William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

"there's no causality in quantum mechanics, like in deterministic physics."

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If you're going to actually address an argument, make sure you get the quote right: "That causality is in question is something that's existed ever since the beginning of QM"

I've repeated essentially the same thing countless times: QM challenges our notions of classic, deterministic causality." Not there is "no causality in QM" or even that "there is no deterministic causality." QM has some deterministic interpretations, but, as I already addressed early, that they are deterministic doesn't really ease our doubt about classic causality, especially when even something like decoerhence (which explains why there is an appearance of a wavefunction collapse) can't even be measured. So, even there, where is the causality in the wake of no predictions?

FWIW, I mostly side with decoherence and Many-Worlds, which are both deterministic interpretations, but that the exact nature of causality is still dubious within them is undeniable.

Most of your post was just about how such fence-sitting is a no-no in philosophy. Again, I don't really care. That classic causality in QM and outside the universe is either true or not true is not to say we must be settled on the matter ourselves when the matter is not settled. I'll take Hume's "wait and see approach." In the meantime, I can assume causality holds at the level at which I experience life (which may just be an illusion created by my inability to see things working on the quantum level), and reserve any further judgments until I hear from the people that actually do this for a living (meaning, people other than Craig).

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

We already know that things as we observe and experience and know them on the macro level are not how things work on the micro level. This is not begging a question, but a statement of fact. That Craig always uses examples from the macro level of our understanding, our "metaphysical intuitions," is very deceptive and dishonest.

Virtual particles are experiential justification. The knowledge that there was a point without spacetime is experiential justification because everything we know about causality is limited to spacetime. You can not name a cause we know of that is not understood because of predictions made withing spacetime, nor can you name a single cause we know of outside of spacetime. That spacetime is a barrier to our knowledge, and therefor should be a barrier to how far we extrapolate our knowledge, is hardly a radical or unreasonable notion.

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Your whole theory that Quantum Mechanics undermines causality sounds culled straight from the pages of a mass market easy-reader. The truth is we simply don't know, but it's also true that most theories propose some causelike mechanisms for quantum phenomena, from typical deterministic mechanisms to retro-causality. And trying to equate disagreement between Relativity and quantum mechanics to an absence of cause is dangerously close to another equivocation.

Consider:

It is sometimes suggested that quantum theory allows for substantial changes out of and into nothing, such as the creation and annihilation of pairs of virtual particles, which by implication would not involve the survival of anything throughout either event. In reply, it must be pointed out (assuming that quantum theory is correct for the purpose of argument) that the quantum vacuum out of which and into which such particle pairs emerge and vanish is not a literal nothing. For instance, Barrow and Tipler say: “It is, of course, somewhat inappropriate to call the origin of a bubble Universe in a fluctuation of the vacuum ‘creation ex nihilo’, for the quantum mechanical vacuum state has a rich structure which resides in a previously existing substratum of space-time, either Minkowski or de Sitter space-time.” (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 441; cited in W.L. Craig and Q. Smith, Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 155.) The cause of virtual particles may be indeterministic (licensed by the Uncertainty Principle), but there is still a physical cause consisting of the set of physically necessary and sufficient conditions for the particles’ existence, including the persisting space-time structure itself. To say that nothing survives the emergence or vanishing of virtual particles is to read more into QM than is actually licensed by the theory. The quantum vacuum is not a genuine void.

Google will not allow the redirect to a PDF, but you can find the beginning of the same article here:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.230...47699020223887

Consider:

Do virtual particles contradict relativity or causality?.....

This "superluminal" propagation had better not transmit any information if we are to retain the principle of causality.

I'll give a plausibility argument that it doesn't in the context of a thought experiment. Let's try to send information faster than light with a virtual particle.

Suppose that you and I make repeated measurements of a quantum field at distant locations. The electromagnetic field is sort of a complicated thing, so I'll use the example of a field with just one component, and call it F. To make things even simpler, we'll assume that there are no "charged" sources of the F field or real F particles initially. This means that our F measurements should fluctuate quantum- mechanically around an average value of zero. You measure F (really, an average value of F over some small region) at one place, and I measure it a little while later at a place far away. We do this over and over, and wait a long time between the repetitions, just to be safe...

After a large number of repeated field measurements we compare notes. We discover that our results are not independent; the F values are correlated with each other—even though each individual set of measurements just fluctuates around zero, the fluctuations are not completely independent. This is because of the propagation of virtual quanta of the F field, represented by the diagonal lines. It happens even if the virtual particle has to go faster than light.

However, this correlation transmits no information. Neither of us has any control over the results we get, and each set of results looks completely random until we compare notes (this is just like the resolution of the famous EPR "paradox").

