Umm, that is the definition of argument from ignorance. Fallacy.

You ask for evidence and when it's given to you all you can do is call people liars and give opinionated hot air that sounds like a whale farting.

In spite of your empty accusations and name-calling everything I've given is indeed the status quo of modern science. You can easily check it out via just some basic education.

In order for this universe to be happenstance you need to have faith in a whole lot of unprovable imagined things. Like infintiely many failed universes that have never been observed.

In fact, given the conclusions of the Human Genome Project even that explanation won't work because they have conclusded that all life on earth had to have started from a single happenstance event. But, because of the time-lines of how life evolved on planet Earth even that would deny happenstance because that extremely rare event would have had to occur instantly at the very first moment that conditions were right. But that flies in the face of happenstance.

Of course they could be wrong. They are only jumping to their conclusion because all life on Earth shares the first 25% of DNA sequences. So they are assuming that this means that they all started from a single cell. However, that could be a wrong assumption. It could be that anytime DNA gets started it always has to unfold in a partciular way up to a certain point before it can diverge from that primal program. If that's the case, then life may have actually started in many different places on Earth and the only reason things appear to be 'related' is because they are indeed related by the simple fact that they all began with DNA (not necessarily from the same DNA cell though).

I'm sure this is all going right over your head, but someday when you become educated about these things and quit calling people liars, you'll see what I'm saying.

To be perfectly honest with you I'm not interested in your petty ego wars. For me, this isn't about ego and calling people liars. It's about a serious question of the nature of life. If you are so emotionally invested in the conclusion of a happenstance universe that you are ready to call people liars when they present evidence to the contrary, then I don't understand why you even bothered to ask for evidence to the contrary. What sense does that make?

You seem to go off the emotion cliff calling people liars everytime someone offers any evidence that the universe is not happenstance. That's totally uncalled for. If you have evidence to the contrary just present it. Not need to take a temper tantrum about it and start calling people liars. Talk about an emotional attachment to preconcieved notions.



On no, Jeannie, finding life on another planet would indeed be extremely enlightening. It would answer the Human Genome question immediately. If we discover life on another planet and find that it too has the same starting DNA sequence that we have, then we'd be faced with one of two possiblities:

1. Either DNA always starts self-programming in precisely the same way with the same 'boot sequence'.

Or

2. Someone went around 'seeding' the universe with the same primal cells.

Personally I would opt for #1 as the more likely scenario in that situation. However, either one of these would be profound.

Now if the conclusion of the Human Genome Project is true, and all life on earth did indeed start from a single cell, then we'd expect to find life on other planets to be totally different from life on earth with absolutley no common DNA sequences at all.

So this is a very profound question that scienists would love to know the answer to. It would tell us just how rare life truly is in the universe. If all life in the universe is similar to life on earth and DNA evolves into life rather quickly (but always starting out with the same initial program, then this universe may very well be teaming with life (and potentially with mammals, primates, and even hominids not all that dislimiar to us).

On the other hand if DNA starts out totally chaotic, then the probability of finding other mammals and primates in the universe that even remotely resemble us would be pretty much zilch.

So these are extremely important questions.

My guess is that DNA may very well be forced to start off in a certain sequence in order to become a self-programming program. It's only that one special "boot sequence" that was originally "programmed" into the creation of the universe that allows life to evolve.

Of course that's just a conjecture on my part. But how many different DNA sequences would automatically produce a self-programming program?

Anyone who knows anything about digital computing (or mathematics for that matter) knows that there are infinitely many random combinations of meaningless numbers and only very few specific sequences of numbers that could seed such meaningful programs.

So from my perspective, the answer to this question is extremely interesting. And some day we may actually discover the answer. In fact, we might even be able to discover it from the Genome Project itself as it unfolds. We're learning more and more about how the DNA program works. Eventaully we'll get to the point of finding it's "Boot-up" sequence.

Once we are able to read that, then we will be able to see what the boot-up sequence requires, and where it's headed. Because that boot-up sequence will be the very programming code that tells what to do NEXT.

DNA as a self-programming molecule necessarily must have a 'boot-up' sequence. It was the random combination of that particular sequence that was the 'happenstance event' that started evolution going. The only point I've made is that the very atoms that make up that DNA were not "happenstance". (i.e. the boot sequence and programming capabilities of DNA were not "happenstance". It was designed to self-program.

Some intelligence programmed the "boot sequence" of DNA molecules right into the structure of the atoms. And there may even be more than one possible boot sequence which would be extremely interesting. But precisely what they are, and how many there are, is yet to be discovered.

