Psychic Experiences in the News, Part 2

 Here is the second in a series of videos I am making about news accounts of ESP,  precognition, out-of-body experiences, prophetic dreams and other paranormal experiences. If you have any difficulty viewing this video, try the link here. 

To see another video as long as this one, with the same type of newspaper clippings, see Part 1 of this video series using the link here. 

Why Accidents Cannot Produce Very Complex and Useful Instruction Information

Darwinist materialism is built upon the idea that accidents of nature can produce dazzling works of biological construction.  In this post I will explain a small part of the reason why this idea is irrational and utterly unbelievable. Part of the reason is that accidents cannot produce very complex instruction information. By very complex instruction information I mean the type of information you would need to construct some complex thing such as a house, a car, a cell or even a large protein molecule with a specific biological function. 

Let us start with a simple case of probability calculation. What is the chance that a random string of five English characters would produce a five-letter word in the English language? To calculate this, you need to answer two questions:

(1) How many random combinations of five English characters would result in a word in the English language?

(2) How many possible five-character strings of letters could you produce from random combinations of characters?

A Google query of "number of five letter words in English" will give you the answer to the first question. The answer is that there are roughly 100,000 to 120,000 five-letter words in the English language. 

The second question can be answered using the mathematical rule that the number of possible combinations of a sequence of characters or digits is roughly equal to the number of possible values in each position of the sequence multiplied by itself a number of times equal to the length of the sequence.  So, for example:

• There are 10 possible digits between 0 and 9, so the total number of possible decimal digit sequences with a length of 5 is roughly equal to 10 multiplied by itself 5 times, which equals 100000. (I say "roughly equal" because the exact number is all the numbers between 10,000 and 99,999, which is 99,000 numbers.) 
• Counting only lowercase letters and digits (a to z and 0 to 9), there are 36 possible characters that can exist in any position in a five-character sequence. The total number of possible five-character character sequences is roughly 36 multiplied by itself five times, which is 60,466,176. 

So what is the chance of a random set of five characters being a word in the English language? The answer is roughly 120,000 divided by 60,466,176, which is 0.00198.  This is roughly about 1 chance in 500. 

Now, imagine we want to calculate the chance of a long series of randomly typed characters producing nothing but words in the English language. To keep things simple, we can calculate this random typing as being a series of five random characters, each followed by a space. If we want to calculate a series of x randomly typed groups of five characters all being words in the English language, we will have to multiply .000198 by itself x times. 

So, for example, the probability of typing 100 consecutive random five-letter sequences and having them all be words in the English language is roughly 1 in 500 (or .000198) to the hundredth power. You can calculate things like this using what is called a large exponents calculator. Using such a calculator, we find that 1 in 500 to the hundredth power is roughly equal to 1 in 10 to the 269th power. 

The large exponents calculator above for some reason prefers to work with integer numbers rather than decimal numbers such as .000198. But since .000198 is very close to 1 in 500, and we are only interested in getting an answer roughly correct, we can simply type 500 in the first input slot above, and remember to divide by 1 the total produced. 

We see that the probability of you typing 100 random five-character sequences and having them all be words in the English language is roughly 1 in ten to the 288th power. This is a number so low that it is prohibitive. Things with this improbability would never occur in the entire history of the universe. 

But what about the probability of you randomly typing 100 random five-character sequences and producing some complex and useful instruction information such as how to build a complex and useful building or invention, or at least one of its parts? Would it be less or greater than the incredibly low probability calculated above? It would surely be very much less, because the calculation above does not even take into account the need to arrange the words in a meaningful order. It is much, much more improbable for randomly generated output to produce a useful instruction sentence such as "use a hammer and nails to hammer together all the wood two-by-fours" than it is is for random words to produce a meaningless but correctly spelled sentence such as "house smart green taste works south quick." So given the previous calculations we are safe in assuming that typing 100 five-character sequences of randomly typed text will produce a useful instruction sentence with a probability very much less than 1 in ten to the 288th power. 

Now, let us consider the instruction information in biology. In biology we have the most gigantic "missing specifications" problem described in detail here. This is because contrary to the false claims that have so often been made, nowhere in DNA or its genes has anyone discovered anything like the instructions needed to build a body or any of its organ systems or any of its organs or any of its cells.  DNA and its genes do not even specify how to build any of the organelles that are the main building components of cells. But we do know that DNA does contain a huge repository of instruction information. The DNA in humans contains more than 20,000 genes. Each of those genes tells how to make a particular polypeptide chain that is the starting point for a particular protein molecule. Such a polypeptide chain is a sequence of amino acids. 

