RE: DNA Proves Existence of a Designer
November 21, 2018 at 1:06 am
(This post was last modified: November 21, 2018 at 1:07 am by Everena.)
(November 21, 2018 at 12:55 am)Bucky Ball Wrote:His science regarding what?(November 21, 2018 at 12:53 am)Everena Wrote: And I do not give a frick about Kraus, and yes he did present a moronic, idiotic, nonsensical, atheist argument.
Lawrence Krauss’s “argument” for atheism is like that of an artist who confines himself to using black and white materials and then concludes that, since color doesn’t show up in his drawings of fire engines and apples, it follows that fire engines and apples are not really red.
The closest Krauss comes to justifying his thesis is in the following passage:
science is an atheistic enterprise. “My practice as a scientist is atheistic,” the biologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote, in 1934. “That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career.” . . . In my more than thirty years as a practicing physicist, I have never heard the word “God” mentioned in a scientific meeting. Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of nature . . .
Is this a good argument? Only if this parallel piece of “reasoning” is also a good argument:
Checkers is an atheistic enterprise. My practice as a checkers player is atheistic. That is to say, when I move a game piece across the board, I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my career as a checkers champ. In my more than thirty years as a checkers player, I have never heard the word “God” mentioned at a checkers tournament. Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of the game.
So, it isn’t just science—even checkers proves atheism! Who knew?
Of course, the fallacy in the latter “argument” is obvious. That we need make no reference to X in the course of doing Y doesn’t prove that X does not exist. We need make no reference to general relativity when studying dentistry, but that doesn’t cast doubt on Einstein’s discovery. We need make no mention of the physiology of tapeworms when engineering bridges, but that doesn’t mean that reports of people having tapeworms are all bogus. Similarly, the fact that scientists need make no reference to God when doing physics, biology, or any other science doesn’t prove—or even suggest—that the existence of God is doubtful.
NOTHING in that addresses Krauss' science. Can you even read Woo Princess ?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2...f-nothing/
It is remarkable to think that, a century ago, quantum theory was barely formed, general relativity was a work in progress and only a few scientists believed there was a beginning to the universe. We have come a long, long way since then by developing scientific tools that have proved themselves both reliable and remarkably fruitful. As Krauss’s insightful book shows, these days we really can talk with scientific rigour about the history and even the prehistoric origins of our universe.
Yet despite its clear strengths, A Universe From Nothing is not quite, as Richard Dawkins hopefully declares in the afterword, a “knockout blow” for the idea that a deity must have kicked the universe into being.[/size]
Krauss does want to deliver that blow: towards the end of the book, he promises that we really can have something from nothing – “even the laws of physics may not be necessary or required”. Ultimately, though, he has to perform a little sleight of hand. Space and time can indeed come from nothing; nothing, as Krauss explains beautifully, being an extremely unstable state from which the production of “something” is pretty much inevitable.
However, the laws of physics can’t be conjured from nothing. In the end, the best answer is that they arise from our existence within a multiverse, where all the universes have their own laws – ours being just so for no particular reason.
Krauss contends that the multiverse makes the question of what determined our laws of nature “less significant”. Truthfully, it just puts the question beyond science – for now, at least. That (together with the frustratingly opaque origins of a multiverse) means Krauss can’t quite knock out those who think there must ultimately be a prime mover. Not that this matters too much: the juvenile asides that litter the first third of the book (for example, “I am tempted to retort here that theologians are expert at nothing”) mean that, by the time we get to the fascinating core of his argument, Krauss will be preaching only to the converted.