You can do things to fields other than measure them. Might you still be able to send a signal? Suppose that you attempt, by some series of actions, to send information to me by means of the virtual particle. If we look at this from the perspective of someone moving to the right at a high enough speed, special relativity says that in that reference frame, the effect is going the other way

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...particles.html


Well there goes your whole silly argument about virtual particles contradicting causality. The problem, I suspect, is that your whole understanding of these issues depends upon popular literature. The thing you obviously don't understand is that all popular literature about physics consists of half-truths by necessity. When you start reading a science text concerned with causality, you know you're either in junior high, reading Newton or reading popular science since "cause" isn't now a properly scientific term. "Cause" is a philosophical figuration to describe the intelligible interactions of things. Science presumes some notion of causality without the need to reference it. You can read an entire college physics text without ever encountering the word "cause". That's not because "causality" doesn't exist or isn't applicable, but rather because it's not within the purview of science since it isn't a precise observable mechanism just like "nothing" isn't. Likewise, if you're reading a science text about "nothing", you're probably reading Krauss's abysmal polemic that was panned by the New York Times, driving Krauss to brink of a foam-flecked fit that required Daniel Dennet to reproach him and Krauss to write an apology in Scientific American that was strangely enough just as offensive and stupid as the reason for which he had to write it.

This will give you some info on the stuff leading up to Krauss's apology:

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.c...cist-with.html

Some interesting bits in which Krauss basically admits the fraud:

Andersen points out: “it sounds like you’re arguing that ‘nothing’ is really a quantum vacuum, and that a quantum vacuum is unstable in such a way as to make the production of matter and space inevitable. But a quantum vacuum has properties. For one, it is subject to the equations of quantum field theory. Why should we think of it as nothing?” Maybe it was just me, but at this point in my mind’s eye I saw Krauss engaging in a more and more frantic exercise of handwaving, retracting and qualifying: “I don’t think I argued that physics has definitively shown how something could come from nothing [so why the book’s title?]; physics has shown how plausible physical mechanisms might cause this to happen. ... I don’t really give a damn about what ‘nothing’ means to philosophers; I care about the ‘nothing’ of reality. And if the ‘nothing’ of reality is full of stuff [a nothing full of stuff? Fascinating], then I’ll go with that.”

But, insists Andersen, “when I read the title of your book, I read it as ‘questions about origins are over.’” To which Krauss responds: “Well, if that hook gets you into the book that’s great. But in all seriousness, I never make that claim. ... If I’d just titled the book ‘A Marvelous Universe,’ not as many people would have been attracted to it.”

Also the part of the review in question, written incidentally by a person with a PhD in theoretical physics, that got Krauss so mad:

The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields... they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place. Period. Case closed. End of story.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

:lol: No it doesn't. It cherry-picks conclusions and ignores all others that disagree with those conclusions and often misstates (or elides) parts of the conclusions that it does use. The BGV theory that Craig loves to parott doesn't even say what he says it says. He always says that it proves the universe has a beginning, but what he leaves out is that all it really says is that our universe had a beginning to its expansion. It says nothing of an ultimate beginning. Does Craig ever mention this? I wonder why?

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The Kalam doesn't cherry-pick conclusions. It makes one. But we already know you don't know how a syllogism functions or what metaphysics is or how fallacies work or how to construct a proper statement, the most rudimentary constituent of logic, or that quantum theory DOES, in fact, make predictions and involve causal elements. When finally you try to actually organize your thoughts into an argument, you fly face-first into the most banal and conventional example of what not to do in an argument. Yet you know all this stuff already. You've got it all figured out. Some yahoo who doesn't know what makes an argument valid has come to the determination that a PhD philosopher's argument is bad.

I'll alert the media.

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Most of your post was just about how such fence-sitting is a no-no in philosophy. Again, I don't really care. That classic causality in QM and outside the universe is either true or not true is not to say we must be settled on the matter ourselves when the matter is not settled. I'll take Hume's "wait and see approach." In the meantime, I can assume causality holds at the level at which I experience life (which may just be an illusion created by my inability to see things working on the quantum level), and reserve any further judgments until I hear from the people that actually do this for a living (meaning, people other than Craig).

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My point was NOT that "fence-sitting was a no-no", but rather that you couldn't just fence-sit and then cry that I wasn't addressing your arguments since fence-sitting generally precludes you from having made any. You're basically mentioning some silly irrelevancy and then crying about me not taking it seriously. My point wasn't that you weren't committing, but rather that your entire approach was IRRATIONAL and filled with errors of thought.

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That classic causality in QM and outside the universe is either true or not true is not to say we must be settled on the matter ourselves when the matter is not settled. I'll take Hume's "wait and see approach." In the meantime, I can assume causality holds at the level at which I experience life (which may just be an illusion created by my inability to see things working on the quantum level), and reserve any further judgments until I hear from the people that actually do this for a living (meaning, people other than Craig).

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1. We don't know precisely how or even if causality applies at the quantum level.
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Therefore, "The Kalam is useless."

