(2024-04-21, 05:30 PM)sbu Wrote: [ -> ]For me, the improbability of RM+NS producing complex systems like human biology doesn't necessarily imply direct evidence for discarnate entities. A plausible naturalistic alternative is the existence of an infinite number of causally distinct universes (distinct from the many-worlds interpretation), each with slightly different initial conditions, possibly due to a true randomness factor. With an infinite number of RM+NS experiments, the emergence of humans (or other forms of biological life) is no longer an unlikely outcome.
Furthermore, a significant portion of mathematics deals with infinities. For example, the exponential function, e, which students learn about in school, is defined as the limit of an infinite series. Calculus, arguably the most important branch of mathematics in engineering, fundamentally involves infinite sums in integrals and limits approaching infinitely small intervals in derivatives. Therefore, the concept of an infinite number of universes does not seem far-fetched to me.
What's the evidence for fresh design work being introduced into biological life?
I don't view science as a political party with which I might disagree. Instead, I see it as a methodology for evaluating evidence supporting various hypotheses—all of which aim to find natural causes. Sometimes the evidence is weak, and sometimes it's strong. Science is inherently self-correcting; over time, outdated hypotheses are discarded and new ones are proposed.
I'm not sure statistical terminology can be used to settle this question as we don't have ways to estimate the posterior probability distribution. But I hope very much for life after death myself. I agree that there's definitely a hope for life after death for a whole range of reasons, the topic of this discussion just being one of them. I assign most weight to the (obvious) existence of consciousness. In a pure naturalistic explanation for the universe there's no known need for consciousness. And yet our own consciousness is the only thing we can ever be sure that exists.
Plausible?
Derived from
https://evolutionnews.org/2022/01/spider...nt-design/:
These are some problems with even your suggested kind of Multiverse, and it's just the beginning:
(1) The Multiverse Destroys Science
It would effectively destroy the ability of scientists to study nature. A short hypothetical example shows why.
Imagine that a team of researchers discovers that 100 percent of an entire town of 10,000 people got cancer within one year — a “cancer cluster.” For the sake of argument, say they determine that the odds of this occurring just by chance are 1 in 10**10,000. Normally, scientists would reason that such low odds establish that chance cannot be the explanation, and that there must be some physical agent causing cancer in the town.
Under multiverse thinking, however, one might as well say, “Imagine there are 10**10,000 universes, and our universe just happened to be the one where this unlikely cancer cluster arose — purely by chance!” Should scientists seek a scientific explanation for the cancer cluster, or should they just invent 10**10,000 universes where this kind of event becomes probable? The multiverse advocate might reply, “Well, you can’t say there aren’t 10**10,000 universes out there, right?” Right — but that’s the point. There’s no way to test the multiverse, and science should not seriously consider untestable theories. Multiverse thinking makes it impossible to rule out chance, which essentially eliminates the basis for drawing scientific conclusions.
(2) Since we cannot observe anything outside our universe, multiverse theories are 100 percent philosophical speculation, not science.
That last point leads to a deeper reason to reject the multiverse hypothesis. Scientific analyses include a requirement that is violated by the multiverse concept: they should be testable. The inability of science to observe anything outside our universe does not seem likely to change anytime soon, or ever.
Uncountable billions of universes — and of galaxies and copies of each of us — accumulate with no possibility of communication between them or of testing their reality.
(3) What is the mechanism that keeps cranking out all of these hypothetical universes, and how did it originate? There is no explanation for the cause of the multiverse.
The theory relies on the assumption that the universes would be different from each other. If there are multiple universes, why wouldn’t many or all of them have the same characteristics?
(4) This is an absolutely massive and ultimate violation of the Occam's Razor principle of parsimony of explanations.