The Design of Life

by Deputy Dog 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  funkyderek

  Deputy Dog:

  And now you see your own problem. The rules don't apply in this context. Was there "Time" before the universe? Does it exist outside of the universe.

  So the rule that creationists have made up in order to deny the possibility of life arising through natural process requires an exception to itself? Why make up a rule and then plead for special treatment?

  And if we're just making up rules, why the need to make up one that requires a complex intelligence to exist before time? Why not just a set of rules that will allow intelligence to emerge (like those we actually see in the universe)? What's the purpose of inventing something that requires more explanation than what it was invented to explain?
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  Deputy Dog

  Funky

  I didn't make the rule. Who's rule is this?

  What we observe in nature is that any intelligence capable of design can arise only through a long process of gradual evolution - something that requires time.
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  BurnTheShips

  And if we're just making up rules, why the need to make up one that requires a complex intelligence to exist before time? Why not just a set of rules that will allow intelligence to emerge (like those we actually see in the universe)? What's the purpose of inventing something that requires more explanation than what it was invented to explain?

  FunkyDerek has no need for that hypothesis! ;-)

  But seriously, the Universe had a cause. We do not know, in a scientific fashion, what that cause is. Everything we have ever observed in the span of time has a cause. The scientific method is predicated on cause and effect. Under identical conditions identical causes should produce identical effects. That is a big part of testing ideas in science. But what caused the Universe? If the natural world, along with its sequence of causality and the laws that govern that causality, came into being with it, what came "before" it? That is what I think DeputyDog is trying to get at.

  Burn
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  serotonin_wraith

  You may want to ask first if time existed before this universe came to be. You also may want to ask if natural law existed before this universe came to be.

  You're the one who said 'before time'. This means there had to be some passage of time, and then our universe started. Otherwise, there's no 'before'. Everything just started with the big bang.

  As for whether natural law existed before (if there was a before) nobody knows. If there was a designer, all that designer did was put two gases together, and leave it alone. The natural laws took over then. It's like putting concentrated cordial and water together, and saying you designed the patterns it makes as it mixes.
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  funkyderek

  Deputy Dog:

  I didn't make the rule.

  No, somebody else did. They just made it up. That's the whole basis of creationism/ID, the made-up rule that complexity requires a designer. But if you make up a rule (or parrot someone else's made-up rule) you should really make sure it doesn't depend on an exception to itself.

  Who's rule is this? [that evolution requires time]

  It's not a rule, it's a statement of fact; evolution requires time the same as aging requires time.

  BurnTheShips:

  But seriously, the Universe had a cause.

  Maybe. If it did, one thing we can say with almost one hundred percent certainty is that that cause was not a person.
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  Deputy Dog

  s_w

  You're the one who said 'before time'. This means there had to be some passage of time, and then our universe started. Otherwise, there's no 'before'. Everything just started with the big bang.

  You're right. Maybe that's a poor choice of words. Maybe I should have said, time as we know it.

  We can't say, everything just started with the big bang, if everything in nature has a cause.

  My point is simply that anything outside (or "before" for a lack of better words) of the universe (nature), would have to be "super"natural. Thus the cause of nature, would have to be supernatural.
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  serotonin_wraith

  There are some alternatives to the supernatural idea:

  The universe is expanding. It will then shrink to nothing, and emerge in another space/time dimension as that universe's big bang. All of this universe's matter will be transferred to that one.

  There are other universes on the other side of black holes. This universe is on the other side of another universe's black hole.

  Maybe saying before the big bang is like saying north of the north pole. You can't get beyond that point, yet the north pole still exists.

  Scientists are trying to make their own big bangs. It's possible that our universe is the result of a scientist who succeeded in another universe.

  My own feeling is that there was a natural cause for our universe, because we've not found a supernatural cause for anything in nature so far. Universes that make their own universes somehow. This would mean an eternity of universes, with no beginning. If a designer can be eternal, I can't see why universes couldn't.

  Of course, none of us knows yet. You may be right. But it doesn't HAVE to be a supernatural cause, it could just as easily (more easily perhaps) be a natural cause.
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  funkyderek

  Deputy Dog:

  We can't say, everything just started with the big bang, if everything in nature has a cause.

  My point is simply that anything outside (or "before" for a lack of better words) of the universe (nature), would have to be "super"natural. Thus the cause of nature, would have to be supernatural.

  OK, so for the moment let's accept that everything in nature has a cause. That doesn't mean nature itself has a cause. Nature could itself be "super"natural and would therefore be exempt from rules requiring designers or causes. No need to hypothesise an intelligence at all.
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  BurnTheShips

  Maybe. If it did, one thing we can say with almost one hundred percent certainty is that that cause was not a person.

  Certainly not the kind of person we are familiar with.
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  funkyderek

  BurnTheShips:

  Certainly not the kind of person we are familiar with.

  Indeed. The only kind of person we are familiar with is that which has acheived personhood after a long process of Darwinian evolution. It is hard to imagine how else the phenomena associated with personhood could come about, without positing exceptions and special pleading (which is exactly what we find among those who claim a person has come to be by other means).