“Intelligence,” OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!

[Harris]

To be precise, the universe began to exist in this form. Prior to that …

To cut the story short, the purpose of your arguments is one; the existence of God can be disproved. You are trying to prove that universe does not have any cause and does not have any purpose. Similarly, human lives and human intelligence comes out from nowhere. In consideration of your views I have decided to submit following reasoning on why I think God exist. Let me have your opinion on that.

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 saying; everything came out from “Nothingness.”

If everything came out from “Nothingness” and ends back into it that means “Nothingness” encapsulate every existing thing 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 such an idea of “Nothingness” since the world of beings 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 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.

There is no “Nothingness” out there. There is God.


“Allah. There is no god but He,-the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? He knoweth what (appeareth to His creatures as) before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme (in glory).”
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 255-

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Thanks for the reference, I've ordered the set, I should have them in about a week. Certainly if I find that those words are De Duve's and not taken out of context, I will apologize.

Guess what arrived today! Here is the quote, in its entirety, and in context:

"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 for you. So you might as well accept, as do most scientists, that the process was completed in no more than 1 billion years and that it took place entirely on the surface of our planet, to produce, as early as 3.3 billion years ago, the bacterium like organisms revealed by fossil traces."

De Duve does NOT equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms. Like most biologists, he thinks the most probable route to the first bacterium like organism was a series of simpler organisms starting with what was essentially self-replicating organic chemistry. Earlier on the same page, concerning the origin of life, he states:

"How this emergence took place is a matter of conjecture, but it most likely involved, on a simpler chemical level, the same cardinal rules of fidelity, variability, and selection that governed biological evolution. Primitive self-maintaining and self-correcting systems must have formed and evolved progressively into dynamic structures of increasing complexity and stability."

So it's a quote mine, a statement taken out of context to make someone appear to have a different position than the one they actually hold, one that supports the liar's (because it IS a form of lying) position in some way. De Duve thinks pretty much what everybody on this thread who isn't a creationist or IDer thinks about abiogenesis, and it's NOT that the odds against a bacterium popping full-fledged into existence floating around in dirty water is an argument against abiogenesis, which doesn't make such an outlandish claim, as much as you want it to be so.

The question now is if Harris was quote-mining deliberately or deceived by quote-miners before him. If the latter, were I Harris, I would be asking why the people on my side are lying. In that sense, I was Harris, once upon a time. Repeatedly finding that the creationist side engaged in wholesale deceit was a major catalyst in my decision to investigate what scientists were really saying about evolution, before having it filtered through sources quite happy to make it look like a reputable scientist's opinion was the opposite of what they actually thought.

No apology for you, Harris, but you owe US one.

You have used quiet strong expressions out there. Perhaps in vain. I am very keen to see what you have to say on the following quotations;

We have seen this quote before

"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 FOR YOU. SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL ACCEPT, AS DO MOST SCIENTISTS that the process was completed in no more than 1 billion years and that it took place entirely on the surface of our planet, to produce, as early as 3.3 billion years ago, THE BACTERIUM LIKE ORGANISMS REVEALED BY FOSSIL TRACES."

Now compare this with the following quote from the same old De Duve and tell me are these quotations out of context!

Quote
Look at the five “words” below, knowing that they were written with an alphabet of 20 letters:

ILDIGDASAQELAEILKNAKTILWNGP
GLDIGPDSVKTFNDALDTTQTIIWNGP
GLDVGPKTRELFAAPIARAKLIVWNGP
GLDCGTESSKKYAEAVARAKQIVWNGP
GLDCGPESSKKYAEAVTRAKQIVWNGP

If I were to tell you the words were typed separately by five different monkeys, would you believe me? Not if you have taken more than a passing glance at them. “All five words end with WNGP,” you would point out to me, “and for monkeys hitting keyboards independently, this cannot be.” Actually it can. But the probability of such a coincidence is one in 655 billion billions. You would need a pretty large number of monkeys for five of them to have a reasonable chance of coming up with the same word ending. Surely, a more likely possibility is that the monkeys cheated. They copied! … If you look more closely, you will see that four other letters, in addition to the terminal four, are the same in all five words (LD in position 2 and 3, G in position 5, and I in position 22). This lowers the odds of a fortuitous coincidence to one in 429,500 billion billion billion billions. Trillions of planets like ours could not possibly provide enough monkeys. And this is not all. Five other letters are the same in four out of the five words (G in position 1, S in position 8, A in position 13, and AK in positions 19–20). Even more striking, the two last words have 25 out of 27 letters in common; they differ only in positions 6 and 17. There can be no doubt. If monkeys there were, they most certainly did not hit their typewriters’ keys at random.

The words shown are not inventions. They represent real things, fragments of molecules called proteins, which are very long chains of up to several hundred units called amino acids, of which 20 different kinds are used in the assembly of the chains. Each word represents the sequence of a 27-amino acid piece (each letter standing for a given kind of amino acid) present somewhere in the heart of a large protein molecule containing more than 400 amino acids. This protein is an enzyme, or biological catalyst, known as phosphoglycerate kinase, PGK for short. PGK is a key participant in one of the most fundamental processes that take place in living organisms, the conversion of sugar to alcohol (or lactic acid), which occurs in virtually all forms of life, whether microbes of various sorts, plants, molds, or animals (including humans).

Now comes the central piece of information, which explains why the words serve as an introduction to this book. The five structures shown belong to the PGKs of five widely different organisms. The first one belongs to Escherichia coli, or colibacillus, a common microbe that we all harbor in our gut. The others are from the wheat, fruit-fly, horse, and human PGKs, respectively:

Colibacillus:------ILDIGDASAQELAEILKNAKTILWNGP
Wheat:-----------GLDIGPDSVKTFNDALDTTQTIIWNGP
Fruitfly:----------GLDVGPKTRELFAAPIARAKLIVWNGP
Horse:-----------GLDCGTESSKKYAEAVARAKQIVWNGP
Human:---------GLDCGPESSKKYAEAVTRAKQIVWNGP

What our monkey parable has brought to light is that the similarities among the PGKs of our sample organisms could not possibly be due to chance. A possibility could be—this, no doubt, would be the “creationist” view—that the similarities betray the intervention of a “hidden hand.”

End Quote

Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning
Pages 3-4
Christian de Duve

Please check out my new post “Is Evolution a science or a faith?”
http://atheistforums.org/thread-27193.html

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I estimate ten-to-one that he will ignore.

Don’t get upset. I am not ignoring anything.