@Thacker , have you ever thought about what goes on inside cells? The business of enzymes is speeding up chemical reactions. As a rule, enzymes speed things up by many orders of magnitude. Thus, everything that happens in a cell happens much, much more rapidly than would otherwise occur. This, along with the inescapable energy flow that accompanies metabolic processes, paints a picture wherein the insides of a cell are much like, say, a hurricane.
Much like, but not exactly. Image a hurricane with wind speeds in the tens or hundreds of thousands of kph. That’s the inside of a cell. And, believe it or not, such a maelstrom is absolutely essential for the assembly of all that incredible complexity you see in cells.
The “membraneless protocell confined by a heat flow” experiment (Floroni et al., Nature Physics, 2025) did not generate life or new genetic information. What the authors actually did was remove the working molecular components of life from their cellular context and hold them in a precisely controlled microfluidic pore under a temperature gradient of about 30–70 °C. The thermal flow replaced the role of a membrane by physically confining a cell-free expression system—a laboratory mixture containing purified ribosomes, polymerases, tRNAs, nucleotides, amino acids, and cofactors. When DNA templates were introduced into this environment, normal gene expression occurred: transcription of DNA into RNA and translation of that RNA into a fluorescent reporter protein.
In other words, the team very carefully replicated the cytoplasmic conditions of a living cell, then replaced the membrane with an engineered thermal chamber. The system functioned only because it already contained all the machinery of life. It’s the biochemical equivalent of bench-testing a diesel turbo by blowing air through it; it shows the parts can still run when externally powered, not that the turbo built itself or that the process explains how it was made.
Along this line, I think a lot of CG animations of cellular activity (particular those used by ID sources) give people a false impression of what goes on inside cells. Such videos usually depict a highly ordered, methodical, and precise process. Whereas the actual activity is far more chaotic.
This is also where analogies tend to break down when comparing cellular activity versus computers or other machines.
Irrelevant. The point is the thermal gradient collected and confined the constituents into a narrow space so their functions could proceed.
Exactly. The temperature gradient in the pore did the ordering. Mere heat exchange across the pore.
Yep. The flow of heat across the pore. Heat is kinetic energy. An energy flow created functional organization, an organization which was absent when heat did not flow across the pore.
It didn’t function until heat flowed across the pore. That’s the point. That a heat-flow did the organizing part of bringing the components together so they could react and begin their functions. An energy flow created functional organization.
All irrelevant since the experiment isn’t purported to have demonstrated the origin of life. It merely debunks your now demonstrably wrong assertion that energy flow can’t create functional organization. It clearly can.
What is the amount of functional organization/information in a painted, furnished house, and how does that amount compare to the amount of functional organization/information contained in a scattering of wood and nails from a lumberyard? What are even the parameters of the problem, that the results depend on? How would I begin computing this “functional organization/information” quantity enough to actually speak of it scientifically in the current context? Something tells me it’s not an actual evaluation, but rather just consulting what either structure feels like to one or all of us subjectively. But I’ll gladly stand corrected.
Well, it’s definitely the case that all self-replicating systems we have evidence of are chemical[1], and it is the case that all data-storage systems we have evidence of are chemical[1:1]. We have plenty enough evidence of chemical pathways leading to such structures from simpler chemical substances. We even emulate the environments known to yield them, when we are in need of them and recovering them in the wild is too expensive. Of course, we also have no evidence whatsoever that anything other than the laws of physics ultimately govern those reactions. I’m at a bit of a loss as to what it is exactly that’s missing here.
A safe assumption to make, frankly, seeing as we have no evidence to suggest an alternative. What exactly is non-undirected chemistry?
We do not find new, functional, or self-preserving code in nature. All we find is chemicals following chemical interactions. There is nothing premature or unreasonable in assuming that how we observe chemicals behaving now is a consequence of their inherent structure, considering we have nothing else to go on, and that the predictions made under that assumption continue to accurately predict observations going into the future.
If you want to say that chemical behaviour is due in some part to something other than the physics that underlies it, the onus is on you to demonstrate that the predictions made assuming this additional factor can compete in accuracy with those made without it enough to justify the conceptual cost of that additional entity.
by some interpretation of “chemical”; they are certainly material↩︎↩︎
Look, I’m 100% with you, I agree, it was likely humans, no question. My point, however, is… it wasn’t brain dead humans, or absurdly unintelligent humans who did it, someone thought about it, planed a scheme to get it done, prepared the site, selected the rocks suitable, obtained the tools necessary to accomplish the task, had a model of what he intended to make, and went about methodically chipping all the rock that didn’t belong in the form he intended to create.
