by nickpsecurity | 2025-05-11 04:21:22+00:00
"Randomness _and_ a selection function"

It takes more than that for the chemical bonds to form, for the encoding to exist, for the bootstrapping environments to form, for the transitions to happen, and so on. Also, if a selection function exists, where did it come from and why does it work? Why does the math work? Why isn't math less useful or changing constantly?

"But you can see 'evolution by natural selection' in a rule set as simple as Game of Life."

That's false. You're repeating the same false premises as in the original claim I refuted. If godless and random could do it, then the questions below would all be No.

Does the game run in an environment made by intelligent designers? Does that environment need to be maintained?

Does it require rules made and maintained by intelligent designers?

Does it take an initial state in those rules to get to the specific outcomes you are looking for?

Does it produce simple, temporary patterns that are useless? Or complex machinery that's actually useful?

Or did all of the above happen randomly, keep happening, and produce increasingly complex and useful things?

"Or maybe every possible universe exists"

Science starts from observations to produce hypotheses. That is a faith-based belief popular in science fiction. It's also sort of a cop out because they're going to imagine something as infinite as God, but not mention God, to hope this would pop out randomly. If one does, they still have the "maintain it with stability over long periods" problem for that or those universes. They'll probably drag it deeper into infinity to say it will finally happen accidentally. Let's do science instead.

What we observe is a universe that is highly chaotic, almost every cubic inch is deadly, and the safest places are dead. We see nothing happening from it with Earth and humans being mind-boggling exceptions. Looking deeper at classical physics, we find reality itself also emerges in an orderly fashion from endless, quantum events that should be too random to support order. It also appears to work perfectly without failure for long periods of time.

We've also observed countless phenomenon that are truly random and chaotic, like July 4th fireworks, which never produce life or complex machines. Never self-replicating artifacts whose complexity increases over time. Never emergent intelligence from anything that didn't show evidence of design or have human input. We have billions of observations of chaotic events which themselves sometimes have a high magnitude of particles, chemicals, etc. Also, nothing lasts on its own due to physics with our intelligent designs requiring maintenance over time.

Our first hypothesis is that our reality should be total chaos. Our second hypothesis is something with unimaginable power is forcing a specific order to consistently come out of chaos. Second hypothesis is that the universe doesn't support life without being forced to. Third hypothesis is an intelligent being went uphill against the deadly universe to create us and our planet. Fourth hypothesis is that being is sustaining us despite a whole universe of threats to our lives. Fifth is that the creator is perfect. God is the Occam's Razor explanation of all of this.

There's also revelatory knowledge. God revealed Himself to us via His Word which came with prophecies, miracles, and testable predictions about lifestyles. Jesus, who died for humanity's sins, had a perfect life on top of the same, other attributes. Neither nobody nor nothing else had these traits to support their claimed revelations. So, outside empirical knowledge, revelatory knowledge reinforces the God theory into a highly-proven, saving belief. The life transformations that follow add anecdotal evidence to it.