William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument

http://www.historum.com/philosophy-p...onalism-2.html
Empiricism, in philosophy, a doctrine that affirms that all knowledge is based on experience, and denies the possibility of spontaneous ideas or a priori thought.

Rationalism (Latin ratio,”reason”), in philosophy, a system of thought that emphasizes the role of reason in obtaining knowledge, in contrast to empiricism, which emphasizes the role of experience, especially sense perception.

The Age of Einstein Frank W. K. Firk Professor Emeritus of Physics Yale University

It is necessary for the scientist to have a conviction that Nature can be understood in terms of a small set of fundamental laws, and that these laws should provide a quantitative account of all basic physical processes. It is axiomatic that the laws hold throughout the universe. In this respect, the methods of Physics belong to Philosophy. (In earlier times, Physics was referred to by the appropriate title, “Natural Philosophy”). In one of Einstein's writings entitled “On the Method of Theoretical Physics”, he states:

“If, then, experience is the alpha and the omega of all our knowledge of reality, what then is the function of pure reason in science?” He continued, “Newton, the first creator of a comprehensive, workable system of theoretical physics, still believed that the basic concepts and laws of his system could be derived from experience.” Einstein then wrote “But the tremendous practical success of his (Newton’s) doctrines may well have prevented him, and the physicists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from recognizing the fictitious character of the foundations of his system”. It was Einstein’s view that “..the concepts and fundamental principles which underlie a theoretical system of physics are free inventions of the human intellect, which cannot be justified either by the nature of that intellect or in any other fashion a priori.” He continued, “If, then, it is true that the axiomatic basis of theoretical physics cannot be extracted from experience but must be freely invented, can we ever hope to find the right way? ... Can we hope to be guided safely by experience at all when there exist theories (suchas Classical (Newtonian) Mechanics) which to a large extent do justice to experience, without getting to the root of the matter? I answer without hesitation that there is, in my opinion, a right way, and that we are capable of finding it.” Einstein then stated “Experience remains, of course, the sole criterion of the physical utility of a mathematical construction. But the creative principle resides in Mathematics. ... I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.”

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Originally Posted by YesNo

One point I'm trying to make with bringing up Eldridge and Gould is that punctuated equilibrium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium) is a currently valid alternative to phyletic gradualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyletic_gradualism). Contrast that with the Standard Model of Cosmology (aka, the Big Bang) where there is no surviving alternative since the results of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe came in.

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I think "valid alternative" is a wrong way of looking at in in this case, because there's nothing mutually exclusive about those two theories, really. That sometimes evolution happens abruptly in spurts has long been noted, even by Darwin, but there are also cases where it seems there is gradual change over a long period time. It simply seems to mean that PE and PG aren't either/or in general, but either/or in each specific case. So I still see one theory (evolution) split into two different methods (of which there is likely a long continuum between them).

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Everyone should know by now what Craig's arguments are going to be... If you want to stop him, you have to show that something is eternal besides God

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The problem with "everyone should know... Craig's arguments" is that it assumes most of the people that debate him have nothing better to do with the majority of their time. That's part of the problem; Craig mostly debates people who have spent their lives studying the things that he cherry-picks conclusions from to fit into his arguments. These people haven't been spending their time honing their arguments because they've been too busy figuring out the facts, or even how they CAN figure out the facts (which is often the real challenge itself). Krauss et al. go into these debates have a great depth of knowledge usually on a single subject, while Craig goes into these debates with a great breadth of knowledge on a variety of subjects. Craig works this to his advantage by keeping most debate subjects quite broad, which allows him to work in every element of his "5-point attack". But it's just common sense that, in the same format (like the time of live debates), the broader something is, the shallower it's going to be. And Craig punishes his opponents for not addressing the full breadth of his arguments when they usually choose (to their own detriment, in appearance, at least) to focus on just one thing. Watch the Krauss debate again: Craig is organized, he is broad, he is fast, he hits points like a gatling gun. What does Krauss do? He picks one subject (like nothing) and can stay with it almost for the entire length of one of his sections. Krauss doesn't address many of Craig's point (like the resurrection) because that's completely outside his area of expertise.

Now, as for showing that "something is eternal besides God," that's just plain incorrect. It's believed that time itself came into existence with the origins of the universe, and if that's the case, then we know the universe can't be eternal because that would imply there was never a time without time. What a term like "eternal" could possibly mean outside time is a real question mark. It's one reason Craig calls God "timeless" rather than "eternal," because he couldn't be limited by something that "begun to exist". So it's actually not up to an opponent to argue that something else can be eternal, but merely that something else that can create the universe can exist outside of time. It's very possible that such a description could fit quantum energy, because there's some theories of quantum gravity that state if you combine quantum mechanics and gravity you get something that brings spacetime and material into existence itself. The problem is that quantum gravity is a pain to test, although attempts are still being made.

Plus, why does God get a pass here? Why can God be timeless, spaceless, causeless, etc. and how does such a being bring space time, gravity, and matter into existence? The problem with God, speaking scientifically, is that it offers absolutely no testable predictions. People are hard at work trying to test quantum gravity, but who's at work trying to even find a way to test God? In the classic phrase: "it's not even wrong".

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Originally Posted by YesNo

It seems that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem also requires the multiverse to have a beginning. So the multiverse is not an alternative to God either.

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That's because "beginning" can simply mean "point that time itself began," but that doesn't mean there can't be something natural that can't create spacetime itself.

stuntpickle,

There isn't much in your last post I have a problem with, but I'll try to restrict my own reply to the points I think are directly relevant to the Kalam, even though I feel most of my last post WAS directly related to the argument.

1. The Problem of Nothing

Most of my last post was related to Craig's definition of "nothing" in his "ex nihilo nihil fit" argument that he has stated argues for the first premise. My argument is that Craig seems to be equivocating when he talks about this, from using observational examples from natural reality, to talking about the singularity, to talking about everything prior to spacetime. In all cases, his nothing doesn't seem to be nothing in absolute sense, so his entire basis for using that classic argument crumbles, as does his basis for accepting P1 as true.

2. The Problem of Everything

Another objection that could be made that I haven't brought up is that it's unclear what Craig means by "everything" in "everything that begins to exist." Similar to the above, when he talks about this everything he always uses examples from natural reality. But if he's using examples that are part of the "universe" set, he can't go from arguing from things in the set (everything) to the set itself (the universe), the same way you can't go from arguing about observations made concerning Socrates to being applicable to all mortals. Sets can't be part of themselves. Craig has insisted before he's not doing this, but then, for the life of me, I can't figure out what he means by "everything," because to use it in a way that would allow "the universe" to be a subset of "everything," "everything" would have to address things outside the universe and, currently, we have no examples of anything outside the universe beginning to exist. Again, at this point, Craig always brings up "ex nihilo," which is why I was focusing so much on that.

3. The Problem of Ignorance, Induction and Syllogisms

When I say the argument is flawed, I mean it's flawed in that we cannot accept its premises as true because there are still too many question marks. I'm not talking about "are all humans mortal" question marks, I'm talking about "we simply have no clue" question marks. There is a ginormous gap between the assumption that's made when we say "all humans are mortal" and "everything (including things outside the universe) that begins to exist has a cause." In the former case, we have no examples to refute it, and many examples that support it; in the latter case, we have no examples outside the universe to refute OR support it, and some examples in the universe (virtual particles) that seem to frustrate it, if not refute it. These two arguments are clearly not on equal grounds.

Yudkowsky once said that because logic is valid in all possible worlds, it doesn't tell you what world you're in. The idea is that pointing out that an argument is valid does nothing if the observations of reality do not support it. The "All men are mortal" syllogism works in terms of its valid inferences, but we only accept the premises as true because our observations of reality continue to support them. If at some time we find a human who is immortal, we may have to rethink that. But, see, scientists are always prepared to do this, we're prepared to let the world TELL US what premises to "assume as true" based on the consistency of our observation.

I addressed you earlier when you mentioned Hume's problem of induction, both with Popper's theory that it wasn't really about induction, but about our inability to refute, which means that we don't have to say that something like "All men are mortal" is some eternal, metaphysical fact, all we have to say is that "we accept it because so far we aren't able to refute it."

My problem with using such syllogisms is likely innate to my distaste for much of (not all of, mind) philosophy in general. There's so often too much of a tendency to obscure ontological complexity through linguistic simplicity. "A syllogism is logically sound if its premises are true and its inferences are valid." Fine and dandy, until one gets to talking about what truth is. It's not enough to state that everything is innately induction and then act as if everything we choose to assume as truth is equal. That's the same as saying all assumptions of truth made from any observations are equal, which is absurd.

To me, using syllogisms is worse when the person using them realizes that there there are issues with the arguments on which the premises rest. It's not that I disagree that the Kalam is a forcing argument, that if its premises are true then the conclusion must be true, but rather that everybody recognizes that there is major doubt concerning the truth of one (if not both), so why are we wasting time stating the argument at all? It's putting the cart before the horse.

This really shouldn't be controversial either, and it's not in science. In science, when there's a theory nobody feels the need to say "If all of X is true, then the theory is true." No, they simply find ways of testing it, and, if necessary, they say "there may be a problem here," and then ALL attention goes on figuring out the case of what's wrong, because it could turn out to be nothing or minor, or it could completely upset the paradigm. Nobody would feel the need to say "well, if light doesn't bend around a gravitational field then Newtonian physics is true." No, they waited for the results of Einstein's eclipse measurements to come in, which proved general relativity right and Newton wrong.

Applied to the Kalam, one can see these kinds of problems all over. Besides "nothing" and "everything" I'll add two more:

3. What is the cause of virtual particles? It must be something predictable or else it's unclear what we mean by "cause" anymore, since cause has always been connected to the consistency of predictions of one (ideally) variable acting upon something else. A distinction must be made between "contingency" and "cause."

4. How does causality work outside of spacetime? Because it's unclear how we get from "cause" as events in spacetime to an event that brings spacetime into existence.

Conclusion: Towards a Bayesian Approach

To me, these are just four big, honking question marks. Not a question mark like "are all humans mortal?" But question marks to which we have no observational answers to. We've seen humans die (every one so far that we know of), we have not seen nothing come from nothing, or spacetime itself come into existence, or what, exactly, causes virtual particles, or anything outside the universe come into existence. With these enormous gaps in our knowledge, it is not reasonable to accept the premises as true.

If we agree that there's no reason to accept them as true (and we should agree; again, there's a major difference in the problem of induction when we have one premise that has never been refuted and is consistently supported and another that has many possible refutations and some that aren't supported at all), then we should really be talking about probability, Bayesian reasoning for their likelihood of truthfulness. In doing this, we could save a lot of time and hassle from continuing to mention the argument itself, and just focusing on the parts that are in question.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I think "valid alternative" is a wrong way of looking at in in this case, because there's nothing mutually exclusive about those two theories, really. That sometimes evolution happens abruptly in spurts has long been noted, even by Darwin, but there are also cases where it seems there is gradual change over a long period time. It simply seems to mean that PE and PG aren't either/or in general, but either/or in each specific case. So I still see one theory (evolution) split into two different methods (of which there is likely a long continuum between them).

