Natural Order and Science

[Harris]

The argument of where do the laws of the universe come from has always seemed stupid to me, unless I'm understanding it incorrectly.

Is it because they are called laws that you think it must be like a law involving the police and the government?  So you're saying well we have these laws but who put them there?

The scientific laws of the universe are principles which usually describe or predict things, the way things behave independent of any outside supernatural force, they're governed by non sentient physical forces.

The laws exist only because things have certain properties and react certain ways predictably, not because god is like the universe policeman shaking a club menacingly at anything that dares to disobey the laws of gravitation or relativity.

All objects of experience are characterized by generic and specific properties. Ponder over this question:

Why the form of a material thing became the manner in which material particles combined, with their relationship giving rise to the specific properties of the material thing?

[Harris]

Harris, given ANY thing, we expect it to exist in the context of framework.  If you look at the framework in turn as a thing (which it is), then you'd expect it to be part of another framework.  In comes infinite regress, right?

You say that chance does not produce information.  This is fair enough, because no state is "information" unless someone is around to make use of it.  However, your mistake is a misunderstanding of the philosophical implications of evolution.  Evolution is the creation of patterns through chance crossed with the variable persistence of those patterns in their environment.  

It is fairly clear that everything in our universe is as it is because of the interactions of the stuff in the universe.  So we are left to ask-- why is the universe such that it arrived at me, sitting here typing this message?

The correct answer to this is "I don't know."  Anything beyond that is speculation, and in the case of a religious academic, pedantic speculation.  We can all try to extend what little we DO know into the unknown and see what ideas it brings.  You know something about intelligent life, information and patterns.  Others know something about physical properties, scientific principles, etc.  But BOTH sides, when attempting to look beyond the bounds of the observable, are just making shit up.  And that goes for the physicalists, here, too, not just you.

The scientific method as it is understood today, placed a great deal of emphasis on systematic observation and experimentation. These methods were constantly updated, with scientists checking and correcting the work of previous scholars. Such practices provide us with universal model of concepts. Any conceptual framework is built upon the semantical characterization of any framework’s observable behaviour. Universals came out of practical and experimental work; theories are formulated after discoveries. Said all that the natural sciences increasingly find unity, order and harmony in nature.

“The role of the form in determining the persistence of an organism results from its role as the SOURCE OF UNITY. The form, including the organisms vital functions, makes a heap of material constituents into a single organism.”

(Metaphysics VII 16)

However, what is this SOURCE OF UNITY that holds the elements of anything into a specific order?

Coming to EVOLUTION, I can say to me EVOLUTION seems to be an alternate of God in atheist world. I had rigorous debates over this phenomenon in the past. I really feel pity that no atheist (including Richard Dawkins) has come up with a precise and clear scientific definition of this term yet almost all atheists are following this term inconsiderately.

[Harris]

In short, all science is founded on the assumption that the physical universe is ordered and rational.

No it doesn't. 'Ordered' and 'rational' are concepts laden with connotations of intention and intelligence. Saying that the universe is rational is nonsensical. Only something with intelligence can be rational or irrational. The universe is not intelligent.

Science describes what happens based on observation and can use these descriptions to infer what will happen next. That is all.

The universe wasn't ordered moments after the big bang, it was just radiation.

What you find with non-equilibrium thermodynamics is that ordered islands of complexity can develop within a sea of chaos. Yet entropy continues to increase as a result of this.

First, I am not saying that universe is intelligent. I am saying universe is intelligible. This intelligibility is possible because thanks to certain physical laws all natural events have regular pattern and they are repetitive in nature. This order thus enables our intellect to make predictions of future events by means of rudimentary calculations. Our common conceptual scheme makes our predictions possible even for seemingly random events but within a larger-scale framework in which that randomness is embedded. The randomness and apparent indeterminism of chaotic behaviour are merely artefacts of our epistemic limitations.

“And We created not the heaven and the earth and all that is between them without purpose! That is the consideration of those who disbelieve!”
Shaad (38)
-Verse 27-
Secondly, if “Ordered and rational are concepts laden with connotations of intention and intelligence” then this statement does not override the ordered principles on which our consciousness operate. The reality which produces perceptual experiences in us, and the structure of which science aspires to formulate and control, must somehow be composed of consciousness.
Although the framework of consciousness is not known but I think it would be completely illogical to think that consciousness is not governed by any laws which are responsible to control discipline and order for its interaction with the physical processes both within its own body and in nature at large.

