Your quote of Hawking is 20 years old. Science has made a lot of progress in the 20 years since Hawking talked about that we didn't know anything during the first moments of the big bang. Now we know a lot. Not everything. But quite a lot compared to 20 years ago.
"BTW, snowflakes are a well-understood example of self-organization." So now you are saying snowflakes have a self that organizes them into their formations? ROTFLMAO...
James Bond wrote: What do you mean by "natural phenomena"? Are the messages on this thread natural or supernatural phenomena?
Too funny. As if stones and soil "organize themselves." ....Yeah, water too. So funny hahahaha. Man too freaking hilarious It only takes a pond and a drop of water, But as if water could organize itself into this As if there could be design without that drop being an intelligent designer. "Sure, of course...whatever... "The logic is so bizarre..." ------------------------------------ What is so bizarre is how your argument requires something you keep referring to as "random ignorant chance". Yet a drop of water in those conditions does what it does exactly because of known circumstances. That is nothing like random ignorant chance. If anything it's complete and utter known certainty. Perhaps you should just try to come to terms with the simple reality of how water molecules will always react, before you stand half an 'ignorant chance' of beginning to comprehend hydrogen bonds in snowflakes - past the closed off world from understanding by incredulity you have that something quite so astonishingly symmetrical must be intelligently designed. Dear me, I'm still waiting for you to explain how you get H20 to turn to water from 2 years back. Apparently H20 - "it appears" - to water. That one still creases me At least you are good for a laugh..well, very occasionally. But then your absurdity also extends itself into your very own argument.... As if an Intelligent Designer could "organize itself" by random ignorant chance.... Too funny. Oh man too freaking funny.
When water, rocks, soil arrange into recognizable or repeating patterns , only by consequence of those elements themselves and surrounding conditions, they do not require intelligent design. That drop of water is not an intelligent designer -it is water reacting in repeatable recognizable patterns by its own molecular activity and reaction. The pond neither requires any ID, nor do those rocks and soil formations TraderNik highlighted. That they sometimes arrange into recognizable patterns, does not remove the fact that non of them need to be intelligent designers - nor require an intelligent designer - so to do. That humans can force or arrange these elements into other shapes, which they design and recognize themselves, acting as intelligent designers to produce "John loves Mary" , does not require nor in any reasonable supportable way mean, all patterns made by natural elements must be intelligent designers themselves or be intelligently designed because of that. The water drop nor the pond water is an intelligent designer - yet it is they which make recognizable designs. On closer inspection natures designs can be demonstrated to occur because of material itself , its molecules, the reaction those have as contingent elements - and their impact on other materials and their molecules all affected by surrounding conditions. But on inspection the "John loves Mary" design sticks out like a sore thumb from every other natural 'pattern' around it. There are no indicators in nature which separate certain parts of the natural world or the universe from others in such a way. You find a watch in a forest, it is the only thing which is entirely different from everything else. The critical and crucial fact is the watch cannot reproduce on its own. It cannot evolve or make 'patterns'by itself as the forest does. Were it to do so, some evidence of a separate agent to both the forest and the watch might be apparent. There is nothing at all like that, let alone any suggestion for a need of any detached designer. So you have to turn to infinite regress to support ID. The so called Intelligent Designer must be apart but present by an outrageously clumsy unintelligent assumption from ignorance, that water drops or ponds need an intelligent designer to be designed, in order that they can produce the design by themselves which they do. Then so does the Intelligent Designer. Something - according to ID'ers - which can produce design must have an Intelligent Designer. An Intelligent Designer can produce design, so there must in turn be another Intelligent Designer to produce an Intelligent Designer. ID turns to Irreducible ID at its very first step. There have been many posts from john dough, 2cents, kjkent, tradernik, james bond 3rd and others in this and some sister threads providing abundant valuable information, facts, details, substantive evidence, proof , scientific verification and validation as to how and why even the very idea of ID remains unsubstantiated in any way. But mainly it boils down to there is nothing whatsoever that stands in support of the ID concept, except the determination to first reject - and then laugh - in the face of all information to the contrary. One minute ID'ers confirm science by accepting a reliable statement, such as Evolution or 'Big Bang', because they have no other means by which to corroborate such things, but the next second they are stipulating science is useless and have nothing more than a sniggering absurdity or other to present in defence of the ID notion . ID is just another pathetic excuse to sit a Creator in some corner or other simply because over time, Creationism has made such a mess of its argument in so many other parts of the building.
Oh yes, water molecules do react in a consistent, organized, orderly, and predictable manner...just as they are programmed to... Imagine that, consistent orderly reactions of molecules, by design... Oh, I see you are still confused from a couple of years ago, no surprise there...which just goes to show you are always good for a laugh... LOL!
According to current theory gravity was the first to split away, at the end of the Planck era, which marks the earliest point at which prsent science has any real understanding." http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/Big_Bang.html As I stated during the first moments of existence science has no understanding of what happened. so james you can continue to provide your view of the world or you could actually provide quotes from people who might be less emotional about this subject.
Stu wrote: Nonsense. We've been over this before. If scientists found a Mount Rushmore-like structure on Mars in the absence of any other evidence that intelligent life had ever been on the planet they would without hesitation infer that the structure was intelligently designed. It would be ludicrous to suggest that scientists upon seeing this structure would invoke infinite regress to thwart their design inference. No one goes looking for designers before they have reason to suspect something is designed. The design inference comes prior to independent knowledge about potential designers. You are trying to make it impossible to infer something is designed absent independent knowledge of the designer(s). The whole idea of ID is to begin with the awareness that we lack independent information about the designer(s) and then ask whether we can still find ways of detecting design. Nobody said it would be easy. Nobody is insisting that you be optimistic. In fact, nobody is forcing you to read this thread and add comments either. How can you build a theory about the designer if you need knowledge about the designer to detect the design in the first place? The demand for a designer-centric position is going down in flames. I seem to recall that some design critics here were under the impression that I am arguing for ETI as the designers. Others think I am arguing for God. Yet my interest is in exploring the biotic world for traces of intelligent design. Now, there are various features of life that lead me to tentatively infer some form of intelligent causation (direct or indirect). Yet there is nothing about these features which allows me to distinguish between a supernatural intelligence and a natural intelligence. Thus, since the data cannot distinguish between the two, any attempt on my part to âidentifyâ the designer(s) would have to be completely extrinsic to the analysis. An explanation does not have to be exhaustive and metaphysically complete to be a working explanation. In fact, the notion that any valid explanation would be able to satisfactorily answer all questions relevant to it is merely a function of human psychology. There are some things human beings may never be able to answer, in principle, or for pragmatic reasons.
You're the ones who are "emotional" about this subject. And you're the ones who feel the need to "quote" others, while distorting what they're saying. I don't need to "quote" others because I know what I am talking about. Do you know how long that Planck era was? 10 to -44th power seconds! Do you know how short that is? The fastest observable phenomena today is on the order of yoctoseconds, which is about 10 to -25th power seconds. That is still 19 powers of 10's longer than the Planck time. To say that we already know what happened 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds after the Big Bang, more than 12 billion years ago, is damn impressive! You really don't know what you're talking about. There is always a limit on the current state of knowledge. 20 years ago that limit was at the first few seconds after the Big Bang. Today it is at the first 10^(-44) seconds after the Big Bang. We don't know where that limit will be 20 years from now. You have to marvel at the speed of progress we're making.
"To say that we already know what happened 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds after the Big Bang, more than 12 billion years ago, is damn impressive!" We don't know that there even was a big bang, so any "knowledge" of what happened after the not known big bang is just data that is speculated on...and becomes more of the same circular arguments put forth, which assume something, then use that initial unprovable assumption to make the assumption itself true... You continue to confuse your faith with knowledge. Reminds me of evangelicals...