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I agree that the good points of both will merge into something better overall. At the moment they enjoy the fight. I'm no expert in the area, but I like the way change is presented by the punctuated equilibrium group. The extinction event stimulates speciation, if I have it correct. I think that is how change occurs in general during some crisis. They also have the fossil record on their side.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

The problem with "everyone should know... Craig's arguments" is that it assumes most of the people that debate him have nothing better to do with the majority of their time. That's part of the problem; Craig mostly debates people who have spent their lives studying the things that he cherry-picks conclusions from to fit into his arguments. These people haven't been spending their time honing their arguments because they've been too busy figuring out the facts, or even how they CAN figure out the facts (which is often the real challenge itself). Krauss et al. go into these debates have a great depth of knowledge usually on a single subject, while Craig goes into these debates with a great breadth of knowledge on a variety of subjects. Craig works this to his advantage by keeping most debate subjects quite broad, which allows him to work in every element of his "5-point attack". But it's just common sense that, in the same format (like the time of live debates), the broader something is, the shallower it's going to be. And Craig punishes his opponents for not addressing the full breadth of his arguments when they usually choose (to their own detriment, in appearance, at least) to focus on just one thing. Watch the Krauss debate again: Craig is organized, he is broad, he is fast, he hits points like a gatling gun. What does Krauss do? He picks one subject (like nothing) and can stay with it almost for the entire length of one of his sections. Krauss doesn't address many of Craig's point (like the resurrection) because that's completely outside his area of expertise.

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The problem is that cosmology is what Krauss studies. If he feels overwhelmed, he should stick to the first two of Craig's points. He only needs to prepare a response to the Kalam argument in a professional manner. That is the main reason there is an audience in the room.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Now, as for showing that "something is eternal besides God," that's just plain incorrect. It's believed that time itself came into existence with the origins of the universe, and if that's the case, then we know the universe can't be eternal because that would imply there was never a time without time. What a term like "eternal" could possibly mean outside time is a real question mark. It's one reason Craig calls God "timeless" rather than "eternal," because he couldn't be limited by something that "begun to exist". So it's actually not up to an opponent to argue that something else can be eternal, but merely that something else that can create the universe can exist outside of time. It's very possible that such a description could fit quantum energy, because there's some theories of quantum gravity that state if you combine quantum mechanics and gravity you get something that brings spacetime and material into existence itself. The problem is that quantum gravity is a pain to test, although attempts are still being made.

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To me eternal means timeless rather than something that existed throughout all time since time itself is finite. Being within time and being infinite (eternal) is where, I suspect, the mathematical contradictions of infinity arise.

Krauss claims that he uses infinity in his profession but what he is really using is the limit process in the calculus. He never actually counts an infinite number of things, nor is any proof that the algorithms he uses are correct based on an actual infinite computation. I noticed that he didn't seem to understand that in the debate.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Plus, why does God get a pass here? Why can God be timeless, spaceless, causeless, etc. and how does such a being bring space time, gravity, and matter into existence? The problem with God, speaking scientifically, is that it offers absolutely no testable predictions. People are hard at work trying to test quantum gravity, but who's at work trying to even find a way to test God? In the classic phrase: "it's not even wrong".

That's because "beginning" can simply mean "point that time itself began," but that doesn't mean there can't be something natural that can't create spacetime itself.

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Well, the Judeo-Christo-Islamic religions predicted that God created the universe, even "out of nothing" as I recall Catholics claiming. The Kalam argument provided the reasoning that if something begins to exist it has a cause. So there has been for some time a "theory" within these various religions about the origin of the universe.

Others felt secure that the universe was eternal in time and no one could test the prediction anyway. But then came relativity, the expanding universe and quantum mechanics in the 20th century and a cosmological theory of the universe coming out of nothing. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, in the 21st century, provided the confirming scientific data that our universe--yes--had a beginning. And not only did it have a beginning, the standard model of cosmology insisted it came out of nothing and so did space and time. So, whatever caused it is not in space or time. Apply the Kalam argument and a core component of the Judeo-Christo-Islamic theory receives a major confirmation.

Although the Kalam argument doesn't give you any specific God, it gives you the existence of something capable of starting off the universe outside of space and time since that was created as well. Craig's other points try to fill in the details with his Christian perspective of what that God is.

Ironically, Krauss is an atheistic cosmologist whose very work is validating a religious position he does not support.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

In case anyone's interested here's a link to an Austrialian physicist's blog that deals a lot with fine tuning.

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I actually read that, and while I agree about the essential idea of nothing bein an equivocation, I think he's wrong to put the blame on Krauss. Here's why:

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Now let’s look at Krauss’ claims again. Does it make sense to say that there are different types of not anything? That not anything is not stable? This is bollocks. What Krauss is really talking about is the quantum vacuum. The quantum vacuum is a type of something... The quantum vacuum is not nothing.

This suggests a very simple test for those who wish to talk about nothing: if what you are talking about has properties, then it is not nothing. It is pure equivocation to refer to the quantum vacuum as nothing when a philosopher starts asking the question “why is there something rather than nothing?”.

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Luke is confusing semiotics with ontology; this is what I brought up to you earlier. It's not exactly outrageous to recognize that we utilize the same word to mean different things; nothing is simply one of those words. Let me simplify this as much as possible:

Ancient man looked at empty space (empty space meaning "empty of tangible sensible matter") and they said "nothing comes from nothing" because they defined "nothing" as "absence of tangible, sensible matter" and they never saw something come out of it. This should not be a controversial claim. They didn't realize that there was even a difference between "nothing" (absence of any thing at all) and "nothing" (absence of tangible, sensible matter).

Luke quotes Rees who states: "We’ve realised ever since Einstein that empty space can have a structure such that it can be warped and distorted. Even if shrunk down to a ‘point’, it is latent with particles and forces – still a far richer construct than the philosopher’s ‘nothing’."

Yes, "WE'VE" realized that empty space isn't actually empty, but nobody, at the time of that discovery, seemed to bother with asking whether "nothing" was still a coherent concept. Remember, the referent of "nothing" began as "empty space," suddenly, we see SOMETHING in "empty space" and we keep the word "nothing," but perhaps not everybody updates it from being a word that has an observational referent ("empty space") to a word that has a theoretical concept ("the complete absence of something.") with no observational referent.

I agree that Krauss et al. are "equivocating," but it's not their original equivocation, it's the philosophers'! The word began its existence referring to space people THOUGHT was absent anything, but which turned out not to be. The word transformed, observationally, to having a definite referent, to being a concept, an idea, a possibility, (I won't call it a theory). The fact that Craig still discusses nothing AS IF it has an obvious, unambiguous, factual referent is disturbing to me. When he mentions nothing he doesn't qualify that by saying "it's possible that nothing can't exist, it's possible that there can't be a complete absence of anything". No. When he mentions nothing he moves on to giving examples from the observational, physical world, which clearly isn't nothing, or he mentions the singularity, which isn't nothing, or he mentions the universe before spacetime, which may be nothing, but we have no clue because we can't go that far back yet.

So Craig's "nothing" has no definite referent any more. It's, at best, a hypothesis. But it should be worrisome that Craig acts as if this nothing has a real-world referent that is "metaphysically intuitive" when he's admitted that people's initial metaphysical intuition of nothing (empty space) isn't nothing at all. You did the same thing when you said "When you make the ridiculous demand to be "shown nothing", you must understand that everyone in the world just complied with your request." The nothing you talk about here is the "metaphysically intuitive" type of nothing that even the person in that link you provided me with is calling equivocation. If I request someone to show me nothing, and they "comply", all they've done is shown me an absence of tangible, sensible matter, not a complete absence of any thing.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

They also have the fossil record on their side.

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I think that's been overstated. The fossil record is always incomplete, and not all evolutionary changes can be detected through the fossil record. That's why there's been so much interest in observing evolution in controlled environments that isn't limited by the obscuration of distant time.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

The problem is that cosmology is what Krauss studies.

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And I don't see that Krauss was outmatched in this area (fwiw, Krauss is a theoretical physicist, which means he studies more than just cosmology). The fact that Craig presents answers to problems we currently don't have answers for is not him "beating" Krauss at his own game. Krauss is dead on when he says "we don't know." It's that simple. Craig would like to convince you that he knows something Krauss and other theoretical physicists don't on the subject of physics in cosmology. He doesn't. That's why Krauss and others like him are unimpressed.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Krauss claims that he uses infinity in his profession but what he is really using is the limit process in the calculus. He never actually counts an infinite number of things, nor is any proof that the algorithms he uses are correct based on an actual infinite computation.

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It's true we may be talking about the limits of our mathematical models when we talk about infinity, but we currently have no other word for it. Read my replies to stuntpickle about infinity: "counting an infinite number of things" presumes that infinity obeys the same laws as finite things. It's possible (likely) that there can't be "an infinite number of (discrete) things," because suggesting discreteness already presumes finiteness. Krauss is right in that all physicists and mathematicians "use" infinity and it does seem to function and have its uses. As for what that means regarding real-world referents is debatable, but Craig simply saying that it can't exist isn't convincing, nor is his trying to demonstrate the absurdity of infinity using finite calculations.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

The Kalam argument provided the reasoning that if something begins to exist it has a cause.

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Yes, but see the problems I outlined above.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

And not only did it have a beginning, the standard model of cosmology insisted it came out of nothing and so did space and time. So, whatever caused it is not in space or time. Apply the Kalam argument and a core component of the Judeo-Christo-Islamic theory receives a major confirmation.

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See above again on the problem of "nothing". All we can really say is that whatever created the universe wasn't limited by spacetime, and must have brought both into existence. But we still don't know what that thing is. It doesn't really supply support for the Judeo-Christo-Islamic theory of "something from nothing," because we don't know if it was nothing. It's still possible (maybe even likely) that it was quantum gravity. Again, let's wait for some tests to provide some kind of solid conclusion before we accept another theory that gives us no predictive power.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Ironically, Krauss is an atheistic cosmologist whose very work is validating a religious position he does not support.

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To validate the position there would first have to be a way to falsify it, and there's not.

Let me add something I haven't brought up yet: In mathematical logic there's something called the Conjunction Fallacy. Simply stated, if one probably is contained inside another one, the one that's contained will always be more likely to occur. So, if you look at two dice-roll sequences:

1. 531542
2. 3425651

The first sequence will ALWAYS be more likely because it is contained inside the second probability (the 531542 sequence occurs in the second, out of order, with a 6 added in an extra roll).

What this has to do with the Kalam is this: Let's accept that the universe must have a cause that precedes spacetime. Let's suppose that this cause could be narrowed down to God or quantum energy. All things being equal, we should always state the latter is more likely. Why? Because we know quantum energy exists, whether God exists or not. So even if God does exist, quantum energy fits inside that hypothesis the same way the 1st roll in the dice example fits inside the 2nd.

This is often sometimes informally expressed as "Occam's Razor", or "the simplest answer is usually the best." Every extra element we add to a theory adds something that can go wrong with it. God "seems" like a simple answer until one gets past the linguistic simplicity to imagining rendering ourselves in, say, AI terminology, but adding abilities that even we don't possess. In comparison, utilizing things we already know exist (like quantum energy) is to be much preferred, if only for the reason we don't have to worry about the probability of its existing at all.

No one has all the answers but Craig has a lot of them. I disagree with him on many things while agreeing with him on many. His precocious debating skills and charisma cannot be denied. I still side with Hawking though.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

Well, because everything we can think of that comes into existence has a cause for that existence. Can you think of any exceptions?

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The English thought all swans were white until they went to Australia.

Just because I can't think of anything that doesn't have a cause that doesn't mean there isn't such a thing. That thing might be the universe. Why not?

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Originally Posted by cacian

Haha because everything happen for a reason...

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Really? How do you know?

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

I think that's been overstated. The fossil record is always incomplete, and not all evolutionary changes can be detected through the fossil record. That's why there's been so much interest in observing evolution in controlled environments that isn't limited by the obscuration of distant time.

