cypress

Nonsense. You have no basis to presume any degree of likelihood with regard to numbers of universes or the set of workable combinations. Pure unsupported speculation. You just made this up. You are stretching imagination to the breaking point. Indeed we are located in reality. Zc is located in the imagination of your mind. I don't make this claim. Please refrain from mischaracterizing my argument. Needs no response. Your description is factually incorrect. The reality of fine tuning has been known for more than 30 years. The dispute is how this fine tuning came to be. You can argue as Cap'n does that the cause is some unknown physical principle and I can accept that, but it makes you appear willfully ignorant to argue that the constants are not fine tuned. Terrible analogy. Your previous arguments were much more sound.

I am working in Deepwater Technology Deployment for an E&P company, not BP though. Our group focuses on providing our project groups with systems, designs and processes indended to prevent what happened at Macondo so we are watching this closely. I have supported Drilling and Completion Operations in the past though not currently. The top BOP is an annulus BOP that is designed to hold back moddest pressures to prevent the well control fluid and high density mud from being pushed out of the well by a "gas kick" while drill pipe is in the well. If a gas kick is not noticed in time, then the annulus BOP quickly becomes inneffective. In the case of the Macondo well, gas broke out the backside of the production casing and into the well due to a failed cement procedure most likely due to poor design and process decisions by BP engineering managers. The gas quickly forced a significant amount of well control fluid out of the well and wellhead pressures rose beyond the ability of the annulus BOP before the immediate problem was realized. The ram BOP is designed to shear off the drill pipe, and it was tripped but it failed to shear off what was obstructing the BOP. There is speculation that the production casing was driven back up into the BOP by the gas kick and it prevented the shears from functioning. A design decision was made to forego use of a casing ring lock that is intended to prevented upward casing travel and a casing seal that would have prevented flow up the backside. In addition the BOP tests did uncover a couple minor failures of portions of the backup deployment controls, but project managers chose to move forward without making repairs to the BOP. It is unlikely that this had a significant impact but you never know. BOP's will function if the system is properly designed and all the prior conditions are met necessary to allow them to function. In the case of the Macondo well, design and process issues were the root drivers and the BOP's cannot substitute for poor decisions.

No, sorry it is far from certain. It is an inductive argument based primarily on noting some degrees of similarity. Trouble is the argument fails to account for most of the unexpected differences except for by appeal to unknown processes. Common ancestry may well be correct, but "certain" is about as poor a word choice as one could make. Near certainties don't have a host of unaddressed or unresolved issues. Here are a few of the more serious issues with this idea. DNA replication appears to have occurred more than once. Many of the primary proteins involved in DNA replication are not similar between species to be related via common descent. Different DNA replication processes exist, used to replicate viral and plasmid DNA. It is surprising that the protein sequences of key components of the DNA replication machinery, above all the principal replicative polymerases, show very little or no sequence similarity between bacteria and archaea/eukaryotes. The core enzymes of the replication systems of bacteria and archaea (as well as eukaryotes) are unrelated or extremely distantly related. Viruses and plasmids, in addition, possess at least two unique DNA replication systems, namely, the protein-primed and rolling circle modalities of replication. the data regarding eukarya, archaea, and bacteria do not reveal any particular evolutionary pathway. We could interpret the data according to evolution, but there are no precursor structures and no intermediate cell types. Numerous cases of functionally-unconstrained similar stretches of DNA have been discovered in distant species. Histones are a good example, they are proteins that help organize DNA. The gene that codes for histone IV is highly conserved among a range of species leading to speculation that they are highly conserved due to strong functional constraints. Despite this experiments showed only minor functional constraints. Even more incredible are the ultra-conserved elements (UCEs). Many thousands of these DNA segments, hundreds of base pairs long, have been found across a range of species including mouse, rat, dog, chicken, humans and fish and experiments have revealed no phenotype effects of these sequences. Biological variation does not arise spontaneously. The idea of common descent relies on the preexistence of biological variation without understanding from where it came. We now know how variation occurs but not how the machine behind it arose. Now evolution proposes to tell us not only how variation is used but how all the species came about—and its answer is by unguided natural forces. But when we come to the Mendelian machine of variation we must ask how was it that evolution produced such a machine which is, in turn, supposed to be the engine for evolution itself? It is a tautology.

