BookTalk.org - View topic - Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle


	HOME	FORUMS	BOOKS	LINKS	DONATE	ADVERTISE	CONTACT

View unanswered posts | View active topics

It is currently Fri May 24, 2013 4:10 pm

Forum rules

Please click here to view the forum rules

Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle Tweet This Topic

Page 1 of 1

[ 4 posts ]

Print view

Previous topic | Next topic

Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle

Author	Message
Chris OConnor BookTalk.org Hall of Fame Joined: May 2002 Posts: 13055 Location: Florida Thanks: 1286 Thanked: 546 times in 430 posts Gender: Country:	Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle Please use this thread for discussing Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle.
Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:40 pm

Dexter

BookTalk.org Moderator

Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 1029
Thanks: 120
Thanked: 384 times in 277 posts
Gender: Male

Re: Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle

I may be jumping ahead too quickly, but I had to post this quote from p. 164:

"That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine-tuning. It is a consequence of the no-boundary condition as well as many other theories of modern cosmology."

From what I've read already, it seems that some informed critics would say it was in fact invented for that very reason. Of course he leaves the reasoning vague here. And where are the references? I know this is a layman's book and I probably wouldn't understand them anyway, but come on, put something in the end notes.

The following user would like to thank Dexter for this post:
Interbane

Mon Nov 01, 2010 5:20 pm


Jim Watters Experienced Joined: Jul 2010 Posts: 102 Location: Tampa, FL Thanks: 28 Thanked: 21 times in 14 posts Gender: Country:	Re: Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle I think he means to say that due to there being no boundary conditions on the Universe, i.e. there are no set "ends" or "edges", that the initial conditions allow multiple solutions, and in this case, multiple universes, according to the mathematics of General Relativity (and quantum mechanics?). But this would be a good question for Leonard or Stephen when we submit our questions for them to answer.
Tue Nov 02, 2010 3:09 pm

Dexter

BookTalk.org Moderator

Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 1029
Thanks: 120
Thanked: 384 times in 277 posts
Gender: Male

Re: Ch. 7 - The Apparent Miracle

I came across this very critical review


	Quote: So there you have it. Hawking has explained literally everything, with only the minor assumptions that there exist 10^500 universes that are unobservable even in principle, that the supersymmetric model of particle physics is correct despite the fact that there's never been the slightest experimental evidence for it, the correctness of string theory/M-theory for which evidence is arguably not even possible, and a set of metaphysical assumptions which would strike Timothy Leary himself as ludicrously dippy. You can grant those assumptions if you want, but don't kid yourself that you're doing science.

http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/20 ... n+Facts%29

Sun Dec 05, 2010 8:40 pm

Page 1 of 1

[ 4 posts ]

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

BookTalk.org Links

• Forum Rules & Tips
• Frequently Asked Questions
• BBCode Explained
• Info for Authors & Publishers
• Featured Book Suggestions
• Author Interview Transcripts
• Be a Book Discussion Leader!

Love to talk about books but don't have time for our book discussion forums? For casual book talk join us on Facebook.

Advertise Here

Random Pages

Amazon.com Widgets

BookTalk.org is a free book discussion group or online reading group or book club. We read and talk about both fiction and non-fiction books as a group. We host live author chats where booktalk members can interact with and interview authors. We give away free books to our members in book giveaway contests. Our booktalks are open to everybody who enjoys talking about books. Our book forums include book reviews, author interviews and book resources for readers and book lovers. Discussing books is our passion. We're a literature forum, or reading forum. Register a free book club account today! Suggest nonfiction and fiction books. Authors and publishers are welcome to advertise their books or ask for an author chat or author interview.

Navigation

MAIN NAVIGATION

HOME • FORUMS • BOOKS • TRANSCRIPTS • OLD FORUMS • ADVERTISE • LINKS • FAQ • DONATE • TERMS OF USE • PRIVACY POLICY

BOOK FORUMS FOR ALL BOOKS WE HAVE DISCUSSED

• The Magic of Reality - by Richard Dawkins • Dubliners - by James Joyce • My Name Is Red - by Orhan Pamuk • The World Until Yesterday - by Jared Diamond • The Man Who Was Thursday - by by G. K. Chesterton • The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker • Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad • The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand • Thinking, Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman • The Righteous Mind - by Jonathan Haidt • World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks • Moby Dick: or, the Whale by Herman Melville • A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan • Lost Memory of Skin: A Novel by Russell Banks • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn • Hobbes: Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes • The House of the Spirits - by Isabel Allende • Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens • The Falls: A Novel (P.S.) by Joyce Carol Oates • Christ in Egypt by D.M. Murdock • The Glass Bead Game: A Novel by Hermann Hesse • A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins • The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell • The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain • The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris • The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio • The Road by Cormac McCarthy • The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking • The Evolution of God by Robert Wright • The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass • Good Omens by Neil Gaiman • Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami • ALONE: Orphaned on the Ocean by Richard Logan & Tere Duperrault Fassbender • Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes • Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks • Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol • The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin • The Genius of the Beast by Howard Bloom • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll • Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner • The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins • Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman • The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins • When Good Thinking Goes Bad by Todd C. Riniolo • House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski • American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman • Primates and Philosophers by Frans de Waal • The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde • God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens • The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco • Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama • Paradise Lost by John Milton • Bad Money by Kevin Phillips • The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett • Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists by Dan Barker • The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien • The Limits of Power by Andrew Bacevich • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov • Orlando by Virginia Woolf • On Being Certain by Robert A. Burton • 50 reasons people give for believing in a god by Guy P. Harrison • Walden: Or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau • Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus • Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal • Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin • No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy • The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby • Ten Theories of Human Nature by Leslie Stevenson & David Haberman • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad • The Stuff of Thought by Stephen Pinker • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini • The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo • Responsibility and Judgment by Hannah Arendt • Interventions by Noam Chomsky • Godless in America by George A. Ricker • Religious Expression and the American Constitution by Franklyn S. Haiman • Deep Economy by Phil McKibben • The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins • The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond • The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo • Evolution vs. Creationism by Eugenie C. Scott • The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan • I, Claudius by Robert Graves • Breaking The Spell by Daniel C. Dennett • A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin • The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger • The End of Faith by Sam Harris • Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon • Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe by Erik J. Wielenberg • The March by E. L Doctorow • The Ethical Brain by Michael Gazzaniga • Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby • Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond • The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong • The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson • What is Good? by A. C. Grayling • Civilization and Its Enemies by Lee Harris • Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan • How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God by Michael Shermer • Looking for Spinoza by Antonio Damasio • Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken • The Red Queen by Matt Ridley • The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker • Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins • Atheism: A Reader edited by S.T. Joshi • Global Brain by Howard Bloom • The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom • Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond • The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan • Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown • Future Shock by Alvin Toffler

OTHER PAGES WORTH EXPLORING Banned Book List • Our Amazon.com Sales • Massimo Pigliucci Rationally Speaking • Online Reading Group • Top 10 Atheism Books • FACTS Book Selections