General
Who has the time?
Recently I’ve been mulling over a small disappointment that’s been growing for me. In one sense, I’ve very happy to have this site up. It’s great for me to write my thoughts down, and I like the feedback. Whether I deserve encouragement, criticism or to be kept in line, I can always count on the internet to sniff it out. I’m confident in what I believe, and part of that is to be open to new ideas and criticism. Getting myself out there has been a great experience so far, and I don’t intend to stop.
But, wow, there’s a bunch of garbage out here too, isn’t there? Sometimes I start to feel like the internet is such a double edged sword for what I want. It’s a huge forum for debate and the sharing of ideas, but it also is rife with fakes. By ‘fakes’ I mean people who pretend to want to discuss things, but have no intention of thinking about anything. Yes, my experience is biased, and this tends to manifest itself with creationists and fundamentalists for me. My guess is that in any subject this would be the case. What prompted this was a brief exchange I had with a blogger that goes by the moniker Makarios. I came across the site and found a post I wanted to comment on. We had a brief exchange, neither one really feeling like the issue was resolved (that’s ok, I didn’t expect us to), and I decided to try to keep going with this guy. Maybe, I thought, I could get to know him a little better by discussing stuff on his blog. And then I started noticing all the crap. It turns out that I came to the blog on a good day, but in general it’s full of atheist hate garbage. Several posts a day with titles like “Atheists can’t or won’t understand”, “Is talking to atheists hopeless?”, “Atheist stereotypes”, and so on. This guy had no real intention of debating anything. I happened on a post that wasn’t full of “every single atheist is an idiot” garbage… but it was by far the exception. And I realized that it just wasn’t worth my time to try to keep up with all the hate-spam.
Blogs tend to be themed, and mine is no exception. I understand that in such a context, it may look like someone has a single-track mind, but that’s not what is going on here. It kind of turned me off to the idea of looking for meaningful discussion on the internet (yeah, yeah, big surprise, I know). It’s disheartening to actually spend some time, think about things, research things, and prepare a meaningful discussion only to see the other side regurgitate canned arguments.
The most popular (by activity level, anyway) sites are the ones that are the most controversial. People love to scream at each other from anonymity. So how do you weed out the ones who have no intention of listening in the first place? Any suggestions for finding some real conversations with people who don’t agree with you?
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Oh No! Fake Shroud of Turin?!
The skeptic’s world is all a-buzz about this latest “finding” about how the Shroud of Turin may not be such a divine miracle after all. Seriously, just about everyone is reporting on this story. So, I just have to ask, who cares?
There are 2 reasons for making such a big deal out of this. Either they’re trying to “prove” that Christianity is a false religion, or they’re trying to kick up controversy. It’s fairly obvious that whatever the goal was, the second one is really all that’s going to happen. Let’s look at this from a Christian point of view. What does the research say? Mostly it says that he came up with a way to put a similar image on a similar type of cloth with means that they might have had some time in the past. So what! You’ve got to be kidding me. We have (according to statistics that Richard Dawkins quoted, and I haven’t researched) just under 50% of the people in this country blatantly admitting to the belief that all the scientific evidence for evolution is crap! In the face of such an enormous amount of evidence for our planet being billions of years old, they believe that it’s more like 10,000! Now, let me ask again, what were you thinking you would do with science to show these people that the shroud is a fake? It’s already been dated to the 13th or 14th century, and that didn’t mean a thing to the ‘true believers’.
Don’t get the wrong idea – I understand completely that it might be nice for you to just systematically disprove every last little piece of divinity that these people cling to. But it just isn’t going to happen this way. Seriously, it’s more like a neat thing to wonder about for most Christians, rather than a place to base your beliefs. People like to claim to have a piece of the ‘true cross’, or put a bone from a saint in their church. How many people in the country have a baseball that was signed by their favorite player. Yeah, it would suck to find out that the ball was a fake, but does that make you think any less of the player? I really don’t think it’s any different for Christians, even in the event that you could definitively prove that it wasn’t divine (which I doubt you could, for them).