Consider:

Appeal to Ignorance
The fallacy of appeal to ignorance comes in two forms: (1) Not knowing that a certain statement is true is taken to be a proof that it is false. (2) Not knowing that a statement is false is taken to be a proof that it is true. The fallacy occurs in cases where absence of evidence is not good enough evidence of absence. The fallacy uses an unjustified attempt to shift the burden of proof. The fallacy is also called “Argument from Ignorance.”

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#AppealtoIgnorance

BTW, if you had properly understood the post you would understand that the wait-and-see approach is not something that can be reasonably recommended.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

BTW, you might find the following interesting, YesNo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg_95wZZFr4

Yes, that's atheist Roger Penrose (of Hawking-Penrose fame) really giving the skinny on some of the issues we're discussing.

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That was an interesting video.

One of the things it reminded me of is the unverifiability of many of the "theories" which means they are speculations. It will be hard to see another universe in the multi-verse. It might be possible to falsify or restrict in some way what that multi-verse, if it exists, has to be.

The multi-verse is only being considered because atheists need an unconscious cause of our universe now that we all know it had a beginning. These atheists are indirectly verifying the soundness of the Kalam argument. They know they have to come up with some kind of God. They just want it to be an unconscious God.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

But now we're just into word games, YesNo. "Explanatory conditions and factors" is incredibly vague, and hardly "explains" how these "explanatory conditions and factors" are discovered, determined, etc. That was part of the value of modern science, in working out a method for figuring out causes that weren't just vague "explanations of conditions and factors." "Explanations of conditions and factors" would allow Phlogiston to be as good an explanation of fire as would oxygen.

I can't stress you read that article enough, because at this point we need to squash the notion of causality as being equivalent with fake causality and, again, bringing up the Ancient Greeks in the context of a debate on an argument that relies on modern science is silly. We have learned some things about how things work in the past several thousand years.

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I've read some of the pages on the LessWrong site as you suggested. I find them interesting, especially the one on hindsight bias: http://lesswrong.com/lw/il/hindsight_bias/

Now that we know that the universe had a beginning, the multi-verse could be viewed as a fake explanation based on hindsight bias used to justify an atheistic belief system. It is much like Phlogiston.

Causality is not the same as fake causality. I don't think Yudkowsky is recommending that causality itself be eliminated. Or is he somewhere? It seems to me he is opposed to jumping to conclusions about what might be an explanation for something.

I'm late to the argument, but in response to the OP (ignore me if this has already all come up):

1-3 make logical sense, but our view of the cosmos, while impressive, is too incomplete for us to definitively place our universe in this causal picture. Thus, this cannot be a proof.

4 and 5 are extremely, even laughably convenient. I could accept that the first cause must be uncaused, but from what argument, exactly, do we derive that it must be personal? Why immaterial, timeless, spaceless? That part of the argument was clearly forged from pre-existing notions of theism to make it a certainty that the theistic God is the answer to the question. It's very poor.

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Originally Posted by Polednice

I'm late to the argument, but in response to the OP (ignore me if this has already all come up):

1-3 make logical sense, but our view of the cosmos, while impressive, is too incomplete for us to definitively place our universe in this causal picture. Thus, this cannot be a proof.

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I think it is only 1-3 that are really under consideration here. That would be the Kalam argument.

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Originally Posted by Polednice

4 and 5 are extremely, even laughably convenient. I could accept that the first cause must be uncaused, but from what argument, exactly, do we derive that it must be personal? Why immaterial, timeless, spaceless? That part of the argument was clearly forged from pre-existing notions of theism to make it a certainty that the theistic God is the answer to the question. It's very poor.

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I don't understand the "personal" part either, but I think the criteria should be whether that cause was "conscious" or not. In order words, did something make a choice?

The "immaterial, timeless, spaceless" comes from the idea that the universe's beginning included not only the beginning of all matter and energy but also the beginning of space and time. So this would place the cause outside the universe as well as space and time. That would make it immaterial, timeless and spaceless.

One thing I've been looking at is the idea of a deterministic efficient cause (or explanation). If there is no matter and time, then a deterministic cause is not possible. I think this may have been what MorpheusSandman was referring to when he could not accept causality outside space and time. If he means a deterministic causality, I think, I would agree. That doesn't eliminate other types of causes that are not deterministic. This just emphasizes the role that a conscious choice had in the process.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I don't understand the "personal" part either, but I think the criteria should be whether that cause was "conscious" or not. In order words, did something make a choice?

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I think Craig would take it to an irrational further step, as the most common meaning of "personal" when referring to a deity is that it cares about human life and potentially intervenes in it. I could consider a deistic argument - of a conscious being that created the universe (though I still think it's an unnecessary and pointless idea) - but a theistic, personal one is absolutely ludicrous. There is no sane way of reconciling that kind of personal god with the history of the world as we know it so far.

I think the only thing we can get from the Kalam argument is that some cause created the universe. Because there was nothing there to ground a determinisitic explanation, there was a choice involved. That's all one gets.

