ID proponents often portray ID critics as “materialists”, and recently someone asked whether a force was “material”. Well, if a force isn’t “material” then there are no “materialists”. So yes, is the answer to that question. A force that can move matter is a material force. A force that can’t move matter isn’t a force at all.
And this matters for the Intelligent Design argument, because when we infer that an object has been intelligently designed, we are also inferring that it was fabricated according to that design. And to fabricate an object, or modify it, the fabricator has to accelerate matter, i.e. give its parts some kinetic energy it did not otherwise possess, by applying a force.
While ID proponents are often reluctant to speculate much about the nature of the designer, they rarely even mention the fabrication process. But the ID proposal implicitly postulates that a force was applied to matter by the designer, or her workforce, in order to make it do something other than what it would have done had that force not been applied.
I’d like to ask ID proponents here: what is your preferred hypothesis as to how the putative designer of living things actually made them? What material force accelerated the required molecules into position in the first living cells, converting potential energy into kinetic energy, and since then, guides the nucleotides into the required positions to produce novel proteins and enzymes as required?
What is, in other words, the energy source for the “poof”?
Get this. From a Creationist I posed the question to:
“I have a hunch (nothing more) that God simply manipulated probabilities at the quantum level until the probability of the desired outcome was 1.”
leodp writes at UD:
Well, for one thing, we are normally quite good at predicting the actions of intentional agents. It’s how we and other animals manage to function socially, be successful predators, and avoid being prey.
But again, the question misses my point. I am happy to entertain the hypothesis that intention is a force. It could even be an unpredictably applied force.
My question remains: if it displaces mass from where it would otherwise have gone to, then work is being done and energy translated from somewhere else into kinetic energy.
So where does that energy come from? What energy source is depleted when the mass gains it?
Hi folks.
Elizabeth you asked William:
“What do you have in mind for the Intelligent Designer in ID? The point I keep making is that to produce a designed object, you have to not only design it but fabricate it (or modify a found object). Which means that you have to displace quite a lot of mass, by applying force to it. Which means that work has to be done. Which means you need energy.
Where do you suppose that energy came from?”
I’m sure you won’t mind me giving my opinion on this.
The first thing I would say is that, if we take human design as an example, the designer and the manufacturer need not be the same individual or the same group.
Secondly, while ID can be inferred prior to knowing the identity of the designer, I don’t have a problem with asking the question, Who or what is the designer or designers? We may not need to step outside nature to find her. Goethe certainly held this view. From his poem “Nature”:
“Nature! We are encircled and enclasped by her – powereless to depart from her, and powerless to find our way more deeply into her being. Without invitation and without warning she involves us in the orbit of her dance, and drives us onward until we are exhausted and fall from her arm.
Eternally she creates new forms. What now is, never was in time past; what has been, cometh not again – all is new, and yet always it is the old”.
So where does the energy come from? It comes from Nature.
CharlieM,
Hi and welcome to TSZ.
As predicted.
Amongst all the bruhaha, William does actually give an answer to the question in the OP:
Which is refreshing.
Of course not, and welcome!
Indeed not, although there needs to be communication between the two. And while a design need not be executed, a designed object needs to be both designed and executed. And so if we observe what we think is a designed object, we need to account for both the design and the fabrication, and the communication between the designer and the fabricator.
That doesn’t really help the ID case. If the ID case is that if we can reject Law and Chance as the explanation for a complex object, we must accept Design (this is the Explanatory Filter version of the argument, but others are similar), then the Design must be operating outside the Laws of Nature.
Human designers, I suggest, do not operate outside the Law of Nature, so that is one problem with the EF. But a bigger problem is that it proposes that the putative designer (implied to be a deity) moved matter around in a manner that it would not have done if left to itself.
And to do that it either consumed energy – in which case I would like to know where that energy last resided, before it was converted to kinetic energy – or it created it, in which case it didn’t come “from Nature”.
He makes a good, but, I would say, irrelevant, point. It is perfectly true that we cannot say why fundamental forces are what they are.
But I am not asking what the fundamental force is that causes designed things to adopt their designed configuration. I’m happy to go along with the proposal that it is a force called “intention”.