I wouldn’t really have a problem with someone sitting in their basement and tinkering with this idea in their free time, but what we actually have is funded research in the quest to disprove the shroud. From one report:
Garlaschelli received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics but said it had no effect on his results.
Well, good that it didn’t affect him, but that’s not the point. This is what this Italian association of atheists and agnostics chooses to spend money on? I don’t know the situation in Italy nearly as well as I do here, though I’d like to (actually, I feel the same way about their wine…). But I really must protest to any significant use of funds for such a purpose. It doesn’t get us anywhere, but it makes the A&A community look like we’re actively working against religion. A campaign of hate is pointless. Let’s see that funding going to getting better science and reasoning courses in schools, or exposing domestic abuse condoned by certain religions. The Shroud of Turin? Come on, it’s a trinket. There are much more pressing issues facing our world today.
The Problem with Science
No, I don’t hate science. It’s wonderful. Sorry if the title was misleading. I guess the problem isn’t with science, exactly. It’s with people’s application of science. Maybe it’s shortsighted of me to say this, but it seems like human knowledge is getting to be so vast in this “information age” that no one person can possibly hope to have a deep understanding in all the important subjects. I know that as our culture develops, our children are learning more and more, earlier and earlier, but this can’t go on forever. Sure, we can picture 1000 years from now having (relative to us) super-intelligent children who have an intuition for calculus at age 3. But I think that it’s obvious to most that our knowledge is growing faster than any evolutionary mechanism is keeping up with. At some point (which may already be here), there is a very real limit to how much one person can master. Will you be a Jack of all Trades, but a Master of None? Will you pick a path, stick with it, and have some authority on the subject?
Map of science
This is incredibly important to our society in the here and now, however. The latest buzz in the United States seems to be about the rise of the “nones”, those suave, smart (and might I say, good-looking?) people who claim no religion. The conflict between theists and anti-theists and/or atheists is growing extremely rapidly, probably because of the incredible communication power of the internet. Here’s how these two things are so intimately linked: the conflict of religion and science (Yes, there is one. Maybe not on every issue or with every person, but there is. Deal with it.) is being brought on just about every front. We have the creation debate which touches biology, evolutionary biology, geology, paleontology, cosmology, physics, particle physics, astronomy and dozens of sub-topics of those. We have debates about scriptural accuracy touching history, archaeology, anthropology, literature and dozens of foreign languages. We have moral debates and afterlife debates, proofs and disproofs of supernatural beings, and arguments about the meaning of life which touch all the spread out fingers of philosophy.
So are we to understand that this debate that is so easily characterized is so easily soluble? No, what it tends to come down to in individual debate is you and your opponent searching for the particular subject in which you each have an advantage of knowledge or experience. Then, you can rest in that comfortable space saying “They may have answers for somethings, but not this one, which proves my point.” If this scenario doesn’t play out, the usual alternative is an appeal to authority (yes it’s a fallacy, yes everyone does it once in a while). It seems reasonable to say that we can’t possibly know everything, so building on someone else’s conclusions makes sense. But it doesn’t play out this way. Theists get slammed for “not thinking for themselves,” and atheists get it back even worse since that’s supposed to be a tenet of the “atheist philosophy”.
What’s the solution? I don’t know. The sum of human knowledge is too vast and is growing all the time. An individual simply can’t keep up. That doesn’t mean that I plan on never drawing another conclusion again. It’s better to be as informed as possible and decide what that means than to be in a state of perpetual inaction and un-decidedness. But I do it knowing full well that the debate will almost certainly never be closed. Blogs full of ranting and railing against the other side for “ignoring the facts” and being ignorant (or stupid, as the blogger decides) are pointless and add to the noise that detracts from real discussion. It’s almost a certainty: the debate will go on. Fight for what’s right, but do it for yourself first. That’s the only person you’ve got a shot at convincing.