Well, I would not describe its purpose "so that water can go out the collecting duct". The primary function is to concentrate the solutes into the urine stream using reverse osmosis across a membrane. It is countercurrent to increase the efficiency of solute removal and thus dramatically reduce the volume of water (the solvent) required in the process. Countercurrent flow keeps the concentration gradient between the two streams as consistent as possible or as you say "intact". It does so by ensuring that the membrane exposed to the most concentrated urine stream is also in contact with the most concentrated transport stream and the most dilute next to the most dilute etc.

Yes correct.

Anyone searching the web will find numerous theories of the universe and arguments including numerous admitted problems and difficulties of the model you prefer. Some are interesting, some are absurd, but more than one are in play. You make yourself sound ignorant when you claim there is only one valid model. Alternate Cosmology or More Models That's right assumptions remain assumptions even if the model mimics observation. Models can reproduce empirical data for a time even if assumptions are wrong. Garbage in garbage out. This does not accurately represent my view. I do note that consensus in science is nearly meaningless. Here is what Michael Critchton said about consensus science back in 2003: I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let’s review a few cases. In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth. One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent “skeptics” around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women. There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the “pellagra germ.” The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called “Goldberger’s filth parties.” Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light. Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees. And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy. The list of consensus errors goes on and on. Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. I disagree. I have made no claim that contradicts either theory unless you include the expansion mode in the Big Bang theory. Perhaps you are misinterpreting my words. As I indicated before, scientific consensus is often wrong and may well be wrong about the nature of the big bang expansion. And again you misinterpret my words. I do not believe we know with any precision the size or shape of the universe. I note again your over reliance on the consensus also. The Copernican principle as applied to cosmology is an assumption and may well be false. And yet through it all, it remains a true statement that we do not know if any distance between two objects in this universe is growing faster than twice the speed of light. This is the claim you think should not be trusted and yet you have no hope of showing that I am wrong. The balance of my claims you have managed to mangle and misstate. Yet my statement requires no evidence because the claim that distances are growing faster relies on assumptions that cannot currently be validated. The best you have to imply I am wrong is scientific consensus but I have shown why we might want to be suspicious of consensus in science. I'm done here. Bear's Key assertion is uncertain and may well be incorrect. You are overselling consensus. Good bye Spyman.

The traditional subsea stack includes two blowout preventers of different designs. Each BOP is typically double redundant. They are tested at each new location and once a month.

You might be niggling, to say something is fined tuned so that it supports life is a statement of fact that does not explicitly speak to the intent of the tuning. The fact of fine tuning does not depend on how pervasive life is. Probability figures into chance events while design either succeeds or fails depending on the fitness of the design. You are making an argument against chance and in favor of design. Fine tuned systems are one indicator of design and are sufficient to describe all of chemistry and its behavior. Multivariable calculus is sufficient to inform us that the subset of workable ratios of interacting but independent dimensions is small relative to the complete set of discrete possibilities. Designers are known to generate fine tuned systems but if you can show how natural processes actually do (not can, or might) generate fine tuning then we can say that fine tuning only gives the appearance of design since other modes do as well. If you prefer Cap'n approach and say instead we don't know why it is so, fine, but we should not pretend the constants don't conspire to produce life. I've no issue with the odds, but I note that natural processes have never produced fine tuned systems of multiple variables. There is no basis to claim alternatives are more parsimonious because you have no way to asses an idea that enjoys no evidence against an idea that observes that design does produce fine tuning. Design is actually better supported.

The evidence is not in question and the evidence provides a basis to speculate about the cause. A first step is to look for events and circumstances that are similar to the evidence in question and then examine the known causes for those events. If known causes are found for similar events then it is indeed inferior to speculate on unknown causes. We know that intelligence is capable of fine tuning parameters and therefore it is not necessary to go on a fishing expedition speculating about unknown causes. No it is not possible to falsify an uncharacterized physical principle because you have no means to indicate how it should or should not behave. You have no yardstick to measure the undefined principle. I have provided two reasons in this response. One is that the first hypothesis is supported by noting that designers fine tune parameters and the second is that one cannot falsify undefined and unknown physical principles.

