See how the shape of the pothole is perfectly designed to hold this particular puddle of water? If the contours of the pothole were off by just the tiniest fraction then the puddle would not fit. It’s a miracle!

By: Liew

Liew — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:37:45 +0000

“Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.”

Also there’s the simple fact that if the laws of physics were any different then observers like us might not exist at all to observe and attempt to explain the way the world works in those laws. The fact that we even exist to create these models of the universe requires the world to be precisely structured in a certain way. Hence the illusion that our existence “depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws”.

…You could probably phrase the above argument with greater precision. Haha…

By: Ox

Ox — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:41:43 +0000

Interesting read. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

By: urbster1

urbster1 — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:36:48 +0000

Thank you! I get this kind of crap all the time from religious apologists, who love to assert that concepts like numbers are real, abstract entities that live somewhere. It’s almost the same reason that many of them are dualists when it comes to consciousness, and couldn’t believe that things such as numbers are simply descriptions of patterns that exist in our brains. Otherwise, how would they exist ontologically?? Same as the supposed “absolute moral law” that many claim can only come from god: what IS a moral law? Makes no fucking sense.