I’m looking forward to Christmas
It’s coming up you know! And I for one am already getting excited. The first little treat that comes my way – I can hardly stand the wait – is egg nog! Mmm… it’s so deliciously bad for me, but I just can’t resist. And as the snow starts setting in for winter, it gets so cozy inside. Something about the winter just makes you want to eat fresh cookies and sit under a big blanket watching the snow fall. Then you have those crisp mornings when the new snow came the night before, and the whole world seems to be pristine and untouched – the snow dampens the sound and makes it feel so still, so serene.
And as it gets closer to December 25th, the decorations start coming out and the city lights up with festive colors and lights. It’s hard to beat a night with your loved ones, driving around with hot chocolate and snacks, looking at lights and decorations and savoring the time together. It builds up to Christmas day, and for me that’s a wonderful family and friends celebration. We give out gifts; we drink, eat and laugh. The stress of the rest of the year doesn’t matter for a day. I look forward to seeing people I don’t see often enough, sharing gifts and seeing their reaction to what I pick out for them. I will forget about health food for a day and eat whatever tastes good. I’ll drink some great wine, maybe take a nap by a crackling fire, and for a day I get to really relax. “Christ”mas or not, I can’t wait for this season to come.
Sometimes when people shed a religion, they’re eager to also cast off any ties to it. It may be a symbolic act for them, rejecting the practices all together. That’s fine, if it’s meaningful for you, but I have no problem keeping some holiday traditions. I don’t feel like it’s anything hypocritical, and doesn’t mean anything about my belief system. Deep down, I know that I enjoy lots of the aspects of Christmas (which has grown very far from celebrating the birth of Jesus, much to the chagrin of many Christians), and I know that a day (or season) of celebration is a great way to recharge for the coming year, and reflect on the past one. I don’t go to church; I don’t put an angel on the top of my tree. But it’s also not necessary to hoist a copy of Origin of Species up there just to make a stand. The holiday, for me, has nothing to do with religion or a belief system, and forcing that upon it is just plain silly. If I wanted to make a stand, I’d make up some other holiday and celebrate that – but then it wouldn’t be celebrating a holiday, it would be making a show of my beliefs.
In fact, I think the secular celebration of Christmas is a great thing. Some holidays commemorate special events, and some are purely religious. But there’s nothing wrong with celebration for its own sake. I don’t have to deprive myself of things that I truly enjoy to be comfortable with my beliefs. Come on, it’s Christmas… just have a good time!
Ray Comfort changes intro to Origin of Species
No doubt many people have heard about this, and it’s provoked a huge array of responses. Ray Comfort is planning to give away free copies of Darwin’s Origin of Species for the 150th anniversary – with an added introduction that attempts discredits the work specifically, and evolution in general.
As you can imagine, this has caused quite the uproar. There are people saying they want to take as many as they can and throw them away, or rip out the introduction and redistribute it, or even organize book-burnings because of the introduction. Until now, I’ve stayed quite on the issue, because I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it. It’s not the clear-cut issue that some people would make it out to be.
First, if the theory is good, it should stand up to criticism. As long as he doesn’t lie outright about the facts, shouldn’t a discerning mind be able to decide if the introduction has better arguments or the book itself? Of course, this relies on the “discerning mind” to do the legwork, and if we’re talking about someone who only decided to investigate the issue because a free book was handed to them in the course of their daily campus stroll, then maybe they won’t. Still, I remember college being full of people on the sidewalk handing out pamphlets and bibles for free, and that doesn’t mean that I read them and immediately agreed with them.
But then I read about how his introduction would be fraught with, at the very least, deceptive tactics in order to discredit not only the theory, but the man (who I might add has nothing to do with the merit of the idea). Indeed, some on his side even find this admirable:
The introduction gives a time line of Darwin’s life, and his thoughts on the existence of God. It lists the theories of many hoaxes, exposes the unscientific belief that nothing created everything, points to the incredible structure of DNA, and notes the absence of any undisputed transitional forms.
