First cause of the universe.

[firedragon]

It's possible; we just don't have any evidence of anything like that.

How is that possible?

 

[Audie]

As in? Worshiping because we believe in God perhaps?

Ye devil is in details.
There are sorts of beliefs, likevsay astrology.
Dumb to act on it.
As for worshipping some god, an awful lot
of very negative things have come of that.

Do i have to spell it out?

 

[InChrist]

Considerably better than you, which isnt hard.

Do you understand, though, that the
REASON Isaid you arent a chemist? (going by your response the answer is obviously no)

So I will tell you. You post these grand " facts"
about chemistry, but you dont know any more
than how to cut n paste. Right?
And go to a "fact" source ( creationist)
that does creationist chemistry.
Right?

You wont know if someone is feeding you
manure or truffles

I did not post any “grand facts” . I asked three questions; pretty straightforward. I don’t think I have to be a chemist to read about RNA, DNA, or the genetic code and ask a few questions.

 

[InChrist]

Letting it play out like he dont know what will
happen in minute detail in all time? Omniscient and all?

Certainly God knows every minute detail. Letting history play out is for the benefit of humanity.

 

[F1fan]

Only you aren't using science.

LOL, oh the irony.

That's OK, because you don't understand science.

There's no reason to believe energy is eternal.

Sure there is, there is no mechanism for energy to be created. In physics there in no way to create or destroy energy, so there's that that disputes your claim.

 

[F1fan]

As in? Worshiping because we believe in God perhaps?

Yes, you believe in some sort of God, and you could be mistaken.

Perhaps a God exists and you believe in the wrong version. Or perhaps no gods exist as theists imagine they do and you worship into the ether. As it is, you aren't certain.

 

[ppp]

Only you aren't using science. There's no reason to believe energy is eternal.

The thing is that there is affirmative evidence that does not require faith to measure to believe that energy exists. There is no such evidence for your god.

Whether a god exists or not, there is no good reason to believe that your opinion on the matter is an informed opinion.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

This presupposes that a) particular points in time exist, and b) that a measure of time is infinitely divisible, into the past.

I have no clue where you pulled "b" from. I never said anything of the sort.
It's called the space-time continuum for a reason.
It's because both space and time are properties inherent of the universe.

Whenever there was a universe, there was space and time.
Whenever there was space and time, there was a universe.

The universe IS space and time. Which is why it is also called space-time.

In point of fact a) contradicts b).

Nobody here has claimed b. At least, I sure didn't.
You are arguing a strawman.

If time is granular, progressing in infinitesimally small quanta known as Planck units, then a) is confirmed but b) is denied; there can indeed be a first point, a temporal singularity before which time did not exist.

If, on the other hand, the flow of time is continuous and unbroken, the past infinitely divisible, then while the first point in time moves mercurially away from identification, so does any other point in time; the present becomes as immaterial as the past (or future) and time itself eludes us completely.

How is any of this related to the post you are replying to?

Can you point out a moment in time when the universe didn't exist? yes or no?

If the answer is "no", then how is it wrong to say that the universe has always existed?

 

[RestlessSoul]

I have no clue where you pulled "b" from. I never said anything of the sort.
It's called the space-time continuum for a reason.
It's because both space and time are properties inherent of the universe.

Whenever there was a universe, there was space and time.
Whenever there was space and time, there was a universe.

The universe IS space and time. Which is why it is also called space-time.



Nobody here has claimed b. At least, I sure didn't.
You are arguing a strawman.



How is any of this related to the post you are replying to?

Can you point out a moment in time when the universe didn't exist? yes or no?

If the answer is "no", then how is it wrong to say that the universe has always existed?

Okay, I’ll try to make it simpler for you (and me tbh)

If time is granular, and reducible to an elementary quanta, then yes, one can point to a first moment, a Planck constant emerging with the universe from the Big Bang singularity, before which there was no time.

If, however, time is an unbroken progression, then it’s impossible to point to any moment in time, and your thought experiment is meaningless, swept away as it were, on the river of time.

Whether or not the universe has always existed, depends simply on whether or not it is infinite into the past. As far as I understand, the current consensus is shifting somewhat away from the Hawking/Penrose model whereby it is not. The question, like so many, remains unresolved.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Quite a complex molecule, don’t you think?

Sure. Many molecules are complex.

Francis Crick who received the Nobel prize for discovering DNA, in a Nobel lecture on October 11, 1962 used the terms information and code in reference to DNA ...