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I think what is known so far about the fossil record supports punctuated equilibrium.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

And I don't see that Krauss was outmatched in this area (fwiw, Krauss is a theoretical physicist, which means he studies more than just cosmology). The fact that Craig presents answers to problems we currently don't have answers for is not him "beating" Krauss at his own game. Krauss is dead on when he says "we don't know." It's that simple. Craig would like to convince you that he knows something Krauss and other theoretical physicists don't on the subject of physics in cosmology. He doesn't. That's why Krauss and others like him are unimpressed.

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I am pretty sure Craig does not want to claim he knows more about cosmology that the physicists. He is mirroring the physicists results back to them with his religious twist. Also the audience is not expecting him to provide any new insights on cosmology, but use the ones that the physicists have discovered to make his religious point.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

It's true we may be talking about the limits of our mathematical models when we talk about infinity, but we currently have no other word for it. Read my replies to stuntpickle about infinity: "counting an infinite number of things" presumes that infinity obeys the same laws as finite things. It's possible (likely) that there can't be "an infinite number of (discrete) things," because suggesting discreteness already presumes finiteness. Krauss is right in that all physicists and mathematicians "use" infinity and it does seem to function and have its uses. As for what that means regarding real-world referents is debatable, but Craig simply saying that it can't exist isn't convincing, nor is his trying to demonstrate the absurdity of infinity using finite calculations.

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The problem of doing an infinite number of even mental events is at the heart of the axiom of choice in mathematics. One cannot assume that is logically permitted without the explicit axiom, at least that is how I remember it.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

See above again on the problem of "nothing". All we can really say is that whatever created the universe wasn't limited by spacetime, and must have brought both into existence. But we still don't know what that thing is. It doesn't really supply support for the Judeo-Christo-Islamic theory of "something from nothing," because we don't know if it was nothing. It's still possible (maybe even likely) that it was quantum gravity. Again, let's wait for some tests to provide some kind of solid conclusion before we accept another theory that gives us no predictive power.

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Yes, that is all we can say. Perhaps it was a multiverse outside our space and time that caused our universe to exist. That is why Craig's reference to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is critical. If he is correct about that theorem, even the multiverse had a beginning and we are caught in the same problem.

I'm not a member of a Judeo-Christo-Islamic group, but I don't mind giving credit where it is due. Part of their worldview, if I understand it, has been validated. It hasn't all been validated.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

To validate the position there would first have to be a way to falsify it, and there's not.

Let me add something I haven't brought up yet: In mathematical logic there's something called the Conjunction Fallacy. Simply stated, if one probably is contained inside another one, the one that's contained will always be more likely to occur. So, if you look at two dice-roll sequences:

1. 531542
2. 3425651

The first sequence will ALWAYS be more likely because it is contained inside the second probability (the 531542 sequence occurs in the second, out of order, with a 6 added in an extra roll).

What this has to do with the Kalam is this: Let's accept that the universe must have a cause that precedes spacetime. Let's suppose that this cause could be narrowed down to God or quantum energy. All things being equal, we should always state the latter is more likely. Why? Because we know quantum energy exists, whether God exists or not. So even if God does exist, quantum energy fits inside that hypothesis the same way the 1st roll in the dice example fits inside the 2nd.

This is often sometimes informally expressed as "Occam's Razor", or "the simplest answer is usually the best." Every extra element we add to a theory adds something that can go wrong with it. God "seems" like a simple answer until one gets past the linguistic simplicity to imagining rendering ourselves in, say, AI terminology, but adding abilities that even we don't possess. In comparison, utilizing things we already know exist (like quantum energy) is to be much preferred, if only for the reason we don't have to worry about the probability of its existing at all.

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I think the idea of God that you have and the one that I have are different. I suspect it doesn't even correspond to Craig's idea of God. I may be wrong, but I suspect that you are right about the God you are describing. It does not exist.

I don't think the Christians are interested in some deistic God. They want a God that is ultimately friendly and loves them--who will save them. I am interested in a God that makes sense of my own consciousness--and I trust is friendly. These Gods not only explain the origin of the universe but also of our and other species consciousness. In that sense it is the simplest explanation. The way to come up with indirect testable statements about that God is to ask questions about our own consciousness, how it relates to the individual brain and across individuals and even species.

As the Christians claim, we are made in the image of God. If you want to study God, look within.

Limiting yourself to a few numbered points is certainly a good attempt at restricting the scope of the discussion, and, thus, preventing it from slipping away from us. I want to point out that what I'm about to do is not best described as a "refutation". I'm not going to try and offer counterarguments to debate the point; I'm simply going to point out the sections I see as being bald errors. It might also be a helpful exercise to try and render your thoughts in terms of numbered assertions, listed in terms of increasing consequence. I'll try to direct my post in this manner.

Also, I have a request: can we try to address your points one at a time? I'd really like to address all of them, but I think if we do, the conversation will run away from us. Let's try to deal with one point completely before moving on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

stuntpickle,


1. The Problem of Nothing

Most of my last post was related to Craig's definition of "nothing" in his "ex nihilo nihil fit" argument that he has stated argues for the first premise. My argument is that Craig seems to be equivocating when he talks about this, from using observational examples from natural reality, to talking about the singularity, to talking about everything prior to spacetime. In all cases, his nothing doesn't seem to be nothing in absolute sense, so his entire basis for using that classic argument crumbles, as does his basis for accepting P1 as true.

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Craig's not equivocating, but you are.

From what I can tell your argument throughout your posts about Craig's equivocation goes something like this:

1. The philosophical concept of "nothing", which means "not anything", is derived from a faulty conception of empty space.
2. The above error constitutes equivocation.
3. Craig uses the philosophical concept of "nothing".
Therefore, Craig is guilty of equivocation.

The problems with this argument are manifold.

First and foremost, your argument isn't valid. The conclusion cannot be reasonably deduced from the premises, regardless of the truth of those premises. Just because something originates in error does not mean that it must persist in error.

Second, the first two premises are obviously untrue. The philosophical concept of "nothing" is a priori and does not utilize the senses to arrive at the concept. Rational discourse is one of thought as opposed to observation. The concept of "nothing" came about within the context of the negation of being rather than observation of space. The concept of nothing did not come about because a philosopher discovered he was swimming in nothing, but rather because he wondered why he and everything else existed.

Of course, empty space was, at one time, thought to be figuratively representative of this nothing. This was simply an error of fact--not of equivocation. Equivocation is an error in which two different meanings of a word are used irrationally in the construction of a single argument. The fact that two different meanings of the term exist is not sufficient reason for an instance of equivocation. To be guilty of equivocation means to use, in an argument, two different meanings of the term in a fallacious manner, which is precisely what you and Krauss are doing. Craig is not doing this.

Krauss is arguing something like the following:

1. Craig says nothing can come from nothing.
2. We know from observation that nothing can produce various particles.
Therefore, Craig is wrong.

This is a perfect example of equivocation. "Nothing" in the first premise means "not anything". "Nothing" in the second premise means "quantum vacuum".

There is nothing (ha!) that I have read in any of Craig's works that commits the fallacy of equivocation. I say this not because I like Craig, but because it's true.

By the way, Craig does not discuss things "prior to" time. He discusses things outside time. Any examples he uses are not necessarily the bases of his assertions; they're just that: examples. His assertions are not derived wholly from observing the generation of Eskimo villages or his own coming into being, but rather these examples corroborate his assertions.

Did the very post you are now reading begin to exist? Did my idea to write it begin to exist? Did the thoughts contained therein begin to exist?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

FWIW, Eldridge and Gould's boldest claims have been widely criticized, and I would say the majority of evidence and evolutionary biologists are still on the Neo-Darwinist's side. Of course, that's ad populum and authority again but, again, it's hard for folks like us to go on much else.

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I would just like to point out that PE vs. gradualism are debates within Neo-Darwinism, they're both on the Neo-Darwinist side.

Gould certainly had a tendency to over-emphasize how drastic changes between stability and rapid evolution occur, mostly in his popular literature. I'd say the current consensus is a more developed understanding of gradualism that admits how radically rates of evolutionary change can differ. PE is still important as a description of a phenomena in the fossil record.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

This is a very good point. I do not disbelieve the theory of evolution. But I do believe most evolutionists are dishonest with most Christians when they try to explain the mechanisms in terms of gradualism, but then turn around and defend the fossil record in terms of punctuated equilibrium. Evolution has been in a bit of a crisis for a while. And although I suspect it will pull through with a more refined theory, I think it's a shame that its proponents won't own the inherent problems.

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That's a common misunderstanding of Punctuated Equilibrium, it is still a form of gradualism, the point of PE has to do with discrete changes in the rate of change. On the other side, Phyletic Gradualism argues that changes in the rate are more continuous and less radical. Although, neither the PE or the PG side is arguing about substantial differences in rates of evolutionary change, since even small differences will have noticeable effect in geological time scale.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

That's a common misunderstanding of Punctuated Equilibrium, it is still a form of gradualism, the point of PE has to do with discrete changes in the rate of change. On the other side, Phyletic Gradualism argues that changes in the rate are more continuous and less radical. Although, neither the PE or the PG side is arguing about substantial differences in rates of evolutionary change, since even small differences will have noticeable effect in geological time scale.

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Again, Pip, let me reiterate that I am not at all hostile to the theory of evolution. I think you here concede the point that I was making, which was not that PE was a complete departure from evolution. Perhaps your objection is simply one of semantics and that PE is properly considered gradualistic and that the true disagreement is with phyletic gradualism.

I have had some limited coursework in evolution and historical geology, but I suspect your acquaintance with the subject is vastly superior to mine. So let me just try to state what I understand to be true. Punctuated equilibrium came about because the previously understood mechanism of the gradual accumulation of changes was not adequately demonstrated in the fossil record. My understanding is that the fossil record does not represent an abundance of incremental change that would necessarily surround all the distinct speciation. My understanding is that PE came about to rectify this problem.

To be honest, it seems to me (although I could be wrong) that you are trying to obscure the point behind technicalities, which was my original complaint.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YesNo

Yes, that is all we can say. Perhaps it was a multiverse outside our space and time that caused our universe to exist. That is why Craig's reference to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is critical. If he is correct about that theorem, even the multiverse had a beginning and we are caught in the same problem.

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Let's just go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room. As of right now, the scientific consensus is that the universe had an absolute edge. This is incredibly disconcerting to scientists because the edge is also an absolute limitation of science. Many scientists are simply unhappy that they seem to have discovered an absolute constraint of their own discipline. What has resulted is a wild attempt to turn science in on itself to avoid the edge. String theory isn't even really a theory; it's a metaphysical discussion about some far-off possible theory. Hawking's quantum tunneling genesis of the universe has not come from a necessity of the theory, but rather it is an attempt to avoid precisely what Hawking knows, and has stated, to be the alternative--extra-physical causation. Science is now in revolt against its own findings, and string theory is simply the foremost symptom.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

I have had some limited coursework in evolution and historical geology, but I suspect your acquaintance with the subject is vastly superior to mine. So let me just try to state what I understand to be true. Punctuated equilibrium came about because the previously understood mechanism of the gradual accumulation of changes was not adequately demonstrated in the fossil record. My understanding is that the fossil record does not represent an abundance of incremental change that would necessarily surround all the distinct speciation. My understanding is that PE came about to rectify this problem.

To be honest, it seems to me (although I could be wrong) that you are trying to obscure the point behind technicalities, which was my original complaint.

