Elsewhere An Atheist Snarkily Makes Claims About Those Unexpected Galaxies

SOMEWHERE IN THE POSTS  I did on the debates between Christian apologists such as John Lennox and William Lane Craig with celebrity atheists, mostly those who were legitimate scientists, not so much the philosophers, soc-sy-entists or their allies in the dangerous semi-science-based field of evolutionary-psychology, I said that I didn't put too much stock in the attempts to tie faith in God to the current claims of cosmology because those were liable to change too drastically to make that a secure line of thought in the matter. Neither was it wise for cosmologists to put so much stock into current schemes of cosmology, especially the more theoretical schemes that could likely never be tested through observation.  Though trying to get them to understand why those were a pretty shaky support for atheism was a hopeless task.  Cosmologists are generally pretty bad at debate, that's something I concluded from listening and engaging with them.  Or maybe it's only the atheists among them who are so bad at it.

I will note that when those two capable apologists did that, one a mathematician, the other a rather good philosopher, it was in response to atheist cosmologists using their schemes of cosmology to attack religious faith, so I'm not saying that they were foolish enough to base their faith in the Big Bang or any other of the various cosmological claims, just that some may be foolish enough to do that.

In regard to those unexpected, well-developed galaxies so long ago, I'd wonder if all the bigger, older universe that they might at least temporarily settle on, for a while, would just mean that there was an even bigger bang somewhat earlier than their previous observations led them to confidently assert happened "smaller" and later.  In which case, some of the arguments might survive in some form.  I wonder if, eventually they'll conclude that the farthest back they can see (if they ever see that far) is a good clue as to half the age of the universe.  But who knows?  I'll have gone on past time by the time that happens.  

Or maybe all it will really lead to is a revolution in are the theories of how stars form, how galaxies form.  As with the evolution of life, speciation which has never actually been observed, unless you see how it happened you really can't know if your theories of that are accurate.  I wonder if they may, someday, conclude that there was no one way that it happened instead of the uniform theories about that which are current science, now.

I would wonder what that would do to all those speculations about the improbabilities of our universe being as it is instead of some other, merely theoretical way.  Though I have engaged over those before, I've got my doubts about using those enormous numbers in such debates because I don't really trust them to tell us much since the unobserved alternatives can't be observed or even, really, theorized.

Though the debates that I've entered into about the improbability of the first Earth-based organism forming, metabolizing, reproducing and surviving all of that on the life-unfriendly conditions presumed on the early Earth might be more useful. The assumed probabilities of those specific things happening, in all of there assumed complexity are, I think, far more reliably conjectured on than anything to do with "alternative universes."  If there's anything those newly discovered galaxies tell us, the one universe we have access to is plenty unknown enough to be getting on with.  I think the question of why life spontaneously arising doesn't seem to have happened all the time, now on a far more knowably life-friendly Earth, is far more interesting.

Before getting much farther on, because college-credentialed people get into such a swivet over the topic of evolution,  I should say that I have both areas of agreement on religion with Lennox and Craig as well as huge areas of disagreement with both of them. Before anyone accuses me of sharing all of their evangelical beliefs.* I think both of them believe, as I do, life on Earth evolved and has been evolving for a few billion years, though I certainly have far less faith in the accuracy of the tales of Genesis and some of the later books of, especially, the Old Testament.

One thing I'm pretty certain none of this will tell us whether or not life arose anywhere else in the entire universe or if Earth is the only inhabited planet anywhere.  I've found over the past two decades of engaging with the clever and sciency that when you pose the idea that it may well be that Earth is the one and only place in the universe where life arose, some of the people who have the most violent reaction to that skeptical proposition are materialist-atheist true-believers in scientism, even though science can have absolutely nothing legitimate to say on the topic absent an accurate listing of planets without life and those with, something which if you believe humanity is ever going to have such a listing, you are a credulous silly-billy.  No matter what the TV sci-guys have claimed on that subject.  