Craig has other arguments that try to lead to a Christian God. Some Muslim people who argue the same thing, would try to lead to Allah. A deistic position is perhaps the bare minimum one would need. I suspect if there was a deistic God, it goes further than that, but that goes beyond the Kalam.

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mal4mac
Is anyone reading all this? I'm not. I think a forum discussion should involve the give and take of argument, not someone standing up and giving a long lecture. Why not make *one* substantial point KCK, and let the argument roll on... oops three posts in a row, time to eat my own words, I'll stop there....

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_(number)
If an odd perfect number is of the form 36k + 9, it has at least nine distinct prime factors.[12]
12. ^ Eyob Delele Yirdaw, "Proving Touchard's Theorem from Euler's Form" ArXiv preprint.

http://www.setterfield.org/Dodwell_Manuscript_1.html
There are no other external forces acting on the earth to produce any additional change in the obliquity of the Ecliptic; but the question may still be asked whether there are internal conditions in the earth itself which may affect its movement. If there were an irregularity in the internal distribution of the earth's mass, causing a displacement of the center of gravity from the exact center of the earth's figure, would this produce any change in the obliquity?

In such a case, the "axis of figure" of the earth would not correspond exactly with the earth's "axis of revolution," and there could be an inclination of one to the other. An oscillation would then be produced, but it would not be an oscillation of the obliquity, but one of a different kind, viz., an "Eulerian Nutation."

http://www.setterfield.org/Dodwell_Manuscript_2.html
There is thus no room for any other harmonic movement of the earth’s axis. We are, in fact, limited to these forces, because a movement of any appreciable magnitude, due to internal changes within the earth, or to any difference between the centre of gravity of the earth and its centre of figure, would at once become apparent as an “Eulerian” oscillation, as already pointed out. It would be observable as a “variation of latitude,” and not as a change in the earth’s axial inclination. We have seen that this variation of latitude does, in fact, exist at the present time, but only on an exceedingly minute scale.

http://www.setterfield.org/Dodwell conclusion.html
In the years he took to research the measurements of the obliquity of the eclipitic, or tilt of the earth's axis, going back in time as far as possible, he found undeniable evidence that something happened to the tilt of the earth's axis in 2345 B.C. [Probable origin of Sumero-Chaldean Flood myth, 1400 BC Joshua, 700 BC The Dial of Ahaz, significant, too] The measurements actually taken differed from Newcomb's curve of the mathematically figured obliquity (based on current earth movement) to a greater and greater degree the further back he looked. Thinking this might be due to early astronomical error, he checked each of these measurements for necessary corrections regarding parallax the semi-diameter of the sun and then against one another. The latitude at which the observations were made is inherent in the data.

[Dodswell] studied some of the ancient temple/observatories. Their orientation towards summer and winter solstices were also 'off' by the amount the ancient observations showed. His conclusion, and the conclusion we find we also must draw, is that there was a sudden change in the tilt of the axis of the earth in or about 2345 B.C. Interestingly, this appears to correlate exactly with a number of disruptions of cultures in the world: it appears to have initiated the First Intermediate Period in Egypt.

[Euler's law and Sacred Spiral and Ulam Circle forms collide here, to show that even in (precession of the equinoxes), the Earth was distrubed in it's path around the sun by celestial forces producing this oscillation ... Also more than likely it could be found in the collision produced by our universe with a parallel one recently discovered, that I've already mentioned for some apparent reason]
[You or I ... mal4mac, both have the right to post as long ... as we obey the rules ... I think the stuff I point out is relevant ... whether you can predict it or understand it or not]

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OrphanPip

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© 1993-2003 ENCARTA Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The [Scopes] trial received worldwide publicity and was conducted in a circus like atmosphere. The press dubbed it the Monkey Trial because, according to popular belief, evolution meant that humans were descended from monkeys.

A slighty dated PocketWiki article [Wikipedia / Evolution and reproduction; Religious disputes] states:

The Creation-Evolution controversy itself originated in Europe and North America in the late 18th century, when geological discoveries indicated that the earth is much older than was suggested by the Judeo-Christian Bible ... [This last part of this is a total and complete lie, I show you why in a second] ... The controversy became political in the United States of America when public schools began teaching the scientific theory [of evolution in schools. ]

© 1993-2003 ENCARTA Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
The [Scopes] trial received worldwide publicity and was conducted in a circus like atmosphere. The press dubbed it the Monkey Trial because, according to popular belief, evolution meant that humans were descended from monkeys.

