"Monkeys and Athiests"

[jegs2]

From this article:

In his book God and the Astronomers, Jastrow tells of his surprise when so many fellow astronomers refused to accept the Big Bang hypothesis for the origins of the universe. In fact, Jastrow writes, many astronomers were actually unhappy about it. Why? Because the Big Bang implied a beginning to the universe, and a beginning implies a Creator, something many scientists passionately reject.

This led Jastrow to the sobering conclusion that many scientists have vested, non-scientific interests in some of their beliefs, especially the non-existence of God. For some psychological or emotional reasons, not intellectual ones, many scientists prefer to believe that given enough monkeys, one will type out a psalm.

Comments?

[SyntaxVorlon]

Well at a glance, some circular logic and mistake in presumption.

The idea behind the "rejection" of god is part of the impartiality used in obtaining and analyzing evidence to come up with an unbiased and roughly correct conclusion.

This Astronomer Jastrow has not read up on his history.
The BBT came about when most scientists were pretty much happy with the Steady State theory. During that time the only ones saying that the universe had begun were the creationists who were weaning off and slowly receding into obscurity. The BBT also had a beginning to the universe, one that, though secular, held the common idea of a beginning with creationism.

[Darth Wong]

In his book God and the Astronomers, Jastrow tells of his surprise when so many fellow astronomers refused to accept the Big Bang hypothesis for the origins of the universe. In fact, Jastrow writes, many astronomers were actually unhappy about it. Why? Because the Big Bang implied a beginning to the universe, and a beginning implies a Creator, something many scientists passionately reject.

Many Christian scientists try relentlessly to impugn the intellectual honesty of their non-Christian fellows. This behaviour is churlish and dishonest; there is no serious opposition to Big Bang theory among astronomers, and I would defy anyone to find any significant group of astronomers that voices this mythical opposition.

Moreover, it is a leap in logic to believe that a universe with a beginning implies a Creator. The universe was its own beginning.

This led Jastrow to the sobering conclusion that many scientists have vested, non-scientific interests in some of their beliefs, especially the non-existence of God.

This Jastrow character is full of shit. Please find me these astronomers who oppose Big Bang theory.

For some psychological or emotional reasons, not intellectual ones, many scientists prefer to believe that given enough monkeys, one will type out a psalm.

For some psychological or emotional reasons, not intellectual ones, many people prefer to believe that a pile of jumbled letters was not random. They assign predestination to a chaotic universe because they always assumed it was there.

[Joe]

Read the whole column; it's an amalgam of strawman attacks, elaborate non sequitur reasoning, and gigantic false analogies atop a mountain of bullshit. I almost doubled over laughing when I read about how some bullshit experiment with monkeys and typewriters was a "vindication" for the creationist strawman view of evolution.

[darthdavid]

According to news reports, instructors at Plymouth University put six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys in a room with a computer and keyboards for four weeks. Though one of the monkeys frequently typed the letter "s", the other monkeys ignored the keyboard, preferring to play with one another and with the ropes and toys placed there. When they did pay attention to the keyboard, one smashed it with a stone and the others repeatedly urinated and defecated on it.

ROFLMAO

According to the science correspondent of Britain's Guardian newspaper, "assuming each monkey typed a steady 120 characters a minute (itself a preposterous assumption), mathematicians have calculated it would take 10 to the 813th power (10 followed by 813 zeros) monkeys about five years to knock out a decent version of Shakespeare's Sonnet 3 . . . "

Again ROFLMAO

[Drewcifer]

...the atheist belief that with enough time and enough solar systems, you'll get you, me, and Bach's cello suites.

Sometimes that idea reminds me of a fish trying to describe its own bowl. There probably are 100 million solar systems out there with earth like planets full of unicellular life bumping around, less with higher forms of life, and the rare with sentient life. I mean, if the universe hadn't worked out the way it had, we wouldn't be here discussing this.

The belief that Bach's music randomly evolved from a paramecium...

That has always bothered me too. It seems utterly incredible that the Grand Canyon was formed by primarily two ingredients: water, and a lot of time (from our perspective). But it did. It didn't just show up after a big storm.

[kojikun]

Bachs cello suite isnt anything fantastic. Lets say its has 1000 individual notes, on a 32 note scale (for a nice round number). If each note is represented in binary, you need only 5 bits to represent each note. So thats 5000 bits for the suite. Thats a total possible number of combinations of 2^5000 or about 1.4E1505 combinations.

Now lets listen to some radio static. If you figure the radiostatic you see on a staticy BW television has 300*400 = 120,000 pixels, each with a greyscale value, perhaps 100 different shades of grey, so thats 120,000^100 = 8.3E707 possible states in a single BW TV image. Typical TVs run at about 30 frames per second, so add another power of 30 to that end result and you get 1.5E21238. Thats oh.. 14 powers greater then the number of possible random combinations required to get bachs cello suite.

Now, granted, my math is pure garbage as i cant do statistics well, but its still pretty close to reality that random combinations can spit out anything you can imagine.

[Drewcifer]

Bachs cello suite isnt anything fantastic.

HEATHEN!

...random combinations can spit out anything you can imagine.

I'll let you know when my TV spits out some Bach on it's own

[kojikun]

Plug it up to a convertor, lets hear some Tchaikovsky.

