Precision in Nature: Evidence of God or Accidents?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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ALTER2EGO -to- EVERYONE:

For the average person, precision indicates that an intelligent person guided the outcome. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, the word “precision” is defined as follows:

“the quality of being precise; exactness, accuracy”

The reverse of precision is imprecision/inaccuracy/inexactness, which is always the result of an accident or a spontaneous event that happens by chance with no one guiding the outcome. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines an accident as:

“a nonessential event that HAPPENS BY CHANCE and has undesirable or unfortunate results.” (Source: Websters New Collegiate Dictionary)

Notice that an accident, by definition, is something unplanned aka it “happened by chance.” Notice the similarity of the definition for “spontaneous” (as in “spontaneous event”).

DEFINITION OF “SPONTANEOUS”:
“Spontaneous means unplanned or done on impulse.”
yourdictionary.com/spontaneous

AGRUMENT #1 FOR AN INTELLIGENT CREATOR:

Scientific evidence shows there is extreme precision in everything around us in the natural world. This precision renders the evolution theory and Big Bang theory mere fiction, because both theories rely on accidents or spontaneous events. Precision leaves no room for error or for accidental events. Rather, precision requires deliberation.

Take, for example, the first 60 elements that were discovered on the Periodic Table of the Elements of planet earth. Some of those 60 elements are gases and are therefore invisible to the human eye. The atoms–from which the Earth’s elements are made–are specifically related to one another. In turn, the elements–e.g. arsenic, bismuth, chromium, gold, krypton–reflect a distinct, natural numeral order based upon the structure of their atoms. This is a proven LAW.

The precision in the order of the elements made it possible for scientists such as Mendeleyev, Ramsey, Moseley, and Bohr to theorize the existence of unknown elements and their characteristics. These elements were later discovered, just as predicted. Because of the distinct numerical order of the elements, the word LAW is applied to the Periodic Table of the Elements. (Sources: (1) The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, (2) “Periodic Law,” from Encyclopdia Britannica, Vol. VII, p. 878, copyright 1978, (3) The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography)

SIDE NOTE: Laws found in nature, as defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary, are:

“a sequence of events that have been observed to occur with UNVARYING UNIFORMITY under the same conditions.”

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. Were it not for the precise relationship among the first 60 discovered elements on the Periodic Table, would scientists have been able to accurately predict the existence of forms of matter that at the time were unknown?

2. Could the precise law within the first 60 discovered elements (on the Periodic Table) have resulted by chance aka spontaneously aka by accident? Or is this evidence for the existence an intelligent Designer/God who guided the outcome?

3. Evolution and Big Bang theories both rely upon things happening by chance aka at random. If evolution or Big Bang were credible explanations for the existence of life on earth or the existence of millions of planets in the heavens, how do either theory account for the Periodic Table of the Elements of planet earth in which the first 60 discovered elements are so precise, and so interrelated with one another, that the Periodic Table has been assigned the word “LAW”?

“That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalms 83:18)

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I don’t think there’s any way of really answering your question with certainty. But I don’t see anything that makes me feel like I have to infer the existence of a god. I don’t usually postulate things I can’t verify until I’ve run out of explanation, and even then, I usually just stop before postulating things that I can’t verify just to make my argument seem like it works.

It’s like I’m looking at a river and I see the rocks and the water and the sand and so on, then I say to myself, “I don’t get how all this works”. I don’t see the bridge between that statement and the statement, “It must be this way because of a god”. I mean it’s just an unnecessary jump, and on top of that, it stifles any chance I have at ever understanding nature, because I cease reasoning when I accept this unverified premise. Cessation of reason upon acceptance of unverified assertions is just bad. If there was a god, I don’t think he’d want us to do that.

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Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.
~Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), comment on the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics, 1927

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
~Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944), Space, Time, and Gravitation, 1920

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ALTER2EGO -to- SMEARS:

I asked three specific questions in my OP that are based upon a scientific fact known as Periodic Law. You show up telling me the above. If I were to ask you if the computer you are using is the result of accidents or spontaneous events, you would have no problem answering in the negative. In fact, you would insist that the computer required the intervention of an intelligent being (in this instance, a human).

The routine of skeptics is to jump through hoops to avoid acknowledging that our fine-tuned universe could not have created itself.

Nuff said.

“That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalms 83:18)

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As to whether the precise nature of physical laws implies a god, I think it does not. I think it only implies that there is a precise nature to things, and that going beyond that is to make a jump that isn’t necessary or warranted by any evidence.

I think that precision can happen by chance. Don’t you? Is it possible that we just came up with precise mathematics and then made these precise distinctions between these elements based on physical, quantifiable, observable differences in them? I think so.

I don’t think that the universe happening by chance, and the assignment of the word “law” to the physical elements is related at all, so I can’t really respond to your 3rd question. I mean…just because we don’t know where the elements were all in relation to one another at some alleged, “beginning of the universe”, doesn’t mean that we can’t weigh and measure observable physical elements that are in front of us, and there’s nothing stopping us from using a very precise measurement. The connection between that precision and a deity just seems like a stretch at best.

I’m also not saying that the universe started itself. I’m just saying that if you’re saying you know how it started, then I’m asking how you know that.

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I think all you have done is prove that you believe the universe is intelligently designed. There are of course ways of providing no fine tuning at all, if the universe is eternal and goes through many cycles of itself over and over again, then inevitably a universe being “fine tuned” will eventually turn up by chance. On the other hand their could be infinite universes side by side, in which case a universe with fine tuning is certain to exist just as one is certain to exist given enough time in the previous case.

It’s not that anyone doubts an intelligent designer, it’s of course a possibility, sadly though it is one of many, infinitely many with no distinguishing features to show which possible existence is true.

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Precision is everywhere, yes.
There’s no getting through to any hard core materialist-naturalist though.

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I’m not a hardcore materialist or naturalist. I don’t even think there’s a universally accepted definition for either of those…if so, it’s not a precise one.

I just have problems with making big jumps from one premise to a conclusion without any logic in between so to speak.

No matter what it is that you’re observing, when you decide to explain it with things you cannot observe, then you subject your reasoning to the scrutiny that should accompany the kind of reasoning you’re doing. Explaining things you can see by reference to things you can’t see removes you from the warm and cozy credibility of empiricism.

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[size=120]ALTER2EGO -to- SMEARS:

Notice in your above comment that all you gave me is what you think aka your personal opinion. I presented a scientific argument in my OP, and you come with “I think.” Where did you get the idea that your personal philosophy can overcome scientific evidence?

In paragraph 2 of your above comment, you said precision can occur by chance (accident or spontaneously). Prove it, please. Do so by presenting examples of precision in man-made creations–and it had to have happened by accident each and every time within the very same set of events.

I will watch for your examples along that line.[/size]

“That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalms 83:18)

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[size=120]ALTER2EGO -to- HELAND HIGHWATER:

If there are ways of proving the universe is not fine-tuned, without a doubt you will be able to prove it for us. Feel free to begin anytime by quoting credible scientific sources.[/size]

“That people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalms 83:18)