[escepticos] RV: update.424. DOES GOD EXIST?

["Pedro J. Hernández" <phgt@...>]

----- Mensaje original -----
De: AIP listserver <physnews en aip.org>
Para: <physnews-mailing en aip.org>
Enviado: martes 20 de abril de 1999 18:39
Asunto: update.424


>
> PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
> The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
> Number 424 April 20, 1999   by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
>
> DOES GOD EXIST?  This age-old question was the subject of an
> AAAS-sponsored symposium in Washington, DC last week.
> Actually, to accommodate a very ecumenical council of scientists
> (mostly physicists) and religious thinkers, the session organizers
> framed the debate in terms of three tactful "cosmic questions" (one
> for each day of the meeting): Did the universe have a beginning?
> Was the universe designed? Are we alone? The colloquy reached
> its dramatic climax in the matchup between John Polkinghorne of
> Cambridge and Steven Weinberg of Texas.  Their collision of
> views was reminiscent of the famous Oxford debate of 1860
> (sponsored by the British Association for the Advancement of
> Science) between biologist Thomas Huxley, staunch defender of
> the-then new theory of evolution, and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce,
> who argued that the notion of human descent from the apes was
> absurd. One thing, at least, has changed in 129 years. Nowadays
> most clerics are comfortable with the terminology and methods of
> modern cosmology.  Indeed,  Polkinghorne is (like Wilberforce) an
> Anglican minister and (like Weinberg) a particle physicist.
> Nevertheless, the surface compatibility of science and religion
> could not cover up the sense that the essence of the AAAS meeting
> lay in the atheism/theism dichotomy as exemplified by Weinberg
> and Polkinghorne respectively.  Addressing the issue of a designed
> universe, Weinberg asked about the designer: Who would he be?
> What is his nature?  Why are miracles no longer performed?  "The
> evidence for miracles is weaker than for cold fusion," he said.
> Polkinghorne asserted that the idea of a cosmic designer was an
> unanswerable metaphysical question; metaphysics, he continued,
> could be constrained but not determined by science.  Weinberg
> countered by suggesting that recent cosmological models (e.g.,
> "eternal inflation") and certain interpretations of quantum
> mechanics (e.g., the "many-universes" hypothesis) demonstrated
> that physics, and not just metaphysics, might one day assimilate all
> of the above-named cosmic questions.  Polkinghorne listed things
> that reductionist science could not account for---beauty, art, and
> ethics. "Consciousness is an intrinsic sign of a creator," he said. In
> defense of a designer-less universe, Weinberg cited a possible
> connection between the human disposition for beauty and the
> seeming symmetries of nature as manifested in the laws of physics.
> (For the full meeting agenda see this website:
> http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/events/cosmo/cosmic.htm.)
>
> AN EXTENDED EXTRASOLAR PLANETARY SYSTEM, a star
> orbited by three satellites, has been mapped by two separate teams
> of astronomers, one using the Lick Observatory in California
> (http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~gmarcy/planetsearch
> /upsand/upsand.html) and one using Harvard-Smithsonian's
> Whipple Observatory in Arizona.  The innermost planet circling
> the star Upsilon Andromedae (44 light years from Earth) had been
> known previously but the discovery of its two siblings is new.  The
> presence of the planets is inferred from irregularities in the star's
> light emission.  The masses for the three planets (working
> outwards, 0.75, 2, and 4 Jupiter masses) and the orbital radii (0.06,
> 0.83, and 2.5 times the Earth-Sun distance) are puzzling since
> according to some theories a Jupiter-sized planet (much less three
> of them) should not have formed so close to a star.  (The two
> groups of astronomers have submitted their findings to the
> Astrophysical Journal.)
>

Pedro J. Hernández
phgt en correo.rcanaria.es
**La web de Pedro J**
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