These are fascinating questions that have answers whether the universe is happenstance or design. It doesn't matter either way. DNA still necessarily must have a "boot sequence" that works. That's necessarily true whether it's by design or happenstance. So these are important questions either way.

Dicovering that boot sequence will truly be exciting. The Human Genome project will indeed discover it eventaully. So only time will tell on that one. Unfortunately I doubt that they'll discover it within my lifetime, so I won't be around to hear the breaking news. But it will indeed be a scientific thriller. Of that I'm certain.

I am suggesting that all life exists within a unified field that is a mind.

What is mind?

Of course we could get into endless personal arguments over the semantics of the word. However, just for the sake of argument, if we allow mind to simply be that which can retain and express structured information, then we'd have no choice but to conclude that the quantum field is indeed mind by that definition.

It clearly retains and expresses very specific structured information.

Moreover, based on everything that we have ever defined as physical, the quantum field is an example of a non-physical mind.

Or if you don't like the word "mind" try using the word "brain", if that still bothers you, then use the word "computer". Because there is definitely structured information being both, stored, and expressed by the non-physical quantum field.

That at least shows use that both, information, and expression of that information, can be accomplished via something that we can't even classify in terms of physicality.

The quantum field has shown us, in no uncertain terms, that what we thought was impossible is actually the very foundation of this reality.

All of the information that causes this universe to manifest springs from a non-physical source of nothing more than structured information that can be expressed in terms of physical manifestation.

What must we conclude from this?

It sounds to me like the only conclusion possible is that we have indeed discovered that a non-physical cosmic mind does indeed exist.

So what do we do now? Deny it?

I see no reason to deny it unless we have some personal pertrified paranoia about the existence of such an intelligent cosmic mind.

We already have more than enough evidence that it exists. What would be the reason behind denying it other than due to an extreme phobia of a non-physical intelligence that knows how to create the universe?

The evidence for it is overwhelming. So why is everyone in denial?

Like I said in a previous post, it seem that they must be suffering from some previous traumatic association with 'supernatural minds' that most likely came from mythological religions.

There's no intellectual reason to reject what we have observed. The only reason to reject the evidence would be paranoia and fear that it might actually be able to be used to support more of those horribly hostile bigoted manmade religions.

We truly need to get past that.

We can't allow the horrors of manmade mythologies to blind us from the true nature of our true essence. If this universe is 'supernaturally intelligent' we need to embrace that. And all the evidence shows us that it is indeed quite intelligent and in a 'supernatural' way. (i.e. in a way that is non-physical). This cosmic mind is what actually gives rise to the physical universe as we know it. It is indeed the 'creator' of this physical universe. And we are it, because we are both the creator and the created.

The Eastern Mystics actually have it all figured out and they didn't even need particle accelerators and astronomical telescopes to do it. They just realized from pure thought that it has to be this way. Modern science has just confirmed what they already knew eons ago.

Sorry Jeannie. You're too late. Quantum physicists already figured that one out and have already shown that it has to be the case.

Quote a peer reviewed scientific paper that even mentions mind no less requires it in QM.


Abra so far I keep seeing the same tortured use of words, and science to back up your ideas that you call obvious.

Physics deals in the physical hence the name. QM is physics. Quantum interactions are physical. Science does not deal in the non-physical whatever that could be . . .

The scientific definition of physical is based on interaction. Any field that interacts would be physical, we have gone over this over and over again and it was made clear that non-physical could only ever be defined in terms of a colloquial sense of solidity which is purely contextual (is a rock solid? Well to us it is, to visible light it is, to gamma rays its not, to neutrino's its not, for some rocks water passes through ect), and physical can be defined in science, nonphysical in science really just means non existent, physical is really unimportant in physics, its known only as the coupling of forces and matter/ energy this is the only way physicality is referenced. Since if something does not interact at all . . . it would then not exist its ignored. Science does not care about useless words, only useful words. Show me the scientific definition for non-physical using positive language that adds value please?

Your vague superficial use of words, your nonscientific method of labeling, it all clearly demonstrates a lack of rigor.

Cite some peer reviewed papers that back up these claims. I doubt you will find any with a reputable publisher.


As far as mind is concerned, a mind is a specific set of characteristics to fullfill specfic purposes.

