“Intelligence,” OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!

[Harris]

"'Intelligence,' OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!" is an apt description of God's own existence.

“Intelligence out of Nothingness,” cannot be a description of God’s own existence.

For the sake of argument, I say, “there is no God (The Grand Designer)”. This statement leads to the idea that everything in the universe, universe itself, and space are popped out from nowhere or came into existence without a cause, which is similar to say, everything came out from “Nothingness.”

If everything came out from “Nothingness” and ends back into it that means “Nothingness” encapsulate every existing being and thus it is “Something” rather than “Nothing.” However, something is a contradiction to the meaning of “Nothingness.” “Nothingness” means “Not Anything.” “Nothingness” cannot be a metaphor for something. “Nothingness” is that which neither is created nor creates. In other words, there is no world, there is no space, there is no time, and there is no being. Mind is even powerless to grasp the idea of total annihilation since the world of being can only function because it is not nothingness. No experiment could support the hypothesis “There is Nothingness” because any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer. Science by no means explain “Nothingness” as it only deals with cause and effect. In the absence of cause and effect, science has no meaning.

The only alternate option to “Nothingness” is God Who is an appropriate explanation for the existence of every being. He is the ultimate cause of every created being however, He is not a created being because if you ask what caused the cause that caused the universe, then let’s continue. What caused the cause that caused the cause that caused the universe? And that goes on and on and on backward to infinite regressions. So in essence, to ask who created God or what caused the cause of the universe is equivalent of saying that we do not have a universe. At one point, there should be an uncaused cause else there would be no explanation for all existing beings in today’s universe.

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Then the foam lied to you. Energy does not equal Mass multiplied by lightspeed doubled - E is equal to MC squared. The real quantum foam would know this.

While writing E=MC2 I did not apprehend that people, in this forum, might face problem in understanding this well-known equation.

There is nothing in the universe that comes into existence spontaneously.

How do you know this? Have you been everywhere in the Universe and looked behind every planet and every star?

For sure I had not been anywhere in the universe. Nature around me is more than sufficient for my loud statements. I do not need a voyage through the universe in order to assert that everything in it has a cause.

However, you seem to be very confident in your verdict that the universe popped out from nothingness. On what bases can you make this claim? Does Nature exhibit spontaneous appearances of things! Or, perhaps you had visited every planet and every star in the universe!

Even virtual particles and even for a Nano-Second!

Hawking Radiation would like a quick word with you.

Hawking radiation around black holes is due to the quantum foam. Close to the event horizon, the gravitational sheer is so enormous that there is a very tiny amount of mass that seemingly appears from the quantum foam itself. How these virtual particles appear and disappear in a stroboscopic fashion, the answer is E=mc2. Quantum foam is vacuum energy.

But one problem arises here, how one can testify Hawking radiation at the event horizon?

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Sorry Harris, but "nuh-uh!" isn't an answer, especially when the science seems to disagree with you. Simply denying that just makes you seem juvenile.

It would be better if you show why science seems to disagree with me and why E=mc2 is not an appropriate scientific answer. This way your words would get more weight in them.

This has literally nothing to do with what we were talking about. And, uh, you are the one without scientific evidence, not I.

The examples that you had given from the web are not scientific facts. On the contrary, I had given substantial scientific reasoning against Theory of Evolution. You can review my responses in case you have missed something.

Why in nature these chemicals react together in a deterministic manner!

Laws of physics?

Okay! Then from where these laws of physics came?

Paleontology and genetics have done nothing but confirm that evolution occurs. What are you even talking about, here?

“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations has been urged by several paleontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or amilies, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.”
Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 302.

“When trying to unravel the origins of the animal phyla . . . the hardest to examine is the phase between the actual cladogenic origin of a phylum and the time that it acquired its first phylum-specific characteristic(s). Even if we have fossils from this phase in a phylum’s history, we will not be able to prove their kinships at the level of phyla.”
Marshall and Valentine, “The Importance of Preadapted Genomes in the Origin of the Animal Bodyplans and the Cambrian Explosion,” 1190, emphasis added.

“This really is evolution’s big unanswered question. Darwin talks about the Cambrian explosion in the Origin of Species back in 1859 and he was puzzled by how quickly organisms appeared. We like to know what were the triggers that caused this real explosion of life.”
Bruce Lieberman University of Kansas

It's not a double standard because time and again certain theories are confirmed by the advancement of science, and others aren't. You quoted a thirty year old source that hasn't been accepted by the scientific community, meaning that, evidently, the science has moved on and found the source to be incorrect or lacking in evidence. By contrast, the centuries that have passed since evolution was first proposed have only ever discovered evidence that reinforces and refines the theory, and never disagreed with it.
That's the difference.

