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How do dark energy and dark matter relate to ID?

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Dr Sheldon
Rob Sheldon

Rob Sheldon writes, in response to a reader who asked that question that it function as a way of getting rid of the idea of design in nature:

1. Dark Energy. Antithetical to ID, dark energy is a proposed, but completely speculative solution to the question of how the universe can appear to be so finely tuned. By invoking a free parameter that can substitute for a designer, the hope is that the fanciful name, the concept (anti-gravity), the impersonality of it all will discourage anyone from attributing intelligence or design to this fine tuning knob.

2. Dark Matter — the yet-unobserved proposed source of correctly observed gravitational attraction, this could be something as innocuous as comets, black-eyed peas, and sand, or as exotic as heavy neutrinos, super-symmetric sprotons, and primordial black holes. Guess which gets all the press. It’s major claim to fame is that we see its gravitational effects, but we can’t figure out how to put it into the “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis” computer model without messing up the “fine-tuned” solution that physicists have spent 50 years tweaking. This and other sociological reasons account for its popularity in justifying the search for “exotica” in physics.

How do suh concepts affect ID? Nothing directly, but indirectly by providing another character populating this “dark universe” which is the major defense against the ID argument from “fine tuning.”

See also: Rob Sheldon on dark matter as a “superfluid”: Physicists have become so convinced of the reality of exotic particular dark matter that they are willing to build entire castles out of their poker cards.

Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how.

and

The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).

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Comments
1. Dark energy was not proposed to explain fine-tuning, but to explain the data. Specifically, it is required to explain the dimming of distance supernovae with distance. The postulation of dark energy does not *at all* explain fine-tuning in cosmology. “There is no known symmetry to explains why the cosmological constant is either zero or of order the observed dark energy.” (Hall & Nomura, 2008) 2. "could be something as innocuous as comets". It can't be baryonic matter - such as the matter that comets are made - because it would change the pattern of anisotropy in the CMB. "we can’t figure out how to put it into the “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis” computer model without messing up the “fine-tuned” solution that physicists have spent 50 years tweaking" Garbage. Dark matter has nothing whatsoever to do with big bang nucleosynthesis, which only depends on the baryonic matter density: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/BBNS-sm.gif Does no one at uncommondescent know an actual cosmologist?lukebarnes
February 8, 2016
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How do dark energy and dark matter relate to ID?
The pearly gates are made out of dark matter. The loudspeakers playing the music of angels are powered by dark energy. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature.Jim Smith
February 7, 2016
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