In terms of complexity and functional usefulness, there is a great deal of similarity between a gene and the 100-word instruction sequence I previously imagined.  Simplifying things, I previously imagined 36 possible values at each position in the random sequences I was imagining. For a gene we have a similar situation. A gene specifies a sequence of amino acids, usually hundreds and sometimes thousands. There are twenty amino acids that are used by living thing. Any position in a gene can specify any of twenty amino acids. 

So the math we have with genes is similar to the math previously imagined.  I was previously imagining a sequence of 500 random characters (100 words each consisting of five random characters). The average length of a human gene is a size needed to specify about 450 amino acids. Human protein molecules are in eukaryotic cells, and the scientific paper here says, "Eukaryotic proteins have an average size of 472 aa [amino acids]." And just as the chance of you making a useable English instruction sentence from about 500 random characters is incredibly low (less than 1 chance in 10 to the 288th power), the chance of you getting a useful gene from a random sequence of nucleotide base pairs specifying a random sequence of amino acids is incredibly low. To be functional, a protein molecule half-specified by a gene requires a very special three-dimensional structure, that uses a very hard-to-achieve effect called folding. A functional gene and a corresponding functional protein molecule requires a very special arrangement of amino acids, as special as the arrangement of characters in a functional instruction sentence. 

The fact that protein molecules require very rare and special sequences of amino acids is shown by how sensitive protein molecules are to small changes. Below are some relevant quotes by scientists:

• "It seems clear that even the smallest change in the sequence of amino acids of proteins usually has a deleterious effect on the physiology and metabolism of organisms." -- Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, "The triple helix : gene, organism, and environment," page 123.
• "Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severely that all function is lost." -- Science textbook "Molecular Biology of the Cell."
• "To quantitate protein tolerance to random change, it is vital to understand the probability that a random amino acid replacement will lead to a protein's functional inactivation. We define this probability as the 'x factor.' ...The x factor was found to be 34% ± 6%."  -- 3 scientists, "Protein tolerance to random amino acid change." 
• "Once again we see that proteins are fragile, are often only on the brink of stability." -- Columbia University scientists  Lawrence Chasin and Deborah Mowshowitz, "Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology," Lecture 5.
• "We predict 27–29% of amino acid changing (nonsynonymous) mutations are neutral or nearly neutral (|s|<0.01%), 30–42% are moderately deleterious (0.01%<|s|<1%), and nearly all the remainder are highly deleterious or lethal (|s|>1%).” -- "Assessing the Evolutionary Impact of Amino Acid Mutations in the Human Genome," a scientific paper by 14 scientists. 
• "An analysis of 8,653 proteins based on single mutations (Xavier et al., 2021) shows the following results: ~68% are destabilizing, ~24% are stabilizing, and ~8,0% are neutral mutations...while a similar analysis from the observed free-energy distribution from 328,691 out of 341,860 mutations (Tsuboyama et al., 2023)...indicates that ~71% are destabilizing, ~16% are stabilizing, and ~13% are neutral mutations, respectively." -- scientist Jorge A. Villa, "Analysis of proteins in the light of mutations." 2023.
• "Proteins are intricate, dynamic structures, and small changes in their amino acid sequences can lead to large effects on their folding, stability and dynamics. To facilitate the further development and evaluation of methods to predict these changes, we have developed ThermoMutDB, a manually curated database containing >14,669 experimental data of thermodynamic parameters for wild type and mutant proteins... Two thirds of mutations within the database are destabilising." -- Eight scientists, "ThermoMutDB: a thermodynamic database for missense mutations," 2020. 

Genes contain very complex and useful instruction information. But getting such information by chance is very roughly as improbable as getting useful instruction information from randomly generated text. A gene tells much of what is needed to construct a particular type of complex invention: a protein molecule. A protein molecule is a very special arrangement of hundreds or thousands of amino acids, which have to be just right for that particular type of protein molecule to perform its function.  Human DNA has roughly 20,000 genes, each of which largely tells how to make a different type of complex invention in your body: a particular type of protein molecule with hundreds or thousands of well-arranged parts. The extreme sensitivity and fragility of protein molecules (discussed in the bullet list above) tells us how very special is the required arrangement that must occur in every human gene. 