What I’ve just described is intelligence and the process by which all intelligent creations are produced. As such, it stands as a good standard for 1) the identification of what might be or not a product of Intelligence, and 2) one which can be used for this subject we’re discussing; some constructs, like coding, decoding, transmitting, error correcting informational systems, like the Statues defy unguided, non-intelligent sourcing, to even float such a theory is laughably dismissed.
With regard to inference to the best explanation we certainly cannot say that a designer is the best explanation of life without examining it. And yet that is exactly what ID does - there is no attempt to establish that there us a likely design explanation - or even come up with anything but the vaguest of explanations, which really explains very little.
Even if we only credit the presumed designer with creating the first life, Is the idea that an undesigned designer with the capability and the desire to create life on Earth really more likely than naturalistic abiogenesis? It is certainly not obviously so. And there seems to be no attempt to establish that it is likely.
Is this designer itself alive? If it is then we must presume abiogenesis elsewhere - but that hardly seems a satisfactory move for either side. But if it is not alive, what is it? And if it is presumed to be some completely unknown entity surely that must count greatly against it’s likelihood.
And what if intent? We are not given any reason why the presumed designer is likely to want to create life. While it is possible to come up with speculative ideas there are none that we can say are likely.
So it seems to me that the vague “explanation” offered by ID is very poor indeed - and arguably inferior to naturalistic abiogenesis.
In the context of distinguishing carved statues from natural wind/water erosion, we do this based on preexisting knowledge of those respective processes, understanding of the physical form of the outputs and pattern recognition applied to the objects in question. In most cases, simply viewing the respective form (geometry) of the objects in question is enough.
If you want to apply the same approach to inferring some designer insofar as biological organisms go, then I would start by asking what preexisting knowledge do we have with a designer creating biological organisms. At the very least, we need some sort of hypothesis as to how a designer went about doing things as a starting point. Without that, we don’t have anything to work with.
This is a curious observation and not entirely uncommon. I have worked on this issue for quite a while. What I’ve concluded is, the rules of this universe cannot be assumed to govern the reality from which this universe arose. Outside of this universe, time and space necessarily would have different meanings, if any meaning at all. In such a context, ideas like beginning, end, cause, and effect may not even be coherent. We have no context, no lexicon to discern what “reality” really is, even here, let along outside this Universe.
What we can say is that the existence of physical law itself appears arbitrary; many theories acknowledge this. What everyone does admit is, the constants and ratios of the matter and forces that define this Universe are remarkably tuned to allow stability, structure, and life. Some claim that this is merely one among countless universes, and we happen to exist in the one that works. Yet given the universal arrow of entropy toward smooth energy distribution and dissolution, that is a poor bet, perpetual motion just doesn’t seem to be a thing energy does.
The stronger conclusion is that the laws and their precise balance express a preferential order, a pattern that reflects intent rather than accident. This is not an argument from necessity but from coherence. A system that resists immediate decay and sustains complexity behaves as if it were shaped toward a purpose, in our experience, screams Intelligent Design.
It follows then that demanding whatever preceded this universe to obey the same physical rules, fit neatly within the materialistic lexicon they foster, is unwarranted.
“Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It’s like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth.” -Stephen W. Hawking
“Asking what came before the Big Bang is meaningless, according to the no-boundary proposal, because there is no notion of time available to refer to.”-Hartle & Hawking’s “No-Boundary Proposal”
These Materialistically driven terms, principles and limits simply cannot be trusted beyond the walls of this Universe.
The laws restrain and define the product, not the source. In any state where time and space do not, literally cannot exist as we know them, questions of before and after, or beginning and end, lose meaning.
The question “Who designed the designer?” fails because it imposes and demands the lexicon of this world apply to a reality where our materially produced language simply isn’t descriptive.
You do understand how this undermines, perhaps fatally, any argument that the beginning of the universe must have involved the actions of a god, right?
Concluded whence? Also what does “this universe arose” mean? Was there a time at which spacetime – and with it at least some version of this universe – wasn’t around? How?
Glad we can agree, then, that cosmological arguments are at best barely coherent. I would go so far as to say that we are struggling quite a bit with beginnings, endings, cause and effect even well within this universe, but that’s neither here nor there. Moving on…
We can say a great lot of things, if we are not concerned with whether the things we say are based in anything.
Many theories of what? And would you kindly name two, please?
