Chemistry making basic biology isn't nothing.
Unless we're now going to question where the chemistry came from.

This question is becoming an infinite regress.

(February 20, 2016 at 10:31 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(February 20, 2016 at 4:35 am)Harris Wrote: Because infinite regression is an impossibility because it simply ends into nothingness therefore the explanation of the existence is the uncaused cause that is God.

God is also an impossibility, by your own definition.  You are saying that a thing exists which was never created-- and yet your reason for positing this being is exactly that nothing can exist without being created.

Not only is God a poor solution to your "problem" of infinite regress, your definitions make God unnecessary.  SOMETHING, it turns out, CAN exist without being created, according to you-- therefore no problem exists, and no solution is necessary.

Let me begin from the pervasive assumption that existence is an uncaused, spontaneous process. However, this assumption is not providing any support to the idea of “no god” rather it creates ambiguity in the intuitive and regular streams of ideas by pushing them away from the regular flow of natural processes on which they are established.

“To Suggest that things could just pop into being uncaused out of nothing is to quit doing serious metaphysics and to resort to magic. Second, if things really could come into being uncaused out of nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything does not come into existence from nothing then why do bicycles and Beethoven and root beer not pop into being from nothing? Why is it only universes that can come into being from nothing? ...

... the most successful ontological commitment that was a guiding line of research since Epicurus and Lucretius is the principle out of nothing nothing comes which is a metaphysical hypothesis that has proved so fruitful in every corner of science that we are surely well advised to try as hard as we can to eschew processes of absolute origin.”

Page 344
Does Physical Cosmology Transcend the Limits of Naturalistic Reasoning?
In Studies on Mario Bung's "Treatise," ed. P. Weingartner and G. J. W. Dorn (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990)
Bernulf Kanitscheider

Metaphysically, it is counterintuitive to assume that something can come into being out of nothing.

Given that the universe has a beginning that means it must therefore have had a cause; it could not have popped into existence uncaused and the cause of the universe would have to have certain important properties. Nothing which is the result of causes can have its existence inherent in itself. There are no uncaused events and all caused events are contingent to just one necessary substance, upon which all contingent things depend. If something were inherently existent it would be permanently (that is, necessarily) existent.

Based on this I have developed these premises:

1. Everything in the universe is a created being
2. Universe is a created being
3. Every created being is a contingent being
4. Universe is a contingent being
5. If universe does not depend on God then whatever it depends upon is God

In the case of God, who is necessarily uncaused, only his intrinsic nature can provide this explanation.
Logically necessary property can be exemplified as when mathematicians prove that there exist numbers with certain properties which in fact helps us in understanding the identity, order, and harmony. However, the concept of number is a concept of pure logic; and that numbers themselves are logical objects.

Whole of our conceptual world is in fact the outcome of idea of the uncaused cause which act as the benchmark for all new ideas because it provides an ideal environment for the beginning and to flourishing any concept. The efforts to develop concepts without having an uncaused cause is similar to doing math without numbers or building a concept into nothingness.

(February 20, 2016 at 11:05 am)Mathilda Wrote: See, Alex said something very reasonable and factually true. I and other scientists who have worked with artificial evolution and self organisation can attest to the fact that it is relatively easy to evolve something using very simple components that can take many months to figure out how it works, if at all. Whether it's a circuit design using FPGAs, neural networks or whatever. I myself spent three months trying to figure out how my neural networks actually functioned during my PhD. In fact I actually spent two weeks trying to stop them working by removing components that I assumed were required only to find that they kept on working albeit at a lesser performance. I envisage spending just as long if not longer with my artificially evolved dynamical systems. All I know is, they work. You on the other hand Harris, have responded with word salad that is not relevant to anything that Alex has said. It is also factually incorrect and relies on equivocation.

Are you trying to persuade the idea that scientific processes and natural processes can grow in progressive manner without having certain relevant laws which set rules for their orderly and harmonized activities? If you mean all that then you are closing your eyes on brute facts of science. If science is incapable of understanding certain processes does that means those processes are self-subsistent and they do not need any governing laws?