HI Sarah, If you mean 3 degrees in presumed average surface temperature rise using the IPCC's models, I do so long as you provide a starting basis. I have to wonder why you would want to do this though. The IPCC GCM's numbers are most likely a bunch of hooey. They seem to have a very poor track record as compared to empirical data (except the limited runs they are tuned with) and so the results you get are more likely to be wrong. Is this for a project? Are you attempting to validate their models or numbers? Is it homework?

Wow! Not sure how you came to that conclusion. I had no idea that contingent had more than one meaning as it applies to causal modes. A causal mode can be either contingent (more than one outcome is possible) or fixed (deterministic). Contingent modes can either be random having no end in mind or they can be intentioned, that is be made with an end in mind or purpose. Yes I understand you don't, but it follows from the definition of what something means when we say it is random (no purpose or end in mind) as contrasted with intentional choice which has a purpose. No I don't, as I explained previously. Not correct again as I previously explained. Your description seems intentionally incomplete. No, I am not. You are changing my words when you remove the third fundamental mode of explanation namely intentional choice. It is transparent why you want to remove it. You don't know me and you don't know what I am. There are any number of reasons to argue against you including that you are simply wrong or at least short sighted, or simply don't make good or valid arguments an I am attempting to correct them while holding to your worldview. I may have a worldview distinct from both creationism or yours. I can see that you think it is silly however the vast majority of successful scientist past and present don't hold your worldview. Furthermore the idea that the universe was created is no more contrary to science than the idea that it had a natural cause. Neither idea is at present testable. Indeed. I had a reason to come here. I came here with a purpose. It was a contingent event. I didn't have to linger and participate, I could have moved on, but I made a deliberate plan to do so. Do you often insult people you disagree with? You mischaracterized the issue I raised. First off I do not believe you have denied free will, but I do believe you have improperly described it as a combination of necessity and chance as is clear from your postings. I have asked you to demonstrate that free will can be reduced to these other two modes and you have not been able to do so. It is self evident that free will is unique from necessity (determinism) because we recognize that we have choices, it is unique from random chance because we make choices with purpose while random chance by definition is without purpose.

I have predominately discussed fine tuning as one example of this evidence which you and some others have apriori rejected. I see no reason to add more examples, it would only allow the discussion to become more disjointed. It would be far more reasonable to accept that the universe is fine tuned and fine tuning is an attribute of designed activity though there may be another unknown explanation. Were you and others to do this we could proceed. I do find Cap'n's viewpoint to be a reasonable position that I could accept.

Very small, vanishingly small. So small I don't choose to take the time to demonstrate it to you. If you disagree, perhaps you are willing to take the time to show that it is not very small. If my answer is not satisfactory I apologize for that. Even if you were able to overcome this small number, the number of additional issues that must be addressed including the need for a universe generator and a mechanism to vary the physical constants make this scenario one I am not interested enough to pursue. Maybe another reader will take up this discussion. If it is true we don't know what is required for life, then we have no basis to speculate on this number. On the basis of what we know and can predict, it is one. I don't see that I have made that claim. I do note that the constants are fine tuned for life. I do not claim to know the purpose of a presumed creator. No, abundance of life everywhere is not a necessary conclusion. We can't be so confident of that. We can say it because it is. Whether or not you choose to see intent behind the reality of it is for you to work out. It would depend on the value of Z among other things. We don't have enough data to say. It would only be more reasonable if the degree of variation of the constants allowed to support black holes is less than the variability allowable to support life. I don't see how the quantity of the outcome makes any difference to the evaluation but as a side note there are an estimated 10^36 or so organism that have ever existed on this earth. How many black holes have ever existed?

You will have to demonstrate why making an appeal to an unknown and potentially non-existent physical principle is superior to an inductive argument supported by evidence. If induction does not work pure speculation can't be better. More speculation. It's interesting but you are adding more holes to the counter argument than to the design argument. But the game itself is designed with the purpose to demonstrate a point. The game imports design into it. Surely you realize that it is nearly impossible to prove a negative. In such cases induction is a valid method of making an inference to a best available conclusion. A large part of this inference notes that our uniform experience is that physical laws generate combinations of causal modes that are either necessity (deterministic) or chance. We note that these modes thus far have never mimicked the clear markers of purposed design for example the encoded information present in software systems or the coherent well fitted functional components present in engineered systems, or the fine tuned behavior of multiples of independent variables. Perhaps this will change some day. Perhaps a physical principle will emerge and at that time we will reevaluate the inference.