The likelihood of random mutations producing a novel type of gene that could serve as instructions for how to make a new type of functional protein is roughly the same as the likelihood of 500 randomly typed characters producing a useful and very complex instruction. The chance of both of these things is so very low as to be prohibitive. The chance of some accident or series of accidents producing from scratch either a new useful type of gene or protein or a new useful 100-word instruction is basically zero, so low that we would never expect it to ever happen in the history of the universe. 

From such realities we can derive the very general principle that accidents cannot produce very complex and useful instruction information. This principle matches our intuitions. If someone ever claimed that he spilled a big box of 500 Scrabble letters, and that they fell on the floor and accidentally produced a 100-word complex instruction that was very useful, you would never believe such a tale. 

 But what about all the biologists who tell us that all of the millions of types of genes and millions of types of protein molecules in the animal kingdom are the result of accidents of nature, mere random mutations? They are believing the worst type of nonsense. Believing in such a thing is as illogical as believing that all of the books in a huge public library were written by mere ink splashes, rather than the purposeful intention of authors. 

What happened was that between 1875 and 1925 Darwinism became a sacred dogma of the conformist belief communities that reside in the biology departments of universities. In the next decades scientists discovered how mountainous is the organization and information richness of living things. Biologists discovered around the middle of the 20th century that humans require an information richness and level of hierarchical organization vastly beyond anything they had ever been  imagined. At that time all claims of understanding the origin of species and the origin of humans should have been abandoned. 

But by then biologists had already made Darwin their Jesus or Buddha, and had made Darwin's boasts of explaining biological origins some sacred dogma that was not to be questioned. So the groundless boast that biologists had explained human origins and the origin of other species continued to be taught, just like some religious dogma that continues to be taught even after facts have discredited it. The biologists made it clear they despised the fundamentalists who clung to the idea that mankind was only about 6000 years old. But by clinging to the discredited explanation boasts of Darwinism, such biologists were acting in the same way as such fundamentalists, clinging to a discredited belief tradition rather than updating their  claims to fit the observed facts. 

And what if you somehow had an explanation for the accidental origin of all the genes in the human body, despite all the reasons discussed above for thinking such a thing is impossible? Then you still wouldn't have a tenth of an explanation for how there arose human bodies, because DNA and its genes do not specify how to make human bodies or any organs or any cells or even any of the organelles that are the building components of such cells. And you also would not have an explanation for human minds and their capabilities, because neither genes nor brains explain such capabilities, for reasons discussed at great length in the posts on my site here. 

You might try to  defeat some of the reasoning above by appealing to possibilities such as lower functional thresholds (such as rare types of protein molecules that might be functional in half form).  Such attempts could easily be demolished by a discussion of facts arguing far more strongly in the opposite direction, such as the fact that most types of protein molecules produce no survival benefit or reproduction benefit by themselves, but only are beneficial when they act as team members in biological components of far greater complexity, such as protein complexes requiring many types of proteins to be useful. A proper study of functional thresholds and interdependent components always undermines the explanatory boasts of biologists rather than supporting them. 

Psychic Child Marvels of Yesteryear

 Below are some interesting clips from old newspaper articles, all describing children who seemed to have astonishing paranormal powers. We may start with Eugenie Davis, who around 1922 attracted wide attention in the press:

You can read about her using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045774/1922-02-26/ed-1/seq-74/

Below is another account of Eugenie Davis, from the page here:

At the link below we read of the psychic powers of 10-year-old Beulah Miller:

https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=twh19130301-01.1.2&srpos=33&e=-------en-20--21--txt-txIN-%22psychic+marvel%22---------

Here is the first part of the newspaper story:

Here is the second part of the newspaper story:

Below is another news article about Beulah Miller:

A long article on the psychic powers of Beulah Miller is found in the "Girl of Two Worlds" article on page 110 of the periodical here.  Below are some excerpts:

" In a recent interview Miss Bailey said to the writer:...'Beulah turned her back to me and described books which I picked up, and correctly named other objects I held in my hand. She also stated words I wrote on the blackboard. I’m positive that no information was conveyed to the child by the mother through the ordinary channels of communication.'