(February 20, 2016 at 11:05 am)Mathilda Wrote: You still haven't explained what a proper code of conduct actually is. Or for that matter a coding system. I can say though that "specify the expected behaviour in accordance with those determinant set of rules" is factually wrong because it ignores the concept of emergent phenomena which has been studied in-depth in the scientific literature (e.g flocking behaviour, ant colonies, bee hives etc). You can for example emulate flocking behaviour with just three rules without specifying an expected behaviour.

A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the pattern for the productive actions. Productive actions may manipulate within the framework of the laws which control those actions. The efficacy of the actions is totally dependent on how the actions are controlled within the framework of code of conduct.
The emergent meaning can be grasped only through a constructive interpretation, an imaginative restructuring of semantic fields, which makes sense of the emergent phenomena as a whole. However, the order is embedded and concrete for an achieved harmony which is always particular and specific.

(February 20, 2016 at 11:08 am)Mathilda Wrote:

(February 20, 2016 at 2:30 am)Harris Wrote: Creation is not possible without intelligent creator because nothing in the universe has created its own being.

Define creation.

When is a hammer created? When wood is carved into a handle and metal is reshaped into a hammer head and the two are put together? When a tree grows and metal ore is refined? When the metal atoms that will eventually be found in an ore are created in the heart of a sun?

Again you are relying on equivocation and the ambiguity of words. Things are never really created so much as the constituent matter reshaped into different configurations.

For the sake of argument if I agree with you that things “never really created so much as the constituent matter reshaped into different configuration” then why there are laws which are driving that shaping and reshaping in precise orderly manner according to specific code of instructions. That is the actual idea behind my original post.

(February 20, 2016 at 5:08 pm)bennyboy Wrote:

(February 20, 2016 at 11:11 am)Mathilda Wrote: We know energy cannot be created nor destroyed so the universe is uncreated. We don't need a god.

I wouldn't take a gnostic position on that, especially with the Big Bang, but certainly if you're going to look for something that has always existed, the first candidate should be what exists.  Why take seriously the superstitious ramblings of ancient, uneducated desert people?

No matter what you say but the Idea of God is innate.

(February 21, 2016 at 11:56 pm)Harris Wrote:

(February 20, 2016 at 11:08 am)Mathilda Wrote: Define creation.

When is a hammer created? When wood is carved into a handle and metal is reshaped into a hammer head and the two are put together? When a tree grows and metal ore is refined? When the metal atoms that will eventually be found in an ore are created in the heart of a sun?

Again you are relying on equivocation and the ambiguity of words. Things are never really created so much as the constituent matter reshaped into different configurations.

For the sake of argument if I agree with you that things “never really created so much as the constituent matter reshaped into different configuration” then why there are laws which are driving that shaping and reshaping in precise orderly manner according to specific code of instructions. That is the actual idea behind my original post.

I don't think you understand the term "laws" when talking about physics.  The laws aren't driving anything.  They are predictions based on observations.  If a scientific law involves velocity, time, space and so on, the law isn't affecting time, space or velocity.

I said this earlier to you, the laws of science aren't like the laws of the government, it's not as if sound would be travelling faster than the speed of light but it can't or else god will give it a speeding ticket because it's prevented by laws.   It's how sound and light behave due to how they are formed, the way they travel, what they are and so on.

I'm not an expert on physics so sorry if it sounds like I'm pretending I am, but I'm pretty sure it's accurate to say that no laws of science are shaping or reshaping anything, please anyone feel free to correct anything I've said incorrect based on my lack of knowledge about this topic.

(February 21, 2016 at 11:53 pm)Harris Wrote: Metaphysically, it is counterintuitive to assume that something can come into being out of nothing.

It is no more intuitive to believe that something exists without having been brought into existence.

Quote:Given that the universe has a beginning that means it must therefore have had a cause; it could not have popped into existence uncaused and the cause of the universe would have to have certain important properties.

Why would this be given for the universe, but not for God? Special pleading, no how matter large your text walls, is still just special pleading.

