“Intelligence,” OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!

[Mister Agenda]

Many contemporary scientists believe that universe came into being about 15 billion years ago. Despite of this fact, a clear majority of scientists in today’s world agree that universe has a beginning.

These two statements don't contradict each other in any way, so why do you say 'Despite this fact....'?

At the beginning of 20th century, scientists believed that the universe has always existed and matter-energy had always been around.

It was a bit of an improvement over the flat, circular earth surrounded by a cosmic sea that was spoken into existence described in the Bible, but not there yet. Erasmus Darwin proposed an oxcillating expanding and contracting universe in 1791, and that possibility is still on the table. Heinrich Olbers argued against Steady State in 1826 when he pointed out that if the universe were in a steady state with an infinite number of stars, there should be no darkness in the night sky.

That was, “The Steady-State Model.” In the last hundred years, the counter evidences have blown that model away.

1. The first evidence for the beginning of universe is its expanding process. Edwin Hubble discovered this phenomenon in 1929.

2. The second is “The Cosmic Background Radiation”. This discovery had given a fatal blow on those who want to believe in an eternal universe.

3. Third is the relative abundance of light elements in the known universe.

Good news, everyone! Just in case there was anyone here unaware of this, Harris has repeated it. No more excuses for being unaware of Big Bang/Initial Expansion cosmological model!

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

This is the part where you need to show your work, rather than merely asserting it to be so. Bear in mind that we don't know the state of affairs before the initial expansion, 'something to bang' having been there all along has not been ruled out by any means.

There are only two things, which can fit to explain this cause.

a. Abstract objects and
b. Embodied mind.

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

All of the above is premature if you havan't demonstrated that the cause of the universe should be immaterial and beyond space and time. What about brane theory? Quantum fluctuation? Cyclicism? These are key ideas you're not dealing with out at all.

The laws of nature (including entire mathematics) are abstract concepts and they cannot produce any event.

The 'laws of nature' are descriptions of what actually happens in physical reality, based on the evidence. Math is one of the languages we use to describe them. It's odd that anyone would think language might cause physics...although I suppose it's what creationists believe.

The rules of arithmetic state the Pattern to which all transactions with money must confirm, if only you can get hold of any money. Consequently, in one sense, the laws of nature are existent only because there exist a physical universe.

No kidding. Didn't see that one coming, eh?

To think the laws can produce, it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums. As said by Hawkins, “it is the laws of physics, not the will of God, that provide real explanation to how the universe came into being. The big bang,” he argues, “was the inevitable consequence of these laws.”

I've never met anyone who thought that, except for religious reasons. Reasoning certainly doesn't get you there.

Does that lead to the concept, if the law says; gravity controls the motion of earth around the sun so is it the gravity that endeavoured the creation of sun or other celestial objects or is it other way round. Law is descriptive and predictive but not creative. It is even worse as laws of physics cannot even cause anything to happen. It is logically impossible for a cause to bring about some effect without already being into existence.

True, law is not a magical thing where declaring something is so makes it so. Do you consider that insight so astonishing that you have to rush off and tell a bunch of strangers?

Nonsense remains nonsense even when talked by world famous scientists.

You don't seem to have the necessary qualifications to assess what is nonsense and what is not.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”
Stephen Hawking.

One of the outdated philosophical clichés, “who created God?” is an oblivious platitude because if there is no cause which is uncaused there simply be no existence.

It's an obvious question because it is special pleading to claim that everything requires a cause except the one thing you want to not require a cause.

Laws of physics are extremely precise to enable complex life to exist.

It is unlikely that is why they are so precise, and 'precise' is a value judgement one would need to know exactly what alternate values the laws of physics could have had, how likely they are to vary, and how they are related to each other. None of this is known, the fine-tuning argument applied to physical laws is based on a thought experiment, not evidence.

It is exceptionally unlikely that this precision could have happened by chance. If we analyse different levels of structures in the universe then we have:

Quarks at the first level that make up the atoms
Atoms build up to make molecules
Molecules build up to make a living cell
The cells make organisms, and eventually, we end up with brains and consciousness

It is rather hard to estimate what the probability is, but it is clearly very, very unlikely that those fine tunings, which allowed this Pyramid of complexities to arise, would be there as consequence of chance.

It is impossible to estimate what the probability is given that we only have one exemplar universe, so the above is pure speculation based on a series of ifs.

As we look at the details of nature, one thing stands out:
This is the order, the pattern, and the symmetry. Everything in the universe has a mathematically precise structure.

When the math we have can't describe something precisely enough for our needs, we invent new math. Math is conceptual, not a property of physics. Above you seemed to understand that it is descriptive and predictive, not creative...now you seem to be singing a different tune.

As one example, consider Double helix of DNA in living beings. Try to assess how likely is it that we find a protein by chance with all the amino acids in that Pre-biotic soup interacting with each other for, say, billions of years?

Those odds are a little more calculable. For starters, no abiogenesis hypothesis starts with DNA, it starts with precursor molecules that evolve into DNA over time. The chance of such a precursor molecule appearing would be odds against it forming according to the rules of organic chemistry compared to the number of opportunities for it to form by chance. All over the world, probably hundreds of milliions of opportunities per day for hundreds of millions of years. Given that number of opportunities, something as unlikely as trillions to one becomes quite possible. And that's without taking into consideration the billions of other suitable planets where this could also have been happening. Extremely unlikely things happen all the time because there are so many opportunities for them to happen. Every time someone deals a hand of bridge, the odds of getting that particular hand are one in billions.