[In the Scopes Trail Bryan was asked by Darrow "Was the earth created in 6 literal days" after this question was asked, and obviously answered, the trail conviened pre-maturely, the next day, without the other side being addressed, some 5 days later William Jennings Bryan died]

http://www.themonkeytrial.com/
Not all fundamentalists, therefore, held to a 6-day creation and Bryan himself, as it turns out, did not believe in a literal 6-day creation (!). (See more discussion of Bryan’s testimony during the trial regarding his view of creation and the age of the earth below.) ... An analysis of the trial transcript, further, eveals that Bryan’s answers were reasonable, intelligent, and often very witty. Darrow, on the other hand, lost his temper, insulted Bryan repeatedly, and asked questions for which there were obviously no known answers. [Which circus?]

In the same PocketWiki article [Wikipedia / Evolution and reproduction; Religious disputes] :

[Dawkins in "The God Delusion"] (arguing probabilities ,,, juxtaposed) ... holds out hope for a cosmological equivalent to Darwinism that would explain why the universe exists in all its amazing complexity. He uses the argument from improbability, for which he introduced the term "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit", to argue that "God almost certainly does not exist": However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747. [or the improbability of life spontaneous appearing?]

The "Boeing 747" reference alludes to a statement reportedly made by Fred Hoyle: the "probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane sweeping through a scrap-yard would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747." . Dawkins objects to this argument on the grounds that it is made "...by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection". [NS is no longer relavant in this context] A common theme in Dawkins' books is that natural selection, not chance, is responsible for the evolution of life, and that the apparent improbability of life's complexity does not imply evidence of design or a designer. [or unknowns?]

Dawkins concludes the chapter by arguing that his "Ultimate 747" gambit is a very serious argument against the existence of God, and that he has yet to hear "a theologian give a convincing answer despite numerous opportunities and invitations to do so." . [Please invite Meyers, if you will then] Dawkins reports that Dan Dennett, calls it "an unrebuttable refutation" dating back two centuries. [2 centuries? Ok, I won't go there Rabbi]

[This analogy is totally void of substance now ... that bio-info that had to pre-exist the process of evolution has been found in the cosmological constant ... I could spend rapturous hours picking apart these analogies ... but this is just a fight between two personalities, agenda's, paradigm's, magisterium who employ false legal agruments such as poisoning the well, moving the goal posts, substituting one thing for another, etc ...]

Creationists, notably Kent Hovind, have made a living debating scientists regarding creationism (intelligent design) and evolution. [Since you mentioned] Eugenie Scott of the National Centre for Science Education, claimed debates are not the sort of arena to promote science to creationists. Scott claims, "Evolution is not on trial in the world of science," and "the topic of the discussion should not be the scientific legitimacy of evolution." Rather the issue should be on the lack of evidence in creationism. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould took public stances against appearing to give legitimacy to creationism by debating its proponents. Stephen Jay Gould noted during the McLean v. Arkansas trial:

"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact — which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"

[You can't prove or disprove God, any more than you can solve PI ... you can prove that certain basic features of the Biblical text ... appear to describe the bio-info and cosmological constants in relevant correlated detail that defy the probabilities, though]

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Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

[Dawkins in "The God Delusion"] (arguing probabilities ,,, juxtaposed) ... holds out hope for a cosmological equivalent to Darwinism that would explain why the universe exists in all its amazing complexity. He uses the argument from improbability, for which he introduced the term "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit", to argue that "God almost certainly does not exist": However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747. [or the improbability of life spontaneous appearing?]

The "Boeing 747" reference alludes to a statement reportedly made by Fred Hoyle: the "probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane sweeping through a scrap-yard would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747." . Dawkins objects to this argument on the grounds that it is made "...by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection". [NS is no longer relavant in this context] A common theme in Dawkins' books is that natural selection, not chance, is responsible for the evolution of life, and that the apparent improbability of life's complexity does not imply evidence of design or a designer. [or unknowns?]

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Although it is somewhat off-topic, one of the things your posts have made me wonder is what is the likelihood of life occurring by chance alone or evolving by chance mutations alone.

I don't know how one would calculate that, however, I think this can be calculated. As we find other planets with life in the universe, we can test whether the null hypothesis is correct that life originated by chance.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Although it is somewhat off-topic, one of the things your posts have made me wonder is what is the likelihood of life occurring by chance alone or evolving by chance mutations alone.

I don't know how one would calculate that, however, I think this can be calculated. As we find other planets with life in the universe, we can test whether the null hypothesis is correct that life originated by chance.

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I think it will take far too long to find life on other planets unless we get lucky in our own solar system - even then, the sample size will be small. What we need to do is discover a chemical reaction similar to those occurring in the early earth which can result in the creation of a self-replicating molecule. "By chance" really means by chemistry.