If by “everyone” you mean those people who think teleological arguments are coherent (unlike their cosmological counterparts, I presume), then maybe. As for the rest of us, no, most everyone does not admit this. There is zero indication that the parameters of the universe could, even in principle, be tuned. And if they could, and someone tuned them specifically with the goals of “stability” (what ever that means), “structure” (what ever that means), and life, then the results certainly don’t seem to indicate it: Most celestial orbits are unstable, as are most isotopes and even subatomic particles themselves. Structures of one description or another arise basically as soon as there are any rules at all and anything for the rules to act upon, and I struggle to understand how something that is missing one or both of these conditions qualifies as a “universe” to begin with. As for life, we know of one place, give or take, that actually supports any, and even there it is restricted to a fairly narrow playing space. One’d think if the point and purpose of the universe was life, it would be ubiquitous throughout space, and not barely keeping it together on the small portion of a molten rock’s thin skin that happens not to be too hot or too cold for life. And if life was created specially, one would perhaps expect it to be more miraculous, perhaps thriving without any adaptations in places that by all measures should not support any.
Respectfully, I do not understand how your response to this admittedly weak objection actually addresses it. As far as I can tell, nothing about the second law of thermodynamics has anything to do with whether or not there are other universes where the rules or at least the parameters are different, or how few or many of them satisfy what ever condition is needed to find them remarkable like we do our own. If you can explain what you mean by your reply, though, I’ll be very interested to chat some physics with you.
Yeah, well, if only there was anything at all to base this conclusion on. What examples have we of intent shaping laws or constants of nature? How would it? What even is intent, absent a physical brain feeling intentions?
No, not really. Not unless we just assume it does. For, after all, we are talking about the universe here, and we only have one known example of a system like that, and no reasons to expect it being a different way than it is. And, for that matter, I would contest the claim that it “resists immediate decay”. By all appearances, the universe’s entropy is rising about as quickly as it can. And, ironically, there is a case to be made that life in particular is actually a rather swift entropy producer, certainly more proficient at it than non-living chemistry. So the existence of life on earth actually boosts the rate of the universe’s “decay” above that of a hypothetical one with a barren rock in earth’s place. Perhaps we would do well to pick a lane at this juncture, and either go with the argument that entropy slowing is a mark of design, or that life is. Both are an awkward pick, conflicting as they do.
Agreed. The idea of anything “preceding” spacetime at all seems incoherent. The idea that the universe could have been made to be from a state of it not being around makes no sense at all. The intuition that there is anything “beyond” the universe, just like there is something beyond a cardboard box just doesn’t hold and must not guide our thinking.
True. The question “Who designed the universe?” has the same problem, though. It assumes that universes (of which we only know one) are something that (a) can be designed (what ever that means), and (b) by something ‘who’-like. But while we seriously struggle to talk coherently about causation within the universe, we are utterly lost attempting to meaningfully talk of it applying to the universe itself, because without there being a time at which time did not exist, there cannot have been a process that brought time into being between then and the first moment of time, intelligent or otherwise. And asking what caused a non-process/event is… unprodutive.
This should be obvious: unless a universe in which life develops on its own is for some reason impossible, even with an omnipotent being in charge, it would be the one most fine-tuned for life, and a creator would logically produce the most fine-tuned universe he could.
So basically you’ve come up with an excuse to make up whatever you want. But that does nothing to make design more likely as an explanation. It certainly makes it much worse as an explanation. So on that basis I feel quite comfortable in saying that naturalistic abiogenesis is the better explanation - at least compared to your version of design.
Research, discussions, thought, its a rather broad field after all.
This universe is finite both in beginning and end, that seems obvious given entropy. Did you note the quotes I offered, one was from Hawking…
“The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”
-Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (quoted in multiple sources)
“Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word ‘miraculous’ without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.”
George Ellis
Maybe “arbitrary” is the issue, what I mean by it is, there are a fixed set of parameters which enable this universe to exist at all, these parameters do not seem to be necessary; that is, its the only possible configuration or calibration, but modulated, regulated (more on this latter).
Barely coherent? What makes you think that?
Well, far be it from me to shirk my burden of proof (full disclosure, I used Google (which I think is an AI) Search for these citations)
Gravitational Constant (G)
Governs the strength of gravity.
If gravity were slightly stronger, stars would burn too fast and collapse; slightly weaker, they would never ignite.
Source: Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers (2000).
Electromagnetic Force Constant (α, the fine-structure constant)
Controls the strength of electromagnetic interaction between charged particles.
A small change alters chemistry itself: atoms would not form stable bonds, and light-matter interactions would be radically different.
