How did the designing intelligence arise? and was it intelligently designed? — praxis
Nice point. This is where I'm coming from. How is a creator an explanation? How is a creator not just one more part of the creation, ultimately? — t0m

I think that infinite regress pre-supposes increasing complexity. It may not be the case. In which case regress would not be infinite and we can close our loop.

What if many random patterns were somehow generated and some of them happened to be self-reproducing? — t0m

That would be fine. Conceptually, I have no problem with the idea that life might have originated through random patterning. The point though is that the random patterning continues to alter through time. This is evolution. The problem is that the pattern of life has no reason to cling to the pattern of the environmental landscape in order to survive. It should randomly drift out of life, just as it drifted in. According to the theory of life, in the 3 billions plus years since life began, this hasn't occurred even once. Why shouldn't life have evolved and de-evolved at least several times by now?

If the patterns are subject to wear and tear, then eventually would we not have only those that are self-reproducing? — t0m

Yes, but can you see what happened though to your possibilities. They narrowed. What is there to ensure that those self-reproducing lifeforms continue to survive through time when they and their environment are both subject to change? If we had a winning combination for life, then random drift through environmental change and mutation should have knocked it out by now. Instead the opposite is true. There appears to be a contradiction at work.

For me the strangest or most mysterious aspect is the very beginning. — t0m

A lot of us feel the same way and talk about it quite a bit. Certainly saying there was a beginning does not negate the possibility of a creator for that beginning.

Thanks t0m, we look forward to hearing your ideas.

Hi t0m, welcome to the forum. You are in good company. A lot of people on here love to do nothing more than talk about that exact type of thing.

There is a bit of an issue here. The mind is designing and initiating such experiments. There is creativity and intent introduced by experimenter. Such an experiment must spontaneously self-create. — Rich

Sure, this is similar thinking to Wayfarer when he said:
Without order, science and reasoned inference couldn't even get out of bed.

It is our own sense of directionality in life and purpose that makes us question if there is any directionality and purpose to life.

Somewhat missing in these discussions is that science is the one that has demonstrated the Universe had a beginning. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. — apokrisis
Pulling the science thing out of the bag. There is no way anyone knows what happened when it happened before any recorded history. In fact, I dare say it is impossible to say what happened an hour ago. — Rich

I agree Rich. My brother made an interesting point only yesterday when he talked about the dots on a butterfly's wings. He said science looks at the dots and says they're there because they look like eyes and that scares away predators. But they have no way of knowing that. It is a story and in the absence of a better story it is adopted as the 'truth' by science - maybe not science on the cutting edge, but certainly the layers of believers beneath it.

Yes, it is a continuous exploration and experimentation via creative will. As we, and all life forms, are evolving we are learning and also trying out new things. When I learn to dance or a new Tai Chi form, or singing, or playing piano, I am actually experiment and training my whole body, all of my cellular intelligence, to do new things. This is the process of evolution. It is neither chaotic nor determined. It is exactly as we are experiencing it, a process of creative evolution. — Rich

Hey Rich, is this an argument of the telos as the fundamental element, arranging itself into surprising and unpredicted states as it emergences?

As a total aside, on Netflix you might be interested in 'Unacknowledged'.

Without order, science and reasoned inference couldn't even get out of bed. The conceit of science is that it can or might explain that order, when it first must assume it, to do any work whatever. — Wayfarer

Well said.

We are all aware that there is a reason we don't walk off cliffs- to preserve our life. That the same 'life preservative' force pervades life at the organism level and not just the molecular or cellular level is outstanding. That an emergent phenomenon such as 'preservation of life' is repeating itself at each layer of complexity, regardless of the form that complexity is taking is something worthy of note.

In semiotic language this is a flashing signal that pervades the entire system regardless of how deep into it you delve.

Teleological evolution seems a bit like predestination — jorndoe

Hi Jorndoe, I don't think teleological evolution is synonymous with pre-destination. Knowing the attributes of the elements in a system does not mean you will know how they interact against the environment or themselves. The outcome is uncertain, but a telological property could be argued to set some expectations for the outcome of the game. Maybe atoms will remain inanimate, or maybe the combination will spark into life and that life will grow into increasingly unpredictable things as the game evolves. God as a poet observer I find an interesting idea, but don't but forward an argument in support of it.