“Welcome Collection” in London has a unique publication. This publication is 100 volumes long each with thousands of pages and text so small that it is barely legible. Together, these books represents only a single human genome. Only four chemicals or letters made this Genome, 3.2 billion of them. A disorder of only one letter in the sequence leads to serious illness in the living being.

And there are plenty of examples of a disorder in the sequence having no particular effect, it can even be beneficial on occasion.

Question is how common or how rare are the functional sequences of amino acids among the big space of all possible amino acids there are?

I bet you think you know.

Nobel laureate, organic chemist and a leader in origin of life studies, Professor deDuve writes in his excellent book, Tour of a Living Cell,

"If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one...”

Christian De Duve said no such thing, and was well aware that evolution does not posit that the first bacterium appeared from a random assemblage of atoms, but evolved from more primitive forms. Abiogenesis starts with one self-replicating molecule, not a whole organism.

Humans and all mammals have some 50,000 genes. That implies, as an order of magnitude estimate, some 50,000 to 100,000 proteins active in mammalian bodies. There are some 30 animal phyla on Earth by estimation. If the genomes of each animal phylum produced 100,000 proteins, and no proteins were common among any of the phyla (a fact we know to be false, but an assumption that makes our calculations favor the random evolutionary assumption), there would be (30 x 100,000) 3 million proteins in all life. Now let us consider the likelihood of these 3 million viable combinations of proteins forming by chance: Proteins are complex coils of several hundred amino acids. Take a typical protein to be a chain of 200 amino acids. The observed range is from less than 100 amino acids per protein to greater than 1000. Twenty commonly occurring amino acids join in varying combinations to produce the proteins of life. This means that the number of possible combinations of the amino acids in our model protein of 200 amino acids is 20 to the power of 200 (i.e. 20 multiplied by itself 200 times), or in the more usual 10-based system of numbers, approximately 10 to the power of 260 (i.e. the number one, followed by 260 zeros!). Nature has the option of choosing among the 10 to power of 260 possible proteins, the 3 million proteins of which all viable life is composed. In other words, for each one correct choice, there are 10 to power of 254 wrong choices! Randomness cannot have been the driving force behind the success of life.

That is correct. Natural selection is the driving force behind the success of life.

Our understanding of statistics and molecular biology clearly supports the notion that there must have been a direction and a “Director” behind the success of life.

It seems you have to ignore half of the theory of evolution in order to arrive a that conclusion.

No serious scientist think that life is a matter of chance.

Nearly all serious scientists think that life is a matter of chance and natural selection.

Some modern Darwinists defend their case by asserting that about 98 percent of our DNA is similar to that of apes and that this difference is only a few spelling mistakes. Other say, more accurate figure is no more than 95 percent. However, considering that humans have three billion DNA information in each cell, even two per cent difference is actually sixty million spelling errors. Of course, this is not error, but 2,500 pages worth of new information. After all, we do share about 50 percent of our DNA with bananas, but that doesn’t mean that we are half banana.

Editing can turn sixty million spelling errors into something that makes sense. That's what natural selection does. It eliminates 'misspellings' that are a problem for the organism, only what's harmless or useful survives.

Entire present-day science is based on the inductive reasoning. Using the same inductive reasoning, “one can compare the information stored in DNA molecule to a software program code only much more complex.”
Bill Gates.

Still, we've found that science works better than pulling stuff out of your ass.

We know information comes only from intelligent source.

You don't know that. You assert that. In other words, you pulled it out of your ass.

When we see coded information in a DNA, the most logical thing to conclude, that too, has an intelligent source.

Because questioning your assumption that information only comes from intelligent sources isn't even on the table, eh?

“… If you look at the details of biochemistry and 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.”
Richard Dawkins
The R. Dawkins Foundation
R. Dawkins Answers Questions

And no such signature has been found. The only causes for anything we've ever found a cause for have been natural causes, that is, not supernatural.

And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colours. Verily, in that are indeed signs for men of sound knowledge.
Ar Ruum (30)
-Verse 22-
Quran

Do you think if it was in the Qu'ran, it must be true?

And in the earth are neighbouring tracts, and gardens of vines, and green crops (fields etc.), and date-palms, growing out two or three from a single stem root, or otherwise (one stem root for every palm ), watered with the same water, yet some of them We make more excellent than others to eat. Verily, in these things, there are Ayat (proofs, evidences, lessons, signs) for the people who understand.
Ar Ra'd (13)
-Verse 4-
Quran

Well, clearly no mere human could write a book that says the people who don't agree with it are wrong.

And He shows you (always) His Signs: then which of the Signs of Allah will ye deny?
Al Mu'min (40)
-Verse 81-
Quran


Nay, here are Signs self-evident in the hearts of those endowed with knowledge: and none but the unjust reject Our Signs.
Al 'Ankabuut (29)
-Verse 49-
Quran

Did you know there are other religions that make similar claims but about a different god? Would you find it convincing if I quoted Hindu scriptures at you? If not, why do you think Islamic scriptures would be relevant to people who don't already believe them?

Thanks for the post. It was very long, but at least it was rambling.

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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.

I don't think the De Duve quote was even a quote-mine, I think it was made-up.

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TL : DR, but fixed your quote mine.

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.

Ask a stupid, unscientific question, then blame the scientist in the headlights for not having a smart, scientific anwer prepared. But use of qualifiers to indicate uncertainty is a characteristic of scientific caution in making claims. Stein could have used some of that.