Hyperspace Fool:
I choose not to chop up your post, because it would take so much space, but I will address your main points nevertheless. I hope you bear with me and don't mind me being, shall I say, "sloppy"? =)
I wasn't really talking about humans or our ridiculous IQ tests me neither. So we're on the same wavelength there, thus I do not think that I am clinging to a very anthropocentric view of intelligence.
Now, there are certainly other organisms on earth that seem to exhibit some type of intelligence, and as we investigate more we often find that it applies to more organisms as well. I can't refute this, nor do I doubt it. These are the facts, more or less. Before I move on, I must get back to some old arguments used in my last post; namely the fact that most of the observable universe is not at all complex, exhibits little structure and certainly not intelligence. We are an infinitesimal small part of the observable universe my friend, and just because there is some degree of complexity (even remarkably so) and intelligence here on earth - probably elsewhere too, but it's still such an infinitesimal part - it doesn't follow that the rest of the universe exhibits these properties. The matter of fact is that it don't, and that is not an opinion, but a matter of fact.
There is an incredible waste of matter (not to say space and time) in our universe. The hundred billions of galaxies, each with on the order of a hundred billion stars, are composed of atomic matter. The portions that are luminous constitutes just one-half of one percent of all the mass in the universe. Another 3.5 percent of the matter in galaxies are of the same atomic matter, only nonluminous. Just 2 percent of atomic matter is composed of heavier elements than helium. One half of one percent of this again is composed of carbon, the essential component of life. That is 0.0002 percent of the mass of the universe. Yet we are supposed to think that there is intelligent design, the universe is teeming with intelligence and what not? Come on! 96 percent of the universe is not even composed of the matter of life and the little complexity we see, 70 percent of this being dark energy and 26 percent dark matter. This remains unknown in nature indeed, but they possess no known miraculous or complex properties. Waste of energy it is too; for example of all the energy emitted by the sun, only two photons in a billion are used to warm earth – the rest radiates uselessly out in space.
Any huge, random universe (as our universe is according to quantum mechanics), regardless of its properties, will naturally develop at least a few tiny pockets of complexity within a sea of chaos, as we see in our universe. There is nothing to suggest, and there is no need to insert, some kind of G*d and intelligent design to account for these deviations as are consistent with chance. Furthermore, we have things like
Self-Organization to account for complexity.
Next is the fact that even though a number of organisms show certain traits of intelligent behaviour, it does not imply that they are intelligently designed. The theory of evolution quite clearly demonstrates how complex lifeforms, such as ourselves, over great lengths of time evolve by a combination of
random mutation and natural selection. Living things not only develop without the need for the intervention of intelligent design by some G*d, but also provide ample evidence for lack of such an intervention or proposed mechanism.
Organisms accumulate changes that enable them to survive and have progeny that maintain those features. If there were an intelligent force behind these purely materialistic and natural mechanisms, then why do we find
so much poor design? Our spine and our knees are adopted to a life on four legs, and this gives us lots of problems we don't find elsewhere in animals that have remained on all their fours. We have a tail bone that doesn't do us much good. We have barely used muscles and nerves in our bodies. While most animals and plants synthesize their own vitamin C, we do not synthesize it on our own because the gene for this enzyme is defective, and lack of vitamin C can ultimately lead to death. The structure of our eyes is not ideal, there is a prevalence of congenital diseases and genetic disorders for humans and the existence of the pharynx leads to the drastic increase in risk of choking. Our bones lose minerals after the age of thirty, making them susceptible to fracture and osteoporosis. Our rib cage doesn’t fully enclose and protect most internal organs. Our leg veins become enlarged and twisted, leading to varicose veins. The examples of poor design are many, and it would be boring to list them all up. Nevertheless, they put intelligent design in a very dim light, while they are perfectly conceived of through random mutations and natural selection.
Evolution has no direction and no final goals. It is blind selection all the way. It is not intelligent, and its "design" can often be very poor. It is not at all perfect, and through engineering we can adopt in a lot higher degree and a lot faster than what evolution is able to.
Now, let's turn our attention again to the constants and parameters of physics not being fine-tuned in any way. You say this is my opinion, but it is not. This comes from physics, and we'll examine some of it.
First of all we can consider the fact that modern cosmology suggests that we are, and you’ve said this yourself, a universe within a multiverse (I love this btw). The huge number of solutions for the crazy equations in string theory also suggests the existence of many universes with different parameters than our own. This implies a very neat solution to the whole problem of fine-tuning, because if we accept this picture then we just happen to live in a universe that is suited for our kind of life and what we see here. So the universe is not fine-tuned for us, we are fine-tuned for the universe.
However, we need not rely on this to solve the problem of fine-tuning, we can just look at our own universe, as I have done much already. We’ll continue along this path, and take a look at the relative strengths of gravity and electromagnetism. If these two forces were anywhere near being equal to eachother, the universe would collapse in on itself before stars and any life could come to the scene.
Let us denote N as the ratio between the two respective forces, and calculate them. We will call the electric force Fe and the gravitational force Fg. As you may know, the force of gravity is inverse proportional to the squared distance between two masses and likewise the electric force is inverse proportional to the squared distance between two charges. Since they both are inverse square forces like this, the distance will cancel out. We get: N = Fe/Fg = (kq1q2/r^2)/(Gm1m2/r^2) = kq1q2/Gm1m2. Here k is the Coulombs constant and G is the gravitational constant, m denotes the respective masses of two objects and q denotes the charges. If we choose the force then, between an electron and a proton we will have upon plugging in the numbers N = 10^39.
Again, if the gravitational force between these elementary particles were not much smaller than the electric force, the universe would collapse in on itself. Therefore it is often argued that this ratio N above is highly improbable and must have been fine-tuned. Note that N is not a universal number, because it depends upon the total arbitrary mass and charge of the bodies you use in the calculation. For the chosen proton and electron we get the famous N = 10^39, but why assume these two particles in defining this ratio? The proton is not even fundamental, as it consists of quarks. If we were for example to choose two unit charges of equal mass 1.85 x 10^-8 kg we would get N=1, thus the forces are equal! There is just no universal way we can describe the strength of gravity, and the N we chose for our example is not the relative strengths of these two forces in all cases. In short, the strength of the gravity is an arbitrary number and can’t possibly be fine-tuned and doesn’t suggest any intelligent-design.
The fundamental constants that we use in physics and that we have used in the calculations above are not universal either, because they depend totally upon the system of units being used, and thus they are arbitrary. There is simply no fine-tuning going on here.
I could go on like this and show to you, through physics and not opinion, that there is no fine-tuning in our universe.
Fine-tuning is a fallacy, and comes largely from poor understanding of physics and science in general. Fine-tuning and intelligent design are not at all consistent with data, thus it is a very poor model of our universe. You should read "
The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning" by physicist Victor J. Stenger for more reference. In this book, he goes in depth and analyze data and theory to see if they are consistent with such a model that you propose. He finds, among most of the physics community, that it is not.
As a last note, as I have said n-times here on the forum, attacking physics for not having all the answers to questions yet doesn't give any reason to fall into varieties of the
God of the gaps argument.
Peace HF, I appreciate our discussions
Citta out (for now)