Yes, you are right that certain theories are confirmed by the advancement of science but that is not the case with evolution. I gave you decent number of reasons, which only confirm why theory of evolution is still a mere postulate and not a scientific fact.

What is your counter proposition to the thirty years old source that you rejected bluntly without any recourse?

You are again spot-on that theory of evolution had enjoyed criticism free environment for about more than 100 years. But, did you ever give a thought why scientists are not criticising theory of evolution even when there are humongous loopholes in it? Why teachers are not allowed to discuss gaps in the theory? I will tell you the reason.

The Origin of species was an instant success, but its popularity due more to the ideological implications of the book rather than its scientific worth. Darwin’s ideas provided considerable support for the materialistic philosophy, which deny the existence of God. Secular states are doing everything (by any means and at any cost) to abstain social structure from the idea of God at whatsoever level to favour secularism.

First of all, it's a dead link: the video won't play.

Sorry for the inconvenience but I asked you to download that video. You can download that by pressing black downward arrow near the top left corner of the page.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7JspPJ...sp=sharing

Second, you should be able to articulate the argument you wish to make on your own, else you'll run afoul of Rule One of the forum eventually.

You have given me tons of references and when I gave you one, it is a foul play. You asked something from this decade and I provided what you asked for. Simple as that.

There is one scientific community, and it's made up of a mix of theists and atheists, many of the former, by the way, accept evolution. In fact, the majority of theists working in mainstream science accept evolution, as they are a part of the majority of scientists that accept evolution. Your attempt to imply some kind of atheist conspiracy falls flat because it's simply factually incorrect.

When scientists today, express an overwhelming level of confidence that evolution is true it reflects several realities. One reality is that for the most part evolution has not been subject to critique for over a hundred years not because it is a perfect an unarguable science but because of political reasons. That means the scientific process has effectively been short-circuited. The normal corrective process in science where some scientists observed problems with the current theory, they analyse it and changes are made where appropriate. That process is not operating as far as theory of evolution is concerned. Therefore, for the most part Theory of evolution has survived without that type of critique. Many people assume that theory of evolution has a solid foundation simply because they are not hearing scientific critiques.

Wrong again, because evolution is not atheism, and there's no requirement for an atheist to accept evolution. You can't "disprove" atheism by disproving evolution. And the only people giving positive reviews for the book in question, from memory, were known frauds like Ken Ham, which is extremely telling.

Please, give your counter argument on the following statement.

To produce any fundamentally new biological forms these mutations would—at the very least—have to produce a number of new proteins. But natural selection can act only on what mutations first generate. Thus, for mutation and selection to produce new functional proteins or protein folds—the smallest unit of selectable function—new proteins or protein folds must first arise by chance—that is, by random mutation. If the probability of this were extremely low—beyond the reach of available probabilistic resources—then this would undermine the plausibility of the neo-Darwinian mechanism.

How rare or common are functional protein folds within their corresponding amino acid–sequence space? If functional sequences were common enough for mutations to stumble upon them relatively easily (within the time required for relevant evolutionary transitions), mutation and selection might be able to build otherwise extremely improbable structures in small incremental steps. On the other hand, if functional proteins are extremely rare within sequence space, such that mutations will not have a realistic chance of finding them in the available time, selection will have little or nothing to work on, undermining its ability to produce biological information.

Second, Ken Ham has nothing to do with this argument.

Third, Theory of Evolution is one of the most important tool to support atheism. It was perhaps that reason the founder of dialectical materialism Karl Marx dedicated his book Das Kapital to Charles Darwin. On the cover he wrote “Given to Charles Darwin from a devoted admirer.” Atheist were the first who adopted Theory of Evolution to boost up their ideology to the firmament.

If Theory of Evolution collapse that would give a hard blow over atheism and secularism. Sure! you can be atheist even if Theory of Evolution falls apart.

No, it isn't. Evolution concerns genetic changes over time in populations, which you'd know if you'd bothered to research this at all.

Did Darwin know anything about Genetics?

Is there any scientific endorsement that makes evident “Evolution concerns genetic changes over time in populations?”

I know what I am talking and I am giving you scientific evidences, which you are flatly rejecting without giving any counter scientific recourse. What you have given so far is only “ifs” or fragments of so-called scientific information that is not science at all.

And if those variations within the same species keep happening, and the species keeps varying more and more, eventually there will come a point where that population is so different from the species if begins at that it can't be called the same species anymore.

You have used two “ifs” in that concise statement of yours. Science is not “assumptions”

Nylon eating flavobacteria. Look it up.

Have a look on the following two articles.

http://www.trueorigin.org/b_cell_maturation.asp
http://creation.com/the-adaptation-of-ba...ylon-waste

If these articles are hard for you to understand then ask Dawkins for help.