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The point is that incremental changes are still occurring, but phenotypic stability occurs to varying degrees so that transitional figures within species do not readily appear in the fossil record. The argument between the PE people and the PG people is about how consistent the rate of gradual change is. PE does not contradict the explanation of evolution through the accumulation of gradual change. Specifically, it is using ideas from population genetics to explain why we see stasis despite gradual change always occurring at the individual level.

The take away point is that PE does not contradict that evolution occurs through small gradual changes, genetic drift is a continuous process. However, things like lineage splitting and major morphological changes are rare enough that they appear suddenly in the fossil record.

The main problem with Gould's over emphasis on PE is that we see gradual change and stasis within the fossil record. They both occur to different degrees. Also, genetic change occurs continuously even when phenotypes stay relatively stable. Gould sometimes argued that speciesation almost always occurred through his proposed mechanism, but this is unlikely. However, it is likely that something like what Gould proposed does explain some of the fossil record.

Where you get opposition to Gould is from gene-centric perspectives, like those of Dawkins. If you view the gene as the unit of selection, rather than the individual, PE does not address the emergence of new genes and thus is not explanatory in that model of evolutionary biology. Dawkins would view strict gradualism as sufficient explanation without the need to come up with an idea of radical change in evolutionary rates.

Edit: Just to clarify, both PG and PE admit that intermediate morphologies are not preserved in the fossil record (which explains the sudden jump). PG contends that a slow gradual rate accounts for the difference between the forms that appear in the fossil record. PE contends that rapid evolutionary change occurs in burst (over say 1 million years instead of 5 million), where small gradual changes occur faster under only certain conditions, and for most of the time morphology is static because of dynamics of population genetics creating stability in large groups.

Neither side would disagree that sometimes lineages maintain static morphologies for a long time. The disagreement is over how rapidly the change occurs whenever what event that facilitates the fixation of new traits happens.

The third and completely rejected alternative is the "hopeful monster" who pops out fully different from one generation to the next.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

The point is that incremental changes are still occurring, but phenotypic stability occurs to varying degrees so that transitional figures within species do not readily appear in the fossil record. The argument between the PE people and the PG people is about how consistent the rate of gradual change is. PE does not contradict the explanation of evolution through the accumulation of gradual change. Specifically, it is using ideas from population genetics to explain why we see stasis despite gradual change always occurring at the individual level.

The take away point is that PE does not contradict that evolution occurs through small gradual changes, genetic drift is a continuous process. However, things like lineage splitting and major morphological changes are rare enough that they appear suddenly in the fossil record.

The main problem with Gould's over emphasis on PE is that we see gradual change and stasis within the fossil record. They both occur to different degrees. Also, genetic change occurs continuously even when phenotypes stay relatively stable. Gould sometimes argued that speciesation almost always occurred through his proposed mechanism, but this is unlikely. However, it is likely that something like what Gould proposed does explain some of the fossil record.

Where you get opposition to Gould is from gene-centric perspectives, like those of Dawkins. If you view the gene as the unit of selection, rather than the individual, PE equilibrium does not address the emergence of new genes and thus is not explanatory in that model of evolutionary biology. Dawkins would view strict gradualism as sufficient explanation without the need to come up with an idea of radical change in evolutionary rates.

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I think I have a grasp on what you stated here. My point is that in public discussions people like Dawkins propound PG as a mechanism, yet they defend the fossil record from the prospective of PE. The reason a lot of fundamentalist Christians argue about lack of transitional forms isn't because Christians are stupid, but because most evolutionists are reluctant to actually discuss the different interpretations of their own theory, as they presume that any discussion about disagreement or lack of unity within the discussion of evolution will be interpreted as a weakness of the theory. I do not think the theory of evolution is in jeopardy, but I do believe that the proposed mechanisms are now being hotly contested.

Would you agree with my last point?


I guess I should address a disagreement about "stasis and gradual change" existing in the fossil record. I understand that stasis is adequately represented in the fossil record, but I also understand that gradual change is not sufficiently represented for PG to be the primary mechanism. In fact, any stasis is, itself, a reasonable objection to PG.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

Let's just go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room. As of right now, the scientific consensus is that the universe had an absolute edge. This is incredibly disconcerting to scientists because the edge is also an absolute limitation of science. Many scientists are simply unhappy that they seem to have discovered an absolute constraint of their own discipline. What has resulted is a wild attempt to turn science in on itself to avoid the edge. String theory isn't even really a theory; it's a metaphysical discussion about some far-off possible theory. Hawking's quantum tunneling genesis of the universe has not come from a necessity of the theory, but rather it is an attempt to avoid precisely what Hawking knows, and has stated, to be the alternative--extra-physical causation. Science is now in revolt against its own findings, and string theory is simply the foremost symptom.

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I agree. Physicists are trying to avoid any extra-physical, God-like causation. That is what prompts speculation about the multiverse. The characteristic of a God-like cause is that some choice was made. The multiverse could operate on chance.

If there was choice involved, then some sort of consciousness made the choice. I hope it is friendly and something we can relate to, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

I think I have a grasp on what you stated here. My point is that in public discussions people like Dawkins propound PG as a mechanism, yet they defend the fossil record from the prospective of PE. The reason a lot of fundamentalist Christians argue about lack of transitional forms isn't because Christians are stupid, but because most evolutionists are reluctant to actually discuss the different interpretations of their own theory, as they presume that any discussion about disagreement or lack of unity within the discussion of evolution will be interpreted as a weakness of the theory. I do not think the theory of evolution is in jeopardy, but I do believe that the proposed mechanisms are now being hotly contested.

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Certainly there is always going to be debate over the mechanisms of such a complex process. Yet, I think there is justification in why speakers about evolution are hesitant about presenting these debates, because there is a history of misunderstanding and misrepresentation by anti-evolutionist. Eugenie Scott had this problem in Texas in 2009 when she went to speak on new textbook standards. The school board wanted there to be a "strengths and weaknesses" section on evolutionary theory in the science books. The problem is that the technical debates about the pace of evolution are so subtle that it is better to keep on point about the things evolutionary biologist do agree on.

I'm also not sure Dawkins attempts to defend the record through PE, I've read the Ancestor's Tale and he is a clear supporter of PG. For Dawkins the fossil record presents sudden changes because of its incompleteness (which PG and PE agree on), and he thinks the change occurs over longer scales of time (which PG disagrees with PE on).

Just as a visual aid to make the distinction clear:

PG

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosit...gradualism.gif

PE

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosit...punctuated.gif

We can see from the visuals that the actual distinction between PG and PE is subtle and often the disagreement is overemphasized in popular discussion of evolutionary biology.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

Certainly there is always going to be debate over the mechanisms of such a complex process. Yet, I think there is justification in why speakers about evolution are hesitant about presenting these debates, because there is a history of misunderstanding and misrepresentation by anti-evolutionist. Eugenie Scott had this problem in Texas in 2009 when she went to speak on new textbook standards. The school board wanted there to be a "strengths and weaknesses" section on evolutionary theory in the science books. The problem is that the technical debates about the pace of evolution are so subtle that it is better to keep on point about the things evolutionary biologist do agree on.

I'm also not sure Dawkins attempts to defend the record through PE, I've read the Ancestor's Tale and he is a clear supporter of PG. For Dawkins the fossil record presents sudden changes because of its incompleteness (which PG and PE agree on), and he thinks the change occurs over longer scales of time (which PG disagrees with PE on).

Just as a visual aid to make the distinction clear:

PG

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosit...gradualism.gif

PE

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosit...punctuated.gif

We can see from the visuals that the actual distinction between PG and PE is subtle and often the disagreement is overemphasized in popular discussion of evolutionary biology.

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Excellent post, Pip. But I think the point that critics of PG rightly make is that the number of lost changes one must presume to believe PG is unwarranted. If I understand PG correctly, then the number of gradual changes in the actual populations of creatures would dwarf any static population. That is to say that the road to speciation should be, even in the fossil record, littered with numerous steps as well as false steps since the representations of incremental change would vastly outnumber distinct speciations. It is my understanding that a number of stumpy in-betweens should be evident that are not. The near complete absence of such steps seems to me highly improbable.

As for Dawkins, I think he simplifies to a position of PE in discussion with anti-evolutionists for the reasons you state, but I don't think that makes it right.

By the way, I never meant to suggests that Dawkins explicitly defends PE. He usually just says something like "the fossil record adequately demonstrates my theory of evolution" when really the Christian is lodging the same complaint as the PE supporter, and Dawkins knows it but doesn't want to touch it with a ten-foot stick.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Just because I can't think of anything that doesn't have a cause that doesn't mean there isn't such a thing. That thing might be the universe. Why not?

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Fine. Who cares. This isn't an objection to anything. Try to organize that into a relevant argument, and I think you'll encounter insurmountable difficulties or, at least, come up with a bad argument. I guess I'm trying to say that severe skepticism and asking why not over and over again doesn't accomplish anything and can be used to frustrate any commonly accepted fact or intuition. The purpose of reason is not to establish things with 100% certainty. We're just concerned with what's likely. And there doesn't seem to be sufficient reason for special pleading in the case of the universe.

What if the universe is really made of jello, and we just don't know it because we're living in the matrix? Why not?

http://www.online-literature.com/for...52#post1138652

OrphanPip
Punctuated Equilibrium, it is still a form of gradualism, the point of PE has to do with discrete changes in the rate of change. On the other side, Phyletic Gradualism argues that changes in the rate are more continuous and less radical. Although, neither the PE or the PG side is arguing about substantial differences in rates of evolutionary change.

stuntpickle
Punctuated equilibrium came about because the previously understood mechanism of the gradual accumulation of changes was not adequately demonstrated in the fossil record. My understanding is that the fossil record does not represent an abundance of incremental change that would necessarily surround all the distinct speciation. My understanding is that PE came about to rectify this problem.

Dawkins explicitly defends PE. He usually just says something like "the fossil record adequately demonstrates my theory of evolution" when really the Christian is lodging the same complaint as the PE supporter, and Dawkins knows it but doesn't want to touch it with a ten-foot stick.

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...ins-page2.html

Quote:

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Can you please re-state your point? Or at least give us a precis of your evidence

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The Bio-info is in Genesis verse 1. Can you tell me how life started according to evolution ... this would take a while.

The structure of the extremely active quatum world, predicts measures of randomness and its variablity, if one chose to 'test' it. Observe = Test, randomness, and variablity. Much like one would have to assume when ... for example, describing a partical wave. If I took this approach I would stress the use of computational gematria, SY, I-Ching, and a binary [trinary better] set that flips 0's & 1's in 32 ways, much like computers. I would also have to include the formulae of the divisibility of 37, which would relate heavily as far as encryption. I would have to link the hebrew equivalent for the word compute, and 'figures of speech' like 'count the number of it' to the text; which i can.

MorpheusSandman
The problem with God, speaking scientifically, is that it offers absolutely no testable predictions.

[Predictions of where infiniti, PI or God begin or end are irrelevant; the text of the scriptures state specifically state a premise alpha-numerically, if the hypothesis can be proved, its correct ... as far as the cosmos or bio-genesis goes ... this idea doesn't need to be expanded beyond this level]

That's because "beginning" can simply mean "point that time itself began," but that doesn't mean there can't be something natural that can't create spacetime itself. Well, the Judeo-Christo-Islamic religions predicted that God created the universe, even "out of nothing" as I recall Catholics claiming. The Kalam argument provided the reasoning that if something begins to exist it has a cause. So there has been for some time a "theory" within these various religions about the origin of the universe.