Quote: Nothing which is the result of causes can have its existence inherent in itself. There are no uncaused events and all caused events are contingent to just one necessary substance, upon which all contingent things depend. If something were inherently existent it would be permanently (that is, necessarily) existent.

Based on this I have developed these premises:

So you are basing your entire line of argument on the samve philosophical assumptions which it points to. This is begging the question. My counter is a conditional one: IF (IF!) anything can exist without being caused to exist, then it is more likely that that which we know to exist (the Universe) is that thing than that a humanoid magical being, for whom there is no proof or even good evidence.

Quote:1. Everything in the universe is a created being[quote]
That depends on your semantics of "creation."

[quote]
2. Universe is a created being

Not known.

Quote:3. Every created being is a contingent being

Fine

Quote:4. Universe is a contingent being

Not known.

Quote:5. If universe does not depend on God then whatever it depends upon is God

An equivocation. If you say "Whatever caused the universe is God," then if that whatever it is has neither consciousness nor will, then you are just calling nature God. You can call it the Loch Ness Monster if you want, but that is just semantics-- it's not a good argument for the existence of an actual Loch Ness Monster.

(February 20, 2016 at 2:29 am)Harris Wrote:

(February 18, 2016 at 7:17 pm)Alex K Wrote: "Meesa no understandy evolutions"

But more seriously, it is easy to imagine (and to construct!) systems which self-organize in a complex fashion that after a few iterations cannot be "understood" by human intellect any more than the entirety of how dna organizes embryological development or how the brain creates consciousness. Take a blank deep neural network and let it learn something. It will become a highly complex thing which accomplishes a task by seemingly magical and to our minds hopelessly intractable steps. My point is that our level of understanding of how a complex self-organizing system accomplishes things is by no means a measure of how likely it could have arisen on its own dynamically (and I am talking not about the construction of the blank network which is obviously designed by humans in my example, but of the learning process which creates the actual complexity which is entirely driven by experiencing the environment.

Without having proper code of conduct for stabilizing and disciplining the action, ever-changing circumstances would transform into chaos in any structure of events in the universe. Not a single event in the universe is the conduct which is free of some coding system which specify explicit rules of action and specify the expected behaviour in accordance with those determinant set of rules. That is another story whether we have an understanding of that coding system or not but there is always a connection between action and certain laws which guide those actions and we cannot simply say that whatever can cause a representational state is represented by that state.

Unfortunately, lack of code of conduct obscures the clarity of Natural Selection’s distinction which by no means can disentangle itself from the ambiguity and able to fit into the world of terminology of the modern scientific traditions. Natural Selection is too weak to support a comprehensive mathematics and on other side system of virtual analogy are not exchangeable: the order of results makes a difference. That regrettably means that wheels of fortune do not constitute a technological (let alone a biological) kind for which you can use information about previously investigated instances. But if you had knowledge of a random sample of all existing wheels of fortune, then you would work on the average for a new, randomly drawn, one.

Dude!

(February 21, 2016 at 11:50 pm)Harris Wrote:

(February 20, 2016 at 7:47 am)Ivan Denisovich Wrote: I'm interested in proof not your special pleading. Though from theists I expect nothing more.

The questions which I have imposed are in fact the answer to your question about the existence of God which you are trying to transform into a plead.

By providing a decent logical answer to my questions you can counter argue my point.

Can you give a proof that things that we use in our daily lives are popping out in reality from nothing merely as a consequence of our stream of thoughts which emerge out of our needs and desires?

Do you think there is anything in the known universe that has created its own being out from nothing and without any intervention of some intelligible cause?

You have no argument only special pleading. I get that god blanky may be comforting and belief in space wizard is something that helps you sleep but this means shit to those who don't share your delusion.

I'm still waiting for proof. I'm not interested in your fairy tales.

(February 21, 2016 at 11:48 pm)Harris Wrote: I am using the concept that your beloved Evolution has given to explain how life developed on earth.

Evolution also does not explain how life originated. That's abiogenesis.

(February 21, 2016 at 11:48 pm)Harris Wrote: According to the theory of evolution former stage of life form is always less developed state.

No it does not. You do not understand evolution. Look up the red queen effect.