“Intelligence,” OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!

[Harris]

TL : DR, but fixed your quote mine.

What do think is the possibility that intelligent design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics, or in evolution?

Well, it could come about in the following way: it could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto, perhaps, this planet. Now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of our chemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer, and that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe. But that higher intelligence would itself have had to come about by some explicable, or ultimately explicable, process. It couldn't have just jumped into existence spontaneously. That's the point.

The phrase “Well, it could come about … And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that,” is an utter guesstimate. It is just an epigram, which has no scientific value.
The phrase in bold, “if you look at the details of our chemistry … elsewhere in the universe,” is a scientific fact based on knowledge that comes through scientific discoveries.
The phrase “But that higher intelligence … it couldn’t have just jumped into existence spontaneously,” is begging the question who created God?

A scientist who is atheist, talks about Deity without using the word GOD this way. Scientific facts force every scientist to ponder over the marvels in nature. Whether to expose those thoughts with sincerity or disguise them behind unjust reasoning is the choice of that scientist.

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... failure to understand the implications of time not existing on the principle of cause and effect.

Did I miss anything?

So how time exist?

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So many fallacies, so little time.

"You shall not pass!" - Gandalf, Lord of the Rings.

See I can quote books of fantasy, too.

And, seriously, if you're going to start referring to Ben Stein you demonstrate the desperation of your argument.

I am not representing Ben Stein. Please point to the clause that you refer to as fantasy.

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This post lends further support to Esquilax' contention that people who don't accept evolution do so because they don't understand what evolution is. This Q'rannic dimwit has equated 'evolution' with 'chance' at least a dozen times in his dishonest, misleading, and wronger-than-wrong post.

For the 12th skajillionth time: Evolution is NOT a random process.

Boru

The development of the genetic science at the beginning of 20th century proved that only genes transmit to subsequent generations and not acquired physical traits. The discovery made it clear that it is implausible that acquired traits accumulated from generation to generation and generated different living species. In other words, in Darwin’s proposed mechanism of natural selection, there is no room for inheritable variations.

All the efforts made by evolutionists of 20th century only confirmed that natural selection has no evolutionary power. At this failure, evolutionists endeavoured a rescue challenge by making an introduction of phenomenon called mutation to the fundamental structure of this theory. However, the problem with mutation is that no beneficial results has yet been observed either in nature or in laboratories. Mutation do not generate new genetic information. It is impossible for living beings to acquire new organs through mutation. To support this idea of evolutionary mutation, evolutionists should come up with a mechanism that generates new never-before-existing information that can produce bigger and better structure which supposedly never existed before. This mechanism should work on a single cell that gives rise to all the diversity of life through a process of genetic mutation or an evolutionary process.
Any evolutionist (including Dawkins), cannot give a single example of any process in nature that increases genetic information by mutation.

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"We know information comes only from intelligent source. When we see coded information in a DNA, the most logical thing to conclude, that too, has an intelligent source."


No, we don't know that. You do not know what information is and you misquote others to support your nonsense.

Dr. Werner Gritt, who is an information specialist wrote in his book, “In The Beginning Was Information,”

“A code system is always a result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor). It should be emphasised that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, to produce a code. There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no known sequence of events which can cause information by itself in matter.”
Pages (64, 67, 79, and 107)

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What do you mean despite of this fact? Surely the fact that the universe has a beginning and it came into being 15 billion years ago agree with each other.

Few scientists are persistent in arguing for an eternal universe. They use multiverse model to support their case.

If the universe has a beginning then it should has a cause and that cause should be immaterial and beyond space and time.

How could anything do something while being immaterial and not within space and time.
I'm confused how you could be a Muslim and say this since your god is definitely within time.
He created everything in periods of time

7:54.

Life runs our material bodies, what do you think is life material or immaterial?

Surely your Lord is Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth in six periods of time,

Here is another verse where Allah is creating within time and establishing himself on a throne above water, seems to be saying Allah has a domain and is established within space.

And it is He who created the heavens and the earth in six days - and His Throne had been upon water

Your confusion is correct, because you have not captured the idea of time the way it is revealed in Quran.
First, Allah is the creator of everything (including space). Only non-created being is Allah Himself.
Second, everything in existence has to face death. Life and death is by the Will of Allah. Only Allah (The Creator) has no beginning and no end.
This process of life and death gives us the sense of aging. Therefore, the aging process and all relative motions in the universe, give us the sense of time. Time is crucial especially when we valuate spatial events, which are closely relevant to our survival and to our focus of interests. Based on our dependency on time, our mind simply rejects any idea that evokes timelessness in any sense. Our sense of time works because we are encountering with the physical universe at every moment of our conscious life.
In other words, when Allah has created everything, He is the one Who is controlling all processes in the universe, and He has no beginning and no end so He is the originator of Time, He is Time Himself.
When you see a mention of time in Quran, it is there for our convenience only; our mind is not capable of thinking without having a measure of time related to any event which is in our interest.

Prophet Mohammad said,

(Allah the Exalted says, "The Son of Adam annoys Me when he curses Ad-Dahr (time), while I am Ad-Dahr. In My Hand are all matters; I cause the alternation of his days and nights.'')

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The problem with the abstract objects is that they are causally effete, meaning, they cannot cause anything.

I don't know what you mean by an abstract object. If you mean one without intelligence then you are certainly wrong - unless you believe that Uranium 235 (for example) is intelligent.

Take a lump of U235 (stay under about 65 kilos) and leave it on the shelf.

Come back in 4 billion years.

There should be about half the U235 you started with, some thorium, some radon gas and various other elements culminating in lead.

So U235 "causes" a whole host of different elements.

Thanks for playing.

“Concrete objects are those which are, in principle, capable of being picked out ostensive, while abstract objects are those to which we can refer only by means of some functional expression”
(Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett).

Abstract ideas such as numbers and all physical and mathematical laws can be neither seen nor heard, nor can they be tasted, felt or smelled. If the range of sense-perception is taken as including only what can be discerned with the naked organ, as it were, the condition for being concrete is clearly too restrictive. It seems clear that being extended in space and time is at least a necessary - but probably not a sufficient condition for its application.