Show how the quantum field shares all of those characteristics, and use specific examples. This is where your argument will fall apart, its where Paul Davies argument falls apart, the difference is that he is an extremely intelligent and honest to goodness honest scientist, and so instead of making these claims and crying that they are obvious, instead he calls them his personal ideas, and makes it clear he has no evidence from first principles, but he is going to keep trying, he at least has good things to add and points to backward causation involving a big bounce cosmology. You just spout nonsense and call people idiots for not agreeing.

yes, i understand that you think life exists within a mind. so to follow your logic; you said that order cannot exist without MIND and that life exists within a mind. there is no evidence to suggest that life has always existed thereby the mind has not always existed. since order cannot exist without mind and if life/mind did not exist at the time of the origins of the universe and for several billion years after, it must follow by your own logic that when the universe began there was no order, no plan, no design, hense, no designer.

Don't need to. It doesn't matter what the call it or don't call it.

They've already shown that it has all the attributes required to be a mind by the definition that I gave. So it doesn't matter what label they use to describe it.

That's totally irrelevant.

I never called anyone an idiot.

But I have had an overly emotionally distraught athiest call me a liar simply because he doesn't like the evidence that I've presented and can't refute it.

I've never seen such emotionally charged paranoia of Intelligent Design.

People truly need to get past their emotional fears before they can begin to look at things intelligently with an open mind.

The evidence for design is overwhelming. It comes from quantum physics, cosmology, as well as from computer science, and pure mathematics.

The hypothesis of happenstance, on the other hand, has nothing at all to support it. At least not without pretending that there are infinitely other failed universes to justify this one as being happenstance.

But that's quite a large leap of faith just to avoid the obvious conclusion of Intelligent Design doncha think?

When attempting to imagine what is going on with the universe, I like to take into consideration that there is no such thing as "time" except within the event of the mind.

The state of the universe is like a light bulb. It is either on or off. You speak of the beginning as if there were such a thing as "time." But time exists only in the field of the universal mind with everything else.

So I like to compare of 'time' to a garden hose. The 'beginning' is where the hose is connected to the source of water.

If the 'big bang' represents the beginning of the universe, the source of the water at the faucet where the garden hose is attached represents the 'big bang' --or the past. Where the water comes out of the hose --at its end-- this represents the event horizon where we are... the present.

Both the faucet and the end of the hose have flowing water. The water represents the life force of the universe, or the current of life. The hose represents the time line. The water must be "on" for existence to occur. Turn off the water, and the life current stops, and everything dries up.

But all of this is happens at once. Turn off the water at the faucet, and the event (the water flow) at the end of the hose stops.

If we look into the sky with a powerful enough telescope we can even see the beginning of time. We call it "the past." If you follow the garden hose to its source you can see where it is connected to the faucet.

Therefore the 'big bang' or the beginning of mind and source of life is still happening and is constantly 'on.'

Yes you do. If you are going to continue to make claims that science says this, or science says that, you better back that up if you want to be taken seriously.

Perhaps no one should take you seriously.

Are you now making the rules for 'science?'

I disagree.

I do not see emotional fear of intelligent design at all. I see that you see it that way though.

I have no fear of intelligent design. I have yet to see proof of it.

I know! Who in their right mind would set things up so it was so easy to clog the air intake with food?

Nobody here is concerned about if there are designers now. This was always a question of if there were designers involved in the creation of Earth before life on Earth.

...has anyone ever tried to argue with you that humans do not design things?



Well yes, that works because there is basically a mind there. "Gravity," as in just the attractive force between anything with mass, is not any god. Consciousness is an absolute must for something to be called a god.


I've done some introductory level programming so it's really nothing. Be thankful there aren't fifty times as many forum tags and that they are not caps sensitive n_n

An answer for yourself or an answer for the rest of us? You seem to dislike it when people disagree with you but if you're just trying to extract an answer that's more useful than people agreeing with you because you know that there is something to be improved by change.

Ya, I gave other options (or I think i did,) so who are you saying is the designer? Previous creatures or a universal consciousness that has existed since the beginning of (our) time?

Now with the evolution stuff there's the question "why should the butterfly need to be conscious to make it's wings like that?" In terms of genetics they can grow those patterns just by series of random changes (funfact: butterflies take the genes that grew them legs as caterpillars and use them a second time in their wing patterns,) and if it works they prosper and if it doesn't they get eaten by a bird or something. Couple thousand years down the road (and for butterflies that's about as many generations,) and you could go from a fairly dull pattern to one that works really well for getting the attention of predators who understand that color means toxic or one that works really well for blending into tree bark.