My next call was on Dr. Henry W. Hopkins, who was called by Mrs.  Miller during the absence of her regular physician. 'I  had heard that Beulah could see and describe objects apparently invisible to normal vision,' Dr. Hopkins told me, 'and concealing a small pencil in my hand. I asked the little girl if she could tell what I was holding. Beulah raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘P-e-nc-i-1' she said after a few seconds thought, spelling the word slowly, letter by letter. ' I wonder if you can tell me the number of my car?' I then asked, and again in the same slow, methodical way she spelled it—‘One-six-seven-three-R-one' which was correct. She then gave me correctly the number of my other car, then in my garage—‘One-five-eight-one-R-one.' "

The 1909 newspaper account below tells of psychic powers of 13-year-old Bess Comer:

You can read the story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1909-01-31/ed-1/seq-17/

Later in the same year we another report on the same Bess Comer, who by then was 14:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1909-01-30/ed-1/seq-18/

The photo here also refers to Bess Comer:

You can find the article here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1909-01-31/ed-1/seq-18/

Next is a newspaper story of a young boy with telepathic abilities (Jackie Merkle):

You can read the story below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1934-12-13/ed-1/seq-19/

In another story about the same person we have these examples of his telepathic prowess:

You can read the full story below: 

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85053106/1935-03-01/ed-1/seq-3/

A later news story in 1940 refers to the 11-year old Jackie Merkle as a clairvoyant, and notes that a then well-known show business figure (Rudy Vallee) was sponsoring him on a tour of theaters. 

The 1972 news story below tells of a boy whose psychic power seemed to save his mother from death:

You can read the story here:

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A2962767?solr%5Bquery%

The newspaper account below strongly suggests that a young boy had clairvoyant powers that had checked out after examination by many authorities. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93065779/1936-06-08/ed-1/seq-3/#date1=1756&

At the link here, we read of the tragic death of a young child called a psychic. We read this: "The parents of three-year-old Cassandra Wickenden maintain she could make objects move just by looking at them and that she had a ghost for a playmate." 

Theoretical Physicists Are Great at Math, But They Cannot Put Two and Two Together

There's a rather ridiculous custom that prevails in almost all published scientific papers: the custom of trying to present the appearance of a single story and a single set of assertions that all of the authors agree with.  So in 97% of all published scientific papers, you will get a narrative and a series of assertions, without any indication that there is disagreement among the authors about some of the claims.  We virtually never see any "minority report" section in which some of the authors state opinions different from that of the main text of the paper. 

This is very suspicious given that so many scientific papers present dubious causal claims, dubious factual claims, and dubious interpretations of the data that was gathered, and also given that in many fields it is common to have many authors of a paper. So when a paper with quite a few authors makes controversial claims, or makes  claims that do not obviously follow from the reported facts and observations, we should ask: is there really going on some unanimity of thought? Or is it that one author (perhaps the lead author) kind of forces everyone to sign off on his subjective opinions and interpretation? 

Very rarely, a scientific paper will defy this convention, and we will see a paper in which different authors are free to state their own opinions, with different sections of the paper listed as having different authors. So it is in the interesting recent paper "The sounds of science—a symphony for many instruments and voices: part II." The paper includes a very bad section by one author, and a very good section by another author. 

The very bad section is a section 12 entitled "How big is nature, and how much of it can we explore?" by Roland Allen. Allen attempts to sell us the Fake Physics that is multiverse theory. The Multiverse is some idea that there are some gigantic or perhaps infinite number of other universes. Allen refers to a Multiverse classification scheme offered by Max Tegmark. Here are the first three levels of the classification scheme:

Multiverse 1: Just an extension of our universe, and not some other universe with different laws or fundamental constants.  Calling this "Multiverse 1" or "Multiverse Level 1" is therefore misleading. 

Multiverse 2:  A vast number of other universes that each has a different set of physical laws and physical constants. 

Multiverse 3: The madness of Everett's "many worlds" theory, the idea that there are an infinite number of copies in you and every one else, each different, in some infinity of parallel universes.  This is the morally poisonous nonsense of Everettism. 