[Cause and even retro-causality is it's own reason for being; Aristotle's tree-seed example: everything a tree needs to reproduce itself is contained within the seed ... provided the conditions for it]

YesNo
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, in the 21st century, provided the confirming scientific data that our universe--yes--had a beginning. And not only did it have a beginning, the standard model of cosmology insisted it came out of nothing and so did space and time. So, whatever caused it is not in space or time. Apply the Kalam argument and a core component of the Judeo-Christo-Islamic theory receives a major confirmation.

Although the Kalam argument doesn't give you any specific God, it gives you the existence of something capable of starting off the universe outside of space and time since that was created as well ...Ironically, Krauss is an atheistic cosmologist whose very work is validating a religious position he does not support.

Ancient man looked at empty space (empty space meaning "empty of tangible sensible matter") and they said "nothing comes from nothing" because they defined "nothing" as "absence of tangible, sensible matter" and they never saw something come out of it. This should not be a controversial claim. They didn't realize that there was even a difference between "nothing" (absence of any thing at all) and "nothing" (absence of tangible, sensible matter).

Luke quotes Rees who states: "We’ve realised ever since Einstein that empty space can have a structure such that it can be warped and distorted. Even if shrunk down to a ‘point’, it is latent with particles and forces – still a far richer construct than the philosopher’s ‘nothing’."

I'm not a member of a Judeo-Christo-Islamic group, but I don't mind giving credit where it is due. Part of their worldview, if I understand it, has been validated. It hasn't all been validated.

stuntpickle
The philosophical concept of "nothing" is a priori and does not utilize the senses to arrive at the concept. Rational discourse is one of thought as opposed to observation. The concept of "nothing" came about within the context of the negation of being rather than observation of space. The concept of nothing did not come about because a philosopher discovered he was swimming in nothing, but rather because he wondered why he and everything else existed.

Let's just go ahead and talk about the elephant in the room. As of right now, the scientific consensus is that the universe had an absolute edge. This is incredibly disconcerting to scientists because the edge is also an absolute limitation of science. Many scientists are simply unhappy that they seem to have discovered an absolute constraint of their own discipline. What has resulted is a wild attempt to turn science in on itself to avoid the edge. String theory isn't even really a theory; it's a metaphysical discussion about some far-off possible theory. Hawking's quantum tunneling genesis of the universe has not come from a necessity of the theory, but rather it is an attempt to avoid precisely what Hawking knows, and has stated, to be the alternative--extra-physical causation. Science is now in revolt against its own findings, and string theory is simply the foremost symptom.

I think I have a grasp on what you stated here. My point is that in public discussions people like Dawkins propound PG as a mechanism, yet they defend the fossil record from the prospective of PE. The reason a lot of fundamentalist Christians argue about lack of transitional forms isn't because Christians are stupid, but because most evolutionists are reluctant to actually discuss the different interpretations of their own theory, as they presume that any discussion about disagreement or lack of unity within the discussion of evolution will be interpreted as a weakness of the theory. I do not think the theory of evolution is in jeopardy, but I do believe that the proposed mechanisms are now being hotly contested.

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...ins-page2.html
Well, though I would generally agree with you [science] ... [but] the question still plagues them ... also punctuated equilibrium and transititional forms ... but they can't give up on these questions because it's just to important. [It involves the origin, creation, evolution of life]

I've mentioned the Torah has 304805 words ... Does everyone agree Genesis 1:1 states: In the Beginning Created God, the Heavens, and the Earth?

http://www.historum.com/philosophy-p...onalism-2.html
The subjects treated in Aristotle's Metaphysics (substance, causality, the nature of being, and the existence of God) fixed the content of metaphysical speculation for centuries. Among the medieval Scholastic philosophers, metaphysics was known as the “transphysical science” on the assumption that, by means of it, the scholar philosophically could make the transition from the physical world to a world beyond sense perception.

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...ml#comment1491
Aristotle regarded the world as made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each individual has its built-in specific pattern of development and grows toward proper self-realization as a specimen of its type. Growth, purpose, and direction are thus built into [this] nature. Science and philosophy must therefore balance, not simply choose between, the claims of empiricism (observation and sense experience) and formalism (rational deduction) ... One of the most distinctive of Aristotle's philosophic contributions was a new notion of causality. Each thing or event, he thought, has more than one “reason” that helps to explain what, why, and where

[The Premise is that 'In The Beginning' everything was complete [in Gen 1:1] and that in Gen 1:2 'the earth became null or void'; beginning a re-creative narrative from the earth's or a person's stand point]

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/...historyid=ab83
Several mythologies, including one developed in China, begin with the splitting in two of a cosmic egg. The Germanic version begins with a magic emptiness, one of the most characteristic features of creation stories. The Hebrews imagine a first moment when all is void, with darkness on the face of the deep. In Greece the story begins with Chaos, meaning a gaping emptiness. In Egypt and Mesopotamia a boundless ocean sets the primal scene.

[The Dimensioning of Gen 1:1 and the growth and decay constants of John 1:1, also reflected in the decay rate of the ages of the patriarchs which is also based on Euler's formula which wasn't dicovered until the modern age; can be reflected in certain symmetries, such as the Ulam Spiral, other art forms of this type, and symetries of harmony, like musical notation in islamic practice, as well as being seen in mesopotamia in circle, astrological, and time-based forms based on 6, 60 and 360. Far East and Indian forms representing an 8 fold fold path or grid that displays anti-symetries]

Does any anyone here ... doubt ... the similarities or 'patterns' in John 1:1... have mirroring and reflective qualities with Genesis 1:1?. [Euler and PI]

Fritjof Capra (1939 - ) Austrian-born famous theoretical high-energy physicist and ecologist wrote:

"Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’’.For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon.

In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance."
(source: The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism - By Fritjof Capra p. 241-245).

There is a striking resemblance between the equivalence of mass and energy, symbolized by Shiva's cosmic dance and the Western theory, first expounded by Einstein, which calculates the amount of energy contained in a subatomic particle by multiplying its mass by the square of the speed of light: E = mc2.

( Source: Richard Waterstone, " India: Living Wisdom" p.135 )

http://www.christianityboard.com/top...ost__p__145013
A team of researchers from the Astrobiology Centre (INTA-CSIC) has shown that hydrogen cyanide, urea and other substances considered essential to the formation of the most basic biological molecules can be obtained from the salt Prussian blue. "We have shown that when Prussian blue is dissolved in ammoniac solutions it produces hydrogen cyanide, a substance that could have played a fundamental role in the creation of the first bio-organic molecules, as well as other precursors to the origin of life

http://www.craigdemo.co.uk/bigbang.htm
One of the most surprising recent discoveries about the universe is not only that it is expanding, but that it is expanding at an accelerating rate. What this means is that extrapolating backwards we find the universe expanding more and more slowly. The initial state wasn't one of maximum acceleration, it was one of minimum acceleration. So, rather than an explosion, the expansion of the universe resembles " organic growth". There is a steady increase in the momentum and energy of galaxies as time passes, which is not just a reversal of entropy, but also seems to involve the creation of energy itself. It seem that the creation of energy and the creation of order are taking place throughout all the galaxies, and this process is the very same process that was responsible for the Big Bang - the creation of our universe ex nihilo.

http://www.craigdemo.co.uk/geneticpatterns.htm
Previously, Vernon Jenkins, discovered a mathematical pattern encoded within the Hebrew text of the Old Testament creation narratives. I was deeply impressed by the mathematical consistency of the patterns that Vernon discovered and I studied his work for about 2 years, contributing insights now and then. One of the things I discovered early on was the occurrence of the ratio 1: 1.2732, the ratio for a squared circle. This led Vernon to the discovery of pi in Genesis 1. This, in turn, led Peter Bluer to the discovery of e {Euler's Formula] in Genesis 1 also.

The patterns that Vernon discovered in Genesis were very clear and strong, so I reasoned that these patterns were unlikely to be the product of chance, and so were probably put into the narrative deliberately. I surmised that if God had encoded the patterns in the creation narrative, then perhaps the patterns would also manifest in the things that God supposedly created - ie in the living things He made. The mathematical patterns found in the genetic code indicate Intelligent Design.

http://www.historum.com/religion/368...ce-god-43.html
The problem comes to a head in cosmology where it is hard to explain what happened in the early universe without asking why. It also crops up in the study of our internal, psychological world and in particular in the study of consciousness. Reductionist scientists hover like vultures around this last refuge of the secondary qualities of mind, seeking explanations through physical brain function. Daniel Dennett, with his bold title Consciousness Explained, and Francis Crick in The Astonishing Hypothesis feel that they have achieved this in all but detail. Others are not so sure. However much you correlate brain function with sensations, thought patterns and so on, all you find is brain function. You never find subjective experience in itself. To the atheists this is mere pedantry but it is on this issue, the so-called hard problem of consciousness, that numerous conferences and publications are based. The issue which is still the most divisive is that of the locality of the mind. If, as the atheists believe, it is entirely rooted in physical brain function, then they feel they can forget about the secondary qualities, the spirit and the soul, for good.

http://www.physorg.com/news160994102.html
Prime numbers have intrigued curious thinkers for centuries. On one hand, prime numbers seem to be randomly distributed among the natural numbers with no other law than that of chance. But on the other hand, the global distribution of primes reveals a remarkably smooth regularity. This combination of randomness and regularity has motivated researchers to search for "PATTERN" in the distribution of primes that may eventually shed light on their ultimate nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_Automata
A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model studied in computability theory, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. It consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as "On" and "Off". Cellular automata are also called "cellular spaces", "tessellation automata". Cellular automata have been proposed for public key cryptography. The one way function is the evolution of a finite CA whose inverse is believed to be hard to find. Given the rule, anyone can easily calculate future states, but it appears to be very difficult to calculate previous states.

[For the lack of a better analogy right now, I'll use this example as a means of Alpha-Numeric Patterns of Symmetry]

http://www.halexandria.org/dward012.htm
In the Tarot, the Fool card symbolizes the Creative Force or Power that initiates and guides the Universe. “The Fool card is actually the God card in the Tarot.” ... Incidentally, 22 is also the number of letters in the Hebrew Alphabet, which due to the Geometry of Alphabets is a highly profound grouping of language symbols. ... One might note an underlying, cyclical nature -- from the emphasis on the individual ... to the cultural/tradition nature ... to the return to the individual (but now on a higher level) .... in each of the Cycles. This cyclical nature is repeated in [Myth], Astrology, Numerology, in the Tao de Ching, and ultimately, in the hierarchical aspects of the [Sephiroth] Tree of Life. It is cycles within cycles within cycles -- much in the same pattern of fractals in Chaos Theory.

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...ml#comment1148
XIII. THE LACK OF A TRANSITIONAL EVOLUTIONARY RECORD
[This is for the scientific community, just to make things fair. This is just off the top of my head, so educate me!]

Why? The lack of scientifically backed transistional fossils, out of the [100's of 1000's?] of species; with very few, if any of these puntuatially equilibriated forms being seen. Within each [genome speciation?] varies very little over time and within acceptable parameters. We see species come and go like the dinosaur; but within each biological age the survivors remain relatively unchanged. At certain biological stages we see life almost spontaneously appear, yet some species like the cockroach, trylobite and alligator remain relatively unchanged. We see this going back millions of years.

The answer I'm looking for is the original species, the transitional fossil, and the current or last one?

The Cosmo [PATTERN], the Katebo [kaos], the recreative process [cosmo2bio processes], evolution [bio-environ process], none of which contradict the Bible or science ... Kaos means without form, order, unsubstatiated, kaotic, desolate, 0 a NULL form, without the direct means of ordered forms, the nothingness of Gen 1:2 as contrasted with the completenes of Gen 1:1 ...

