Lol, I remember Susskind being asked by another fairly well known physicists about whether the book title would provide support to religious morons who believe in intelligent design (not exact wording). Needless to say not only does Susskind not respect you, he would be horrified at somebody like you quote mining him with such a poor understanding of anything relevant to the topic. If you were smarter you would not be making any of this arguments. Sorry, but when you are going to be so stupid and so dishonest, there isn't anything hope for you to understand any of this.

Anyway, for everybody else, the phrase "appearance of design" is only meant in the same way that the Earth appears to be designed. But once you look even a little bit closer it seems obvious that it almost certainly wasn't designed and is exactly what you would expect a planet with intelligent life to look like if it was anthropically selected from a large number of planets in a large number of solar systems. Even religious morons don't claim that the Earth likely was specially designed anymore and nobody that understands the basic features of the standard model claims it about the universe.

“Physically, we may think that again in the very remote future, the universe “forgets” time in the sense that there is no way to build a clock with just conformally invariant material. This is related to the fact that massless particles, in relativity theory, do not experience any passage of time. We might even say that to a massless particle, “eternity is no big deal.” So the future boundary, to such an entity, is just like anywhere else. With conformal invariance both in the remote future and at the Big Bang origin, we can try to argue that the two situations are physically identical, so the remote future of one phase of the universe becomes the Big Bang of the next. This suggestion is my “outrageous” conformal cyclic cosmology.” - Roger Penrose


Roger Penrose: Conformal Cyclic Cosmology: Ideas and Current Observational Status

Video Lectures:
http://www.cosmolearning.com/courses...tional-status/

One more thing, when when Stu made up the "slow trend away from atheism" for cosmologists I said that was maximally false. What I meant was the same arguments for design have been around for 40 years, pretty much as soon as the standard model was put into place. The recent trend in cosmology is the landscape idea, when it was discovered that the cosmological constant is not 0 but just some random low number that doesn't seem to have any significance. Nothing in the past 30 years has made design more likely. So if anything, the trend would be away from a designed universe amongst cosmologists.

Funny to repeatedly see you and other theists spew this same garbage over and over again. The atheist response is "I don't know." Why is that so hard for you to grasp? Find me one quote of an atheist on this site saying that and i'll ship you $50 on ftp...

Another valid, although blurry, response would be what some people might call "luck". There's a reason why it is called "luck". I'm sure not everyone knows what it is, but that's another matter.

The usual theist response is the nonsensical one in the lines of:

LOL...very funny...

But I'se proved I has a baseball yesterday...

Stu, why do you continue to assert utter crap about a subject that you know absolutely nothing about?

Excuse me?


That's how some trolls work. It's like the monkeys with the typewriters but they ignore the feedback and critical questions that are posed to them, because, well, they are monkeys.

Lol, this is priceless coming from you.

Yes, we have talked about this. You still do not understand what fine tuning is. Large degrees of fine tuning are not evidence of design. I would expect designed universes to have a cosmological constant of exactly 0, which would (presumably) require 0 fine tuning. It is baffling to think that the designer fine tuned the cosmological constant to an incredibly small but non zero value as it seems to serve no purpose if creating intelligent beings was the goal of the designer.

Or that the multiverse is so large that intellect was guaranteed to exist somewhere at sometime unless it was impossible

You are flat out wrong Max. Here is a video were Susskind comes right out and says God is a valid explaination of the universe. He presents a list of explainations for the fine-tuned universe and explaination number 1 he gives is "God"

http://www.closertotruth.com/video-p...-Susskind-/431

Now the explaination Susskind puts his money on is explaination number 3. Susskind isn't a theist but he certianly does hold the position that the appearance of the universe is consistent with one created by a god.

You should stop posting in this thread Max, your making a fool of yourself.

Max, seriously dude....work on your reading comprehension. We are not talking about life and consciousness. We are talking about intellect and consciousness. You are making an assumption that intellect and consciousness require biological life to exist. I am certainly not prepared to accept such an unfounded assumption.

We already went over this. This is no different than saying "Hey, look at the ocean. If we changed a few of the variables around that effect the ocean, say temperature, liquid water would not exist. If liquid water didn't exist, no fish would exist. But the temperature is the way it is, so the ocean looks remarkably designed for the existence of fish!"

Do you not understand why the environment in which a life form evolves is ALWAYS going to look "designed" for it? We already went over this, but once again, you show an uncanny ability to not learn and to continue being ignorant.

Psychrophiles are commonly described as microorganisms which exhibit a growth temperature optimum of 15°C and lower.

Why does evolution exist? If the universe looks designed to allow evolution you cannot claim evolution simply evolved that way. That would be stupid.....still I wouldn't put it past you though.

Like I said before its silly to talk about oceans and fishes when the question is why does the universe have this property whereby it continually takes matter and energy and organizes it into more and more complex structures. Why isn't it a just some unchanging singularity or a diffuse expanse of energy?

It's a natural process on Earth. Your god, in a shocking turn of events, is still not required for any part of it.

If it were there probably wouldn't be anybody here to discuss it. Once again, you show you do not understand that life forms are naturally suited to the environment in which they happen to be in. Humans evolved to suit whatever the parameters of the universe were to begin with. The parameters of the universe were not set for humans. Humans came along as a result of the parameters.

You have no evidence whatsoever that shows that the parameters of the universe were set specifically for the existence of intellect. You only have the fact that intellect, in some very small pocket of the observable universe, evolved as a result of the parameters. The parameters and the physics of the universe are what they are; you are trying to anthropomorphize them and attribute meaning to them when we have no evidence that they are meaningful or "set that way" or "designed" - all we know is that they simply are what they are, they are simply the parameters which we find ourselves in. No different than a fish finding itself in the parameters and conditions of the ocean and trying to convince itself that a loving god must have created the whole universe so that it could exist in the utmost egotistical fashion.

It is perhaps arguable, but it is hardly 'unfounded'.

Also, there is more bacteria inside 1 human body than there are people on Earth. It would seem far more correct, given this fact, to say the the universe is "perfectly suited for the existence of single-celled organisms and bacteria" than it would be to say it is "perfectly suited for the existence intellect and consciousness". But of course, realizing or learning about such a fact doesn't satisfy your egotistical, self-centered agenda - so you will most likely simply ignore it and continue trying to quote-mine and anomaly-mine all the scientists who disagree with you and act like that is just great.

This has literally nothing to do with what I said. The appearance of the universe is "consistent" with one created by a god because everything that happens (and even things that don't happen) are consistent with god. Recent trends in cosmology are very puzzling if the universe is designed. I assume the reason who haven't responded to any of the actual physics points is because you don't understand them. I never read or look at any of your links by the way.

Lol, you know that you are one of the least respected posters here, right?

In this video Susskind agrees with you but he says they are doing it only begrudgingly. He seems to imply that cosmologists are realizing naturalism is failing them.

http://www.closertotruth.com/video-p...-Susskind-/442

You can put intellect and consciousness in my sentence and it is still true. Both of those things will likely only exist in this universe for close to 0% of the time as there is not any known time when the universe is going to end.

Again, I never read or click on any of your links.

Wait, Stu said it's probable that it will be at least a googleplex years. You mean he didn't have any actual evidence or science behind that comment?

In other news, water is wet and bears **** in the woods