Allen's attempt to lure you into believing in the multiverse starts with trying to get you to accept Multiverse 1, which isn't actually a multiverse at all, but just a universe like ours, in which we can't see everything with our telescopes. The misleading word trick here is comparable to the misleading word trick by which people are lured into believing in unbelievable dogmas of Darwinism, by using multiple definitions of "evolution."  Here's how that scam works:

Darwinist:  You know one of the definitions of evolution is just "gene pool change over time." Now I'm sure you believe in that, right? It can't be that the human species has exactly the same gene pool it had 5000 years ago, right?

Darwinism resister:  Well, sure I believe in evolution in that tiny sense.

Darwinist: Okay, great, so you've accepted evolution. It's nice to know you believe that all earthly life arose from only random natural processes.

Darwinism resister: No, I didn't say that. 

Darwinist: But you said you believe in evolution, and what I just said is one of the definitions of evolution. 

Darwinism resister: No, I only said I believe in a little microevolution, not some "this explains it all" theory of macroevolution. 

What we have here is a trick of equivocation. The trick involves starting out by using a word in one way, and then switching the definition of the word to mean something different. It's the same kind of nonsensical trickery involved if you get someone to agree that Taylor Swift is a star, and then say, "Okay, I'm glad you agree that Taylor Swift is a massive self-luminous spherical body in outer space." And similar trickery is going on with Allen's appeal to a "Multiverse 1" by which he merely means a universe like ours but bigger than we can see with our telescopes. The "Multiverse 1" of Allen and Tegmark isn't a multiverse at all. 

As for the "Multiverse 3" that Allen wants you to believe it, is is just moral and intellectual madness. It's the completely nutty Fake Physics fiction of an infinite number of parallel universes in which there are infinite copies of you, each different, what is called the Everett "many worlds" theory.  Allen's idea of trying to support this idea is to appeal to a little opinion poll taken at a conference led by multiverse enthusiast Max Tegmark. This is about as convincing as trying to prove the truth of the dogmas of Hindu fundamentalists by referring to a poll taken about belief in such dogmas, in which the people polled are all Hindu fundamentalists. 

You should never have any moral trust in anyone believing in the Everett "many worlds" theory. Since such a person believes there are an infinite number of copies of himself that will have every possible variation of behavior, with each variation repeated an infinite number of times, we should never expect such a person to act morally or honestly. Someone who believes in the Everett "many worlds" theory will tend to be thinking something like, "There's an infinite number of copies of me that act in every possible way, so it doesn't matter how I act; there will still be an infinity of my selves who do right, and an infinity of my selves who do wrong." Never trust your children to the care of persons believing such madness, and never trust such people with your money. And never expect them to speak honestly or fairly in anything they write. 

But one of the authors of the paper does talk straight to us. That person is physicist Jim Baggott. Here are some choice quotes from his section of the paper (Section 11), which begins on page 21:

"Contemporary foundational theoretical physics is largely broken. It offers nothing in which experimentalists can invest any real confidence. Theorists have instead retreated into their own fantasy, increasingly unconcerned with the business of developing theories that connect meaningfully with empirical reality.

About forty years ago particle theorists embarked on a promising journey in search of a fundamental description of matter based on the notion of ‘strings’. Lacking any kind of guidance from empirical facts, forty years later string theory and the M-theory conjecture are hopelessly mired in metaphysics, a direct consequence of over-interpreting a mathematics that looks increasingly likely to have nothing whatsoever to do with physical reality. The theory has given us supersymmetric particles that can’t been found. It has given us hidden dimensions that may be compactified at least 10 [to the 500th power] different ways to yield a universe a bit like our own. And at least for some theoretical physicists who I believe really should know better, it has given us a multiverse – a landscape (or swampland?) of possibilities from which we self-select our universe by virtue of our existence...

I’m pretty sure there was a time in which this kind of metaphysical nonsense would have been rejected out-of-hand, with theorists acknowledging the large neon sign flashing WRONG WAY....Alas, instead we get a strong sense of the extent to which foundational theoretical physics is broken....

In the meantime, popular science periodicals feature an endless stream of multiverse stories, pandering to an audience that may no longer be able to differentiate science from fringe science or pseudo-science. The very credibility of science is under threat, at a time when public trust in science and scientists is needed more than ever."