Source: Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (1977).
Strong Nuclear Force Constant
Determines how strongly protons and neutrons bind in nuclei.
If it were just 2 percent stronger, all hydrogen would fuse into helium early in the universe; if slightly weaker, no atoms heavier than hydrogen could exist.
Source: John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986).
Weak Nuclear Force
Controls radioactive decay and hydrogen fusion in stars.
If weaker, stars could not synthesize the heavier elements needed for life; if stronger, supernovae and cosmic radiation would sterilize everything.
Ratio of Electron Mass to Proton Mass
Sets the scale for chemistry.
If the electron were much heavier, orbitals would collapse and molecules would not form; if much lighter, bonding would be too weak to hold matter together.
Ratio of Electrons to Protons
The universe is almost perfectly charge-balanced: for every 10⁹ photons, there is roughly one proton and one electron.
A tiny asymmetry (about one part in a billion) is what allows matter to exist at all instead of annihilating completely with antimatter.
Source: Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe (1982).
Cosmological Constant (Λ)
Determines the rate of cosmic expansion.
If slightly larger, matter would never have clumped into stars and galaxies; if slightly smaller, the universe would have recollapsed before life began.
Source: Steven Weinberg, Physical Review Letters, 1987.
Baryon-to-Photon Ratio
Controls density fluctuations in the early universe.
Too high or too low and galaxies, stars, and planets cannot form.
Rate of Cosmic Expansion (H₀)
Fine-tuned balance between gravitational attraction and expansion speed.
Too rapid: no galaxies; too slow: premature collapse.
Carbon Resonance in the Hoyle State
The energy level of carbon-12 allows stars to produce carbon efficiently through nuclear fusion.
Change that resonance by even a few percent and carbon (and therefore life) vanishes.
Source: Fred Hoyle, Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 1954.
So at some point we have to acknowledge this universe resides in a Goldilocks zone and isn’t a necessary state, for it to exist a lot of elements had to be just right. Now you could argue, all the elements I’ve cited (which are not all that exist) are necessary, as opposed to arbitrary, but imo, that has more issues than mine. Btw, I trust you are satisfied with the foundation for at least my claim to fine tuning.
Eternal Inflation and the Multiverse (Andrei Linde, Alan Guth, et al.)
In this model, inflation; the rapid expansion that followed the Big Bang never completely ends. Instead, it continues in different regions, creating countless “bubble universes.” Each bubble can have its own vacuum state and therefore its own set of physical constants and laws. Our universe happens to be one bubble where the constants fall in the narrow range that permits life.
This idea is often paired with the Anthropic Principle: we shouldn’t be surprised that the constants here appear fine-tuned, because only in such a universe could observers exist to notice.
“Eternal inflation predicts that our universe is just one of many bubbles in a much larger multiverse, each with different physical properties.”
— Andrei Linde, Scientific American, 1998
String Landscape Theory (Leonard Susskind, Raphael Bousso, et al.)
String theory allows an enormous number of possible solutions for the vacuum configuration of the universe — estimates often cited are around 10^500 different possible universes.
Each configuration produces different values for physical constants such as the cosmological constant, gravitational coupling, and particle masses.
The argument is that our universe is simply one that fell into a viable configuration for life — not designed, but a statistical inevitability across a vast landscape of possibilities.
“The anthropic principle is not a cop-out; it is the realization that in a landscape of perhaps 10^500 different vacua, it is no surprise that some tiny fraction will have the right conditions for life.”
— Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (2005)
If you’d like more, just ask.
Fred Hoyle (Astrophysicist, discoverer of carbon resonance)
“A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.”
— Engineering and Science, 1981, vol. 45, p. 12
“This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been, namely to an accuracy of one part in 10 to the power of 10^123. It’s an extraordinary figure… I cannot even recall seeing anything else in physics that comes anywhere near so impressive.”
— Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (1989), p. 444
Now, “everyone” is somewhat hyperbolic, though, I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t acknowledge the oddity of this fact, and Penrose isn’t a theist or some crack-pot Christian wanna-be physicist. If you’d like I can give you 10 or 100 more, you name the number of scientists who have acknowledge this oddity of our universe. Just sayin…
Sure, Entropy is steadily killing this universe, driving it toward complete dissolution, and it’s ultimate dissolution is only a matter of time. The appeal to “countless universes” doesn’t solve that problem; it merely enlarges the set. Entropy still rules them all, and every energy system ends the same way, in smooth, featureless equilibrium.