To show the dangerous fruit of evolution, it also mentions Hitler’s undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin’s racism, and his disdain for women. In addition, it counters the claim that creationists are “anti-science” by citing numerous scientists who believed that God created the universe — scientists such as Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pasteur, and Kepler.
“The dangerous fruit of evolution”? “Hitler…racism…distain for women” ? What do these have anything to do with the validity of the theory? Unfortunately, I don’t always think that people correctly see through these misleading issues. I was about to jump right in and say “shame on him” for trying to win a scientific (well, at least on one side) debate with such sleaze. But I investigated and it seems that he’s trying to change it to make it a little less repulsive. According to his website, he’s changing the introduction to account for a lot of this: check it out for yourself. It isn’t available by the time of this writing, so we should keep checking back. I want to read it. If he’s willing to make it not such a complete mockery of real debate, then maybe this will actually turn out to be good.
Can giving away 100,000 copies of a very thought-provoking book be bad? I would hope that anyone who had their consciousness raised to this debate would use this as motivation to search for more answers. For me, it’s clear where that should lead. If we get him to make his introduction even-handed and let him spout bible-literalism, I really think it will do the opposite of what he wants.
War of the fundamentals
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that there is a huge fight on both sides of the theism debate to characterize each other as “fundamentalists”. Indeed, some on the Christian side occasionally take pride in such a term (I have yet to see quite the same from non-theistic proponents, though their fervor can be hard to match as well). And then still more fight the term on principle, maybe because they think that it’s getting a poor reputation, surely yet another tactic in this battle. So how do we sort out the madness? How do you actually say that someone is wrong and you are right – definitively? Well, it’s not the saying that’s hard. Everyone already does that, but how do you make it a good argument?
Obviously, I’ve already got a side on this issue, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who did not. And I think it benefits both sides to consider from the point of view of the other. In my research and conversations with Christians, one thing that really sticks with me is the argument I sometimes hear about evangelism, converting unbelievers. Think of it this way: If you believed, really, truly believed, what they say that they do – that all of humanity was in danger of eternal hell, that there was only one way out, that they alone could guide you into salvation – what kind of person could not be adamant, even pushy about it?
Unfortunately, I think that they use this argument selectively. I generally find it hard to believe that most Christians actually believe to the level necessitated by this argument. If they really, truly believed, what would that imply? Should you go to a doctor? If you happen to die because you didn’t go to a doctor, is that a sin for not trying to preserve life, or are you in God’s hands at that point? Do you wear a seatbelt? I mean, if you’re saved right now, and you happen to get into a car accident, wouldn’t it actually be better to just jump to eternal bliss right now? If you really believed, wouldn’t you sell all of your possessions and follow Jesus with as little as you need? The implications for this kind of belief are many, and I don’t usually see it.
On the other side of the coin, what about the anti-theists which is a big difference, though not mutually incompatible, with atheism? If you really see religion as an evil in the world – teaching children that blind belief is more virtuous than common sense, that it adds guiltless justification for atrocities which far outweigh any redeeming benefits – that you would fight tooth and nail to get it out of here? There are proponents on both sides, and getting inside their heads sometimes sorts out the confusion a little bit. To honestly hold such a world-view and not be almost confrontational about it would be hypocritical. So who is right?
It’s not so obvious how you might show that you are correct. The real problem is a difference of basic principles. Anti-theists tend to hold reason and evidence as of utmost importance (I happen to do this too), and theists usually have “divine inspiration” on their side. And while some of them may claim that it’s a very logical and provable proposition to believe in God, I’ve yet to see anyone actually defend that well. In all of my experience, when we push down to it, they always admit that there is a leap of faith, however small in their eyes, required to get where they are. And who am I to say that this is wrong?
But the key difference I see is that in most things, they want to rely on reason and evidence as well. Intelligent governance depends on sound ideas, and a common position that I see a lot on both sides is that a theocracy mangles both the government and the religion horribly. This is something that I think the FFRF works for, quite nobly. And I see such ’separation of church and state’ as the only possible way of coexistence (and even then it’s a stretch). There are specious arguments against this too, such as a recent commentary out of Memphis which says,
Every “freethinker” in the world screams for tolerance… They are an example of the adage that if you tell a lie — such as the myth of “separation of church and state” — often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.