What I’m asking is where the energy comes from when that force is applied to mass in a manner that results in additional kinetic energy being imparted to the mass.
I’m not asking for an explanation for the force. I’m asking for an accounting of the energy.
If we design a robot that will assemble Boeing 747s out of junkyard parts, that Boeing will be the result of intention no question.
But having built our robot, it will do absolutely nothing unless we provide it with a power supply.
I’m asking ID proponents what the power supply is.
Elizabeth asks:
I’ve answered that question several times. Where does the energy come from when humans design and build things that would not otherwise exist? It’s embedded in the physical system the designer internally occupies and operates through; it’s also embedded in the external physical structures readily available for the designers manipulation. How many times do you require that I answer this question?
So the designer of the universe is inside the universe, right?
Makes sense…..
So, to be clear, when you talk about ID or the designer you are talking about a physical being subject to the same constraints as human beings? Right?
From a perspective of classical theism, god is the ground of all existence and being. Nothing exists outside of god, so yes, anything god creates must be manifested internally, and ultimately had to be made out of whatever god is made out of, because nothing else exists and no other spaces exist. There may also exist aspects to reality that are non-physical, or other universes or dimensions or spiritual worlds, but all of those would also be inside god.
William J. Murray,
“Energy” seems to have been hijacked by New-Agers to reference something which is not really the physical property at all. Does the energy available to God obey a conservation law? Does entropy inexorably increase as it is interconverted between its various forms? If so, how does God-and-the-universe evade heat-death?
I asked you, not classical theism.
When *you* talk about ID or the designer are *you* talking about a material being like us or something else?
I said the intender is embedded in they system their intention is operating through. That doesn’t mean they are “solely” in that particular system, only that they have internal access to work through it. In order for me to directly affect water, I don’t have to be entirely submerged in the water. That’s just an analogy.
An easy way to look at this is by thinking about lucid dreaming. During lucid dreaming, I can intend for the physical landscape to change and my brain makes it happen because it is physically connected to and controls the substrate that is supposedly producing the imagery of the dream. I don’t know how it works; I don’t have to know how it works. The brain moves whatever physical energies and matter around in order to manufacture the intention and represent it as my dream environment.
If we assume god is like a dreamer, and the physical world is at least one part of god’s internal dream (so to speak), then god is simultaneously connected to and empowers all aspects of the dream, in a manner similar to what goes on when we dream. Perhaps that connection relates to quantum entanglement and quantum collapse; perhaps, as some theorize, the physical world is a massive set of interpreted informational vectors. There are theories of the physical world that support the contention that it is something like a massive hologram being generated in a supercomputer. These views and evidence supporting these views also support the “physical world as a sort of dream of god” perspective.
So, what does the term “physical” really mean in those contexts? I don’t know. Which is why I’m trying to just refer to it as “the system”. Whatever the system is, it has what we call “energy” – whatever that is – embedded in it and we can intentionally use it towards teleological goals.
perhaps, assume, if.
Sounds like one of those “just-so” stories they are so against at UD. None of that gets us anywhere. So your answer to the question in the OP is that the energy does not come from anywhere as it’s all inside god anyway?
So it’s basically a cop-out. WJM-ID proposes a designer that changes things, but as part of that definition rules out being able to become aware of those changes by (for example) apparent violations of 2LOT.
Perhaps you need to start a thread where ungrounded speculations about the nature of god can be navel-gazed endlessly? This thread asks a specific question about a specific ID claim and it appears to be a question you are not capable of answering (not that I expect anybody can but going straight to “god moves in mysterious ways” is not very interesting tbh).
And what goals are those, exactly? Last time I looked humanity made up such a small proportion of the universe as to be basically a rounding error. So what are those teleological goals as you see them? Is the goal of the universe, as set by the designer, the creation of WJM so WJM can speculate on the nature of god in a forum? Or what?
One wonders, if energy/matter can never be created or destroyed, where did it come from in the first place?
However, I think that any designer working in/through the physical world is physically limited to what is possible under physical laws and forces.
What is the energy source for the “poof” of the No Man’s sky Universe?
There is none at all is one answer. And others have done more then wonder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe
Neat huh.
So back to the OP. When these “designers” change things in the physical world, where does the energy come to do that? Is there an infinite sink of energy on the designers side?
