COSMIC FINE TUNING....
"what banged and why?!"

There are four fundamental laws of physics
which determine the nature of the universe.
They are gravity, electromagnetism, and the
weak and strong nuclear forces.

All these factors (any of which could have
absolutely any value) are, in reality, so care-
fully balanced that the mathematics is
unbelievable. It has been likened to someone
firing an arrow from one side of the universe to
the other and hitting the bull's eye. Or put
another way the odds are conservatively estimated
to be 10 to the power of 55 [that's a 10 with 55
zeroes after it]. If any of those fundamental
values were not exactly balanced as they are by
each other we would not have an ordered, habitable
universe. A slight variation one way or another in
any of the four laws and the universe is a titanic
'black-hole', and a minor tweak the other way, the
universe is a diffuse cloud of gas - with no stars
or planets. Another twist; you can have stars and
planets but no Carbon [and hence no complex organic
molecules]. The universe we observe is exactly as
it should be to sustain intelligent life.

The standard objection to these observations is
that if it didn't exist, as is, we wouldn't be here
to discuss it. This misses the point entirely - it
is like the man put up before a firing squad to be
executed. Against all the odds the soldiers miss.
After the event someone comments that he has had a
lucky escape! Or could it be that the squad had
been bribed, were they drunk, had the rifles been
sabotaged, or was there some other logical explan-
ation? "None of these", says the prisoner, "because
if they hadn't missed I wouldn't be here to discuss
it". One would rightly conclude that the man was
being rather obtuse to put it mildly. There is a
legitimate existential question here.

The usual response is to bring up the 'lottery
analogy'. Of course the odds in favour of any
given winner winning in the lottery are vanishingly
small, but the odds that there will be a winner are
actually very good. Again, this misses the point
entirely. There aren't trillions and trillions of
players in this cosmic lottery. There is only one
and its our 55 figure number which came up. Again,
let me repeat, there is a legitimate existential
question which - despite our best efforts - cannot
be avoided.




tagline; Calendar of Doom. Anthropic Principle.
Cosmic Fine Tuning. Cosmic Precision Tuning.
Cosmological Argument. Goldilocks Enigma.

63rd (Royal Naval) Division.

Ninety years ago exactly on Monday 13th November 1916 the Royal Naval Division launched an attack on Beaucourt near Beaumont Hamel in the closing phase of The Battle of the Somme which had raged from 1st July of that year. I recently discovered that it was on this date that my grandfather was wounded. He would survive the First World War but not before being wounded for a second time.

My grandfather died when I was a teenager and apart from some self-deprecating anecdotes rarely spoke of the war. A chance remark by my sister, that Grandad had a naval rank and the fact that I had coincidentally read something about the RND made me wonder if that was the unit he was with. The Naval Division was one of the most distinguished fighting units of the British army in the First World War!

The army records of The Great War were largely destroyed during The Blitz in 1940 but the documents of the Royal Navy have survived - and it was among these records at The National Archive on-line that I learnt about my Grandad's war. None of us had appreciated that he was in the RND!

I already knew enough about The Royal Naval Division to recognise that this was an elite fighting unit formed in 1914 at the outbreak of the war for amphibious operations. So I was surprised to learn that this was the outfit my grandfather had volunteered for. The RND was the brainchild of Winston Churchill who was then First Lord of the Admiralty - how could any unit created by him not be elite? Among its more famous members were Rupert Brooke,
the war poet, who died en route to Gallipoli. Arthur Asquith, son of the then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, was a battalion commander. Bernard Freyburg would be a future Governor
General of New Zealand.

In fact the RND was fighting on the Turkish coast in late 1915 when Grandad volunteered. If he was hoping for an exotic posting it wasn't to be. The RND was withdrawn from Gallipoli early the next year and sent to France which is where grandad first saw action. Command of the RND switched from the Admiralty to the War Office (i.e. army) in April 1916 and was redesignated the '63rd (Royal Naval) Division'. Despite now being officially part of the British army the division insisted on continuing to use naval ranks, fly the White Ensign, salute navy style and speak naval slang, even though they were deep inside the french countryside on the Western Front. I imagine any elite fighting force will seek to retain its distinctive character. This did not win it any fans among certain army types who sought to stamp out these idiosyncracies.....and failed. The RND was said to be the only force to have fought both the German army and the British army!

My grandfather [my mother's father] was an all round sportsman; he played football (soccer) and was a fine cricketer. He won a battalion boxing competition cup - which my aunt still owns (we suspect that it was actually a looted chalice!) He had a passionate love of the Yorkshire Dales and would frequently go walking there. The cricketing gene has since passed to my cousins [watch for the name Jonathan Tattersall in the coming years!] But the walking gene passed to me! I love the Dales too.

Grandad's division was in action throughout the Somme Offensive of 1916. In the UK we largely remember this battle for its disastrous first day when British and Commonwealth forces suffered their worst losses ever. We forget that the offensive lasted several months and lessons about the nature of modern warfare were drawn. One of the final actions of the Somme campaign was the attack on the German stronghold of Beaumont Hamel. It was on the opening day of this attack that my Grandad was wounded and evacuated to the 1st Canadian Hospital at Etaples and then back to England. The RND suffered major casualties in heavy fighting over the next few days.

An interesting aside; during the night of 13th/14th one of the RND's junior officers went AWOL. He was later tried and shot for desertion; one of only two British officers shot for cowardice in the whole of the First World War.

From his record it looks like my Grandad spent 2-3 months in hospital and then had a quiet 1917 working as an instructor around various bases in England, he was probably still recuperating from his injuries. He was promoted to Leading Seaman - and then got busted - twice! Family memory has it that he got involved in a fight; I imagine his protagonist came off the worst.