“Part of the work covered by the Nobel citation, that on the structure and replication of DNA, has been described by Wilkins in his Nobel Lecture this year… I shall discuss here the present state of a related problem in information transfer in living material – that of the genetic code- which has long interested me, and on which my colleagues and I, among many others, have recently been doing some experimental work…”

And Richard Dawkins has said in his book The Blind Watchmaker:

“Every single one of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire computer.

“Each nucleus, as we shall see in Chapter 5, contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica put together. And this figure is for each cell, not all the cells of a body put together.”

Are you aware that these people accept evolution and aren't in your camp at all? Not even remotely?

How did a chemical reaction occur which brought about a code necessary to direct each cell of all living organisms, without intelligence or a mind behind it?

Chemistry and evolution.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

So you are saying no intelligence is required to produce or transfer information

yes.

but how is useful information such as, genetic code preserved?

Natural selection

For it to bu useful, must it not be preserved? So what preserves useful genetic code and prevents it from being wiped away by the same natural forces which generated it in the first place?

Natural selection

Isn’t it only intelligence and knowledge of what constitutes the usefulness or meaningfulness of a code that would then preserve it?

Your observation of "usefulness" and "meaningfulness" is just hindsight.
At bottom, these are just chemical reactions. Directed and filtered by evolutionary processes.

Isn’t saying...life was not caused by God ( Mind, Intelligence), but by natural processes ...

Evolution deals with the development of life, not with its origins.
And evolution surely is a natural process that requires no intervention by any kind of agent.

like saying... the cake was not made by a person, but rather by the baking process?

Cakes aren't naturally occuring entities that reproduce with variation and which are in competition with peers over limited resources.

So this is yet another equivocation fallacy.
You can't argue against evolution by pointing at things that aren't subject to evolutionary processes.


It's like trying to argue against gravity by pointing out that hammers float in the ISS.

 

[Polymath257]

Okay, so you are saying RNA was the original genetic material, but even if RNA is a precursor to DNA, wouldn’t the first RNA molecules have to already be rich in information to replicate? So wouldn’t information necessarily exist first, before any other transformational process could take place? Without the prior genetic information in RNA or DNA how could anything of significance happen within cells? So I am of the view that information had to have initially come from some source of intelligence because from my understanding information only comes from intelligent sources.

No, the information grows along with the complexity of the system. The original system was simply a collection of interacting chemicals, one of which replicates.

Molecules, even molecules of water, have information. They have preferred reaction directions, they have different strengths of reaction, they take up space, making it impossible for others to be in the same location. All of that *is* information.

That is why amino acids and nucleic bases spontaneously form in the right environments: the information is in the atoms themselves about how to join together to form these basic molecules.

Then, the fact that some amino acids attract others while repelling still others is also information. The fact that lipid molecules have one end that attracts water and another that repels it is *information* that leads to the formation of spherical cells. The fact that certain nucleic bases attract others while repelling still others is information that allows RNA strands to reform and replicate. The fact that those bases attract some chemicals and repel others is how RNA can catalyze reactions like glucolysis (a basic reaction for life).

A carbon atom has information simply because it can form four bonds and some of them can be double or triple bonds. An oxygen atom has information because it is smallish and can form two bonds, including double bonds. A sulfur atom has different information because it can form two bonds, but is larger and cannot form double binds as readily.

You seem to think that information is rare and unusual. Instead, it is every place and incredibly common. Each atom has information, each arrangement of atoms has information, each molecule has information, each arrangement of molecules has information. Every reaction produces new information. And this information can (and does) arise spontaneously without any outside intervention. Molecules form the way they do because of the properties of the atoms. Molecules interact with each other because of the properties of the atoms that make them up.

Matter is not inert. It interacts, sometimes dramatically. It carries information about previous reactions and what new interactions can happen. It changes things around it by simply being there. it interacts with light, produces temperature, pressure, etc.

ALL of this is information.

So, no, the information doesn't have to be created prior to the formation of the first cells. The formation of the cells carries the information from how the matter that makes them up interacts.

 

[Audie]

Okay, so you are saying RNA was the original genetic material, but even if RNA is a precursor to DNA, wouldn’t the first RNA molecules have to already be rich in information to replicate? So wouldn’t information necessarily exist first, before any other transformational process could take place? Without the prior genetic information in RNA or DNA how could anything of significance happen within cells? So I am of the view that information had to have initially come from some source of intelligence because from my understanding information only comes from intelligent sources.