Well It may depend on who you talk to ... and what formula's and numbers you employ ... The interstellar distances maybe to great to overcome ... [seeding maybe possible] ... I heard someone say we could go to the moon and collect bio-info from Earth's past located on the moon in micro-particles blown into the atmosphere and transmitted to it by gravity ... Anyways here's a rounded view of some idea's ... This may also involve agruments from poor design, which may or may not be applicable ... depending on your type of belief system. [These are just excerpts for stuff I have ... but I hope this can move the ARG forward ... I'm sure you'll come up with more detailed stuff ... I'll be in the background]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyle%27s_fallacy
According to Hoyle's analysis, the probability of cellular life evolving was about one-in-1040000. He commented:

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.

which is a reflection of his stance reported elsewhere:

Life as we know it is, among other things, dependent on at least 2000 different enzymes. How could the blind forces of the primal sea manage to put together the correct chemical elements to build enzymes?[4]

Hoyle's Fallacy is rejected by evolutionary biologists,[3] since, as the late John Maynard Smith pointed out, "no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step."[5] The modern evolutionary synthesis explains how complex cellular structures evolved by analysing the intermediate steps required for precellular life. It is these intermediate steps that are omitted in creationist arguments, which is the cause of their over-estimating of the improbability of the entire process.[1]

Hoyle's argument is a mainstay of creationist, intelligent design, orthogenetic and other criticisms of evolution. It has been labeled a fallacy by Richard Dawkins in his two books The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable.[1] Dawkins argues that the existence of God, who under theistic uses of Hoyle's argument is implicitly responsible for the origin of life, defies probability far more than does the spontaneous origin of life even given Hoyle's assumptions, with Dawkins detailing his counter-argument in The God Delusion, describing God as the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit.

1. ^ a b c d e f g Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations – An explanation at the TalkOrigins Archive by Ian Musgrave Last Update: December 21, 1998
3. ^ a b c d e Derek Gatherer, The Open Biology Journal, 2008, 1, 9–20, Finite Universe of Discourse: The Systems Biology of Walter Elsasser (1904–1991)
4. ^ Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe (1983), ISBN 0-7181-2298-4
5. ^ a b John Maynard Smith, The Problems of Biology, p.49. (1986), ISBN 0-19-289198-7, "What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
The Fermi paradox (Fermi's paradox or Fermi-paradox) is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations ... The equation was formulated by Dr. Frank Drake in 1961, a decade after the objections raised by Enrico Fermi, in an attempt to find a systematic means to evaluate the numerous probabilities involved in alien life. The speculative equation factors in: the rate of star formation in the galaxy; the fraction of stars with planets and the number per star that are habitable; the fraction of those planets which develop life, the fraction of intelligent life, and the further fraction of detectable technological intelligent life; and finally the length of time such civilizations are detectable. The fundamental problem is that the last four terms (fraction of planets with life, odds life becomes intelligent, odds intelligent life becomes detectable, and detectable lifetime of civilizations) are completely unknown. We have only one example, rendering statistical estimates impossible, and even the example we have is subject to a strong anthropic bias.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
[The Drake equation which is closely related to the Fermi paradox is] used to estimate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. It is used in the field of Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The equation was devised by Frank Drake, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz ... states:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...fd474d3aaa.png
where:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;
and
R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop techs that releases detectable signs of existence
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space

Considerable disagreement on the values of most of these parameters exists, but the values used by Drake and his colleagues in 1961 were:

R* = 10/year (10 stars formed per year, on the average over the life of the galaxy)
fp = 0.5 (half of all stars formed will have planets)
ne = 2 (stars with planets will have 2 planets capable of developing life)
fl = 1 (100% of these planets will develop life)
fi = 0.01 (1% of which will be intelligent life)
fc = 0.01 (1% of which will be able to communicate)
L = 10,000 years (which will last 10,000 years)

Drake's values give N = 10 × 0.5 × 2 × 1 × 0.01 × 0.01 × 10,000 = 10.

Michael Crichton, a science fiction author, stated in a 2003 lecture at Caltech:

The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. [...] As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless ...


http://www.science20.com/news_releas...h_like_planets
The Mathematical Probability Of Life On Other Earth-Like Planets - April 16th 2008

Infinity was invented to account for the possibility that in a never-ending universe, anything can happen. Life on other Earth-like planets, for example, is possible in an infinite universe, but not probable, according to a scientist from the University of East Anglia.

The mathematical model produced by Prof Andrew Watson suggests that the odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets are low because of the time it has taken for beings such as humans to evolve and the remaining life span of the Earth. Structurally complex and intelligent life evolved late on Earth and this process might be governed by a small number of very difficult evolutionary steps.

According to Prof Watson a limit to evolution is the habitability of Earth, and any other Earth-like planets, which will end as the sun brightens. Solar models predict that the brightness of the sun is increasing, while temperature models suggest that because of this the future life span of Earth will be ‘only’ about another billion years, a short time compared to the four billion years since life first appeared on the planet.

“The Earth’s biosphere is now in its old age and this has implications for our understanding of the likelihood of complex life and intelligence arising on any given planet,” said Prof Watson. “At present, Earth is the only example we have of a planet with life. [Although Enceledus is showing signs of it for example] ... the timing of events is consistent with it being very rare indeed.”

