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Saturday, July 9, 2011

THE MATHEMATICALLY PRECISE UNIVERSE

Do we live in it? Is it evidence for God's existence? Christian apologists would have u think so. I've been insanely busy the last few weeks, so I apologize for the time between posts(not that posting more often would make you close your porn anyway). The fact is, no, we don't live in a M.P.U., and it's obvious. The Christian argument goes that our planet is clearly designed specifically for humans to live on. If we were any farther from the sun, earth would be a frozen wasteland like Hoth in Star Wars. Any closer, and no life could survive the high temperatures. Likewise, our gravity and oxygen perfectly balanced for us to live.
   So do we or do we not live in a mathematically precise universe?  No.
Here's why.

For one thing, the argument above forgets that we evolved to survive on this rock. If the gravity or atmosphere were a little different, then life would be a little different. And the fact that this planet is perfectly positioned for life is less impressive when we consider the infinite planets in our universe. There are billions upon billions of them, and some that we've seen via the Hubble Telescope are Earth-like in atmosphere and gravity. And even if this argument had weight, it's still labeled wrong.

Every second, asteroids slam into planets and moons or each other, stars go super-nova, quasars form, and entire solar systems are sucked into massive black holes. Even galaxies collide from time to time, in great cosmic cataclysms that make the apocalypse described in the bible look even weaker, punier and insignificant than it already is. The music of the spheres is chaos.

 What's precise about that?

3 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure no other planets have been found with Earth-like atmospheres. Free oxygen is chemically reactive and would not remain permanently in an atmosphere unless it were being constantly produced by some process like photosynthesis, so an atmosphere rich in free oxygen would be strong evidence of an ecosystem with photosynthesizing plants, something which would have rocked the world of science if it had been found.

    The religionists' claim is still absurd, though. Complex life probably does require an unusual and precise set of conditions to evolve, but with billions of galaxies and billions of stars per galaxy, it's not surprising that such a "freak case" did in fact occur at least once (our own planet).

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  2. For one thing, the argument above forgets that we evolved to survive on this rock. If the gravity or atmosphere were a little different, then life would be a little different.

    Right, but as far as we know, it hasn't evolved on any of the other planets in our solar system - much as I hate to cede any ground to them.

    Of course, this doesn't provide evidence for the veracity of their obscene death cult.

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  3. Thanks for the feedback. Also, when I said that the argument was labeled wrong, I meant that if anything, we live in a precise solar system, not a mathematically precise *universe*.

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