What biologists and biochemists should be doing (but are not) is giving us straight talk about the implications of what they have found out about how enormous is the purposeful hierarchical organization, information richness and component interdependence throughout large living organisms, and the accidentally unachievable functional thresholds of the systems of such organisms. What physicists should be doing (but are not) is giving us straight talk about the implications of what they have found out about how sensitive our universe is to tiny changes in its laws and fundamental constants.  Here are some relevant quotes:

• "We conclude that a change of more than 0.5 % in the strength of the strong interaction or more than 4 % change in the strength of the Coulomb force would destroy either nearly all C [carbon] or all O [oxygen] in every star. This implies that irrespective of stellar evolution the contribution of each star to the abundance of C or O in the ISM would be negligible. Therefore, for the above cases the creation of carbon-based life in our universe would be strongly disfavoured." -- Oberhummer, Csot, and Schlattl, "Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe."
• "The cosmological constant must be tuned to 120 decimal places and there are also many mysterious ‘coincidences’ involving the physical constants that appear to be necessary for life, or any form of information processing, to exist....Fred Hoyle first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely-tuned resonance in this interaction. Heinz Oberhummer has studied this resonance in detail and showed how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that these must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life."  -- Physicists B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, "Fine-Tuning in Living Systems." 
• "The Standard Model [of physics] is regarded as a highly 'unnatural' theory. Aside from having a large number of different particles and forces, many of which seem surplus to requirement, it is also very precariously balanced. If you change any of the 20+ numbers that have to be put into the theory even a little, you rapidly find yourself living in a universe without atoms. This spooky fine-tuning worries many physicists, leaving the universe looking as though it has been set up in just the right way for life to exist." -- Harry Cliff, particle physicist, in a Scientific American article.
• "If the parameters defining the physics of our universe departed from their present values, the observed rich structure and complexity would not be supported....Thirty-one such dimensionless parameters were identified that specify our universe. Fine-tuning refers to the observation that if any of these numbers took a slightly different value, the qualitative features of our universe would change dramatically. Our large, long-lived universe with a hierarchy of complexity from the sub-atomic to the galactic is the result of particular values of these parameters." -- Jeffrey M. Shainline, physicist (link). 
• "A mere 1 percent offset between the charge of the electron and that of the proton would lead to a catastrophic repulsion....My entire body would dissolve in a massive explosion...The very Earth itself, the planet as a whole, would crack open and fly apart in an annihilating explosion...This is what would happen were the electron's charge to exceed the proton's by 1 percent. The opposite case, in which the proton's charge exceeded the electron's, would lead to the identical situation...How precise must the balance be?...Relatively small things like atoms, people and the like would fly apart if the charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Larger structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." -- Astronomy professor emeritus George Greenstein, "The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos," pages 63-64. 

• "The overall result is that, because multiverse hypotheses do not predict the fine-tuning for this universe any better than a single universe hypothesis, the multiverse hypotheses fail as explanations for cosmic fine-tuning. Conversely, the fine-tuning data does not support the multiverse hypotheses." -- physicist V. Palonen, "Bayesian considerations on the multiverse explanation of cosmic fine-tuning."

• "The evolution of the cosmos is determined by initial conditions (such as the initial rate of expansion and the initial mass of matter), as well as by fifteen or so numbers called physical constants (such as the speed of the light and the mass of the electron). We have by now measured these physical constants with extremely high precision, but we have failed to come up with any theory explaining why they have their particular values. One of the most surprising discoveries of modern cosmology is the realization that the initial conditions and physical constants of the universe had to be adjusted with exquisite precision if they are to allow the emergence of conscious observers. This realization is referred to as the 'anthropic principle'...Change the initial conditions and physical constants ever so slightly, and the universe would be empty and sterile; we would not be around to discuss it. The precision of this fine-tuning is nothing short of stunning. The initial rate of expansion of the universe, to take just one example, had to have been tweaked to a precision comparable to that of an archer trying to land an arrow in a 1-square-centimeter target located on the fringes of the universe, 15 billion light years away!" -- Trinh Xuan Thuan, Professor of Astronomy, University of Virginia, “Chaos and Harmony”  p. 235.

There is an obvious and straightforward conclusion that follows from such findings: that our universe was purposefully designed to have the incredibly rare and  enormously-hard-to-achieve special conditions needed for there to exist creatures with our type of physical organization and physical dependencies.  Reaching a conclusion so obvious is a case of putting two and two together (to use an English expression meaning to reach an obvious conclusion).  But it seems that while our physicists are very good at math, they just can't bring themselves to put two and two together.