OK, so what if a semi-aware consciousness pervades all living things, and receives input from each entity's experiences — CasKev

CasKev, I think this is similar to what you were suggesting in this piece.

Yes, agreed. Without a teleological end that directs occurences towards the production of increasing complexity and order this would be impossible. — Agustino

Yes, without an imperative that affixes life to environment, a 'perfect' system would just as easily drift out of perfectness as it did into it. While the atoms would go on to rearrange themselves into other interesting combinations 'life' would have ended. Evolution suggests that the intrinsic movements of the evolving lifeform will somehow always match the changing environment, thus blindly - coincidentally perpetuating the populations - for over 3 billions years.

one of the frustrating things about this debate is that to even say there might be something other than chance behind it, is to then be categorised as creationist! — Wayfarer

Yes, rather than defending the obvious vulnerabilities in their own theory, believers in life arising from the random interaction of chemicals take the position that creationism is being argued and attack such a position, when creationism is clearly a subsequent step beyond the one being discussed.

Apokrisis has been going around saying our impulse to order here is to dissipate heat, to increase entropy. At the molecular level, under certain stable conditions (an energy source, heat bath) matter orders itself to dissipate more energy and this puts the upward trend of evolution of matter into motion. — Nils Loc

Yes, I think the contention is that life is handy for freeing trapped energy configurations that otherwise may take much longer to dissolve. To say that matter is ordering itself for the purpose of dissipating energy is like saying clouds are there so it can rain.

I am rushing a little now and can't read thoroughly the full comments people are making - although I will go back to them and read.

On the surface we have an interesting approach. I think that proving, as much as anyone can, intelligent design is a two step process.

The first step is to render the 'something from nothing' hypothesis so statistically improbably to be close to impossible and thus fundamentally incredulous as a theory. This OP hopes to make steps in that direction.

The second step is the putting forward of the something from nothing hypothesis as a credible theory. When rivalled against the much weaker something from nothing theory, if, as science likes it to be, it is a winner take all scenario until the next best theory, then intelligent design can trump something from nothing.

It seems that the something from nothing people are not defending their theory, but rather attacking the second step, which has not been formally put forward in this OP. Is there a defence that can be mounted in support of the something from nothing hypothesis that has some real weight?

At best some nucleic acids and amino acids have been produced in laboratory conditions trying to simulate what life on earth might have been like. That is a far step from proving something from nothing. That just shows that the reactants that we use to sustain our life can be created - which is a no brainer. There is no strong directionality to the argument of life arising from nothing - to show I can make bits of rubber does not explain how the racecar appeared.

In other words you are not happy to accept "just random ". And if you are like me to do so would feel wrong because effects need causes. Einstein could have said "only God could play dice" rather "God doesn't play dice" because it would require a miracle to have an effect without a cause. — Jake Tarragon

Yes, precisely my thoughts, Jake. To say effect without cause is to chop off the bush at the base and swing it around as if you have the entire thing in your hands.

I think the puzzles you keep running into, Mike, come from an image of the lone organism, a person, struggling heroically against their environment. Now you've even taken to treating Life as if it were a single entity doing stuff like adapting and surviving. There's not a single rock falling down the well but trillions. Evolution is a statistical phenomenon. It's all about populations. — Srap Tasmaner

Hi Srap Tasmaner. Thanks for your reply.

The point you put forward is that we, at present, have so many variants and instances of life that at least some of them will continue to ring a mathematical harmony for billions of years as they fall. Some lifeforms drift out of mathematical harmony and are lost from existence, while others continue to randomly correct the drift and propagate. It's a strong evolutionary position to take.

I will try and use evolution and statistical phenomenon to reply.

