Does evidence imply the cosmos was intentionally programmed for conscious beings?

Does evidence imply the cosmos was intentionally programmed for conscious beings?

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Pious

Registered Senior Member
We live inside a finely ordered cosmos, in which many physical traits, forces and constants are so precisely fine-tuned that they are just right for matter to exist. The most extreme example is of dark energy, whose effect on the expansion of the universe is fine-tuned to 120 decimal places, an unimaginable precision, just to make the existence of galaxies possible. As a result of it, galaxies did form after the Big Bang.

The cosmos we live in seems well programmed for conscious life. Without us conscious beings, the cosmos would just be a product of meaningless wave functions which would never collapse until we observe, everything would be meaningless. We add meaning to the cosmos just by intentionally looking at it and collapsing wave functions, hence converting possibility to reality.

Also, the universe apparently seems holographic in nature and everything here (except for probably consciousness itself) can be physically described as projections of another version of the universe on a 2-dimensional surface at the cosmological horizon of the universe.

All of this is evidence for why it's like we, conscious beings, are seeing only projections from a program and we can't see the real world outside of these projections. It may mean the cosmos was programmed for us.

Is there any evidence to the contrary, i.e. the assumption that the cosmos is not finely programmed just for us?
 
Pious said:
Is there any evidence to the contrary, i.e. the assumption that the cosmos is not finely programmed just for us?
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1) The question is backwards. Is there any evidence that the cosmos is finely programmed just for us? I can't think of a single piece of compelling "evidence" that it is.

2) This is not physical question. At best it is framing of the question of the "anthropic principle". At worst religion. But regardless it is a philosophical question, not a physics question.
 
Declan Lunny said:
1) The question is backwards. Is there any evidence that the cosmos is finely programmed just for us? I can't think of a single piece of compelling "evidence" that it is.

2) This is not physical question. At best it is framing of the question of the "anthropic principle". At worst religion. But regardless it is a philosophical question, not a physics question.
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Agreed on both points
 
Sounds like intelligent design to me. Where's the physics & math? This should be in the religion forum.
 
Declan Lunny said:
That's the "at worst" I was referring to. It does belong in the religion forum. It's metaphysical gobbledygook.
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It is a philosophical/metaphysical question, almost the same as asking "Is there a God?"

As religious people would say, we must have faith til we pass on and are able see it for ourselves.


The OP has mashed in a common mistake of quantum decoherence and the holographic principle, not entirely related to the anthropic principle.
 
Is there any evidence to the contrary, i.e. the assumption that the cosmos is not finely programmed just for us?
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If it were finely tuned then why do galaxies collide killing off any living things within them? Why do stars explode killing of any living thing in its surroundings? If it were such an intelligent design wouldn't those things, among many other deleterious events, never happen so that life could continue on forever?
 
cosmictraveler said:
If it were finely tuned then why do galaxies collide killing off any living things within them?
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When galaxies collide, the stars within them don't collide (with very rare exception). Rather, the clouds of gas within them do collide, causing a burst of star formation. This is used to find merging galaxies, by searching for ones emitting lots of blue light (the signature of early star formation). Over time, the stars simply reorganize into a new, larger galaxy. http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/galaxies/colliding.html
 
Pious said:
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Is there any evidence to the contrary, i.e. the assumption that the cosmos is not finely programmed just for us?
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Pious, I think that you got some responses from some of the science enthusiasts here, and maybe that is the motivation for starting the thread in Physics and Math. Probably it should be moved now to Religion, but you have the basis for a discussion there fueled by some imput from this sub-forum, so see what you can make of it.

My response to the question is that Intelligent Design, or programming or planning of the universe invokes the Supernatural, and the scientific method excludes that specifically, because it cannot be repeated or tested under controlled conditions. Never-the-less, humans in general, and science enthusiasts included, generally come to a place where they make a personal descision as to whether or not they believe that anything that seems Supernatural has natural causes that we don't yet understand.

Consider this: if there was any "intention" involved in the fact that the universe hosts life, then the only way that "intention" is not a Supernatural act is if the universe has always existed, and the intention that it host life has as alway been a part of it. The would seem to preclude any active Supernatural intention as a first cause, but could then support the concept that God and the universe are one in the same. That only works if the universe is infinite and eternal, and thus is the host of all natural laws that function without any active Supernatural intervention, i.e. laws that are subject to scientific analysis.