That phrase does not appear in our country’s founding documents. The First Amendment guarantees that one particular religion or denomination would not be forced upon the country, that no one would be allowed to infringe upon our rights to exercise and express our religious beliefs. It was, quite clearly, freedom for religion, not from religion.
I disagree completely with this interpretation, because it rests on the fundamental assumption that everyone has a religion. It’s the letter of the law, not the spirit. It also opens the door for someone to get fed up and say, “Fine! Call atheism a religion and lets enjoy the freedom that entails.” This is extremely harmful in the long run, and defeats the whole purpose. We’d open the floodgates of, “See! You have just as much faith as me!”, undermining the whole idea of rational belief in atheism. And I’ve said this before: even if that’s exactly what the law meant, that doesn’t mean it’s right. If that’s what it means, then we need to work to change it.
There’s no simple solution for the war of fundamentalists, because to truly believe what each one says they do, you simply must act the way they do. But if we keep it out of our government, then neither side steps on the other’s toes. We can have our debates and our fights and disagreements, but they don’t have to destroy the way everyone caught in the crossfire lives their lives. I think to both sides, this had better be an acceptable goal, since they both claim to care about us so much.
New Survey – Pass it on!
I’ve added a page to gather more viewpoints on Christian beliefs. I think that the majority of people that come across my site are atheists, but if anyone would like to pass on the link, I would be very appreciative. The page has a description of what I’m after, and then a survey. It’s 30 questions long, but I’m appreciative of any input. So don’t feel like you have to invest the time for the whole thing if you would rather not.
Of course, any and all viewpoints and beliefs are more than welcome to participate. I will be compiling the Christian views as described, but to contrast these with other religions or atheists is also very informative.
So, help me out! Pass the link on to your Christian friends and family! Thanks for your help!
http://www.reasonabledissent.com/survey/
Why I dismiss intelligent design
A recent post seemed to incite a reader more than I would have expected. The link that was left seems to imply that I have a bias toward evolution, and may be guilty of some intelligent design hating without just cause. I must respectfully disagree, but I think it’s only fair to justify why I dismiss the theory. I welcome any criticism to my understanding, of course.
Intelligent design’s relationship to religion
First of all, I’m not necessarily one to run around saying that intelligent design is nothing more than creationism spruced up to pass off as science. It is obvious why its validity could be used as an argument for many Judeo-Christian religious life origin ideas, but the implications don’t make it wrong automatically. However, let’s investigate the implications some. For a scientific theory to mean anything, it needs to make predictions. A modern example might be string theory. At this time, there are very few testable predictions of string theory. It makes some claims, and looks quite pretty, but until you can test a prediction and say that your hypothesis is supported or falsified, you haven’t got a very solid theory in the scientific sense, just some ideas. That doesn’t mean you can’t investigate your ideas, but failing to come up with testable predictions is a huge blow to your credibility. Looking at intelligent design, what does it say? In short, that “the theory of intelligent design holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause” [1]. But does this really answer the question if you claim that the theory is non-religious? In fact, it merely postpones the question. The whole question that they are trying to answer is “how did intelligent life come to exist?” And the answer is, “Intelligent life came to exist by the design from intelligent life.” Intelligent design advocates don’t make any mention of what this intelligence might be, but the only conclusion that doesn’t result in the exact same question is supernatural. Any natural (meant here as “part of the observable universe”) source would be intelligent life that would beg the exact same question: How did it get started? So, while the implication for a creator god doesn’t falsify the theory outright, it seems plain that either the theory is at the very least deistic or it doesn’t answer the question it pretends to.