Ok, I stand corrected. I think it is a fine point and perhaps I could have worded my intent better which was to point out that there is evidence that indicates the universe and life in was the product of intent. The evidence makes use of an exclusionary filter in that relies on the principle of uniformity and thus tentatively rules out natural causes that have not ever been observed to generate the observed characteristic and in that sense inductively implicates design. Indeed. Perhaps we will have to disagree on this point. I see your claims as just so stories as contrasted with factual events. I say this because it requires that we speculate as to what might have happened. It is not supported by realistic experiment. Your example and all examples like it have information smuggled into the system and this smuggled information is the reason the examples work. One of several sources of smuggled information is that design of your example predefines the target (the full size straw) and guarantees that the target will be achieved. It is front loaded with information by a designer, namely you. If evolution works in the fashion of your example,then natural selection is front loaded with information to guarantee a desired outcome. You will need to devise an example that is not front loaded with information or demonstrate that natural processes generate coherent structured information. Yes, The code is independent of the material and structure. Coded systems on neutral carriers are generally considered markers of design. We currently know of no natural processes that generate coherent encoded information. biological systems have an unknown origin. to claim that they are an example of natural process presupposes they were not a product of design and it would be a tautology. there is no need to discuss the balance of your example. Yes, I have looked at a number of evolutionary algorithms and each one of them imports information and design into them. They all are aided by the designer. No, it is fruitless to speculate about the character of a designer at all at this point. It is sufficient to observe the results and note that only design presently accounts for many of the characteristics of this universe and life in it. Discussions of evolution are interesting and there are many elements of it that are only accounted for by invoking design but since evolution first requires life, I need only cite the attributes present in biological systems and absent from inanimate chemical systems to show that the at least life from non-life exhibits characteristics only found in systems known to be designed. Since there is no way to validate this I don't see the utility. Or I could simply note that the universe exhibits characteristics of design and further that its cause transcends the universe and is therefore out of reach to us. So long as the universe contains properties that are found in designed systems and not accounted for by natural processes, it is silly to pretend that we know a creator is not necessary or that making a metaphysical argument favoring one is somehow illogical.

I disagree. Clear markers for designs involve non-repeating patterns of complex and diverse components that are well fitted and where the components involve a high degree of contingency. The configurations and make-up of the configurations are in a very large set of alternated possible configurations. In addition, the actual configuration is coherent and have specific identifiable function that is identifiable and independent of the system itself. While designers also make simpler systems that lack these clear markers, we know of no case where physical principles derive the system I described. Edit: there have been a number of posts that I have not responded to every item. I generally won't if the topic has already been addressed or if the issue is not particularly revealing to the topic or I think it is obviously without merit. If you feel strongly that I failed to address a key point, raise it again.

The hydrogen yes, the oxygen is an oxidizer so no and the nitrogen is endothermic and requires more energy in than one would get out and it produces compounds that are pollutants when oxidized.

Discovery of unknown principles have thus far never accounted for known markers of design (including for example fine tuning). However unknown purposeful agents have (Stonehenge for example). In that sense they are quite different.

What a bunch of nonsense. The wing is functional only because it is the shape it is, and the shape is due to design. the physical principles did not develop a blueprint and then direct that it should be built a particular way. Your argument is laughable, interesting approach though I have to say.

You could use imageshack, but don't bother I think I understand. Now check your formula again. You got the force due to gravity OK and it is vertical thus the use of sin but remind yourself the definition of sin. Is it not opposite over hypotenuse? If so, what does that imply about your formula? It may help to think about the impact of a wire (or rod) holding a force but at an angle. As the vertical angle decreases from 90 to 0 what happens to the required force? Does it increase or decrease? Yes, good! When it is static (in equilibrium) the forces are not zero but are balance so only the net forces (not each force in isolation) acting on each and every item is zero. In the case of the sign, gravity is exerting a downward force and the wire is exerting an equal upward force. Now since the wire is not vertical, the wire, in the process of pulling tension on the sign also pulls outward on the building and thus something must push back on the wire to keep it from collapsing inward toward the building. Thus the rod pushes back putting it into compression and the building pushes on the rod with an equal force to keep it static. So how about those formulas?