And from a complex pattern you can go blazingly fast to another complex pattern, like with the moths in Europe around the industrial revolution that turned black as the trees got covered in soot and are again white now that things have been mostly cleaned up.


It does because programming is something we do and we were comparing the way a butterfly works to something we do. The comparison is not perfect though. It's hard to relate to something we don't do so if instead of "programming" we had chosen a word that didn't imply some kind of designer the analogy would be meaningless to us.

With genetics and some chemistry it really looks like all of this stuff gets sets in motion just from common chemicals interacting for a thousand or maybe million years. The only reason it hasn't started up over and over on Earth is that now there are bacteria everywhere that gobble up those molecules long before they get a chance to form new life.


This is the real break down in communication here.
So what's important is WHEN do we get so say something is a design/program? Your argument implies that we call it a design or program every time we think it looks anything like a design or program but the other side here says we can only call something a design when we know who designed it or a program when we know who programmed it. There's some flexing room with that but we are basically arguing about the order it makes sense to do this with.

Now, the big problem I have with the "design means designer" order is that you are saying there is no possible way for that thing to have happened without a designer. People in my line of work have devoted decades of their lives to showing how every step of life from barest bacteria to the full diversity of things we see today has happened one step at a time and that each step is just a simple change that we know happen well enough at random in every living thing.

Reading through that definition the precondition for life would be the properties of chemistry. Going with the standard atheist's "Science answers everything" motif this question takes us through physics and to the start of the big bang. We have chemicals because we have elements because stars fuse them and then puff them out or explode because of how much mass an atom can support because of the four fundamental forces being the way they are because of how they split very early into the big bang.

Lately string theory and the related ideas have come onto the scene to say a thing or two about how and why the big bang happened and if I really understood the math I think I'd be able to describe another step back from there.
If you're assuming a creator you can keep asking if the next step is God and in time people will tell you no and describe what the next step is and then you can as if the one after THAT is God and so on for, maybe forever.

Right now there's no more reason to think a designer did it than there is to think that the Earth is really flat and people have just been faking all those photos of it from space. If you've already made up your mind that either of those things is the case you won't have any trouble arguing it with a series of people who eventually just get frustrated and leave you to your own mechanisms as the world moves on without you but is that any way to live?


There are two things that make evolution happen.
The first is mutations. A mutation is any time during DNA replication that the copy is not like the original. If you knew chemistry the question "why isn't the copy always like the original?" would be trivial to answer but on a layman's level there's basically too much going on to keep it absolutely perfect. Sometimes a photon of light hits some molecule and gives too much energy to something else which sticks itself in place when it shouldn't have and other times our body makes proteins that purposely throw a monkey wrench into the works to make mutations happen even more.
But no matter how they get there they are the source of genetic variation.
The second thing is selection. You've heard of survival of the fittest before but in more precise terms when there is variation and any kind of selective force those selected for continue while those selected against do not.

Of course, with our language being so anthropomorphic you're no doubt poised to ask who the selector is.
Well there are several. Natural selection is basically the idea that making more and healthier babies adds up over the generations. If your family had always each had ten children and someone else's has only had two in the first generation you outnumber them 5 to 1, in the second 25 to 1, in the third 125 to 1 and so on.

Sexual selection mixes things up a good deal and gives us things like rams bumping heads and peacocks flaunting those tails of theirs around. This shows up at "a higher level of consciousness," when an organism is able to look at the available mates and decide which one is best. With the rams the one that wins the fight was stronger and with peacocks the one with the nicer tail is, and this sounds a bit strange at first, also stronger. With some birds you see monogamy though and so things turn not to just "who will probably make the best babies" but rather to "who will help me raise the babies the most?"

There are several other types of selection but most of them a odd genetic quirks like "when you stick two people on an island how does that mess with the gene pool thirty generations down the road?" so the only other one I'll go over is domestication.
Wolfs became dogs when people first selected the ones that were friendlier towards people and since then we've selected fighters and retrievers and rat-hunters and runners and ones with pretty fur and all manner of things to form the many dog breeds. Given a few thousand years they might split into separate species but for now we see how compatible things can be so long as you don't change their immune systems.

As with dogs we have also domesticated every plant and animal we eat so that bananas are edible raw and not full of seeds, citrus fruits are virtually bursting with juice, grains are enormous and sometimes more hearty compared to their wild relatives, beef has almost artistic layers of fat between the meat, and chickens lay those big white eggs. For thousands of years we have actually selected the ones that were easier and more useful to eat.