Irreducible Complexity
The science behind intelligent design has never seemed more than vague and, frankly, unscientific to me. (No, I have not read every single article on ID that exists. If you have one that just blows me out of the water, show it to me. I’ll think about it and let you know if it changes my mind). So let’s go into some of the major arguments, as I’m familiar with them. The one that I seem to hear most about is “Irreducible Complexity”: the idea that some biological systems are complex in a way that removal of one piece causes the entire function to cease. The infamous example is a mousetrap. There are several key components to a mousetrap, and until they are all present, the mousetrap will not function. The claim is that there are such systems in biology that could not have been built up by gradual processes because the intermediate steps would not be justified by a Darwinian process.
I have two major issues with this idea. First, it supposes a lot of understanding about the intermediate steps that they do not possess. There is no reason to say that every step of the way to evolving my eye had this result in mind. Nor is there any reason to say that every step of evolving my eye had something to do with sight. The intermediate steps could have had an organ that resembled my eye in a basic way, but supported survival in a completely different way. Or, one might argue that a partially functional eye is still beneficial, even though it may not work in exactly the same way as it does today. My second argument with it is that it doesn’t give any falsifiable predictions. The prediction is, “There exist biological systems of irreducible complexity.” This is not a hypothesis because there is no counter proof. The only test is this: “Is this one irreducibly complex? No. Ok, is this one? No. Ok, how about this one?” It’s a question designed to be unanswered forever, unless we can somehow show that we have exhausted the search of every single biological system.
Fine-Tuned Universe
As pointed out by the commenter on my post about the anthropic principle, the idea can be used by both sides of this debate to justify certain arguments. Personally, I don’t see this as a big problem. Two theories can use a previous result in different ways, and that doesn’t invalidate it, nor the theories. But the question of the finely-tuned universe is less a reason to invoke intelligence and more a realization that we don’t know everything there is to know – not very surprising.
Still, it’s worth considering its validity. The idea is that there are several universal constants that seem to be exactly what they need to be for life to form. My first reaction to this was “Well, that just means that a different kind of life might have formed”, but I think this is not necessarily correct. The question may be a valid one, because it involves the production of elements in stars. Certain constants, like the gravitational constant and the strong nuclear force, would impact the way that stars come together, if they were to come together at all, and if they would produce a useful array of elements or not.
But intelligence is not dictated at this point. It’s merely a lack of knowledge, not some “knob-turner” in the sky. Consider people long ago that didn’t have the knowledge of science that we enjoy. Does it seem like an intelligent source is making sure that the sun rises and sets at regular times that correspond very well with our need to sleep? How could it be so finely tuned that we don’t need only 2 hours of sleep and have so much extra dark time? Or how about sailors using a compass before they understood magnetism? It seems like an intelligent source is directing the movement of the needle to always show us north, no matter where we are. (And yes, the compass very much precedes knowledge of magnetism[5]). I have never seen any evidence for intelligence for this position, even from ID advocates. Usually what I see is the idea that it sure looks too good to be random, so therefore intelligence. This is not science.
I don’t claim some authoritative understanding on intelligent design. This is how I understand it, based on my own experience and research. Everything that I’ve seen and investigated has led me to consider intelligent design a pseudo-science at best. I don’t take it seriously, because I tried to take it seriously and found it empty. No, I don’t think that evolution has all the answers to all the questions, but that’s what science is: continuously improving our theories based on evidence. Intelligent design does not do this, so I don’t take it seriously. It’s as simple as that.
[1]http://www.discovery.org/a/3059
[2]http://www.discovery.org/a/2640
[3]http://www.iscid.org/papers/Luskin_HumanOrigins_071505.pdf
[4]http://www.intelligentdesign.org/index.php
[5]http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Compass.htm
Coincidence or purposeful placement?
I saw this at the store the other day:
So either it’s just some early Halloween decoration that was put up near this section, or someone is trying to make a statement… perhaps something about the wickedness of reading Dan Brown? I’m thinking coincidence, really, but I have a habit of giving people more credit than I sometimes should. You be the judge.
