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| Frogwatch... |
 Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 6:19 am |
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Guest
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As a scientist, I have to admit I see no signs of any divine
intervention in the universe yet whenever I go to church with my wife
I see other physicists there. I have never really discussed religious
issues with them so do not know their ideas.
Being trained as a Physicist, I spend most of my time wondering why
things are the way they are. However, I am also trained as an
engineer (MSEE) so I have an engineers appreciation for well designed
things. I became a convert to "intelligent design" when my wife and I
were going through childbirth classes and saw several amazing examples
of good design.
1. The purpose of contractions is not just to push the baby out but
to also expel fluid from its lungs and massage the chest cavity to
cause it to begin breathing. Apparently,, the old "slap the baby on
the bottom to start it breathing" is not necessary for births when the
mother is unsedated and the contractions are strong. This is a great
example of a mechanism solving two problems simultaneously and I
greatly admire how this is done.............looks designed to me.
2. Nursing: Purpose #1 Feed the infant when it cannot yet eat solid
food. Purpose #2: transfers disease resistance antibodies. Purpose
#3: Initially causes the baby to expel waste to get its digestive
system working, apparently the first milk contains a natural
laxative. Purpose #4: Produces bonding between mom and baby. Purpose
#5: Provides "birth control" for a few months so a nursing mom
generally cannot get pregnant again for awhile. Purpose #6: The
mothers milk comes in attractive containers. One could go on and on
on this subject giving problems solved by nursing and the likelyhood
of randomly solving so many problems in one mechanism seems very low,
to me, a clear case of intelligent design.
Yet, one can always find natural mechanisms by which these problems
are solved never requiring intelligent design. It seems science will
never have to invoke a designer. Even worse, when examining events,
we never see the hand of god at work, all we see is natural
explanations seeming to indicate that prayer is meaningless, or is
it..............
If one assumes a completely deteministic universe where if one knows
the boundary conditions and initial conditions then every future state
of the universe can be calculated and there is no room for the hand of
god.
However, modern physics says the universe is not deterministic, or at
least quantum mechanics is not deterministic but only gives
probabilities of events. For example, say I have a nuke set to go off
in NYC and it is triggered by the radioactive decay of a single atom.
Will NYC exist tomorrow? How long will NYC exist? ANY answer is
natural because any solution is a possible solution to when the single
atom will decay. One can predict a probability of the atom decaying
in some finite time but essentially infinite times are good solutions
with low probability. God could act at any time to prevent this decay
and we would never know because any decay time is "natural". Thus,
there seems to be room for God to act in an undetectable way in this
special case.
I maintain that ALL events are such special cases because ALL events
are subject to probability. Thus, there is room for the hand of God
to act in every event undetectably. God could act in such a way so
that events were nudged just a bit over a series of events leading to
some outcome and WE COULD NEVER DETECT SUCH INTERVENTION and would say
the events are totally natural.
Why would such an intelligent being not want us to detect him?
Consider if you were GOD and had made a universe and populated it with
creatures you wanted to interact on their own. I think you would
purposefully construct your universe so they could never detect you.
If they knew you existed, they would not do difficult things and
simply appeal to you for help.
SO:
1: A lot of the universe looks "designed"
2: There are ways for god to alter events in a way that would be
undetectable to humanity.
3: The undetectability of God even makes sense.
Comments?
Frogwatch |
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