And on what basis do you think that such a designer is so limited? After all, if a man can fly why can’t *anything* at all happen?
The sun.
William J. Murray,
A legitimate question, but not answered by making God part of the fabric of the universe. If God is bound by physical laws, one of these is that every activity results in a decrease in the amount of available energy. Perhaps that’s why he’s so quiet these days – saving energy!
OMagain,
I’d disagree. Or rather, not this sun. 1st life was probably powered in part by the electronegativity differentials locked in the elements generated by nuclear fusion reactions, rather than photon flux.
OMagain
Nop…the answer is mathematical formulas.
You’re working on a prototype ‘mathematical formula power station’ as we speak, right?
Well, I was going to say the plug socket initially 🙂
I see. And your point is what, exactly?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe
Lets destroy these arguments
“Dr. Michael G. Strauss, an experimental particle physicist, regarding the speculations on QM and the chaotic inflationary model.
“Quantum mechanics works within the laws of physics. So if you postulate that this universe was created from QM then you must also postulate that a previous universe with similar laws existed previously, to which we have no evidence to support.”
Speculating about QM or chaotic inflationary requires you to go beyond the experimental evidence to the positing of unobservable realities.
There are multiple lines of evidence in favor of the standard big bang model, and that has been confirmed by multiple converging discoveries.
A Vacuum is not nothing.
These “uncaused” events occur in a particular environment called a quantum vacuum. This environment exists IN SPACE, where quantum mechanical events are possible. The problem is that this does not work for the beginning of the universe, because there WAS NO SPACE prior to the instance of the big bang. Therefore, you cannot explain the origin of the universe by appealing to uncaused events.
Additionally, the virtual particle pairs that appear in a quantum vacuum exist for a period of time INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL to their mass. The universe is not a virtual particle, and it has been here for 14 billion years – a huge period that is impossible for such a massive object to exist as a virtual particle.
1) QM events that we observe in a laboratory take place a vacuum that is there, not absolute nothing as was the case with the big bang. 2) QM events could not occur without a field present, they are not uncaused. 3) Virtual particles exist only temporarily, inversely proportional to their mass. The universe has been here for 13.7 billion years, not a fraction of a second.
Even radioactive decay is unpredictable, but it is not something coming out of nothing without a cause. Sub-atomic physics takes place in space. But the beginning of the universe was out of nothing.
Let’s take a look at two of the speculations that sound scientific, but aren’t confirmed by any research. The first is quantum mechanics (i.e. – vacuum fluctuation model). It argues that the universe is an event without a cause, because there is an unobservable hyper-universe that spawned our universe. The second is a response to the fine-tuning. It argues that there are an infinite number of unobservable universes that are not fine-tuned, and we just happen to be in the fine-tuned one.
Notice that both responses are theoretical speculations that take refuge in unobservable entities in order to escape the good experimental science that proves that there is a Creator and Designer. It’s atheism-of-the-gaps!
Vacuum fluctuation:
– offered as a response to the big bang
– what can QM do: explain how particles appear in a vacuum when the vacuum is sparked
– speculation is that this same process may explain the origin of the universe
– in order to test it, our universe would have to be contained within a larger universe, with similar laws of physics
– but there is no evidence that this unobservable hyper-universe exists
Chaotic inflationary model:
– offered as a response to the fine-tuning
– speculates that inflation may cause other universes to come into being, with different constants
– no experimental verification has been offered
– no evidence of any of these other universes
So, what we have here is a clear cut case of logical arguments and evidence for theism, vs atheist faith and wish-fulfillment. All the data we have today is for theism, but all the untestable speculating is on the part of the atheists, who have faith and hope that the progress of science will overturn what we know and replace it with the what atheists hope for. (And I haven’t even talked about the origin of life and molecular machines, etc.!)
Quantum mechanics is not going to save the atheist here. In QM, virtual particles come into being in a vacuum. The vacuum is sparked by a scientist. The particles exist for a period of time inversely proportional to their mass. But in the case of the big bang, there is no vacuum – there’s nothing. There is no scientist – there’s nothing. And the universe is far too massive to last 14 billion years as a virtual particle.
