If we found Earth's missing twin, would we regret it?
For Your Consideration
The Demi-God Hypothesis: The traditional definition of God comes from St. Anselm: 'that which nothing greater can be conceived.' However, I believe a new definition of God is in order -- one that accommodates the notion that God can be less than perfect -- and one that can be applied to teleological arguments. Metaphysical propositions referring to an 'intelligent designer' (as opposed to St. Anselm's definition) are not cognitively meaningless; a 'cosmological programmer' falls within the realm of scientific conceivability. The supposed death knell offered by logical positivists to all arguments that refer to God offered is thus thwarted as the universe becomes increasingly understood as a finely tuned entity. Moreover, as mathematical/Platonic realism makes a comeback (probably inspired by such things as information theory and quantum computational theory), it becomes increasingly plausible that all we observe may be contrived by a higher-order being. Now don't get me wrong -- I do not subscribe to intelligent design theories. The burden of proof still lies with them; just because something looks 'finely tuned' doesn't mean that it was consciously designed to be finely tuned. The universe appears that way because if it were any other way, we would not be here to observe it. But essentially, my argument is this: the design argument remains a valid argument so long as it attempts to prove the existence of just that: a designer...an more
Say What?
Quantum physics confuses me terribly. Does the Many Worlds Interpretation suggest that existence is merely about probabilities? If so, how does one assess probabilities in reference to infinite possibilities? Help... [I love this quote from Richard Feynman: "It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem [with quantum mechanics]. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm sure there's no real problem."
