YOU HAVE AN EITHER OR CHOICE TO MAKE: RANDOM, OR NOT?
VERN BENDER
YOU HAVE AN EITHER OR CHOICE TO MAKE:
EITHER THIS HAPPENED:
This universe is one of many variegated universes, produced by physical processes that randomly scan through (a subset of) the set of possible physics. Eventually, a life-permitting universe was born. We can observe only such universes since only such universes contain observers.
OR, THIS HAPPENED:
There is a transcendent, personal creator of the
Universe. This entity desires to create a universe in
Which other minds will be able to form. Thus, the entity.
Chooses from the set of possibilities that will make a universe that will evolve known- thought intelligent life. The life-permitting parameters are blueprinted into the build-out phase.
FREE TO CHOOSE, THE REST IS UP TO YOU.
The universe shows immense, specified complexity. Human cells speak to intelligent design. The machinery that drives the complexity and the sophistication within each cell cannot evolve from an unguided, random trial-and-error process. The complexity and sophistication of what occurs within a cell dwarfed nearly every feature of society’s advanced technology. The DNA in one human cell holds the information equivalent to roughly 8,000 books. A single cell requires hundreds of thousands of bits of information precisely sequenced in its DNA. An unguided, random, and blind selection process can’t do that in a billion years. Life requires too much information for the explanation of a random cosmic fluke to hold up.
For a system in which gravity is essential, such as the universe, this is a low-entropy state (compared to a high-entropy state of having all matter collapsed into black holes, a state to which the system may eventually evolve).
With gravity, being spread evenly is difficult/rare and therefore low-entropy, and being clumped is easy/common and therefore high-entropy. The universe’s energy was distributed evenly after the big bang, and therefore, with gravity, it was low entropy. The expansion of the universe created an entropy gap. It is not apparent that you can distribute entropy uniformly within an enclosed volume.