Perhaps "grand facts" isnt the best way
for me to have put it but it seems quite grand
to state that a molecule contains Intellegent
Information, subtext, injected there by
The Grand Designer.
Elsewhere I asked if hydrogen contains
Intelligent Information that shows it how to
combine with another H to form H2, then
go on to combine with oxygen to give us
water
And then all the marvy things water knows
how to do!

A little more on " information".

Is there "information" to be found in meteor crater? Researchers seem to find it worthwhile
to study them in great detail.
How did all that info get there? The meteor was a smart rock?
If a person wants info on some subject, its good to start without assumptions, and, start
with simple basics.
Note you did neither.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

No, the information grows along with the complexity of the system. The original system was simply a collection of interacting chemicals, one of which replicates.

Molecules, even molecules of water, have information. They have preferred reaction directions, they have different strengths of reaction, they take up space, making it impossible for others to be in the same location. All of that *is* information.

That is why amino acids and nucleic bases spontaneously form in the right environments: the information is in the atoms themselves about how to join together to form these basic molecules.

Then, the fact that some amino acids attract others while repelling still others is also information. The fact that lipid molecules have one end that attracts water and another that repels it is *information* that leads to the formation of spherical cells. The fact that certain nucleic bases attract others while repelling still others is information that allows RNA strands to reform and replicate. The fact that those bases attract some chemicals and repel others is how RNA can catalyze reactions like glucolysis (a basic reaction for life).

A carbon atom has information simply because it can form four bonds and some of them can be double or triple bonds. An oxygen atom has information because it is smallish and can form two bonds, including double bonds. A sulfur atom has different information because it can form two bonds, but is larger and cannot form double binds as readily.

You seem to think that information is rare and unusual. Instead, it is every place and incredibly common. Each atom has information, each arrangement of atoms has information, each molecule has information, each arrangement of molecules has information. Every reaction produces new information. And this information can (and does) arise spontaneously without any outside intervention. Molecules form the way they do because of the properties of the atoms. Molecules interact with each other because of the properties of the atoms that make them up.

Matter is not inert. It interacts, sometimes dramatically. It carries information about previous reactions and what new interactions can happen. It changes things around it by simply being there. it interacts with light, produces temperature, pressure, etc.

ALL of this is information.

So, no, the information doesn't have to be created prior to the formation of the first cells. The formation of the cells carries the information from how the matter that makes them up interacts.

Yeah, that is one definition of information. There are others.

 

[Polymath257]

Only you aren't using science. There's no reason to believe energy is eternal.

There is good reason to think that whenever there was time, there was also matter and energy.

The only question is whether time it 'eternal' and that depends on what you mean by the word 'eternal'. it it means 'for all time', then matter and energy are, in fact, eternal. If, instead, you mean 'has no beginning', then it is quite possible time is NOT eternal (but then, nothing is).

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Perhaps "grand facts" isnt the best way
for me to have put it but it seems quite grand
to state that a molecule contains Intellegent
Information, subtext, injected there by
The Grand Designer.
Elsewhere I asked if hydrogen contains
Intelligent Information that shows it how to
combine with another H to form H2, then
go on to combine with oxygen to give us
water
And then all the marvy things water knows
how to do!

A little more on " information".

Is there "information" to be found in meteor crater? Researchers seem to find it worthwhile
to study them in great detail.
How did all that info get there? The meteor was a smart rock?
If a person wants info on some subject, its good to start without assumptions, and, start
with simple basics.
Note you did neither.

So you can do science without assumptions? That is a new to me. Please explain.

 

[Polymath257]

I just wonder why there was a cause for the Big Bang other than the collapse of the eternal pre-universe. You have to ask yourself, what was happening that whole time before the universe was born? And how pointless would it be if it all just ended, but time just went off into the distance forever? I think Hope is more than just eternal life, but a good and safe life, but the hope is there.

How do you know there *was* time before?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

There is good reason to think that whenever there was time, there was also matter and energy.

The only question is whether time it 'eternal' and that depends on what you mean by the word 'eternal'. it it means 'for all time', then matter and energy are, in fact, eternal. If, instead, you mean 'has no beginning', then it is quite possible time is NOT eternal (but then, nothing is).

That is philosophy and outside science.

 

[Audie]

Certainly God knows every minute detail. Letting history play out is for the benefit of humanity.

Lets it "play out " but constantly meddles.

 

[Polymath257]

I did not post any “grand facts” . I asked three questions; pretty straightforward. I don’t think I have to be a chemist to read about RNA, DNA, or the genetic code and ask a few questions.

No, but it is good to know some basic chemistry to understand the answers.