I have noted in the past that the wishful thinking in support of his materialist-atheism on his claimed ubiquity of life in the universe by the last generations favorite TV sci-guy, Carl Sagan was totally clueless as to its presumed implications.  He claimed that as soon as contact was made with another life form (perhaps next Thursday morning) that would put the final nail in the coffin of religion.  Alas, I never got to ask him what he would do if he found that the, presumably, smarter and more sci-tech advanced aliens who contacted us (we're certainly not likely to get there) were religious believers would do to his materialist fever-dream in that regard. And that whatever the first such example of "other life" held in that regard would not tell you what the second or n to the xth example would hold on the question of religion.  Ol' Carl was pretty sure that all those ETs would be atheist scientist-mathematicians, just like him and his colleagues. His imagination had its limits.  Maybe I'll get to tease  him about that in the next life.

I have no idea what the new findings of very developed galaxies so near the previously believed creation of the universe are. If they completely overturn Big Bang cosmology, if they force a new physics revolution to account for new evidence, I'm kind of old to go through that.   What I will conclude is that the arrogant beliefs of perhaps soon to be old-hat physicists and, so much more so, cosmologists are that they had anything like a full idea of those things was, as I suspected, somewhat premature.  I would also think they should be taken down a peg or more.  I've never had much faith in the announcements of the impending completion of physics, anyway. I think humanity will reach, perhaps already has reached, the limits of our technical ability to peel the perhaps eternal onion of physical law further down and that the project will always be incomplete. Once we cannot test theories in observation, theoretical physics is a pretty banal and useless religious faith.   I think maybe there are too many theoretical physicists, anyway.  They should be working on applications that will keep us from destroying the environment and getting us all killed.  I have a lot more respect for applied physics than I do theories that can't be verified.  That is if they're not building things that will get us all killed.  Those guys should all be isolated in a mental institution where they can't do any more harm.

As to its implications for religious faith, I don't think its implications can be reliably known by us. Faith is called "faith" for a reason.  It won't tell us why there is something instead of nothing, if there is a reason the universe exists, why it exists, why we exist, how we can know anything of it or any of the other less interesting questions of religion deal with. And I've never been that interested in those questions, either, to tell you the truth, though the idea of a cosmological completion is more satisfying to me than any idea of physical cosmology.  

I'm a lot more interested in all of us having their daily bread, to tell you the truth. The clothes and housing they need, the medical care they need, the truth that they need. I'm a lot more interested in the welfare of our fellow living creatures, the environment we must have to live.  I'm a lot more interested in where we're going on Earth than galaxies so many billions of years in the past, to tell you the truth.  There's nothing much I can do about them. And, frankly, I'm a lot more interested in our possible future life, what we can believe about that.  I'm a lot more interested in what near-death-experiencers tell us about their experience though that can never really be known by anyone but those who have those experiences, in that regard. I'd like some real and rigorous investigation of apparent mediumship, though I don't think science would be the most effective means of doing that, methods of legal evidence, the kind of evidence that rigorous history uses would probably be better at that.   I don't think science can tell us much of anything that can remain  legitimate science in that regard, it's not simple enough for science to tell us much about it.  

I'm a lot more interested in how the Prophets had their incredible insights into the real world, those being sufficiently counter-intuitive as to make them really remarkable, their consequences so often becoming so real in reality. If I can avoid having one of the scary, hellish ones I'd really like to avoid that.  Or at least try to. I suspect that The Law and The Gospels are more relevant to that problem than anything cosmologists can tell us.

* Even though, as an Irish Catholic+ believer, my orientation is far from evangelical Protestantism, I don't necessarily disrespect all evangelicals. Many sects, one God. I certainly think the Christianity of The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. Jimmy Carter, and so many others is both sincere and faithful to the Gospel.  Despite what Pew research, the American free-press, Republican-fascists would like everyone to believe, there are "white evangelicals" who voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, who would probably vote for AOC and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, are very egalitarian, very progressive and admirable figures, living lives of charity and service and self-sacrifice.  I certainly honor that as I only wish there were more Irish Catholics who could match them in that. Some I wish I could or had.  I don't know much more about Craig and Lennox than I've heard from them on video debates and reading some of what they've said, for all I know they, despite my religious differences with them, are as admirable in their activities as President Carter has been. I'm a works and faith Christian, I can't say as I am convinced by the claims of faith without the acts of works.  I think Martin Luther (the originator of Protestantism) was all wet in his claims about that, I think it is one of the worst ideas that a Christian theologian ever had. Yet I admire many Lutherans at the same time.