The active intentions of individuals and groups that are functioning completely within the bounds of natural law might seem to produce Supernatural results, but those results are not subject to scientific analysis.
 
Walter L. Wagner said:
When galaxies collide, the stars within them don't collide (with very rare exception). Rather, the clouds of gas within them do collide, causing a burst of star formation. This is used to find merging galaxies, by searching for ones emitting lots of blue light (the signature of early star formation). Over time, the stars simply reorganize into a new, larger galaxy. http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/galaxies/colliding.html
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Thank you for that timely reminder. It is certainly valid science, and though it is posted more as a correction to a previous argument against an intentionally programmed universe, it does add some detail to my own views on the mechanics of the landscape of the greater universe.
 
Look at them complaining it should be in religion. Again, the lack of knowledge of posters here is showing up again. There is now a clear consensus among astrophysicists that several fine tuned arguments exist.

This means our universe could have been designed. In fact, there appears to be growing evidence to support this idea.
 
Nightshift said:
Look at them complaining it should be in religion. Again, the lack of knowledge of posters here is showing up again. There is now a clear consensus among astrophysicists that several fine tuned arguments exist.

This means our universe could have been designed. In fact, there appears to be growing evidence to support this idea.
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You seem exasperated with people who separate science and religion. It isn't a lack of knowledge about the several "fine tuned" arguments. If there were no indications of order in the chaos, then we wouldn't be around to agree or complain, so some order is a given. The Supernatural intention of any finely tuned natural laws though is excluded from science, so it follows that such discussion would be more appropriate in the Religion forum.
 
Pious

Does evidence imply the cosmos was intentionally programmed for conscious beings?
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No, you get the type of intelligent being you do because the Cosmos is as it is. The Cosmos was not designed for us, we evolved within that Cosmos so that we fit it. Like Douglas Adam's puddle, you are expressing surprise that the contour of the ground fit's your form so well.

Grumpy:cool:
 
Grumpy said:
Pious



No, you get the type of intelligent being you do because the Cosmos is as it is. The Cosmos was not designed for us, we evolved within that Cosmos so that we fit it. Like Douglas Adam's puddle, you are expressing surprise that the contour of the ground fit's your form so well.

Grumpy:cool:
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Well put. The fine tuning argument ignores the fact that the cosmos must have SOME combination of values for the "tuned" attributes and, if they had been different, something other than us would be here instead of us.

The argument has always annoyed me, as it seems just a more sophisticated way of restating the position I have always found so arrogant, that the centre and purpose of the universe is humanity.

(I say this, by the way, as someone with great respect for Christianity.)
 
Nightshift said:
Look at them complaining it should be in religion. Again, the lack of knowledge of posters here is showing up again. There is now a clear consensus among astrophysicists that several fine tuned arguments exist.
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There is no "clear consensus" among astrophysicists that "fine tuned arguments exist". Quite the contrary. The consensus among astrophysics is that the "anthropic principle" a metaphysical topic, no more, no less.


Nightshift said:
This means our universe could have been designed. In fact, there appears to be growing evidence to support this idea.
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Are suggesting that Laplace's Demon is a real entity?
 
Extracted from wiki

''Physicist Paul Davies has asserted that "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life". However, he continues, "the conclusion is not so much that the Universe is fine-tuned for life; rather it is fine-tuned for the building blocks and environments that life requires."
 
Nightshift said:
Look at them complaining it should be in religion. Again, the lack of knowledge of posters here is showing up again. There is now a clear consensus among astrophysicists that several fine tuned arguments exist.

This means our universe could have been designed. In fact, there appears to be growing evidence to support this idea.
Click to expand...

Aha so Reiku is a Creationist. That explains all of his trolling on the science threads. He's "blighting" us. I think I've finally cracked the nut(s) that's been bugging me for so long (why do they waste so much of our time).

Now we just need to figure out if Pious just did a drive-by or whether this is "blighting" at some other level . . . some other sock puppet. Is that all there is any more, to argue with Creationists at this very superficial "supercilious condescending" (borrowing from another member) level of religious pretense?

I vote to ban Nightshift.
 
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