Other Sources
http://www.online-literature.com/for....php?p=1138652
http://www.historum.com/religion/347...d-origins.html
http://www.historum.com/religion/347...rigins-11.html
http://www.historum.com/religion/347...rigins-12.html
http://www.historum.com/religion/312...lution-80.html
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...-response.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

The problem comes to a head in cosmology where it is hard to explain what happened in the early universe without asking why. It also crops up in the study of our internal, psychological world and in particular in the study of consciousness. Reductionist scientists hover like vultures around this last refuge of the secondary qualities of mind, seeking explanations through physical brain function.

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When it comes to spiritual experiences, I think it is in a theist's favor to have those experiences associated with brain functions. This validates that the experience is truly a human experience and not a culturally induced idea. When a person describes an experience it goes through language so a critic can say that there was no underlying experience at all claiming it was all culturally induced. But when one can see a brain function associated with the experience there is no intermediate language involved and this legitimates the spiritual experience.

Reductionist scientists who seek explanations of experiences in the brain are much like Krauss who thinks he has scored some victory over religion by claiming the universe came out of nothing. They are actually validating the religious position.

I started reading Krauss's A Universe from Nothing looking for more insights into the universe. However, I was disappointed. After skimming around, I began to realize that I already knew most of what he was presenting there from other texts and I was amused by the amount of anti-religious ranting he was wasting both his time and mine on in the text. I suppose I could read the book to see how his ranting turns out, but I have better things to do.

My first encounter with Krauss was when OrphanPip posted the YouTube link to his talk over a year ago on a thread at Lit Net. That was the first time I realized that the universe had such a radical beginning. I couldn't believe it--out of nothing! How could an atheist say that with a straight face? Later, stuntpickle introduced me to Craig in another thread. By then I had already read enough astronomy to convince myself that Krauss was right about the universe and Craig was right with the Kalam argument.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

1. Craig says nothing can come from nothing.

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And Craig is God so we have to accept what Craig says :)

If Craig says the universe comes from A, then A has to be something we can detect, or he's just blowing hot air. Do you have you a photograph of A?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

And Craig is God so we have to accept what Craig says :)

If Craig says the universe comes from A, then A has to be something we can detect, or he's just blowing hot air. Do you have you a photograph of A?

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I don't think you understand what Craig means when he says "from nothing, nothing comes." He's saying "not anything" comes from "not anything." That is to say that he's suggesting nothing comes into being without adhering to conventions of causality. This is one of the oldest, most innocuous and least controversial ideas in all of philosophy (and science). It's like saying "there's a reason something happens."

The Kalam does not say "the universe comes from this or that thing." The Kalam is simply saying that the universe comes from something with X, Y and Z necessary properties. The Kalam does not aspire to identify or name this something.

Not so surprisingly, we have no photographs of God, nor do we have photographs of logical absolutes, love or electrons, yet we all still believe in these things. Your insistence that all claims must be subjected to empirical verification is an old and entirely refuted criterion of logical positivism. For us to entertain your absurd criterion, we first require that you empirically verify it. Thus explodes your criterion, thus explodes logical positivism. Your demand is best suited to refute your demand: you refute yourself, which is to say your position is self-refuting, self-contradicting, etc. Capice?

The problem with most New Atheists is that they are unwittingly reviving a dead and completely refuted worldview. Yes, you heard me right: the requirement of empirical verification for all claims is less reliable than theistic philosophy, and this is something both atheistic and theistic philosophers agree on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

Can you tell me how life started according to evolution

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No, because evolutionary theory doesn't address how life started. Might as well ask how life started according to gravitational theory.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-...-universe.html
Everything that we know about the universe allows for it to come from nothing, and moreover all the data is consistent with this possibility," says Krauss, who teaches in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Department of Physics in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

the question of creating something from nothing is first and foremost a scientific one—as the very notions of 'something' and 'nothing' have been completely altered as a result of our current scientific understanding. science has literally changed the playing field for this big question. The latest physics research into the origins of the universe shows that, not only can our universe arise from nothing, but more generally, the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity imply that something will generally always arise from nothing.

http://www.christianityboard.com/top...e__pid__143052
The idea is that in verse Gen 1 everything was created perfectly [the 1st perfect creation, the template for everything - how the bio-info - pre-evolution got there], in verse 2 the katabole [The Big Collapse - Chaos], and in verse 3+ a re-creation. [The Big Bang and subsequent Bio-Genesis] [1, 2 & 3 may get mushed together in a scientific view]

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...elligence.html
Aristotle limited his “theology,” to what he believed science requires and can establish. The influence of Aristotle's philosophy has been pervasive; it has even helped to shape modern language and common sense. His doctrine of the Prime Mover as final cause played an important role in theology. Until the 20th century, logic meant Aristotle's logic.

[I think you' all are missing the point in Aristotle's analogy of the tree ... in the end, the sead of it contains all the info necessary to reproduce itself ... the chicken and egg question pops up here ... what came first ... the template of design from the original ... chicken]

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...d-origins.html
The human DNA is constructed of two halves. Replication of the two strands takes place when both halves of the helix are pulled apart and then used as a template to copy the original model. The information received from this genetic copying is how replication of the original model is built.

The word ‘replicate’ defined by Webster’s Dictionary means, "to duplicate." The word ‘replica’ defined by Webster’s Dictionary means, "a reproduction or copy of a work, especially a copy by the maker of the original."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation
Human_genetic_variation The recency of our common ancestry and continual gene flow among human groups have limited genetic differentiation in our species. [Gene mutation though present ... is within acceptablle limits ... which also suggests recency to our original parents ... in that huge genetic variation hasn't ocurred]

http://www.icr.org/article/mutations...for-evolution/
Carl Sagan, in his Cosmos program "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue," stated that evolution was caused by "the slow accumulations of favorable mutations." While this may be the current popular theory, real science disagrees. The perpetuation of the Darwin myth clashes with reality.

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...elligence.html
Paul Davies is a British-born mathematical physicist who's now Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy at the University of Adelaide. He has written many popular books on physics and cosmology as well as highly regarded textbooks. Central to Paul Davies's ideas is the sense of purpose he sees in the universe and our place within it: "I find it very hard to accept that our existence in the world is something that just happens to be. It seems to me that the fact that the universe is self-aware is something that's written into the laws of nature. Paul Davies is keen to point out that the Templeton Prize is for progress in religion; in order to be able to make progress, this suggests to him, religion does not have all the answers. Science too should be progressive and not dogmatic, he says. Scientists must always be prepared to change their minds in the light of new evidence; that is the power, not weakness, of science. Such an approach brings a sense of humility that tells us we do not yet have all the answers, nor are we not necessarily the pinnacle [of] creation. [or knowledge]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak...ou_b_6105.html
It's high time to rescue "intelligent design" from the politics of religion [and science]. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology ... the Bible [or even other sacred texts] .... by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer
In March, 2002, Meyer announced a "teach the controversy" strategy, which alleges that the theory of evolution is controversial within scientific circles, following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education. The presentation included submission of an annotated bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "Darwinian evolution". In response to this claim the National Center for Science Education, an organisation that works in collaboration with National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association that support the teaching of evolution in public schools, contacted the authors of the papers listed and twenty-six scientists, representing thirty-four of the papers, responded. None of the authors considered that their research provided evidence against evolution.

On June 23, 2009, HarperOne released Meyer's Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. Philospher Thomas Nagel submitted the book as his contribution to the "2009 Books of the Year" supplement for The Times, writing "Signature in the Cell...is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin

http://www.historum.com/religion/375...estion-22.html
God [if he exists ... and is ... as possible for you to conceive him] wishes you to have life more abundantly ... the human condition, evolution and the material world are much easily understood than say ... the mind, consciousness, altered states of reality, existence or sentience. Basically physical material matter barely consistuients 5% of the universe, with dark matter over 20%, and dark energy comprising a whopping 70+% ... If we were to compare this to earth ... it would be a waterworld with one tiny speck of an island of mostly a vast unclaimed wilderness ... How hot can it get above 0 Kelvin ? [7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit]

Keywords: textbooks, schools, education, current political scientific paradigm, applications of ID that "meet the critrea".
http://www.historum.com/philosophy-p...subject-3.html

Other Sources
http://www.historum.com/religion/347...d-origins.html
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...-big-bang.html
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...elligence.html

YesNo
My first encounter with Krauss was when OrphanPip posted the YouTube link to his talk over a year ago on a thread at Lit Net. That was the first time I realized that the universe had such a radical beginning. I couldn't believe it--out of nothing! How could an atheist say that with a straight face? Later, stuntpickle introduced me to Craig in another thread. By then I had already read enough astronomy to convince myself that Krauss was right about the universe and Craig was right with the Kalam argument.

Yes, I agree ... my sentiments too

OrphinPip
No, because evolutionary theory doesn't address how life started. Might as well ask how life started according to gravitational theory.

Exactly ... hence the need to know ... not exactly ... because evolutionary theory must address it ... in whatever form, function or cause, it takes ... or even the real questions that plague science won't be answered ... it's a must, for science, it's the purpose and origins and development everyone's is interested in finding out.

No it doesn't, the origins of life are issues of abiogenesis not evolution. Evolutionary Theory attempts to understand how inheritance with modification works. It is not necessary to explain where life came from to look at how life works now and in the relatively recent past.

The origins of life are left up to molecular biologist and biochemist to work out.

KCK, first I want to offer you a couple hopefully helpful tips. Your posts are very long, which is fine, but unfortunately, your posts also tend to lack a certain unity/direction--an error that is magnified by the length of the posts. For example, you often quote persons in this forum without making use of the quote feature, and you tend to address others in an indirect manner so that your ultimate point is hard to discern. It might be helpful if you tried to be control the breadth of your posts, so that they better cohere.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KillCarneyKlans

Everything that we know about the universe allows for it to come from nothing, and moreover all the data is consistent with this possibility," says Krauss, who teaches in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Department of Physics in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

the question of creating something from nothing is first and foremost a scientific one—as the very notions of 'something' and 'nothing' have been completely altered as a result of our current scientific understanding. science has literally changed the playing field for this big question. The latest physics research into the origins of the universe shows that, not only can our universe arise from nothing, but more generally, the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity imply that something will generally always arise from nothing.

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Not only have you adopted Krauss's unwitting equivocation, but now you are also unwittingly arguing against the Kalam. That's no big deal because everything you've stated above is simply incorrect.

Consider the following from the physicist's blog I earlier linked to:

We can now see that this question cannot be answered by any of the methods we normally call scientific. Scientific theories are necessarily theories of something, some physical reality. Equations describe properties, and thus describe something. There cannot be equations that describe not-anything. Write down any equation you like – you will not be able to deduce from that equation that the thing that it describes must exist in the real world. Existence is not a predicate, as Kant memorably explained.

You've got it exactly wrong. Science isn't the arbiter of "nothing"; in fact, science can't even traffic with such. Science requires some physical reality to even get going. Krauss, who may be a brilliant physicist, is a philosophical dullard. He often makes such weird and bizarre claims that he embarrasses himself publicly. For instance, he co-hosted a talk with Richard Dawkins called, I think, "Something from Nothing", and was continually humiliated when he proposed such boners to Dawkins as "Isn't evolution a great example of something from nothing?" And, of course, to keep from looking like a nincompoop, Dawkins was forced to answer coldly, "No." This happened all throughout the talk: Krauss would say, "Don't you think X?" and Dawkins would have to answer "No."