We don't know how exactly, but we have strong evidence that it's possible for life to form naturally, which removes the requirement for a designer completely.

Is there any mechanism for “NATURALLY?” Even if everything is happening automatically then again through which mechanism? Perhaps, everything is happening out from nothing!

We have thousands of examples, including near complete lineages in some cases. Here's a big ol' list of them. You're wrong again.

Please read Wikipedia carefully which says;

“This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.”

Further it goes on

“This is a tentative list of transitional fossils” …
“As noted already by Darwin, the fossil record is incomplete.”

I’ll give you few quotes from Darwin to contemporary palaeontologists without inserting my own commentary. If you’ll find is insufficient then I’ll give you more.


“The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, (must) be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it… Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils… It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.”
Dr Colin Patterson, a senior palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History
(correspondence w. Sunderland)

What Wikipedia is showing as transitional fossils are few species that by no scientific means be recognised as transitional fossils. They are few links of a ginormous missing chain of life.

The eye. We know how the eye evolved, in fact we know how it evolved along multiple independent evolutionary paths, hence the differences between, say, our eyes and squid eyes. Oh, and there's a species of skink here in Australia that are developing the ability to live birth their young, rather than using eggs as lizards generally do.

That said, the formulation of this question is a tad dishonest, since evolution of the kind you're looking for takes millions of years.

Unfortunately, father of evolution said something different.

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivance for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”
The Origin of Species, John Murray, p. 186.

Genetics only talks about variations in same species. Genetics do not talk on transformation from one specie to another.

Accumulations of the former result in the latter.

I cannot say there is no evidence of mutational degradation (of the functional genome) over time. The genome does display evidence of past viral insertions, deletions, transpositions, and the like, much as digital software copied again and again accumulates errors. Nevertheless, the vast majority of base sequences on the genome, and even the many sequences that do not code for proteins, serve essential biological functions. Hypothetically, you can assert positive values for mutational accumulations but there is no scientific confirmation that accumulation adds new information and correspondingly adds new organ.

There's a reason the majority of the species on this planet are extinct, you know. The rest of this section is just another argument from ignorance from you.

What makes you so sure that species extinct due to mutational trial-and-error process? Do the fossils exhibit mutational processes or you have all links in the missing chain of life?

Instead of saying “argument from ignorance,” give the proper scientific or philosophical reason for your verdict. Otherwise, “argument from ignorance” is no more than empty words in thin air.

I am still waiting for your counter scientific argument to my following assertion.

To produce any fundamentally new biological forms these mutations would—at the very least—have to produce a number of new proteins. But natural selection can act only on what mutations first generate. Thus, for mutation and selection to produce new functional proteins or protein folds—the smallest unit of selectable function—new proteins or protein folds must first arise by chance—that is, by random mutation. If the probability of this were extremely low—beyond the reach of available probabilistic resources—then this would undermine the plausibility of the neo-Darwinian mechanism.
How rare or common are functional protein folds within their corresponding amino acid–sequence space? If functional sequences were common enough for mutations to stumble upon them relatively easily (within the time required for relevant evolutionary transitions), mutation and selection might be able to build otherwise extremely improbable structures in small incremental steps. On the other hand, if functional proteins are extremely rare within sequence space, such that mutations will not have a realistic chance of finding them in the available time, selection will have little or nothing to work on, undermining its ability to produce biological information.

You literally don't know what evolution is, do you?

Go and ask Neo-Darwinists who are trying to incorporate mutation with natural selection.

Flavobacteria. Seriously. Fruit flies too. Silver foxes. Look up any of those things in a search with the word "evolution."

I look forward to you coming back here and demonstrating how little you know about the subject you're babbling about by protesting, "but they're still the same species!"

Honestly, if you don't care to understand evolution, then stop disagreeing with this strawman version of it you've cooked up.

Have a look on the following two articles.

http://www.trueorigin.org/b_cell_maturation.asp
http://creation.com/the-adaptation-of-ba...ylon-waste

It was the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial, back in 2005. A quick google search should furnish you with everything you need to know, but the short version is that intelligent design advocates presented their best "evidence" for their idea, and the judge in charge of the case ruled that intelligent design wasn't scientific and could not be taught in schools in that area.

Intelligent design and Evolution are science or not that was not the only issue before Dover’s court. Court was considering a question stemming from different line of evidence that when they introduce the intelligent design to the classroom, were members of the Dover’s school board motivated by religion. If so that would amount to a violation of part of the first amendment of the constitution “The Establishment Clause” which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. This mandates the separation of state from the church. That trickles down to any state action and in Dover’s case the actions of the school board.