[Harris]

Refuted a myriad times on this forum already. You are using a strawman argument. No one is arguing that a bacteria cell assembled its atoms merely by chance. You are looking at a bacteria cell now and assumed that it spontaneously came into existence. The first cells would have been more primitive and may not have reproduced. The very word chance is misleading. If you have a completely random process over aeons of time using a whole soup of chemicals then you will be exploring a search space. This means that any configuration that more effectively minimises free energy will be settled upon. In the same way that a crystal does not develops by a process of self organisation and not by chance. Yet each snow flake is unique.

Today scientists are capable to produce any soup which you can imagine. Today’s science is sophisticated enough to produce life in matter or at least produce a primitive living cell only if nature would allow scientists to do so. No matter if all possible soups boil in whatever environment trillions of years, there is zero probability for life to appear within any soup. This is a naked fact.

The great example is Abiogenesis that has already tried to create all type of soups to create life. What in your opinion Abiogenesis had proven? Nothing!

Abiogenesis has not given any details about the source of first life form, about the mechanism that built-up first life form, and it even failed to confirm whether first life form was a single primitive cell or a whole monkey. Every assumption in abiogenesis is totally based on conjectures.

Nobel prizes are not given to stupid people. If that was the case, then Richard Dawkins was the one to win all Nobel Prizes.

Meaningless word salad. At best taken out of context. Code system? Also logically inconsistent. If a code system cannot be created without a mental process, then what created the initial mental process that created the code system? Did it not itself use a code system? And if not then why are you using the example of a code system (whatever one is).This paragraph is laden with such ambiguous terms. For example, what exactly is free will? Are you talking about classical information or information in terms of quantum mechanics? Your bullshit relies on equivocation and is disingenuous sleight of hand.

Here I give you one more delicious salad. Try to digest it if you can.

“The six feet of the DNA coiled inside every one of our bodies 100 trillion cells contain a four-letter chemical that spells out precise assembly instructions for all proteins from which our bodies are made … No hypothesis come even close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic means.”

Lee Strobel
Former legal editor of Chicago Tribune

[Harris]

“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”

Sort of like the chance that any specific hydrogen and oxygen atoms will combine to form water.

Do not forget about the ingenious question of Leibnitz:

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Chance and determinant are meaningless terms in the scope of nothingness.

[Harris]

Anti-intellectual.

I'm a professional scientist with a PhD who has held post-doctoral positions at universities and writes scientific papers in my spare time.

What you wrote wasn't intellectual. It was mental masturbation.

Try again.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”
Page 227
The Grand Design
Stephen W. Hawking

“The trouble here is this, that when scientist say something especially if he is well known, people take their statements as true but they dont realize that a statement by a scientist is not necessarily a statement of science. NONSENSE REMAINS NONSENSE EVEN IF EMINENT SCIENTIST STATED IT.”

John Lennox

[Angrboda]

Here I give you one more delicious salad. Try to digest it if you can.

“The six feet of the DNA coiled inside every one of our bodies 100 trillion cells contain a four-letter chemical that spells out precise assembly instructions for all proteins from which our bodies are made … No hypothesis come even close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic means.”

Lee Strobel
Former legal editor of Chicago Tribune

Quoting Lee Strobel. What a buffoon. You must be desperate. Strobel is a nutcase and hardly qualified.

[Harris]

Here I give you one more delicious salad. Try to digest it if you can.

“The six feet of the DNA coiled inside every one of our bodies 100 trillion cells contain a four-letter chemical that spells out precise assembly instructions for all proteins from which our bodies are made … No hypothesis come even close to explaining how information got into biological matter by naturalistic means.”

Lee Strobel
Former legal editor of Chicago Tribune

Quoting Lee Strobel.  What a buffoon.  You must be desperate.  Strobel is a nutcase and hardly qualified.

Who cares about the qualification of Strobel, concentrate on the meaning of his statement.

[IATIA]

Chance and determinant are meaningless terms in the scope of nothingness.

Obviously, "I" (whatever that is) am "here" (where ever that is) which means there was never nothing.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Chance and determinant are meaningless terms in the scope of nothingness.

Obviously, "I" (whatever that is) am "here" (where ever that is) which means there was never nothing.

“I'm not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh