:-)

Charlie,
Quick clarification on some comments I made. I used the words: complexity/design/intelligence quite interchangebly. The example of the computer.vs sand dunes is different because of the design shown in computers. Design involves more than just complexity. Design involves complexity plus order and an aspect of integration and functionality.
With that said: It would be more accurate for me to say: complexity plus order plus functionality and integration all require design and not just complexity requires design.
Just a point of clarification.
best regards,
Stranger

I wanted to comment on the above quote to make sure I address all of you comments.
It might not sound like a great plan to you true; but do you know if life would exist as it does now if these planets and other galaxies did not exist? This is like asking: why god created water for us to drink, can't we just live with no water? You realize that planets stabilize earth in it's orbit and without them life would not have existed on earth. Also the same can be said about stabilizing the galaxy's orbit around other galaxies.
We actually believe God made it so huge like this too for us to ponder and reflect on his greatness. In one challenge in the Quran, he states that we will never be able to permeate through all the heavens he created, which we have not yet. This is our perception of the universe that we're actually convniced of. Makes sense to me. .
best wishes,
Stranger

Hi again Charlie,
I read your comments again about my statement4 regarding laws and rules. Let me keep this post within this topic because like I said it’s my favorite one. This does not involve cause-effect and logic chains and whether we can apply our physics before BB …etc although I will come back to that topic later. I will reply to your later posts when I get time.

If we talk about something different as for example pieces of sand in the So Charlie, I gave many examples because I believe examples are very good tool of communicating ideas. Although I gave many, I think it was still not well-communicated what I wanted to relay to you. So let’s try to be a little patient with each other. We both have assumptions that we have to challenge as I indicated before.

I gave the example of a computer and you gave the example of sand and dunes in a desert. Let’s look at both examples a little more closely and see why I think they’re different. If we look at a computer along with all of the rules/laws it follows (computer rules/laws), you automatically logically deduce that there has to be someone who “created” or “designed” this computer. Let’s differentiate between the computer causes for how it works and our inference of the need of a designer/creator. Ever since we were born, we’ve seen sand and other things in life, and we did observe that wind can put sand into dunes. Does that mean there is a cause for the sand to form dunes: yes, and that cause is wind. We observed these laws and they became natural for us to observe. Does looking at the dunes make you think that there needs to be a designer and creator of the hills? Probably no. So what’s the difference between computers and dunes? Forming dunes is a simple phenomenon. There is not enough complexity involved that would make us ask: how did these dunes come together. But now if I ask you if you see in the desert sand in forms of letters and words and you read them to find a Shakespearean poem. You will not say: ok wind did it and nothing else. You will say: some intelligence was involved to write a poem because sand by itself including all of its basic physical properties along with wind can NEVER write such a poem no matter how much time you give it. So the difference between the two examples is in complexity. Complexity requires design. When new rules (ex. Computer rules) emerge, we deduce that these rules work perfectly and must have a designer/creator.

I think it takes thinking a little bit outside the box. “If” you argue and say: we see human beings that are very complex, you would not have gotten the point, because the very existence of human beings is what we’re discussing about. Attempt to answer the following question(s) and I think this will force your mind to look at it from our angel if you will:

Question intro: Before life even started, there were just atoms; and planets were cooling and forming…etc. There were no biological rules/laws. Then somehow life emerged on earth and somehow biological laws/rules were introduced. These rules are very interesting because they always tend to increase in complexity. These very biological rules eventually depend on sub-level rules of physics (forget about where these physics rules/laws came from, we’ll assume they were just there). Here is the problem now: according to physics law: matter tends to go from higher complexity/order to lower complexity/order randomly (entropy) unless external power is involved. If you look out our world you would notice that we see an overall trend of increase in complexity!

Question(s): How did these biological rules emerge to form such an enormous undeniable complexity in our world? How is it that these biological rules violate the essence of physics rules that they depend on? Were they developed in a completely random fasion that violates mathematical and physical laws of randomness?

We refuse to see a computer (with complex computer rules that emerged) and not deduce there must be a designer just like we refuse to look at the world and living things and not deduce there must have been a designer. And knowing a lot of how this computer works by opening it up and observing patterns in it to discover why we see the picture on the screen does not mean there is not enough complexity and design for the computer designer to exist. Just like knowing all the things we know about life from natural science does not mean that there is no one behind the rules by which the universe operates. We simply refuse the idea of total randomness that generates such amazing rules with such complex beings as a result, with no design and intelligence involved; again not because we want to believe, but because this leads us to believe.


Closely related to this is the talk about the first cell and viruses. I’m aware of the viruses you talked about. You said they act live and dead. This will really boil down to the definition of what “live” means! Biologist likes to call it dead since it doesn’t have mtabolic activities that we see in other living creatures. But keep this in mind: they have what we call the “secret of life”; DNA. Their DNA has instructions on attaching to hosts and replicating as a parasite on that host. For the sake of this discussion I would really consider viruses live because they have that very interesting “programmed” DNA along with biological rules/laws associated with its existence. It can act like “dead” since everything depends on pure physics at atoms eventually, but still has the DNA “code” in it while in that “dead” state. The question remains: how did these biological rules (that allowed viruses to develop in such a unique way, and allowed organisms to develop in such a unique way) emerge after they were not there?

Awaiting your answers,

Best wishes,
Stranger

Hey Charlie, How is it going?
I’m curious by the way as to what you think about Dr. Barretts research and experiments. Did you get a chance to read the article?

Also I think that as you spend more time thinking about what we’re discussing, things will be clearer.

couple of things on your comments,

Once again please read what I wrote carefully. I did not say I’m writing my messages to train my thoughts, I said:

Train of thought = expression. Train as in: “bus, car or train”, not as in: “I’m trying to train my mind”. It's just an english expression. I'm basically sayin, I'm trying to organize my thoughts.

I hope this statement is based on the previous misreading of what I wrote. Also I request that you don’t share opinionated statements like this, especially when there is no supporting evidence. We actually like to see new points of view (we really do), and are very welcoming to reply to them. We do it all the time here so, try to avoid these presumptions.

I have mentioned Dawkins because he’s very known publicly to support atheism, and was just mentioning him in the context of his inability to answer the question I asked. Feel free to disagree with him and/or not take his ideas. Let’s discuss the arguments rather than people.

About the BB. You said:

I did mention the evidence that support the theory. Maybe you meant to say that the theory is not necessarily an absolute solid fact; exactly what I believe about evolution.

That’s why physics theorists insist on the existence of what they call dark matter although they have yet to prove it. But this pulsating universe theory has no evidence at all that I’m aware of. Actually like you mentioned universe is behaving to the contrary of what the theory says. Have you heard of the “theory” of God? The theory says: There is a God who created the world! I see this theory more, logical, convincing, and less of a mind-stretch with better evidence than a pulsating universe. Why are you open to the possibility of a pulsating universe, but are absolutely not open to the “theory” of God?

Charlie, after I read your comments on this one, I think I have identified a very important distinction that we have to note; and I think you will find this interesting. We might have been using the words “matter” and “universe” to mean different things. You seem to limit matter to only this universe as we know it, although I meant for it to be all matter. Let’s take the pulsating universe idea as example to clarify. You say, before the big bang, there could have been some universe before ours. That universe has matter in it. Now that universe is included in my discussion when I discuss whether matter/energy is eternal or not. There might have been some confusion using the word with interchangeable meanings. Think about applying the reasons of why we favor God to matter as the eternal first cause again. Matter changes its attributes all the time as far as we know. Whether in this universe as we know it, or in the previous one (assuming pulsating universe), or the one before…etc. I explained to you why we view change in attributes as a contradiction to eternal matter.

Logically we have two options:
Either the universe/time/matter all started at the Big Bang;
Or something existed even before the Big Bang.
Option1 makes us naturally ask, what started the BB? Our minds completely refuse an absolute-nothing-before-it idea (per statement1). Check out the following dialogue (hope it will clarify things a bit):
The question becomes, what existed before BB?

You say: ok more matter we don’t really know what it is, just as in a pulsating theory example.
We say: God.
If we say: but what was before the previous universe in your pulsating universe example.
you say: I can turn the question on you and ask: but what was before God.
If we say: Nothing was before God because God is eternal, he existed all the time to infinity in the past.
you say: Ok well I can say the same thing then. Nothing is before matter because matter is eternal, just like your God is eternal; it existed all the time to infinity in the past as well!!!!

We stopped here at some point in time. But I wanted to clarify to you why we choose God over matter to be the eternal “first cause”; and that was in one of my last posts.

So let me know what you don’t see logical if any so far. I’ll address the rules/law discussion in a different post.
Best of luck 
Stranger