Big Bang Birthday: gravitational waves; language and logic (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, April 12, 2014, 12:20 (3878 days ago) @ David Turell

DHW: ..... If the generator is the eternal energy you call a universal intelligence, it was NOT designed. But if God as energy doesn't break down, why should energy simply as energy break down? Stable does not have to mean intelligent. A stable but non-conscious first cause universe-generator is no less feasible than a stable conscious first cause universe-generator! -DAVID: The complexity of the quantum particle zoo underlying the workings of this universe, and the rules by which they work strongly suggest (remember we can't prove anything at this level of thought) a complex pattern of planning, and therefore intelligence as a source.-I have criticized the passage above for what seems to me to be faulty reasoning. You have substituted your own argument, which is not the point I was dealing with.
 
dhw: As for the section you have bolded, obviously if universes were generated and were not eternal they had beginnings. But they were no more ex nihilo than our own, since every universe would have been preceded by the activity of the "universe-generator" (you and I have called it energy), which may or may not be intelligent.
DAVID: They are not ex nihilo but started by an eternal source.-Precisely the reason why I have criticized this passage in the article you recommended. The author shares your belief that the source is a designing god, and so I have questioned his use of "ex nihilo".-dhw: The conclusion to this article is pretty staggering: "What all of this reveals, of course, is that it's intelligent design all the way through and all the way down, and that theophobic scientific materialists, once they get past knee-jerk denials, must come to terms with what is, for them, a worldview-defeating fact. 
Fact?
DAVID: Yes, overstated, but a very logical conclusion.-Not a good idea to defend an article with so many flaws in its reasoning and such a manifestly unscientific conclusion! How would you respond if Dawkins claimed that his conclusions were a fact?