(November 5, 2012 at 5:13 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: "Fact" is a funny word to use. Depends on how pure you want your fact to be. The fact of evolution itself on the overall whole IS fact...but not all the explanations of the HOW it is fact are all there or entirely accurate. It's fact...though we just don't know ENTIRELY why.No, that depends on your definition of "fact". Language is another example of something governed by "laws" that is found in complex systems; but is not a part of any of its individual components. No one has yet come up with the full theory on linguistics. It's something we can observe, it's something we can use, it's something found in the system, but it's not in the components. It develops and grows without any permanent physical link to its components. It is implicit that a system such as ours will necessarily give rise to it, we don't know why, we don't know the rules (or if you like laws) and we can't predict its behaviour, at present.
Let's turn this on its head for a moment. Our universe, we suppose is 13.8 Billion years old. It has been expanding since the time of its inception, it has also been cooling and the radiation dissipating. For the first time (and the only time) since the creation of the universe, it is now able to support life, our Earth was formed at exactly the correct time to allow life to exist on it. A few billion years in the future, the universe will be too cold to support life as we know it, yet it will continue to expand forever, never again supporting life. Everything we have is possible because we have a universe that is just the right age, that is just the right size and - most importantly - has just the right fundamental physics to enable life to exist. We don't have multiple universes, we only have one. Before I hear you argue the point on this - do you understand rudimentary General Relativity, and if so - do you actually understand rudimentary SCC that would replace it?
I find it a lot easier to think of the world in terms of QM - because at the heart of it, QM behaves much the same as classical physics, and this is easy to comprehend. GR is difficult to picture in your head - mainly because it turns our observations of the whole universe on its head. Sadly, both theories can't be true at the same time - they have an uneasy coexistence. QM works for its own systems - its own window of reference, but it can't be used beyond it. How it actually relates to the laws of chemistry is unknown - if it is indeed responsible for giving rise to the laws of chemistry in the first place. GR in the same way works for its systems - its own window of reference. Galaxies shouldn't be holding together, but scientists readily ignore this problem and claim dark matter holds them together (this isn't the only patch-up we do for this theory either).
No one can ignore the fact, whatever their view on the make up of the universe, that what we EXPECT to see, according to traditional reductionism, is simplicity. But the inner workings of the universe are fundamentally complex, this is a paradox. The universe can't be a computer - that is, it doesn't perform calculations to determine the next state of matter within it, so how do the systems that are built upon it function within it?
We're given a universe with the correct laws of chemistry to support life. Not just chemistry either, we have the correct laws of physics - whatever they are - that allow life to self-start as well; as impossible as it seems. We were given an Earth at exactly the right time for life to begin. And then add to that, we have a universe that has the correct laws of physics that give rise to the law of evolution that allows complexity to be downhill - the path of least resistance - a universe that not just allows, but demands (requires) diversity in life, and great complexity as well. In fact it also requires this level of complexity to rise from such a short period of evolution. Look at our history on Earth - as soon as conditions permitted, life started... as quickly as possible, life evolved into very complex organisms.
I view it as nonsensical to hold all these scientific views of the world, and then not see design. Not because it's impossible, but because there are so many fundamentally essential systems in our universe, that are held in the balance and work together to allow for life to exist and to enable it to have the kind of existence we observe. But, people will believe what they want to believe.