Actually, that would be a really fucking cool experiment -- hook up a radio dish to recieve random static, then convert the static to audio, using multiple length bits. We could start a fad!

[Wicked Pilot]

Comments?

I know it's probably not intentional, but it is spelled A*T*H*E*I*S*T.

[RedImperator]

My first name shows up in Pi in binary somewhere in the first billion digits. I think that's all the proof you need that the universe was, in fact, created specifically for me.

[Superman]

Another logically challenged piss-poor excuse for an argument.

Because the Big Bang implied a beginning to the universe, and a beginning implies a Creator, something many scientists passionately reject.

Bullshit, bullshit bullshit. This is a red herring here and a quite a leap in logic. Why does a beginning imply a creator? This statement is not explained (surprise)...

The rest is circular garbage.

[Crown]

Because the Big Bang implied a beginning to the universe, and a beginning implies a Creator, something many scientists passionately reject.

Well actually, the correct ending to that sentence would be;

Because the Big Bang implied a beiginning to the universe, and a beginning implies an end.

[Superman]

Crown, I agree. What is it with these logically challenged creationists? Don't they ever learn?

[Rye]

...the atheist belief that with enough time and enough solar systems, you'll get you, me, and Bach's cello suites.

Sometimes that idea reminds me of a fish trying to describe its own bowl. There probably are 100 million solar systems out there with earth like planets full of unicellular life bumping around, less with higher forms of life, and the rare with sentient life. I mean, if the universe hadn't worked out the way it had, we wouldn't be here discussing this.

The belief that Bach's music randomly evolved from a paramecium...

That has always bothered me too. It seems utterly incredible that the Grand Canyon was formed by primarily two ingredients: water, and a lot of time (from our perspective). But it did. It didn't just show up after a big storm.

What i wanna know is why "intelligent life" is always thought of as "unlikely". I mean, there's bound to be life somewhere that started out a few million years before it did on our planet, why should we think of intelligence as something completely unlikely?

If it worked for us, i'm sure it would've worked for other planets too.

Good point about the time thing too, even if we see paley's watch horrific example, if there was a world that had whatever circumstances for a watch to be natural, given time, one would occur naturally, just like with the grand canyon, carrots...or whatever.

[NapoleonGH]

But the begining of the universe does NOT imply an end at all, why need there be an end if there is a begining?

The universe in our most current model has no actual end, it just continues indefinitely expanding, sure all the matter and energy will be not accessable, but the universe and time will still exist

[Drewcifer]

What i wanna know is why "intelligent life" is always thought of as "unlikely". I mean, there's bound to be life somewhere that started out a few million years before it did on our planet, why should we think of intelligence as something completely unlikely?

To start, IMO, of the millions of species on Earth, only a handful can be considered intelligent, and only one has evolved past the daily grind of survival.

THen factor in that the proper conditions for carbon based life had a lot to do with water and air (oxygen), and it appears (so far) that there aren't very many planets out there that are snugly inbetween freezing and boiling with 'breathable' atmospheres.

If it worked for us, i'm sure it would've worked for other planets too.

Remember that it may have already worked elsewhere. There very well could have been a Galatic Empire here in the Milky Way that died out 500 million years ago or even one right now in Andromeda. The scales of time and distance in the universe are beyond our comprehension.

For that matter, there could have been a species of semi-intelligent dinosaur that was using wood tools, building huts, and telling stories and we'd never know it

-----

Back to the article, it seems to be saying that random chance can't be responsible for human beings, but there are many factors missing: again, it's a big universe, and we may just be the only example of intelligent life, or life, period. Or we could be one of many; it's a big universe, and we're still learning to understand it.

Time is another factor many of the creationist arguements seem to not understand. A billion years is a very long time. For that matter, 12,000 years ago, North Dakota was under a mile of ice. A few million years back and Nebraska was at the bottom of giant shallow sea.

[Durandal]

I've never met an astronomer who opposes big bang theory. The only real dispute amongst astronomers is about the particular details that laypeople simply could not hope to understand.

Monkeys with typewriters cannot be compared to the universe's evolution, because the universe's evolution is guided by the laws of physics. Monkeys with typewriters have no such guide compelling them to take certain courses of action.

[Wicked Pilot]

I've never met an astronomer who opposes big bang theory. The only real dispute amongst astronomers is about the particular details that laypeople simply could not hope to understand.

The article is probably refering to when the Big Bang model was first proposed. Many scientist at that time where holding to the steady state model and were extremely opposed to Lemaitre's new theory. Einstein was one of them. He was a firm believer in the Newtonian idea of an infinite unchanging universe. He was convinced that there was some law of physics that would prevent any overall expansion or contraction. To this end, he added an extra term to his equations, the "cosmoligical constant" which was a weakly repulsive force to counteract the inward pull of gravity. But eventually with Hubble's data and a meeting with Lemaitre in California, Einstein announced that he just heard "the most beautiful and satisfying interperation I have ever listened to" and went on to say that the "cosmological constant" was "the biggest blunder" of his life. Science triumphed.


Many decades later, with the discovery from the Hubble space telescope, it appears that the universe's expansion is accelerating, and there may be in fact a "cosmological constant." Einstein strikes back.