When does design become intelligent? (AS OF 8/2/10 - CLOSING COMMENTS ONLY)

Big Bang is observable buzzsaw... It's still happening.
Big Bang has never and will never be an explanation for the beginning of all things. No one has stated it is. It would be greatly appreciated if you would stop spouting crap that has been pointed out many times to be crap.

Only to those without any.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

You neglected to explain why one complex process requires intelligence and the other does not. Please do so.

So you keep asserting yet you never, ever, have presented the model showing how that imaginary intelligence did anything.Edited by jar, : fix sub-title

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Might I suggest a couple more lines of attack on this 'theory'.
1) The Rev Paley was quick to point out that any watch on the beach would first stimulate thoughts of a designer. I suggest that is nonsense. Introspection tells me that i would first think about the owner, and I suspect most would. Inconvenient to the Rev Paley, but there we have it.
3) This argument is also inconsistent. The design argument applies to Set A - everything that is not God, but a different logic applies to the God entity who is allowed to transgress the so-called logical impossibilities that the design argument is supposed to address. Not quite circular reasoning - more a case of first begging the question then chucking it away completely,.
4) We know a lot more about emergence and complexity nowadays. No sensible person would say that the Mandlebrot set is evidence of design, yet the complexity and self-similarity in the set is stark. We know that deterministic and apparently simple processes can produce amazing complexity with apparent organisation. This is done in the lab everyday and happens everytime it snows. Therefore the whole basis of the argument from design is based on a false premis and should, therefore, be disregarded as fallacious.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Quite: when talking to people who don't know any cosmology it is necessary to explain what the Big Bang is before explaining how it works.If you were really interested, which you are not, you would already know that the mechanism of the Big Bang is the behavior of spacetime as described by the equations of General Relativity.Your turn.

weeeelllll.....sort of.....but I think it is needful for those debating on the side of rationality to be as honext as possible so that the contrast is drawn in clear and obvious relief.GR needs a spacetime to make sense - otherwise you end up with many infinities and no amount of renormalisation is going to sort it out.PS - the rest of this is not, I hope you will understand, directed at you, Doc :-)The 'before' t=0 question has, I think, two valid answers from the scientist:
a) If conventional theory is correct then then question cannot be answered because it has no meaning. Spacetime was formed at the BB so no time existed for things to occur 'before' since causality requires time which, relativity tells us, doesn't come as a single entity but travels with its spaced-out friends. As to what 'caused' the BB - well, still the wrong words...slipped a naughty 'cause' in, when of course we know cause and effect time dependant. But anyway, nothing needed to cause the BB. What causes a particular alpha emmission from a radioactive element at the time it happened? Why then and not 5 seconds earlier? Answer - that is just the way it works. We know most of the rules of the game, and the trouble is that the rules that you think you understand are not the rules that matter. Common-sense rules, based on experience (perception) are not really possible for electrons and protons and photons (I'll not name the whole standard model contents - let's take it as given).
We use words like 'wave particle duality' and that gives the false impression that the scientist is saying that a photon behaves like a particle sometimes, and other times like a wave. But that is wrong. It isn't a wave, as we understand it, and it isn't a particle as we understand it in common-sense terms. Our language is set-up to translate concepts into communicatable symbology but we have no experiential data for the micro-world of quantum physics. It isn't "like" anything and everytime we try to get around that with analogies people end up more confused when the analogy breaks - as it must.
And the fact that the quantum world IS too weird to define or even discuss in natural languages like English, that DOES NOT mean that we are missing something obvious. I think it is pretty amazing that we have the knowledge we now possess, despite having nothing but a brain evolved to shout at monkeys about food, sex and avoiding preditors. Many folk expect the proper reaction to any grand theory should be: well, isn't it just obvious when you see it, why didn't I think of that?
What arrogance....Learn the vocab then you can start to learn the syntax and grammar, otherwise we waste our time. Maths isn't that hard if you work at it.b) If some of the alternate cosmological models gain some evidential basis then the question might have some meaning. It is difficult, if not impossible, to give a meaningful answer though, and the question is only sensible to the extent that it isn't completely incoherent. How would one set-about describing the Calabi-Yau manifold? Let's face it we can't satisfactorily describe an electron in prose, and unless the questioner is prepared to learn the only language in which the answer makes sense (or is even coherent) - maths - then they are asking a question with no hope of understanding the answer.
And worse - when the analogy breaks they will think it is because the scientist's model is wrong. No, it's because the analogy is unrigorous, ambiguous, poorly expressed and ultimately an attempt to explain a baby version. Don't whine because you can't understand the schroedinger equation and then crow because an attempt to analogise it to you results in the nonsense of a dead/alive cat which you think shows it is wrong....It isn't.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : Correcting spellingEdited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

I thought before the Big Bang there was no time, so in order for the Big Bang to use this general relativity of spacetime there would need to be time. But since there was none, so how could it begin to use it?

I say that the question of the non-materialistic world can not be answered because you are using the wrong language.If one asks what causes supernatural phenomenon, I just say-"that is just the way it is"I say "It isn't "like" anything and everytime we try to get around that with analogies people end up more confused when the analogy breaks - as it must. "I mean "Let's face it we can't satisfactorily describe samsara in prose, and unless the questioner is prepared to learn the only language in which the answer makes sense (or is even coherent) - the language of a clear mind- then they are asking a question with no hope of understanding the answer. "I say "Don't whine because you can't understand Suddhavasa worlds and then crow because an attempt to analogise it to you results in the nonsense of a dead/alive cat which you think shows it is wrong....It isn't." !!

Here's the only important difference.
I will write my squiggles down, which you will not understand, and those squiggles will make definite testable statements about the universe. What is more, when you test them you will find they are right.
You will attain your 'clear mind' and use it to say all sorts of things that are not testable and don't say anything testable about the universe, so whether they are right or wrong is, and will remain, moot.It is the difference between pseudo-science and real science. One works, the other pretends.

Time and space are not distinct 'things'. Motion in one determines motion in the other. They both come into existence at t=0 - The BB

When did I say they were?I said if you don't have time, how can you begin a Big Bang?By the way, it is you using our language, to say that something came into being from non-being.

Can your squiggles say how something came into being from not being? Can it predict when it will once again return to not being?

Can these squiggles of yours say where thought began?

Absolutely, yes.
We call it quantum field theory and it tells us that things are constantly coming in to being and going out of existence all around us. We call them 'virtual pairs'.These can be measured.Religion, on the other hand, makes usually vague and ALWAYS untestable assertions about human existence which you either believe or you don't - there is no evidence and no test possible.