What Krauss is calling "nothing" is really a quantum vacuum, which is something. "Not anything" cannot have properties, and Krauss's "nothing" has tons of properties and tons of applicable theories. This is all unimportant because Hawking actually provided the "nothing" we're looking for.

Of course, Hawking didn't strictly find "nothing", but rather he found the complete absence of physical existence--something called the singularity. The singularity is a zero-volume, infinitely dense thingum, which really describes the complete nonexistence of physical things and the absence of any possible system of scientific measure. What Hawking unwittingly established was that the universe had no MATERIAL cause. What the Kalam argues for is EFFICIENT cause, which is SOMETHING.

Not only are your incorrect statements unhelpful, but they are counterproductive since you seem to support the Kalam but are providing evidence (bad) against its underlying premise (nothing comes from nothing). Moreover, you are agreeing with the logical positivists when you tried to cede authority over the absence of existence to science, with which just about every extant philosopher would disagree.

Also, please consider the following points.

The Bible is not an authoritative text for the purpose of this discussion.

You keep talking about some vague interpretations of the Bible that sound roughly similar to numerology, and the truth is that, regardless, of the truth of your statements, you are ruining your position.

In a discussion, a text is only authoritative if both sides agree to its authority.

The only way I can see you establishing the authority of the Bible to an atheist is to:

A. Beg the question.

1. Either God exists and the Bible/Torah is His authoritative message, or God does not exist and the Bible is not His authoritative message.
2. God exists.
Therefore, the Bible/Torah is His authoritative message.

B. Resort to a non sequitur.

1. The Bible/Torah includes startling truths.
Therefore, God exists.
Therefore, we ought to take the Bible/Torah seriously.


Evolution is undeniable

Evolution is in some manner an inescapable truth. Antibiotics-resistant bacteria confirm evolutionary phenomena. The equivalent would be if we witnessed, after several generations of humans getting speared in the face, a human with an exo-skeletal face plate emerge. Evolution has proved applicable in any number of applied fields. Evolution gets tangible, undeniable results that are nearly impossible to deny.

This doesn't matter since evolution and God's existence are hardly mutually exclusive. Even Yaweh and evolution aren't mutually exclusive--unless, of course, you adhere to the most rudimentary, comic-book literalism of a seven-day creation and a 6,000 year-old Earth, which would eliminate the Kalam as a possible justification for God's existence, which presumes the truth of modern physics.

The truth is a world with evolution is more mysterious and startling than one without it. If evolution is true and God exists, that means that God created a self-assembling universe that built itself from hydrogen, which is far more impressive than--poof!--there's Adam. The engineering feat of creating a self assembling machine is not only unmatched by humanity, it is nearly inexplicable.

And, of course, this is precisely what current science is telling us. All the formerly questionable aspects of the universe (it's vastness, for example) are not needless extravagances, but rather the necessary preconditions of our own pendant world. This is one of the most startling discoveries of not Christian apologists, but secular physicists.

C.S. Lewis said that believers should not be afraid of the truth, but rather they should seek it. For God is the truth. But so is evolution. We shouldn't run from science because we're afraid it will convince us there is no God, but rather we should embrace science because it can help us discern the truth, and each and every day, science is proving the truth looks a lot like God. So stop trying to resist it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

You've got it exactly wrong. Science isn't the arbiter of "nothing"; in fact, science can't even traffic with such. Science requires some physical reality to even get going.

Of course, Hawking didn't strictly find "nothing", but rather he found the complete absence of physical existence--something called the singularity. The singularity is a zero-volume, infinitely dense thingum, which really describes the complete nonexistence of physical things and the absence of any possible system of scientific measure. What Hawking unwittingly established was that the universe had no MATERIAL cause. What the Kalam argues for is EFFICIENT cause, which is SOMETHING.

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I think KillCarneyKlans was quoting Krauss, but without the quote tags it is hard to tell. I also agree that quoting the Bible is not relevant here.

The problem with nothing confuses me, but I think your post, stuntpickle, sums it up the way I see it. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding something here.

When physicists such as Krauss run out of causes and have no explanation for why something came into existence or happened they are tempted to claim Chance was the cause or the object came out of Nothing. Rather than saying, "I don't know", they come up with a bogus explanation. Since neither of these are explanations, I have capitalized the words "chance" and "nothing" to suggest that these are constructs in some underlying and probably not well-reasoned metaphysics.

In the case of the universe Krauss has run out of everything he can accept as existing that could be a cause of the universe, or even the speculative multiverse. Rather than admitting that he now doesn't know what caused the universe to begin, he claims, oh, yes, he does know--the universe came out of Nothing. He thinks the argument can stop there. However, the Kalam argument tells him that that explanation will not work.

Krauss's Nothing is used to fill in the gaps of his knowledge. It is his explanation of last resort. It is not quite a God since no choice was made by this Nothing to create the universe. Whatever triggered the event had to be that other construct Chance. Although Nothing is not a God, it behaves for Krauss the way a God would. Rather than a God of the gaps Krauss employs a Nothing of the gaps as a denial of what the Kalam argument is forcing him to accept.

I've started reading John D. Barrow's The Book of Nothing to try to get a better understanding of what physicists are referring to by Nothing and see if my suspicions about Nothing are correct. If anyone thinks I've misrepresented this, please let me know. I'm no expert.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by YesNo

In the case of the universe Krauss has run out of everything he can accept as existing that could be a cause of the universe, or even the speculative multiverse. Rather than admitting that he now doesn't know what caused the universe to begin, he claims, oh, yes, he does know--the universe came out of Nothing. He thinks the argument can stop there. However, the Kalam argument tells him that that explanation will not work.

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I agree with most of what you're saying with one major exception. The problem isn't with what Krauss doesn't know, but with what he DOES know. The singularity isn't simply some unknown quantity: it is the structural prohibition against science probing further. He understands that the greatest development in physics during his generation was Hawking's work with Penrose, which basically tracked the universe back to non-existence. Other than relativity and quantum theory, there's nothing more central to modern cosmology than Hawking's work. Hawking's findings do not end with a question mark, but rather with an emphatic exclamation point. It's not that scientists don't know how to progress, but, in fact, know that they can't progress. Krauss is simply engaged in a switcharoo in which he has said "Fine, if they want nothing, then I'll give them nothing." But everyone understands that Krauss's "nothing" and Hawking's are not the same thing.

It doesn't matter! If you are an atheist you ascribe everything to nature. If you are a Christian you ascribe nature to God. The tedium of proof is superfluous for one of true faith.

Quote:

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stuntpickle
You've got it exactly wrong. Science isn't the arbiter of "nothing"; Science requires some physical reality to even get going.

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1st I never impied any of this ... 2nd, to go straight to the heart of the matter without quoting more quotes The argument goes to the heart of the matter of ... is origens or evolution right? [or both] Are we monkees or are we men?

I know all about abiogenesis, I was just impling that bio and cosmo questions are fundamental to science, they are first order questions ... Who I am, how does life come to be? Where Am I, How big is it, what's it like, etc ... It is the basis for all scientific inquiry

Quote:

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From a historum member
Well, though I would generally agree with you ... the question still plagues them ... also punctuated equilibrium and transititional forms ... but they can't give up on these questions because it's just to important.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose. Most amino acids, often called "the building blocks of life", can form via natural chemical reactions unrelated to life.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evoluti...ife-begin.html
What are the origins of life? How did things go from non-living to living? From something that could not reproduce to something that could? One person who has exhaustively investigated this subject is paleontologist Andrew Knoll, a professor of biology at Harvard and author of Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Life. In this wide-ranging interview, Knoll explains, among other compelling ideas, why higher organisms like us are icing on the cake of life, how deeply living things and our planet are intertwined, and why it's so devilishly difficult to figure out how life got started.

http://www.livescience.com/10531-lif...-approach.html
All currently known organisms rely on DNA to replicate and proteins to run cellular machinery, but these large molecules—intricate weaves of thousands of atoms—are not likely to have been around for the first organisms to use. "Life could have started up from the small molecules that nature provided," says Robert Shapiro,a chemist from New York University .

Biologist James Ferry and geochemist Christopher House from Penn State University found that this primitive organism can get energy from a reaction between acetate and the mineral iron sulfide. Compared to other energy-harnessing processes that require dozens of proteins, this acetate-based reaction runs with the help of just two very simple proteins.

The researchers propose in this month's issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution that this stripped-down geochemical cycle was what the first organisms used to power their growth. "This cycle is where all evolution emanated from," Ferry says. "It is the father of all life." Shapiro is skeptical: Something had to form the two proteins. But he thinks this discovery might point in the right direction.

http://www.freewebs.com/genetics37/geneticamino.htm
There are 64 code words, but there are only 20 amino acids. Therefore, more than one code word can signify the same amino acid ... Of all the amino acids, only two, methionine and tryptophan, have a single DNA code word.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methionine
Methionine Together with cysteine, methionine is one of two sulfur-containing proteinogenic amino acids.

http://www.whatabeginning.com/Misc/G...enetics_VS.htm
It transpires that 19 of the amino acids comply with the generic formula: The variety in amino acid characteristics derives entirely from R - the unique side chain. The one exception to this general rule is Proline which has one less hydrogen bonded to the nitrogen of its standard block. Since shCherbak's findings take us further along this route in which the prime number 37 dominates - but only when Proline is harmonised with the other 19 amino acids by transferring one hydrogen from R to B.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proline
Proline (abbreviated as Pro or P) is an α-amino acid, one of the twenty DNA-encoded amino acids. It is not an essential amino acid, which means that the human body can synthesize it. It is unique among the 20 protein-forming amino acids in that the α-amino group is secondary.

All this stuff above ... its all in the Scriptures, the text, in the cosmological constants, in the bio-info, transcendantal numbers, the nuclear decay constant [NDC], the golden mean, the ulam spiral, fibonacci numbers, unusual forms in nature, etc ...

3rd transposing the more complicated scientific view on a simple theist's perspective "that something came of of nothing", that nothingness being space ... hardly requires more thought or evidence from my perspective ...

Quote:

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What Krauss is calling "nothing" is really a quantum vacuum, which is something.

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Is the Glass half full or half empty ??? Hebrew had no zero notation, The Sephiroth does, since ancient times divisions of 1 have been used to the 64th power ... like the Eye of Horus ... which is imbedded in the text, also ... It wasn't to long ago science was calling a vacuum of ordinary space, nothing ... hence the phrase, "nothing lives inside a vaccuum"

Quote:

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Of course, Hawking didn't strictly find "nothing", but rather he found the complete absence of physical existence--something called the singularity. The singularity is a zero-volume, infinitely dense thingum, which really describes the complete nonexistence of physical things and the absence of any possible system of scientific measure. What Hawking unwittingly established was that the universe had no MATERIAL cause. What the Kalam argues for is EFFICIENT cause, which is SOMETHING.