Evolution won based on political agenda not on the merits of scientific competency. It can’t be because it is only a postulate, not an established science. It has gaps and missing links. Intelligent design lost because court had transformed intelligent design into creationism to crush it under the political footings by using secular law namely “The Establishment Clause”. In the trial’s concluding argument Eric Rothschild compelled the idea that intelligent design is religious, he said,

“This trial has established that INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL because it is inherently religious proposition. A modern form of creationism. It is not just a product of religious people, it just not have religious implications, IT IS IN ITS ESSENCE RELIGIOUS.”

Judge had given the verdict that it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design (religion) in a science class as it goes against the constitution (of secular state.)

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DNA didn't just pop into existence all built up. It must have evolved from simpler self-replicating structures... RNA being a close relative.

I see Evolution as the process from zero to human in mother’s womb. This is an established science and I am not reluctant to regard it as scientific evolution. However, this evolution is equipped by DNA code. This DNA code keeps woman away from giving birth to a crocodile. From where that DNA code comes, you don’t have answer to that. You say natural selection and evolution but again you don’t know what are the forces working behind natural selection and evolution. What is the scope of Natural Selection? If Natural Selection exist then why it exist?

Neo-Darwinism is desperate and in this desperation, it is giving postulates which leads to the ideas that there is a possibility that human might develop wings in due course of incorporated activates of genetics and Natural Selection.

Start on wikipedia, follow the references, seek them out on google scholar and learn.... it will be a slow process, given that there are now tons of articles on the subjects and few are attempts at summarizing it, but it will be worth it.

Most of the books and articles on evolution are based on ideological grounds. They are far from scientific realities. I have given considerable amount of examples. In response I got no explanation of scientific or philosophical worth.

Like I said somewhere else, probably to someone else, your logic fails you due to wrong premisses. Endeavor to make your premises as correct as possible and you can't be faulted for them...
Do what you've been doing... and you're dismissed like a pigeon playing chess.

Dismissals in thin air is not a news for me.

1. What is the origin of living cell?

Was there anyone around back then who could document it reliably? I'd wager that no, there wasn't. So, we may never know that.

If evolution does not have answer on the origin of living cell in modern scientific world then how comes you are sure about origin of species? Were you the monitoring agent of Cambrian’s life explosion “the Big Bang of life”?

There are, however, people working on how life could come from lifelessness... and they have come to quite a few promising results, like Esq said...

These are only promises, nothing else. Check my answers to Esq.

Also, have fun:
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

When Vatican can publically confess and apologise on the gay act in the church then recognition of evolution as biblical is not a surprise.

Secondly, if you are following Natural Selection (blindly), then you should have the answer on why there is Natural Selection. Is Natural Selection a chance or something out from nothingness? Perhaps Natural Selection is God!

2. Where are the transient animals?

They're dead. If we can't find fossils of them, then it's because fossilization is an extremely rare process. It's actually a wonder we have managed to find as many fossils as we have. Again, refer to Esq's reply for examples.

Please check my response to esq.

Some are still around us... yous see, according to the theory, evolution is still taking place and so we are all transitional forms into something else.

Humans are a special case, as they've learned to mold the environment to suit themselves, instead of having to adapt to the environment.... which just renders evolutionary pressures somewhat null and thus we are evolving very, very slowly, compared to the remaining life on Earth.

Do you hope that humans would have wings sometime in the future?

You seem to be under the impression that a single mutation can result in a new fully functioning organ, from one generation to the next.

You are correct because this is the exact impression which Neo-Darwinism propaganda machine is spreading around, of course not for a single mutation. If looking natural selection from your perspective then is not it strange that small successive changes are occurring in a very systematic manner without any errors as if some intelligent being is controlling all these changes.

This is not how the theory of evolution proposes new structures to form.
I'll have to refer to my original post where I ask you to learn about the theory of evolution, before you reply, as it will be beneficial for our conversation to proceed. Refusal to do so, may be met with sarcasm, mocking and/or taunting.

I had given thought provoking arguments against theory of evolution and proven that it is only a theory not scientific fact. You can go back and check all of my reasoning in this relation.

If you have actual doubts which you wish addressed by someone who may be aware of their responses, then feel free to post them. But refrain from strawmanning.

So far, I am the only one who have given scientific and logical reasoning. Instead of having, counter scientific and philosophical arguments, I only bumped into the language that normally is the property of street hooligans.

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Please explain for my benefit because I'm trying to understand what the fallacious opening your reply to esq was supposed to prove or add to the discussion.

Theory of Evolution is not a conventional scientific fact. It is an ideological tool for atheism and secularism. This is what I am proving and adding to the discussion.

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Yes -- the total mass/energy of the universe is ZERO. So, this flat universe we live in could only have come from nothing. The only other thing you missed is there is no god.

Susskind might not like your statement.