Secondly, atheists will say that the big bang is speculative physics that could change at any moment. But the trend is in favor of an absolute beginning out of nothing. We have had a string of solid, recent scientific discoveries that point in a definite direction, as follows:
Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and the scientific confirmation of its accuracy
the cosmic microwave background radiation
red-shifting of light from galaxies moving away from us
radioactive element abundance predictions
helium/hydrogen abundance predictions
star formation and stellar life-cycle theories
the second law of thermodynamics applied to nuclear fusion inside stars
The central point to be made here is that the quantum mechanical vacuum on which they depend for their existence is emphatically not nothing. The dynamical properties of vacuous space arise out of its interaction with matter and radiation fields, in the absence of which “this dynamism of empty space is but a formal abstraction lacking physical reality.
(See Robert Weingard, “Do Virtual Particles Exist?’ in Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association, 2 vols., ed. Peter Asquith and Thomas Nichols (East Lansing, Mich.: Philosophy of Science association 1982), I: 235-242.)
The quantum vacuum is a sea of fluctuating energy which gives rise to virtual particles. Thus, virtual particles can hardly be said to arise without a cause. So this is where they both come and go.
Some atheists apparently think that cosmological models in which the universe originates via a spontaneous fluctuation from the primordial vacuum are distinct from models in which the universe does not violate the mass-energy conservation law because the sum total of its positive and negative energy is zero. But this is just confused: these are the same models, all presupposing the existence of the quantum mechanical vacuum which spawns the universe.
Thus, these models do not subvert the causal premiss. Moreover, while these models merited scientific discussion when Davies wrote God and the New Physics back in the early 1980’s, they are today widely rejected and no longer at the center of interest
(Alexander W. Stern, “Space, Field, and Ether in Contemporary Physics,” Science 116 (1952): 493. Stern is even willing to speak of the quantum vacuum as a sort of ether.)
OMagain said:
I’ve already answered the question directly several times. The energy is embedded in the same system the intender is operating through. It’s the same energy any human or any “physical” designer would use and direct towards teleological goals.
I didn’t say god was bound by physical laws; I said god’s activity in the physical universe adheres to physical laws, IMO.
Allan Miller
According to Quantum Mechanics nothing physical exists prior to measurement, everything exists as an abstract mathematical concept. I say that everything is reduced to mathematical formulas. Your paradigm is irrelevant i am not saying that we Humans created the Universe i say that we live in a Holographic Universe that was created by God and we Humans are just receivers of this world.
Day by day this theory is proven true
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150527103110.htm
When I press against a surface an equal and opposite force is generated. The surface presses back against me!
When the designer presses it’s finger against an atom to make it change direction, what happens to the force that presses back on the designers finger?
Rather, let’s copy and paste something I don’t understand and call it a day.
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/how-to-defend-the-kalam-cosmological-argument-just-like-william-lane-craig/
OMagain
Of course i understand it, you on the other hand follow the Dogma of Materialism and nothing will change your mind, you will not even answer to WinteryKnight why he is wrong.
They use the energy available in the physical world to change things in the physical world just as any physical designer would.
I think the nature of this universe serves a purpose, and so the laws that “govern” this universe are necessary for the realization of that purpose. Why would god violate the nature of a system that serves a divine purpose by having that nature?
Demonstrate that.
Do I? Is that written down anywhere?
I’m perfectly open to having my mind changed. Evidence is all it takes.
However I’m not sure you go from me noting that there is (possibly) no energy in the universe overall to me being a materialist. Is it not the case that your deity could do anything, including creating a universe with no overall energy in it?
Why would I? If you can ask a question in your own words (demonstrating you actually understand what you are asking) then there are plenty of people here capable of giving you your answer.
By this argument, no designer can ever change any arrangements of matter.
Also, try reading for comprehension next time. If we’re talking about god, god isn’t a finger pushing an atom; god inhabits the atom and all the potentials and possibilities associated with that atom and any chemical it is a part of.
yet:
What happens to that force from the second body? Does the designer “feel” it in it’s dimension? Therefore energy has been “destroyed” in this universe as it has left this universe.
And that purpose is? Or don’t you know? If you don’t know, how do you know it serves a purpose at all?