(And sorry for the blurry shot… I was in a hurry)
Power in understanding the anthropic principle
The anthropic principle is an incredibly useful and powerful idea that I think is misunderstood by far too many people. I think the most likely reason is that it is somewhat like looking at an optical illusion that suddenly pops into the shape you’re supposed to see. Before you really get it, it’s not at all obvious what it’s really saying.
Not only that, but it’s easy to say it in an oversimplified way that sounds like it doesn’t solve anything. If I say, “If things weren’t like they are, we wouldn’t be here to ask why they are,” and you think that it’s a dodge of the question, read the rest of this, and then come back to that statement. Does it have a little more meaning now?
So I’ll dive right in. The anthropic principle comes in a few flavors. For the record, the one that I’m advocating is usually termed the Weak Anthropic Principle (not weak in the sense that it doesn’t stand up to itself well, but not as forceful as the others). I’ll start with the ones that I don’t advocate, because I don’t plan to spend much time on them. There is the Strong Anthropic Principle which says that the universe’s ultimate goal was to produce us, so it was fine-tuned to that purpose. Then, the Final Anthropic Principle tries to build on this by saying that if the universe intends to produce intelligent life, then it has a vested interest in intelligent life. Therefore, the universe not only must produce intelligent life, but once in existence, intelligent life will never die out. Wow, that’s quite a conclusion! As I said, I don’t like these. The vague relationship of the underlying ideas with the weak anthropic principle mean that they got to share the name, but it’s like grapes and grapefruit – the name may be the same, but one is delicious and the other is fit only for a madman.
The weak anthropic principle (I’ll drop the ‘weak’ from now on) goes like this. We look around us and see what seems to be huge amounts of order. The amount of chance events that would have to happen to end up where we are is staggering, and the probability of this is fantastically small. How then can we justify an impartial universe that seems perfectly tuned for our existence? The anthropic principle comes with this response: We are already biased to this universe/planet/whatever by our very existence. The fact that life has developed here means that this may not be such a common place, statistically speaking. Usually this is applied to cosmology and abiogenesis. I’ll borrow some ideas here from The God Delusion, and it’s worth the read, if you haven’t. One common issue people bring up with evolution is that it’s a great tool for explaining complexity from simplicity – but not from no life at all. It only applies after there is some start, which is apparently unlikely.
One of Dawkins’ arguments at this point is that, thanks to the anthropic principle, we can afford a somewhat greater degree of improbability in this first start, simply because it is only one event. We just need to get the chain started, and natural selection takes us the rest of the way easily. We seem to live in a very pleasant place, from the temperate climate of our planet and its orbit, to the star that we are around. Many things seem “just right” for us. But the anthropic principle is the idea that the very fact that we exist here means that this might just be exactly that special of a place. If it were not, who would be asking the question? It is conceivable that in different and uninhabitable-for-us situations, an all together different kind of life would develop. They might ask the same things: why is this place so special? But it would be special to them, not us. But the point is, the universe doesn’t necessarily have to have a temperate, life-supporting environment as the average. If this is a special place in the universe, this is exactly where we would show up. It’s not that surprising after all. We could then go into some probabilistic arguments based on the number of stars and planets to show that actually, even though it seems unlikely, the universe is so big that the fact that some places are ok for life like us is not that unlikely.
Maybe a resonable way to think of it is like the lottery. The odds against winning are incredible, and most people know this going in. But they also know that because of how many people are playing, the odds are reasonable that at least one of them could win. But in the cosmological case, losing isn’t as apparent as in the lottery. You don’t get bummed out and try again. You just simply aren’t. There aren’t life forms in uninhabitable parts of the universe to say “This is a terrible place to live,” you’re only aware because we won this lottery. And there were billions of years with billions of billions of stars and planets playing the lottery, and only once did we have to hit big. Just once, the right set of circumstances needed to come together to get life started, and the process of natural selection very logically produced what we see today.
So, if this is new to you, try that sentence again. “If things weren’t like they are, we wouldn’t be here to ask why they are.” Does it seem like a dodge still? If it does, let me know, because that means I failed at explaining it well too.
