by jimwalton » Wed May 16, 2018 3:38 pm
> What do you mean by "it"?
Yes, I mean the universe, so we agree.
> but that's like saying you didn't exist at some point so you came from nothing, when in reality you are a result of matter from other individuals that existed before you.
It's not like this. In reality we are biological effects of a biological cause characterized by reproduction. The universe, by contrast, did not derive (according to current scientific knowledge) from a previously existing universe. Nor can we claim that the universe as we know it today resulted from energy already in existence. That has not been verified or substantiated.
> What reason would anyone have to believe that the energy wasn't existing at that point prior to the expansion?
I can't prove a negative. The burden is on you to substantiate your claim. It seems you have to assume energy existed to justify a bang, but your assumption is without support.
> You would have to not only assume that energy expanded from a point at which nothing existed beforehand (which doesn't logically make any sense) and then assume that something intelligent designed and created that energy without being able to explain how something could exist before the universe did or how it would have intelligence and where it "exists".
Something has to have existed before the Bang to be the causal mechanism. We are trying arrive at the most plausible explanation, given all of what we know and see.
> How is a dimensionless singularity "nothing"?
If it has no height, depth, width, spacial reality, material reality, or temporal reality, and the laws of physics and/or nature are not in operation, then nothing is an appropriate descriptor. What would you call something that has no material or functional existence?
> information data comes from other information data
There are different kinds of data. One I would call just random data. That certainly doesn't require an intelligent cause. Then there's ordered data: 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2. Ordered data, like snowflakes for instance, doesn't necessarily require an intelligent cause. But then there's informational data. Random or ordered data that is processed, organized, structure or presented in a given context so as to make it useful. Random or ordered data are simply facts or figures, designs—bits of information, but not meaningful. When data are processed, interpreted, organized, structured, or presented so as to make them meaningful or useful, that's informational data. We can look at the history of temperature readings all over the world fo the past 100 years (that's random data). But if this data is organized and analyzed to find that global temperature is rising, then that is informational data.
Information theorist Hubert Lockey argues that the information needed to begin life could not have developed by chance.
The issue is, science can't give us one singe example of organizational data that doesn't come from previous organizational data or from an intelligent cause.