Perhaps it has no choice?
Nonsense. You simply don’t understand Newton’s laws of motion! When I stand on the earth I press down. The earth also presses up. However the earth and I are somewhat difference masses…..
yet:
So sometimes the designer is god and does not need to move anything because everything is god, and sometimes the designer is just like us, using existing physical systems and the energy in them.
Your ideas are somewhat confused.
The internet is surely a boon for people like WJM to spout out their voluminous nonsense thinking, dressed as orthodoxy, but really, it’s just disrespectful and bad English.
If people here actually pay attention to proper capitalisation, most of WJM’s quasi-theist smut would be irrelevant.
EL said:
Natural Laws and Forces are descriptions of behaviors; we do not know what causes those behaviors. Since the behaviors are the bounding parameters of what “nature” is, whatever causes those behaviors necessarily lie outside of what “nature” is. Nature is whatever is “in” the box those behaviors describe; nature cannot also be “the box”. Whatever causes “nature” cannot itself be “nature”; a thing cannot cause itself.
To say that intention or design must lie outside of the laws of nature is the same as saying that whatever causes gravitational effects must itself lie outside of the laws of nature. That doesn’t mean that the effects it produces inside the box can act in violation of the natural laws governing behavior in the box; rather, like any other physical law or force, it acts in conjunction with the other laws and forces. One force doesn’t “violate” any other force, but rather acts in conjunction with them.
So, a force of intention would not violate any other physical law or force, but rather act in conjunction with them. Intention would be an additional physical law or force; what it would be generating would be effects not derivable from other known laws and forces. That doesn’t have to include generating or utilizing some novel energy.
OMagain
Why should i? Will i write a test or something?
Quantum Enigma
Observation in Quantum Mechanics and the ‘Collapse of the Wavefunction’
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1961ZPhy..161..454J
http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777
http://philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/TexteHS10/bell1964epr.pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/full/446866a.html
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1026096313729
http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/apr/20/quantum-physics-says-goodbye-to-reality
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9903047
http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/kim-scully/kim-scully-web.htm
http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.4481
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20600-quantum-magic-trick-shows-reality-is-what-you-make-it.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6578
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070416/full/news070416-9.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5294
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1256.abstract
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR07/Event/57254
http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v7/n5/full/nnano.2012.34.html
http://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.1469
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/050411/full/news.2011.210.html
http://www.wired.com/2009/09/quantum-entanglement/
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.0337.pdf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150527103110.htm
First of all God is not nothing or something God is EVERYTHING that’s why we call Him God and the Universe is subjective to His Will just like the shape of the shapeless clay is subjective to my will which has infinite ideas prior to the shape.
God is Omniscience that’s why He is Powerful, if you have all the knowledge you don’t need to have power in the sense of something physical, you create energy out of nothing physical, the only thing that precedes energy is intention. How can you create energy from nothing physical? This video game answers this questions, it only takes mathematics.
Given that you’ve yet to show what can and cannot be derived from known laws and forces you’ve skipped a crucial step. Go back 3 squares, do not pass go etc.
Looks like the bottom line is WJM has no idea how his magic Designer produces the energy to manipulate matter but it seems to violate the 2LoT, conservation of momentum and probably plenty of other physical laws.
ALL SCIENCE SO FAR!
No Science in the belief that the Universe popped ouf of Nothingness or existed past eternally. The Universe was intentionally created because there was nothing random in the process of Creation.
as for this
When you built a Wind Farm to gather energy what you actually are building is mathematical formulas since wind turbines are made of matter and if you reduce matter you get wave function.
Presumably you are God, otherwise how would you know this?
Intention is the force to change everything physical and for that reason it precedes material reality, if the opposite was true, rocks would have intention as well but the last time i talked to a stone it didn’t replied back. The plasticity of the brain is a great example of how intention rewires the brain.
William Dembski, the “Isaac Newton” of ID Information theory.
William J. Murray, the “Isaac Newton” of ID Gawddidit physics. 😀
How do i know what? That i live in a Creation?
Adapa,
The other options are Nothingnessdidit and Infinitydidit. None of these 2 offer an explanation.
How do you know that the Universe was intentionally created and that there is nothing random in the process of Creation?