If life arose out of nothing, unless the suggestion is that it did not have a single source origin, then in order to get to the point where there is a field of balls falling through a field of bells, quite of lot of population growth and differentiation had to happen. Life would have to pass through a long and sustained bottleneck of survivability due to a lack of variance, population, and refined systems.

A single arrow of life has been shot through time, not many. A system of molecules that just so happen to replicate themselves have formed a mechanical system so elaborate that not even the finest 'watch maker' on earth could match it for complexity.

The amount of successful and very difficult and often simultaneous steps required for this first lifeform to form are so numerous that even in the face of proof to the contrary, we would think that rational scientists should steadfastly refuse to believe in life’s existence, based on nothing more than statistical magnitude of improbability of this first step occurring.

If we grant that life did evolve naturally, and overcame the bottleneck of invariance, population and lack of exact specificity to the environment, so that it was perfectly adapted, then as the initial reactants that were driving life fell, life should have drifted out of existence. The system sustaining the initial populations should have disintegrated and returned to random motion. The statistical likelihood of such a response is extremely high.

To use an illustration: If, in our laboratory, we had a system of finely calibrated molecules dependent on each other and on a reactant we are adding to their environment, then we would not expect that removal of the reactant would cause a conformational or biophysical change in the molecules so that they now started using the glass of the test tube as the reactant in order to sustain their cycle.

However, such a change did occur, and more. Instead of drifting out of existence once the reactant was used up, a very fortunate coincidence, at this very instance in the evolution of lifeforms, occurred. Copying errors in the DNA underpinning their creation meant that flagella and chemoreceptors popped up and that allowed the ‘search’ for new reactants to occur. Life diversified.

Further mutations to the metabolic processing cycles and the specificity of transmembrane proteins as well as second messenger cascades, also allowed for an adjustment to new chemical environments.

All of this occurred without the primary molecular cascades being disrupted (for that would be death).

Statistically, there are several separate things to consider. The likelihood that such random mutations would give rise to such elaborate features, AND the statistical likelihood that such mutations would then occur at the exact time they were needed AND that these huge mutations and metabolic shifts did not destroy the initial chemical cycles that were defining life.

AND Of course, even before that is the statistical improbability that life would arise in the first place. Remember, there is no intentionality to life. It is all random.

And then there is the mathematical statistics I opened this OP with. Without intentionality or some type of invaginated terrain over which life is running, then mathematically speaking we would expect to see disorder punctuated every so often with order. This order would be nothing more than the expected anomalies from an underlying random motion – the monkeys on typewriters. Life, even if it did blow wide open for a while, should have narrowed and ultimately disappeared in the billions of years of its repeating pattern. Life should not have survived.

If we now move to the science of physics we see that life is statistically very improbable because it depends on the locomotion of a system through space to source reactants to support a system that is anti-entropic and dependent on random mutations matching precisely against a changing environmental terrain in order to sustain and propagate itself. Such a system is surely facing massive selection pressures against its existence. Survival of the fittest suggests that life should not survive.

Sorry guys, I'm getting a bit pulled about at the moment, so haven't had time to sit down and respond.

How could something always have existed? But on the other hand how could nothing have existed? — CasKev

My OP suggests large stretches of chaos until the mathematics falls into a recognisable harmony, and then slowly drifts back out again. There is no reason that the harmony should continue, let alone become an increasing complex mathematical melody through time.

This OP suggests that if we buy into the premise that life arose out of nothing, we must also accept that because there was no intent, life should also drift out of existence just as easily. To not accept this position is to negate your own argument.

And yet the facts of what we know about life do not support the argument that life has drifted out of existence, thus contradicting the premise. So how do biologists reconcile this fundamental conflict in their own theory? This places the burden on them. If it hasn't drifted out, then it could not have drifted in.

As to the monkey analogy, it is not mine of course, I just borrowed it for this OP to illustrate my point.

Who here can be satisfied with an "explanation" of.. "Oh it's just random" ..? — Jake Tarragon

Hi Jake, I can be happy with an explanation that it is 'just random' by understanding the mechanism of the random number generator from which it arises (or realising that there is one).

