Dad gave me a book that he wanted me to read called "Questions of Truth". The author is a man by the name of John Polkinghorne, a British particle physicist. We agreed to read the book together, starting with the foreword and introduction.
Starting with the foreword, it appears as if right off the bat the book is being set up as an argument from authority, although I understand that the purpose is to introduce the author, so that doesn't really bother me that much. I do of course recognize that Polkinghorne is a lot smarter than me in the fields of mathematics and physics. What I want to make clear, however, is this: the fact that a person is smart in math and physics does not necessarily make them an authority on the existence of God and the supernatural. A claim should stand on its own merit, not the merit of those who state the claim.
The foreword author makes a comparison between the un-intuitiveness of quantum mechanics as well as that of the supernatural. He proposes that we should be prepared accept that "the deepest aspects of our existence go beyond our common-sense intuition". While I agree with this statement, I don't agree with the context in which this statement is used. What he's trying to convey here is that because the ideas behind quantum physics are at times non-intuitive, we should also be open to accepting claims of the supernatural. I disagree with this because even though some aspects of quantum mechanics seem non-intuitive, its principles still adhere to the scientific method, while claims of the supernatural are usually not held subject to scientific inquiry.
After reading the first two paragraphs of the introduction, I can see that I'm going to have a difficult time taking Polkinghorne very seriously.
Planets on which any intelligent life-form resembling humans would be likely to evolve would probably have a blue sky, so in an important sense the sky is blue because we are here to observe it.This is, as I've explained before, is a textbook example the anthropic principle, which I believe to be a complete logical fallacy. This basically says that the existence of human beings constrains the properties of the universe.
I have no problem agreeing that the earth is the only environment (that we know of) in which we are able to survive. The reason for this, as science has shown, is because humans evolved as a product of their environment, not the other way around. That is, the environment was not created as a product of humans. This is a classic "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy, or "affirming the consequent", which asserts that if one event happens after another, then the first must be the cause of the second.
On the other hand, consider this: If the entire universe is created "just for us", why would an intelligent being design 99.9999...% of the universe to be incompatible with human life? Leia Mais…
