Natural Order and Science

[Mr.wizard]

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.

You are understanding it correctly, Theses people actually think there is a law that something like gravity must follow, that has been put in place to make gravity do what it does. Otherwise gravity would be running wild, causing chaos and anarchy, lol.

[bennyboy]

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.

[I_am_not_mafia]

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.

[I_am_not_mafia]

“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”
 
Page 356, volume 2
A Guided Tour of the Living Cell
Christian De Duve
 

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.

“A code system is always a result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor). It should be emphasised that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, to produce a code. There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no known sequence of events which can cause information by itself in matter.”
 
Pages (64, 67, 79, and 107)
“In The Beginning Was Information,”
Dr. Werner Gritt, (information specialist)

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.

[Neo-Scholastic]

[Ben Davis]

[I_am_not_mafia]

[bennyboy]

Two responses to Chad which are just ad hom-- not even ad hom, even, because an ad hom attack is still a kind of argument. But I think both Mathilda and Chad have put forward intelligent arguments.

[The Grand Nudger]

Meh.  The "argument" that Chad put forward is that human beings cannot conceive of reality without an imposing agency.  That can't be true, since I and a great many others can conceive of -precisely- that.  That no one could "express the natural order" without invoking "proscriptive principles".  That can't be true either, since -all- of our declarations of the "natural order" are descriptive, rather than proscriptive........ in the first place. Metaphors imply -nothing-.  Metaphors are narrative, not logical, devices.

You have low standards for intelligent argument Benny. 

[abaris]

Therefore skydaddy! Sounds legit. Next!

Binary thought anyone?  Fallacy#1

Ah, that's what OP is about.

Thought as much. But thanks for reading that wall of text.