And of course there are carrier pigeons and foxes but those arne't so relevant to our lives anymore.

Well almost. Those without a focus on survival just die off so we only see the ones the ones that are left.

Naw, you gave me lots of spots to inject biology information most people don't know. If you've had the patience to read all of it you should end up very far from where you started, whether it changes your overall interpretation or not.

So can we just end the line of reasoning here and say that a butterfly's wing is not design?

Being responsible does not always require that you made choices. I actually mentioned it earlier with the wing patterns having to do with caterpillar feet. Turns out dots with the same pattern as their feet look like eyes and when predators see what they think is a face that big they don't try to eat it.

Little bit of chance plus survival equals evolution.

And I blame that on the state of the public education system. Science courses are supposed to at least introduce people to these concepts but most science teachers are little more than high school graduates themselves in terms of scientific understanding at the time they are handed a curriculum to teach to students. Very few know how to keep students excited so many grow bored and other teachers get wrapped up in the race for funding and turn the class into preparation not for the world but for doing well on the final exam.

Good. This leaves what you've been supporting and evolution as the two preferable options. So far either should satisfy you.

This question is a whole can of worms. When you ask where the genes for something came from it's always the ancestors. It is absurd to say that some sea sponge is the origin of feathers but on a genetic level it really sort of is. Feathers didn't outright come from scales but the lifted the chemicals for telling one side from the other (top and bottom for scales is important, otherwise they would just form a sheet like skin but be too hard to flex and the disadvantage of that should be obvious,) and scales took their chemical systems from other genes and so on. In terms of multicellular animals the feather and tortoise shell are about the only things you can honest call "new" features but even they take lift almost all of the genes that create them from other things in their bodies.

That's the solution that is the most pleasing to the ear. When you know about much of biology I should hope you don't still think that makes sense.

I'm with Abra. I see a defensive posture and a paranoid attitude against anything spiritual as it is compared to the dogma of religious ideology and I am responded to with sarcasm about a deity that sends people to hell. (I don't even believe in that and I don't create threads about that... yet there they bring it up.)

What I am talking about is very different from religious dogma but all some people can see is what they fear.... that ideology. Hence they get sarcastic and defensive and don't address the real questions I am asking. They assume too much.

In order for this universe to be happenstance you need to have faith in a whole lot of unprovable imagined things. Like infintiely many failed universes that have never been observed.

Why do you keep bringing this up? Infinitely many failed universes that have never been observed. This is one of the failed "proofs" of your theory. This is where you fail to prove your point.

There doesn't have to be any failed universes to disprove intelligent design.

Intelligent design fails to prove itself. Who designed the designers and who designed that designer....etc...

Who created god? Because he/she/it could not appear from nothing just as we could not if the theories for intelligent design are valid.

People have been asking that question forever.

I said perhaps the universe was born. Perhaps it has parent universes. Your guess is as good as anyone's. But I don't think this is an accident. I don't think the human brain can comprehend INFINITY.

I do not see that.

Just because folks will not agree with the presupposed ideals in the questions doesn't show defense. And the questions do get answered, some refuse the answers.

The 'defense' is in their assumptions that I am talking about the same old religious dogma they are and have been battling against all their lives. They are still in the defensive mode against anything other than their own beliefs and they automatically assume I am pushing theology on them. (I am not.)

Instead of answering my questions they go off on some tangent about some deity that sends people to hell or make sarcastic remarks about 'Santa Claus' That is just avoiding the direct question that I am asking and strikes me as a defensive maneuver. This has happened on other threads besides this one. They assume I worship some 'deity' which can't be further from the truth.

It is quite ironic how the arguments in favor claim no one is considering the evidence they present, yet they completely avoid getting further into the counter-arguments presented, and instead focus on things not said.

One of you...

Put a logical syllogism where your mouth is. If there is so much evidence which must conclude a designer, or that the universe is a design, it could be shown.

Do it.



Abra,

Do not believe your own hype about what you think my emotional state is. Every step deeper into the delusion is easier to make, once it has began to snowball. Turn on the heat dude! Give a syllogism. You can do it, your a mathematician, remember? It should be a piece of ontological cake for you in your infinite scientific and philosophic wisdom. I want to cut it up and eat a piece of it, with my ego-centric nature of course.




Sky,

Are you sticking to the earlier standard form you gave? Should I focus more on that? It seems that you think I do not see the relevance of it. If you know the source of the universe, it is completely relevant to this conversation. If you know, you can show. Can you demonstrate it?