“Complex life is separated from the simplest life forms by several very unlikely steps and therefore will be much less common. Intelligence is one step further, so it is much less common still,” said Prof Watson. His model, published in the journal Astrobiology, suggests an upper limit for the probability of each step occurring is 10 per cent or less, so the chances of intelligent life emerging is low – less than 0.01 per cent over four billion years. Each step is independent of the other and can only take place after the previous steps in the sequence have occurred.


http://www.evolutionfaq.com/articles/probability-life
Creationists often claim that the chances of a modern enzyme forming by random means are astronomically small, and therefore the chances of a complete bacterium (which is composed of hundreds or thousands of such enzymes & proteins) is so near to impossible that it would never happen in the 13 billion years or so since the universe took shape.

The main problem with this argument is that it assumes abiogenesis (the initial formation of life from simpler molecules) was a totally random process. It also assumes that in order for abiogenesis to be successful, a complete microbe would have had to form spontaneously. In fact, the same non-random forces which propel biological evolution also propelled abiogenesis. Specifically, Natural Selection.

If this were the theory of abiogeneisis, and if it relied entirely on random chance, then yes, it would be impossible for life to form in this way. However, this is not the case. Abiogenesis was a long process with many small incremental steps, all governed by the non-random forces of Natural Selection and chemistry. The very first stages of abiogenesis were no more than simple self-replicating molecules, which might hardly have been called alive at all.


http://www.science20.com/stars_plane...d_begin_chance
Calculating The Odds That Life Could Begin By Chance By Dave Deamer, April 30th 2009

Proponents of intelligent design believe that the components of life are so complex that they could not possibly have been produced by an evolutionary process. To bolster their argument, they calculate the odds that a specific protein might assemble by chance in the prebiotic environment. The odds against such a chance assembly are so astronomically immense that a protein required for life to begin could not possibly have assembled by chance on the early Earth. Therefore, the argument goes, life must have been designed.

It is not my purpose to argue against this belief, but the intelligent design argument uses a statistical tool of science -- a probability calculation -- to make a point, so I will use another tool of science, which is to propose an alternative hypothesis and test it ... For the purposes of today’s column I will go through the probability calculation that a specific ribozyme might assemble by chance. Assume that the ribozyme is 300 nucleotides long, and that at each position there could be any of four nucleotides present. The chances of that ribozyme assembling are then 4^300, a number so large that it could not possibly happen by chance even once in 13 billion years, the age of the universe.

[this rest of the article is very good ... I'm omitting alot of detail]

http://www.icr.org/article/4348/
Chemistry by Chance: A Formula for Non-Life by Charles McCombs, Ph.D. *

Can random chemical "accidents" produce the building blocks of life? The following eight obstacles in chemistry ensure that life by chance is untenable.

1. The Problem of Unreactivity
2. The Problem of Ionization
3. The Problem of Mass Action
4. The Problem of Reactivity
5. The Problem of Selectivity
6. The Problem of Solubility
7. The Problem of Sugar
8. The Problem of Chirality

The chemical control needed for the formation of a specific sequence in a polymer chain is just not possible through random chance. The synthesis of proteins and DNA/RNA in the laboratory requires the chemist to control the reaction conditions, to thoroughly understand the reactivity and selectivity of each component, and to carefully control the order of addition of the components as the chain is building in size. The successful formation of proteins and DNA/RNA in some imaginary primordial soup would require the same level of control as in the laboratory, but that level of control is not possible without a specific chemical controller. Any one of these eight problems could prevent the evolutionary process from forming the chemicals vital for life.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...e-chakrabarti/
Now that astronomers know where to look for Galaxy X, they should be able to find it, especially if they conduct the search in dust-penetrating infrared light, Chakrabarti said.

"Say you're looking for a car with very dim headlights, in the fog," she said. "If you know approximately where to look, you would have a better chance of finding it." Chakrabarti hopes to do some looking herself within the next few months and is seeking to secure time at a large infrared telescope. Even if Galaxy X isn't confirmed, she said, her findings will still shed new light on a shady subject. The absence of X would mean there's some other oddity out there throwing off the calculations—perhaps an unexpected distribution pattern of the halo of dark matter thought to surround the Milky Way. "We still stand to learn something very fundamental," she said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe
As such the conditional probability of observing a universe that is fine-tuned to support intelligent life is 1. This observation is known as the anthropic principle and is particularly relevant if the creation of the universe was probabilistic or if multiple universes with a variety of properties exist (see below).