Fair enough, I see your point. I stand corrected. If humans are warming the planet, then CO2 is likely the primary input. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The theoretical amount of impact CO2 has on radiant forcing declines exponentially so that after 700 ppm the incremental impact becomes nearly negligible. In order for there to be a catastrophe, the potential for significant impact must exist. Evidence for this potential seems to rest solely on models that appear to be incorrect. I am not worried about a catastrophe.

I assume you mean wire not string and rod not the wire. Not sure where the 82sin40 came from the tension in the wire is a force not a mass. but sin40 does figure into it. No the load in the rod will not be equal to the sign. Also watch your significant digits as you go. Gravity is 9.807 m/s2 not 9.8 and as you continue with the problem you may introduce error by rounding off early. So You seem to be on your way to finding the tension in the wire but your formula needs a little work. Next note that the 40 degree angle creates a horizontal load in the rod. Do you see why? The question tells you the load is a compressive load into the building, do you see that? If so what would be the formula that would result in a static balance of loads?

There is not enough data to go beyond this point. We could continue to argue metaphysically, but I have no interest in that so I stop where the evidence exceeds our current reach. Yes I can see you don't. A designer is favored because we observe things that are fine tuned and note that in every case where the cause is known, design is at the root of it while at the same time we never observe physical principles causing fine tuning. Perhaps this will change one day. For now it is a sound rationale. Again you make a valid point. I agree, but since we have no information about unknown principles we have no way to factor them in.

I don't argue that a creator is a necessity. I have stated there is evidence that the universe and life in it was intentionally created. False. You provided some just so stories supported by a host of assumptions, some of which are wrong. I pointed out a couple errors previously. True that there are references for the presence of research. Not true that the research validates your claims. Correct you did not, and my statement does not require the system to be closed either. Even in an open system entropy requires a source of order (information and molecular entropy both require a source for an increase in order). I do agree that human mathematicians are very adept at beginning with simple systems and transforming them into complex ones. Design is a nice source of entropy. Turing machines are designed. I completely agree that evolution can and does proceed uninhibited when a designer is behind it. Genetic engineers are proving this regularly these days. Take away the designer and you need a different source of information and molecular ordering. If evolution made use of some naturally derived turing machine I would tend to agree with you. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Agreed, but our information ends in our realm so it is fruitless to speculate if the fine tuner was caused or not. Nor do I, however if fine tuning was a result of a simple physical principle, then we should be able to derive examples using physical principles alone of mimicking designed systems. Looking for this example seems like a reasonable thing to do. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Hmm, I am not convinced. Your description is one scenario but by no means the only one. I won't go into the alternatives since examples are easy to find on the web. However I simply note that we don't need to understand the characteristics of the fine tuner or the fine tuners realm to address the evidence we find in our universe. I am silent about the character of it. While an explanation may be helpful I don't see how it is required. Agreed. I don't know if it is safer or not, but I would say that although there is evidence from the nature of the constants to suggest a designer, since physical causes have not yet been ruled out it is not conclusive.

Perhaps you misread or misinterpret it. Not so. while relative ratios of the constants may also produce livable conditions, it can easily be shown mathematically that the number of workable ratios of a fixed number of variables remains an infinitely small number relative to the total combinations. The expression as applied to this situation is intended to mean any form of life we can conceive of given our understanding of biochemistry and chemical properties of similar molecules. Your attempt to dismiss the argument may help you rationalize it away but it is no different that a young earth creationist making an appeal to the supernatural. You would not accept that appeal and you should not accept your own similar appeal. What about them? We cannot evaluate constants that might govern a hypothetical realm external to the universe so it is silly to bring it up. It is sufficient to note that our universe is in fact finely tuned. There is no evidence for an infinite regression and no necessity for one, therefore it is also silly to suggest one except as a metaphysical argument. I don't make any claim about the characteristics of this fine tuner other than the results imply and are evidence for purposeful design. Capt'n did an excellent job of addressing this issue at another level. I don't make any representation that it is an uncaused cause. It is not a necessary requirement. An incorrect and irrelevant analogy.