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Yes, I know ... NDC ... well without going into The Shroud ... http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...94-shroud.html ... which assumes a singularity also, possibly ... I'll just throw that out ... anyways, because whatever form it becomes or cause it assumes is only relative to it nature ... unless your folding time ... all mattter is pressed to infiniti ... data is displayed on its event horizon ... Krauss by your understanding calls this "an Efficient Something" ... There's only a 4 to 5 % material cause at best ... Not every cause is an argument for a designer, if fact there's only 1 [ish] ... have scientists ever measured nothingness, let alone virtual nothingness

As far as the rest, if this is true in sense I have expresed here ... Kalam is correct in the layman's sense ... I not here to evangalize you, I'm just lining up my ducks ... I hope you can better see my position ... I hope I haven't offended you ... I like your engaging style ... I spent some 20 pages engaging atheists, evolutionists, agnositics and theists in conversions at least as difficult to prove ... Thanks for you patience, I'll try to be more precise ... but, this is the same problem I had ... anyways ... maybe a new thread

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...5142007AAc2sMi
If Quatua is a plugin, a means by which things can be manipulated. to fit within design rules, (my words) then it may be possible to harness certain powers that don't obey the laws of general relativity. [This is apposed to a string multi-verse which is more ordered than chaos or quata, but built on these and physical Laws][Photon packet of light the best example/shroud][100,000 years for light to excape from a sun's core to the corona]

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...-big-bang.html
"Signature in the Cell...is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter [ZERO] – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. [a-PI-ori]

Signature in the Cell, a big book that methodically, but agreeably, constructs an argument that intelligence in some unspecified form [becoming a familiar term], is responsidble for the bio-molecular machinery in the cell and, therefore, for first life. Meyer's argument is, at its heart, logical and statistical but also strives for a reality check by engaging the reader's day-to-day experience of cause and effect. His long argument is encyclopedic yet lively and persuades that science is at an impasse in explaining the origin of life as the product of undirected processes.

4th - ultimately without solving a higher function component like the mind/body question or conscious, forethought, altered states of reality, being bound by time [the p-NP like problem], etc ... the problem will never be able to be solved

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

It doesn't matter! If you are an atheist you ascribe everything to nature. If you are a Christian you ascribe nature to God. The tedium of proof is superfluous for one of true faith.

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At some level nothing matters. Most people aren't going to be convinced by any proof that violates their beliefs anyway, whether atheist or theist. One can always posit a "God of the gaps" or a "Nothing of the gaps" to get out of being backed into a logical corner. Or, more easily, one can ignore the arguments.

Craig's use of the Kalam argument along with Krauss's A Universe from Nothing are parts of a culture war going on now between Christians (and indirectly all religious people) and atheists such as Krauss and Dawkins. Dawkins wrote the concluding chapter to Krauss's book and he wanted Hitchens to write an introduction, but Hitchens was dying at the time. Krauss's text is not so much about science as it is an anti-religious polemic.

So whether the issue ultimately matters or not, it will be interesting to many people.

The core problem is can atheism explain our universe, including space and time, without recourse to some cause beyond space and time? That our universe had a beginning is now part of the standard model of cosmology. The Kalam argument, which is quite simple and which Craig is popularizing with many of the debates he engages in, insists it cannot. Krauss seems to be arguing that we should just accept stuff coming out of nothing without a cause because he can't find one that suits his beliefs.

Signature in the Cell is a joke that misrepresents molecular biology in order to convince the layman of Intelligent Design. It's the same old **** from Meyers about the impossibility of generating "information." Meyers is a mouthpiece for the Discovery Institute who has no respect for intellectual honesty, he deliberately misleads his readership.

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OrphanPip
Signature in the Cell is a joke that misrepresents molecular biology in order to convince the layman of Intelligent Design. It's the same old **** from Meyers about the impossibility of generating "information." Meyers is a mouthpiece for the Discovery Institute who has no respect for intellectual honesty, he deliberately misleads his readership.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer
On June 23, 2009, HarperOne released Meyer's Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. Philospher Thomas Nagel submitted the book as his contribution to the "2009 Books of the Year" supplement for The Times, writing "Signature in the Cell...is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/04...itc033471.html
A new review of Signature in the Cell is just out in The Journal of the International Society of Philosophical Enquiry. It brings to the forefront of the overall debate the perspective of a software engineer and logician. Specifically, Harry Kanigel, former executive director, Information Technology at UBS Investment Bank, whose expertise is in computer algorithms. So he knows a thing or two about digital information. His reviews starts strong:

Stephen C. Meyer changes the game in the intelligent design fight with Signature in the Cell, a big book that methodically, but agreeably, constructs an argument that intelligence in some unspecified form, is responsidble for the bio-molecular machinery in the cell and, therefore, for first life. Meyer's argument is, at its heart, logical and statistical but also strives for a reality check by engaging the reader's day-to-day experience of cause and effect.

Despite how much you despise "the Discovery Institue"

http://www.stephencmeyer.org/biography.php
Meyer has argued that the intelligent design field is still in its infancy and that vital evidence of a designer’s “signature” on life only emerged as recently as just 10-15 years ago. His work in biological information represents the cutting edge of the argument for design.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/educa...wkins-refuses/
Stephen C. Meyer asks Richard Dawkins to Debate, Dawkins Refuses. Anika Smith has noted at Evolution News and Views that Richard Dawkins, author of the recently published book The Greatest Show On Earth, refuses to debate Stephen C. Meyer, author of the recent book The Signature in the Cell. Dr. Meyer challenged Dawkins to a debate when he saw that their speaking tours would cross paths this fall in Seattle and New York. Dawkins declined through his publicists, saying he does not debate “creationists.” “Dawkins’ response is disingenuous,” said Meyer.

It’s a fair question to ask why Richard Dawkins won’t debate even a creationist, but much more telling that he won’t debate Dr. Meyer, who wants only to discuss science. Dr. Dawkins​ calls “Life” the Greatest Show On Earth, yet he will not debate someone in how that show was produced?

Signature in the Cell proposes to revisit the origins controversy particularly in light of the discovery over 50 years ago of DNA and the enormous advances in our knowledge of cellular biology and information theory since then. Meyer does this using the motif of his personal journey toward understanding what he calls “the DNA enigma.” This enigma is “the mystery of the origin of the information needed to build the first living organism.” Until such a first life exists Darwinian evolution cannot commence.

Well, there's more than enough evidence that, that isn't true

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...ml#comment1148
On the average, in any randomly-selected set of integers, 1 in every 37 will be a multiple of 37. Applying this principle to the 127 values represented by the 7 words of Genesis 1:1 and their various combinations, it is to be expected that 3 or 4 will have 37 as a factor. As has been shown here, there are actually 23 - ie over 6 times the expected number!

The reality of the appearance of 37 (now including its numero-geometrical analogues, 7, 13, 19, 61, 73 and 121, besides its multiples, 666 and 703), among the various particle counts of the 20 canonical amino acids is now supported in the writings of two experts in the field of genetics, viz. shCherbak and Rakocevic, and in the writings of a significant contributor to the nascent field of bioinformatics, Boulay.

"When evolutionary biologists use computer modeling to find out how many mutations you need to get from one species to another, it's not mathematics — it's numerology ... They know nothing about biological systems like physiology, ecology, and biochemistry ... Whatever is brought together by sex is broken up in the next generation by the same process. Evolutionary biology has been taken over by population geneticists." - Lyn Margulis

So, in summary:

Signature in the Cell was published by a popular press for mass market and not by an academic publisher, and this publisher sings the praise of its product in its descriptions.

It was reviewed favourably in an irrelevant magazine with a highly pretentious name.

Dawkins refused to debate Meyer because he's a sham. And somehow we're to take this as a poor reflection on Dawkins.

And then a quote mined from Lynn Margulis, who rejected the importance placed on natural selection in Darwinism in favour of her own symbiotic evolutionary theory (and of the Gaia Hypothesis), which was clearly wrong. Margulis is a rather bizarre figure because she was right about one thing, the endosymbiotic origins of the mitochondria, but otherwise she was a life long fringe scientist with bizarre ideas. Despite this, it is disingenuous to quote Margulis suggesting she favoured creationism, because she was adamantly not a creationists. She believed in evolution, just in her own weird personal version of it.

Based on what I am reading, I take it Stephen C. Meyer is a creationist. That means he must believe the universe is less than 10,000 years old. If that is the case, that's fine. There are books in the public library I use by scientists claiming the big bang didn't happen. That's fine, too. It is always useful to have viewpoints that challenge the current models.

This thread, however, is about Craig's use of the Kalam argument based on scientifically verified data, confirmed within the past 10 years, that the universe is 13.72 billion years old, plus or minus 1%, and that the big bang actually occurred. With Craig relying on this data, he is not a creationist, although he is a Christian.

One thing I've noticed about creationists is that they seem to be waiting for both theistic and atheistic scientists to come to their senses and ultimately confirm their worldview. Until those scientists do, the creationists use a "God of the gaps" argument to justify their position.

One thing I've noticed about atheists is that they now have to do the same thing. They have to wait until those same theistic and atheistic scientists come to their senses and confirm their worldview. Until those scientists do, these atheists, like Krauss and Dawkins, use a "Nothing of the gaps" argument to get the results they want.

It is amusing that atheists and creationists are in the same position today when it comes to science.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

... we have no photographs of God, nor do we have photographs of logical absolutes, love or electrons, yet we all still believe in these things.

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Why does logic have to be absolute? We observe it to work, in a pragmatic sense, in our universe, that's good enough for me. So I 'believe' in logic, in the sense that 'I think it's useful'.

If you are viewing love as 'a subjective feeling', then, OK, I don't expect pictures of that. So this is something that, I agree, that we can believe in but, also something we have no pictures. (We might see brain scans light up when we have the feeling, but that isn't a picture of the subjective feeling...)

We have seen bubble chamber tracks of electrons, that's 'good enough' for me as photographic evidence -- if you combine it with all the other theoretical & experimental evidence. Has God shown up in a bubble chamber?

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

Your insistence that all claims must be subjected to empirical verification is an old and entirely refuted criterion of logical positivism.

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I didn't, and wouldn't, insist on that, see my comment above on love. I like Bryan Magee's example 'Mozart is a better composer than Ted Heath' as an another example that refutes the strong version of logical positivism - I would certainly agree with this statement but there is no empirical evidence.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

The problem with most New Atheists is that they are unwittingly reviving a dead and completely refuted worldview.

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I've read Dawkins, and a few others, and never had this impression.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

...the requirement of empirical verification for all claims is less reliable than theistic philosophy, and this is something both atheistic and theistic philosophers agree on.

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What New Atheists has claimed that you must have empirical verification for all claims? I've never read a claim like this from Dawkins, or any other New Atheist of similar intellectual stature.

God, viewed as the cause the Big bang, is something I might reasonably expect to have some empirical evidence of, as the Big Bang is in the empirical domain.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

And then a quote mined from Lynn Margulis, who rejected the importance placed on natural selection in Darwinism in favour of her own symbiotic evolutionary theory (and of the Gaia Hypothesis), which was clearly wrong. Margulis is a rather bizarre figure because she was right about one thing, the endosymbiotic origins of the mitochondria, but otherwise she was a life long fringe scientist with bizarre ideas. Despite this, it is disingenuous to quote Margulis suggesting she favoured creationism, because she was adamantly not a creationists. She believed in evolution, just in her own weird personal version of it.

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Thanks for pointing out Lynn Margulis, KillCarneyKlans and OrphanPip.

I found a book by her and Dorion Sagan called Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species, published in 2002 in the library. The cover says this about her:

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Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Processor in the Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Natural Science. She received a National Medal of Science from President Clinton in 2000.

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Niles Eldredge is quoted on the jacket as saying the following about the book:

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Novel, mind-spinning ideas abound throughout this book. If Acquiring Genomes doesn't stimulate new directions of thought in evolutionary biology, I can't imagine what will.

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Eldredge came up with the idea of punctuated equilibrium with Stephen Jay Gould and appears, from his Why We Do It: Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene, to be opposed to Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene.

I'm looking forward to reading it.