If we imagine a tree whose branches grow out at random angles grow ever larger, longer and more complex, by understanding the initial conditions that gave rise to the randomness there can be contentment in the observation.

The secret of the randomly sprouting tree is in its code (not necessarily DNA), which allows a variable (or several variables) into its equation. The variable is an ever changing environmental value (heat, light, other plants, wind effects, soil quality, water supply etc).

I think that if there is a sentient God watching, he has set the initial conditions, and now watches in fascination as the randomness spreads through creation. The random bodies that evolve, themselves feed in as variables into other equations.

The key to success though is to have restraint in the code, and never moreso than at the base where it all begins.

If you look at a growing element like a tree, you will notice there are two type of growth happening. The first type stabilises the structure after it has passed through randomness, the second, on the fringes contains the most randomness (grow up, down, sprout a branch, bloom a flower).

If we imagine our tree in a harmonic motion, vibrating to some unseen frequency, then by controlling the base tightly the tree can maintain the resultant random motion without descending into chaos and collapse.

I hope that made sense.

Simple regular repeated geometry

We know the cubes are man-made. — Πετροκότσυφας

Jokes aside, you may have answered it. Regular geometry.

Have you seen this, Sam? About consciousness, death and brain activity. I'm only skimming, but I think you might find it interesting.

Thanks for coming Jeremiah. Always a pleasure.

Again with the big words Jeremiah. You should learn to articulate a little better. My OP is about Rubix cubes. I want to know how we can go about verifying something is man made. If we can do it, then we might have a method for proving the existence of your God. :)

What are you talking about?

Get out of here! So I guess they solved the problem afterall. You should ask them to get Aristotle on Philosophy Forum.

Why are you asking me about God when I'm asking you about rubix cubes Jeremiah. It sounds to me like maybe you want to be a believer and just need a bit of evidence to go your way. Am I right?

intersubjectively verifiable hard evidence of god or not? — Jeremiah

Well, I'm talking to you aint I? :)

And you haven't answered my question, but if it's too hard for you I understand. It's too hard for me too.

You wouldn't think so, but there was this weird storm that blew up out of nowhere and a cargo ship carrying Rubix cubes headed straight into it. The father was good friends with Aristotle though and they often talked of QM but called it the dance of the etherial spirits.

No trap Jeremiah, you just can't answer it. There's a difference.

Are you sure about that? I saw a cube shaped rock once. Sharp edges and all Fault-lines and erosion. And just for the record, its not me that's confused (thanks for the link anyway), it's the Egyptian boy and his dad (and they don't have the internet).

Don't forget the cubes washed up on the shore.

Well, prove it to me.

What about man-made, in the case of the rubix cube? How does the backward logic bare out for you?

I am very curious if it's possible to prove something is man-made, if you've never seen it before. It sounds easy, but it's actually pretty hard.

And you are very much building a straw man. — Jeremiah

Not at all.

Yeah, I'm not following you there. I never was the best student. You talking about narcisism? I can't find anything else.

Back in Egyptian days it was neither, which is why I chose that era. But now we're getting somewhere with our analysis. What else?

You're a funny guy Jeremiah. Any suggestions on the cubes?

Oh I see, well in this particular case of the rubix cube, what would you suggest?

you know the part you left out — Jeremiah

About the talking rabbits?

Your thoughtless attempt to make absolute standards is straw-man — Jeremiah

A strawman fallacy is when you deliberately create a weaker form of the argument so you can attack it. I am trying to build a framework so I can build on it.

As to your no true Scotsman, you're getting ahead of the game. I admire your enthusiasm, but for now I would like to focus on how we might go about proving something is man-made. Saying it depends doesn't quite cut the mustard, common sense or not.

OK, I'm with you now.
So if we could backward construct the object into a blueprint and verbal model, we might have an insight into the creator of it?

What is? Are you able to answer a simple question like proving that something was man-made Jeremiah? Come on, turn on that Common Sense for me. Let's see what you've got.

You never know Sam. Well, maybe never is too strong a word. :)

Well, not a science claim, but it would fall on that side. They're working toward it.