“Intelligence,” OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!

[Mister Agenda]

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.

I didn't even try to make an argument that the existence of God can be disproved in that post. I don't believe the existence of God can be disproved, especially since people who believe God is real are comfortable changing his attributes for the convenience of their arguments.

You are trying to prove that universe does not have any cause and does not have any purpose.

Nonsense. Why would I try to prove the unprovable? Unlike you, I know my limitations. At this point, whether the universe is caused or causeless is unprovable either way.

Similarly, human lives and human intelligence comes out from nowhere.

Characterizing billions of years of evolution and generations of our predecessors who lived and died before us as 'nowhere' is so wrong as to be dishonest.

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.

Sure, although your nearly complete misunderstanding of what I've had to say so far makes me think doing so may be entirely pointless.

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 that were your position, it could as easily simply mean the cause of the universe was not a conscious being. 'Not designed' is not a synonym for 'causeless' or 'nothingness'. Current physics suggests that a state of 'Nothingness' may not be possible, if true, there 'never was nothing'. Since you went off the rails in your first paragraph, everything that follows below...doesn't actually follow.

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.”

According to the most current physics, the most probable fate to the universe is not 'nothing' but an ever-expanding, excruciatingly thin cloud of photons. I don't know of any scenario in which the future of the universe is actually bounded by '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.

So, who do you think among the atheists believes that the sort of philosophical nothingness you describe ever actually existed? Even saying it 'existed' seems to involve a contradiction, if only a semantic one. The 'nothing' a physicist like Krauss refers to in 'A Universe from Nothing' is not philosophical, it is the hardest vacuum possible, which is not 'philosophical nothingness' at all. Quantum foam may possess the characteristic of existing necessarily.

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.

Good thing that science doesn't have to take your imaginary hypotheses seriously, then. Your type never seems to ask what we think about something before telling us what we must think about it.

The only alternate to “Nothingness” is God Who is an appropriate explanation for the existence of every being.

The only alternative to 'capital N Nothingness' is something. That something having to be God is what you need to support, just saying it doesn't make it so.

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.

That we don't like infinite regression is not proof against it. No one has been able to prove that infinite regression is not possible, so as far as anyone knows, it could be the case.

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.

It's the equivalent of pointing out that you have not justified either the rule that everything must have a cause, or that God is the lone exception to that rule. If God can exist without a cause, why can't the universe? Not to mention that we observe causeless events at the quantum level, if everything in the universe has to have a cause, it does not follow that the universe itself must have a cause, that would be a fallacy of composition.

At one point, there should be an uncaused cause else there would be no explanation for all existing beings in today’s universe.

A quantum fluctuation is an uncaused cause. Physics indicates that a quantum fluctuation is a possible cause of our universe.

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

I agree with the first sentence. The second seems to be unsupported by any substantial argument or evidence.

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.

I am please you have responded, and glad my estimation of the odds that you would was incorrect. If you are so senstive about strong expressions, perhaps you should have avoided saying this about me: "Whether you are ignorant or trying to mislead the world on purpose. Based on this fact I reckon any of your comments meaningless."--Harris

It makes complaining about my tone sound very hypocritical.

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."

There are no extra points for repeating yourself. The quote is an explanation for why people concerned with real science think the earliest bacteria did not spring into existence whole like Athena from the brow of Zeus, but evolved from simpler precursors, as you have been told repeatedly in this thread.

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?”
https://atheistforums.org/thread-27193.html

You should stop posting quotes you don't understand. This is a quote mine. The part where you left off, without even looking, is just before de Duve goes on to explain how evolution accounts for the lack of randomness. That's how predictable this quote-mine lie is. The man is not a creationist, you are misrepresenting his position. Again. Dr. de Duve has a habit of offering the creationist explanation before demolishing it, which makes him trivially easy to quote mine. It's not hard to quote mine, just deceitful.

But perhaps I'm being unfair. I am willing to lay down a thousand dollars of my own money, payable to the charity of your choice, which I will show official acknowledgement of my contribution for, that de Duve goes on to say how evolution accounts for the phenomenenon described in what you've chosen to quote. If you agree to do the same if you are shown to have quote-mined de Duve, it will certainly be worthwile for me to order another de Duve book from Amazon if necessary, presuming the proof isn't available on the internet.