In March 1918 the Germans launched their massive Spring offensive. Using all the troops freed up from the Russian front after the Communist revolutionary government made a separate peace; it was Germany's last best chance of winning the war before the Americans could intervene effectively. Incidentally it was on the 23rd March 1918 that my father's elder brother Jim was killed aged 19 - he has no known grave.

To stem the German advance reinforcements were sent to France - including my repromoted grandfather. As best as I can judge it from the history of his battalion it looks as if he went back to virtually the same area he had fought in in 1916! It must have been enormously painful to find oneself fighting desperate rearguard actions across the Somme battlefield which had been bought at such a high cost only two years earlier. He was wounded again, but returned to the front a few weeks later. The British army managed to hold the Germans and then in the Summer of 1918 the allied armies began their 'Advance to Victory'.

During one action involving my grandfather's battalion at this time his immediate commander won the Victoria Cross.

There was a ceasefire on 11th November. The Royal Naval Division was disbanded in 1919 and my Grandad returned home. The RND had suffered over four times its original number in casualties - a dreadful attrition rate even by First World War standards. He died in 1971 in
his late seventies. On my grandad's file under 'distinguishing marks' a tattoo is noted - my grandfather's initials [not an uncommon practice even today for elite forces to have such tattoos to aid identification in the event of their death]. But family memory recalls a tattoo
commemorating his lost comrades. I suspect that the original mark was tattooed over and incorporated into the more recent one after the war. Grandad rarely spoke of the war - perhaps it felt unseemly to glory in events that proved so costly to so many families, including those who had died at their hands. My impression is that that generation had a tacit contract with itself never to talk about such things - perhaps their memories were too painful to address or maybe
they simply felt no-one could understand unless they too had been there. Or it could simply be a refusal to allow those few years to effectively define who one is, Grandad's life was bigger than "war" and maybe that was why it had been fought.

EDWARD O WILSON; Lies,
Damned Lies and Statistics.

November 2006's thought from my agnostic calendar is;
"No statistical proofs exist that prayer reduces illness and
mortality, except perhaps through a psychogenic enhancement
of the immune system; if it were otherwise the whole world
would pray continuously". Edward O Wilson.

I'm intrigued to discover what exotic statistics Wilson is demanding
which can be used to demonstrate 'contingent knowledge' (how life
might have turned out in other circumstances). How can Wilson assert
that prayer has no effect on a statistical basis? How do you know that
I wouldn't still be laid up with back pain? How do you know that I
wouldn't have had a heart attack last year or died in a car crash aged
19 but for someone's prayer?

I'm also intrigued to discover why Wilson has assumed that Christians
claim to be exempt from the common experiences of Mankind. I am
aware of no such assurance in the Bible - quite the contrary. If statistics
prove anything it is that Christians are not above the sufferings of Humanity.
Quelle surprise.

I'm intrigued too why Wilson assumes that prayer is exclusively about
physical healing of a 'name it and claim it' variety when all the Christians
I know would say that prayer is about conversing with God and not
neccesarily about getting stuff. In the words of Robert Law "prayer is
not an instrument for getting man's will done in heaven, but for getting
God's will done on earth". Wilson - it seems to me - has a formulaic
and one dimensional understanding of prayer, one that I would argue is
sub-Christian. I assume, for reasons that are unclear, that Wilson has
excluded from the equation the more usual phenomenon of prayer by
Christians offered in support of those health care professionals who are
there to care for their loved ones using their God given talents. And
Wilson has also excluded the phenomena Christians call "common grace"
where God blesses the unbeliever because he cares for all his creatures.

I'm baffled, but if the charge is that the bloated claims of some tele-
evangelists are to be laid [sotto voce] at my door, I can assure you that
I am sceptical about their claims too, but for a wholly different reason:
miracles in the New Testament are not miracles for miracles sake - they
are 'identifiers'. The miracles point the observer to precedents and
promises in the Old Testament and help them understand who the miracle
worker is. In the New Testament miracles are not mere padding within the
narrative - in reality they contain meaning beyond the event itself. Miracles
attest the revelation brought by the messenger. "Could this be the Christ?",
"who is this, that even wind and sea obey him?", "that you [all] may know
that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.....[he said to the
paralytic] pick up you bed and go home." etc etc etc. You have to test these
things against the claims they make for themselves not by Wilson's skewed
standard - 'supernatural healing on demand' - something Jesus never
promised because that was never the primary function of his ministry. I
should add that even when Jesus and his apostles did perform miracles this
did not automatically result in saving faith, the message of even the authent
-icated messenger could and frequently was rejected. Jesus went so far as to
say that some people will not "be convinced [even] if someone should rise
from the dead" Luke 16v19-31. Biblically speaking the real miracle is that
anyone comes to saving faith in Jesus at all..........and actually this is more
important than mere physical wellbeing.

So what test then can we apply which is congruent with Christ's claims?
It is a remarkable fact that within thirty years of Jesus' three year ministry the
message of the Gospel had spread from a tiny band of followers on the
Roman periphery to all around the empire. They had a sizeable community in
Rome itself - sufficiently large to be worth persecuting by the Emperor Nero
and strong enough to survive. The promise is not that Christians are exempt
from difficulties but that God's grace is sufficient to help us through them. If
you want statistical evidence of a miracle look at the growth of the apostolic
church and its survival - and its continuing survival today despite physical
persecution and intellectual ridicule.





tagline: calendar of doom.


Postscript: Quite coincidentally the November 2006 edition of
"The Briefing" [issue 338] majors on the whole 'health & prosperity'
gospel and offers a critique of it from a Christian perspective.
http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/
http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/