1. Oystein Elgaroy - the Christian defender who became an Atheist

Comment #195325 by Loke on June 18, 2008 at 4:23 am

Comment #195316 by Mr. Forrest

I sympathize with your view. If you have to choose a god, you should pick one you can get drunk with.

But if anyone can tell me how to change my screenname, I will change it to my real name. I had tried the control panel, but it didn't seem to allow me to change it.

2. Oystein Elgaroy - the Christian defender who became an Atheist

Comment #195306 by Loke on June 18, 2008 at 3:42 am

Again, thanks for all the encouraging remarks. When I agreed to do an interview with "Fri tanke" I had no idea that the story would reach beyond a relatively small circle of Norwegian atheists and agnostics. I agreed to do the interview because I had previously appeared as an example of a religious scientist on some occasions, and therefore thought I should let the few people who had noticed know that I have come to my senses.

I cannot possibly justify spending time on answering all of "clearthinker"'s remarks. But since I am a cosmologist, I would like to make a few comments about the so-called fine tuning argument. First of all, a universe containing "bubbles" with different values of fundamental constants is a natural outcome of many variants of inflation, a period of rapid expansion in the very early Universe. Speculative as inflation may be, it has some empirical support since it gives a very elegant way of generating the density fluctuations that later became galaxies, stars, and us. The form of these primordial fluctuations can be inferred from observations and turn out to be in excellent agreement with the predictions of inflation. It is far too early to say that inflation is as well established as the rest of the Big Bang model, but it is equally wrong to say that it is an untestable theory, or lacking empirical support.

Even ignoring that aspect, I must say that the fine-tuning argument for the existence of a cosmic fine tuner is a bad argument. If you accept the premisses, then you are basically saying that God left the emergence of intelligent life entirely to chance and natural processes. But then you would think that he would at least have tuned the parameters of the Universe to maximize the probability for the evolution of intelligent life. In that case, he did a bad job with our Universe. He could for example have tuned the vacuum energy to zero, or assigned the neutrino a vanishing rest mass, and the result would have been a Universe where galaxies, stars and planets would form more easily than in our Universe. The parameters of our Universe are, in other words, not optimal for the emergence of life.

The Universe looks just like it would if it was the result of entirely natural processes. If there is a god who wants us to believe in him, he has certainly not made it easy.

3. Oystein Elgaroy - the Christian defender who became an Atheist

Comment #195211 by Loke on June 17, 2008 at 11:01 pm

Hi everyone,

I am the astrophysicist in the article above, and I would just like to say that I have enjoyed reading the comments here (especially the one by Cartomancer about my looks. I am painfully aware of it, and whenever I need an argument against ID I just look in the mirror).

From the interview it seems that McGrath (or Hitchens) deserves the credit for my conversion to reason. That is only partly true. It was the result of a long period of reading and thinking. One of the things I found the most difficult was the emotional aspect. Having been raised as a Christian, I felt like I was betraying my family by giving up my faith. I think I might not be the only one to have this experience.

Oystein

4. Does science make belief in God obsolete?

Comment #170113 by Loke on April 27, 2008 at 11:52 am

What I always find puzzling is the constant talk about God somehow contriving to exist outside space and time as a non-material being as in, e.g., Keith Ward's piece. What the hell does it mean to exist outside space and time? If theists can't give some kind of explanation of what it means, what is the difference between saying that God created and fine-tuned the Universe and saying that these things have no explanation?

5. Happy Birthday Josh Timonen!

Comment #118815 by Loke on January 31, 2008 at 2:52 am

Happy Birthday, Josh! Thanks for a great website!

6. Dawkins is third most prolific internet Briton

Comment #117688 by Loke on January 29, 2008 at 11:35 am

Congratulations to professor Dawkins and all the good people who make this site possible.
But what the hell is Simon Le Bon doing on this list?