Effectively, the multiverse evolves as a universal wavefunction. If the big bang that created our mutliverse created an ensemble of multiverses, the wave function of the ensemble would be entangled in this sense. The least controversial category of multiverse in Tegmark's scheme is Level I, which describes distant space-time events "in our own universe". If space is infinite, or sufficiently large and uniform, identical instances of the history of Earth's entire Hubble volume occur every so often, simply by chance. Tegmark calculated our nearest so-called doppelgänger, is 1010115 meters away from us (a double exponential function larger than a googolplex).[75][76] In principle, it would be impossible to scientifically verify an identical Hubble volume. However, it does follow as a fairly straightforward consequence from otherwise unrelated scientific observations and theories. Tegmark suggests that statistical analysis exploiting the anthropic principle provides an opportunity to test multiverse theories in some cases.

75. ^ Tegmark M. (2003). "Parallel universes. Not just a staple of science fiction, other universes are a direct implication of cosmological observations". Scientific American 288 (5): 40–51. PMID 12701329. http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...llel-universes.
76. ^ Max Tegmark (2003). "Parallel Universes". In "Science and Ultimate Reality: from Quantum to Cosmos", honoring John Wheeler's 90th birthday. J. D. Barrow, P.C.W. Davies, & C.L. Harper eds. Cambridge University Press (2003): 2131. arXiv:astro-ph/0302131. Bibcode 2003astro.ph..2131T.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...rch/26.44.html
Math and theology have had a long and checkered relationship ... in 1744, John Wesley confessed: "I am convinced, from many experiments, I could not study either mathematics, arithmetic, or algebra … without being a deist, if not an atheist." Three numbers in particular suggest evidence for God's existence. They are 1/1010123, 10162, and eπi.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...rch/26.44.html
The first recent number that points to God [infinity or improbablity] is 1 in 10 to the 10 to the 123. This number comes from astronomy. Oxford professor Roger Penrose discusses it in his book The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind. It derives from a formula by Jacob Beckenstein and Stephen Hawking and describes the chances of our universe being created at random ...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Polednice

I think it will take far too long to find life on other planets unless we get lucky in our own solar system - even then, the sample size will be small. What we need to do is discover a chemical reaction similar to those occurring in the early earth which can result in the creation of a self-replicating molecule. "By chance" really means by chemistry.

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I understand that life needs three things: (1) an energy source, (2) a fluid to move in and (3) the right molecules. These have been found on Mars and NASA's Curiosity is heading there now to look for life: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

So life might be found in the solar system this year.

I understand there are moons of Jupiter and Saturn that have the conditions for life as well. In this case the energy comes from gravitation.

So given that, what does it mean for life to start by chance alone? My suspicion based on some of the things that I've read from KillCarneyKlan's posts is that this happening should be so rare that our planet should be the only one with life. I don't know. But if that is the case, finding microscopic life on Mars should be the end to the chance argument.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YesNo

I understand that life needs three things: (1) an energy source, (2) a fluid to move in and (3) the right molecules. These have been found on Mars and NASA's Curiosity is heading there now to look for life: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

So life might be found in the solar system this year.

I understand there are moons of Jupiter and Saturn that have the conditions for life as well. In this case the energy comes from gravitation.

So given that, what does it mean for life to start by chance alone? My suspicion based on some of the things that I've read from KillCarneyKlan's posts is that this happening should be so rare that our planet should be the only one with life. I don't know. But if that is the case, finding microscopic life on Mars should be the end to the chance argument.

---

I particularly love Saturn's moon, Enceladus - I hope we can find something there!

I think the argument that life is a one-off is one that we can't seriously entertain. I mean, that seems to me to fall into the line of other anthropocentric mistakes we've made - i.e. the earth was at the centre of the universe, no? Well our solar system is then. No? Well our galaxy is then. No? Well we're still the only life-forms.

I just don't think it's conceivable. Finding self-aware life-forms will be a hell of a task, but I'd bet anything on finding microbial life.

On reflection, I think terms like life arising "by chance" is actually a very subtle way of hiding a value judgement in the statement. Because life is viewed as important, chance is considered demeaning and so is only employed as ridicule. If you look at this mechanistically, it's really as ridiculous as saying, "given a load of hydrogen atoms, what's the possibility that a star would form by chance?" *scoff scoff* - it's not chance, it's a natural consequence of physical laws.

I think we agree, Polednice, on the prospects of finding life on other planets than Earth in the solar system.

My only point with this is that I don't like using chance as an explanation. Chance is good for modeling, but in the case of life (microbial at least), what are the odds that it arose by chance? I don't know, but I suspect KillCarneyKlans is right that it is very unlikely.

However, I suspect life didn't start by chance and finding microbial life on Mars would mean that biologists would need to come up with a more interesting cause. At the moment, chance is OK, since Earth is the only planet where we know microbial life exists. Perhaps we just got lucky, but if Mars also got lucky and probably Enceladus as well, that would force one to look for an explanation other than chance.

Saying chance caused something is no better than saying some God caused something. I have an agenda when I claim this: if a deterministic cause cannot be found, we should look for a non-deterministic cause. This leads us back to the Kalam argument. There is no known deterministic cause for the universe to come into being, but there still needs to be a cause.