The idea that any structured system could arise spontaneously from that kind of total energetic uniformity is, given what we know, astonishingly implausible. Yet this universe did arise and not chaotically, but with the precise tuning needed for stability and life.
So the bet against entropy, the hope that the smooth stillness of total decay might somehow be perturbed again into a new Big Bang, is a long one indeed, especially for a worldview that denies any agency beyond matter itself.
So, let’s start with what we both can agree on: this universe is governed. It’s regulated. The fact that it behaves according to consistent mathematical relations isn’t a matter of debate, it’s the very reason science works. The oddity isn’t that we can describe the laws mathematically, but that there are laws to describe in the first place.
And Mathematics isn’t causative; it’s descriptive. It doesn’t make gravity pull or light travel at a constant speed. It only lets us describe the behavior we observe, a behavior that, for reasons no one fully understands, are consistent, intelligible, and extraordinarily precise.
The regulation constants; the fundamental forces, particle ratios, and coupling strengths, are tuned with a precision that defies chance. Adjust a few of them by even the smallest fraction, and this universe dissolves into chaos or never forms at all. I can provide citations for every one of those tolerances if you like.
To say this level of precision “just happened” is not an explanation; it’s a refusal to give one. If you discovered a perfectly calibrated instrument, say, a clock keeping flawless time you wouldn’t assume it assembled itself by chance. You’d know it was engineered. The same reasoning applies to the constants and forces that regulate this universe: they work together with exquisite coordination and precision, and both point unmistakably to design.
So yes, I’m arguing from evidence: the stability, intelligibility, and fine-tuned precision of the physical laws themselves. They are not random. They are not chaotic. They are regulated, and regulation, by definition, implies preference and that is the hallmark, the fingerprint of Intelligence.
I’m not sure it does. When we encounter a finely tuned mechanism; one that regulates countless potential failure states into a narrow band of stable, functional outcomes, the inference to design isn’t unwarranted. It’s the same reasoning applied in every other field of investigation. Watches, computers, and aircraft all display coordinated systems of constraint and function. We don’t call that coincidence; we call it engineering.
This connects directly to Dr. Axe’s work. In an unimaginably vast probability space where only a vanishingly small fraction of configurations yield functional outcomes, that level of precision; that sort has no natural analogue. Nothing in unguided nature selects such fine-grained, information-rich states by chance. The space is so overwhelmingly tilted toward disorder that Design becomes the default inference, not the extraordinary one.
Moreover, the genetic and physical regulation that sustains life operates on the same principle. It suppresses chaos, maintains order, and channels energy into work, all are hallmarks of goal-oriented design. So yes, the inference to a “who-like,” preference-bearing agency definitely is an assumption, but it remains the most coherent explanation of what we actually observe daily.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Physics has been remarkably successful in mathematically describing this universe, both descriptively and predictively. As Einstein himself said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” That alone should give us pause.
We live every moment within a causal framework. Cause and effect are not philosophical abstractions; they are the very foundation of science itself, including biology. Your entire perspective; the evolutionary chain that produced you, depends on causation operating consistently for hundreds of millions of years.
Sometimes what is most fundamental becomes invisible precisely because it is constant. We swim in causality like fish in water, unaware of the medium that sustains us.
I view this as an “inside out” observation, using our present reality we exierience in this highly regulated universe, and applying it beyond its boundaries, and we know it has boundaries. Now it may be there is literally nothing outside this Universe, but the paradox of “something from actual nothing”, particularly something this fine tuned… imo, that takes far more faith to believe than ID.
The issue I see with your reasoning is, time here, may not be the only “clock”, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. But one thing is certain, at one point this universe did not exist, and at another it did, I think that is a fact very few Scientists dispute.
And asking what caused a non-process or non-event isn’t unproductive, in fact, we use inference re sourcing every single day, generally I find it’s only avoided when we dislike where it might lead. What Intelligent Design asks is simple: apply the same standards of inference in biology and astrophysics that we already use in archaeology or forensic science. When we find ordered systems exhibiting clear markers of function and purpose, we infer Intelligence, we don’t carve out exceptions; no one seriously suspected the Rosetta Stone was produced by unguided nature; wind and water.
Creating protected categories of explanation, where only materialist orthodoxy is permitted is not science, imo, it more like a method for validation of a preconceived ideology. The request ID makes is modest: that evidence be allowed to point where it points, even if that means admitting that some order appears designed. To me, that seems the reasonable position.
(AI was used in this post exclusively for research and proof reading (my spelling and grammar are horrific), all the thoughts, arguments and assessments are mine exclusively, completely, w/o exception)
