How can we reconcile the argument of intelligent design with supposed design flaws?

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t see any issue.

By standard science I mean the tested and unfalsified theories in text books, as opposed to ideas which have been disproved, or are untested (speculative) or are unscientific (i.e. cannot be tested).

By standard theology I mean, for you, what your Church teaches, as opposed to discarded or heretical ideas or things such as Cartesian substance dualism.

You appear to be saying that standard science and standard theology, as so defined, are incompatible, which then forces every Catholic to independently invent some bridge between them, or to live in permanent cognitive discord.

I doubt many Catholics would agree with that. Which aspects of the two do you think you have to account for “overlapping”?

Well, now you are becoming intentionally obtuse.

How does looking for indications of design by God in nature make standard theology and standard science “incompatible?” If anything, proposing design would indicate an unsatisfied but inherent assumption that they are completely and essentially compatible.

Your illogic continues to baffle and confound.

In fact, to turn the tables on you: you appear to be the one quite willing to avoid the entire compatibility issue by declaring standard science and standard theology to be non-overlapping, I.e., that they have nothing to do with each other and refer to two completely separate realities as if creation has nothing to do with God and God nothing to do with creation. Doesn’t THAT assume incompatibility at its very core – that there is no need for God to explain nature and no need for nature to explain anything whatsoever about God?

I suppose the Patristic Fathers’ notion that God wrote two books – the book of Scripture and the book of Nature – means, for you, that the book of Nature is simply a user’s manual that tells us nothing of the design, the designer nor the intent or reason for existing behind nature.

I would submit that this perspective gives away your nineteenth century deistic core thinking that industrially designed creation is merely an artifact like a steam locomotive or gas oven which tells us nothing of its creator; as opposed to a work of art such as a fully fleshed out novel, sculpture or painting into which the Author has poured his heart and soul – his Word and Imago Dei.

Your post shows you haven’t a clue what my position is but you consistently seek to change it into a straw man that can be goaded by rhetorical flourish because it only exists as a tamed and chained enfeebled chimera in your own mind.

 

[tonyrey]

The false dilemma between Design and Chance implies God is directly responsible for every event.

You’re not answering my point, which was who else but you makes the division between Chance and Design? Which philosophers or theologians write about this division between chance with a capital c versus design with a capital d?

You’ll find plenty of examples if you google them.

Btw can we see that thesis? It would be good to finally see one of these many varied theories written down in with academic rigor.

You can download it for a small fee from EthOS. Send me a pm if you’re interested.

That is not evidence that the laws of nature are due to physical necessity. Why is there order rather than chaos?

For the sake of argument, suppose for a moment you believe in one of those multiverse notions, where there are many possible worlds.

You could not exist in any of the worlds where there is insufficient order. And, let’s not forget, you couldn’t have existed in our universe before stars manufactured carbon and oxygen, nor could you exist when the universe runs down into the speculated “heat death”. You can only ask why you exist in a world where there’s sufficient order of a kind which is compatible with you existing. There’s no chance or design involved there, unless you believe that you preexisted all those possible worlds and either by luck or design ended up in this world in an epoch where your body could exist. But that would seem to be incompatible with the Church’s teaching, which (I think) is that you got your soul at the moment of conception, and so can only physically exist in a world where you can be physically conceived.

You are assuming that given sufficient time there will necessarily be a world where there is sufficient order for life to exist. How do you justify that assumption?

Now your design theory short-circuits that multiverse notion, avoiding its need for many worlds, but it doesn’t disprove it in any way. Surely every attempt to prove or disprove God will fail (for 'It is said: âDo not put the Lord your God to the test.â" Luke 4 [Deut. 6:16]).

Jesus pointed to the beauty of the lilies as unmistakable evidence that we have a loving Father in heaven.

The fundamental theory is the same for everyone who believes the universe was created by God for the benefit of His creatures.

Nope. There are plenty Christians who don’t believe in any version of intelligent design, including any of many varied theories on this thread.

In that case they reject the teaching of Jesus.

The weakness of the Chance theory highlights the superiority of Design:

Again, you’re the only one who talks of chance with a capital C versus design with a capital D.

Please use Google!

I got lost with your post after that as the formatting went awry, perhaps you could post that part again.

I apologise but it seems to have disappeared with the formatting.

 

[inocente]

Ok. Let’s see if we can help the guy out.

I think I see what he was getting at. So, what is that?
Let’s say the y axis represent complexity of being.

In the pdf, the y axis is labelled “material complexity”, so yes, that’s definitely what yppop is getting at.

Genesis is a truthful explanation that can be understood by those approaching it with open minds and hearts in any era. A kid gets it. There is a depth of meaning that it continues to act as a personal font of truth decade after decade.

Again, agreed, but did past ages really interpret Genesis 1 as being about modern ideas of material complexity? Do most people eventoday? It isn’t self-evident in the text in the way that, for example, God creates everything is self-evident, and is so powerful that he merely has to speak commands. Surely the enduring truth must be the same across every era?

 

[inocente]

Well, now you are becoming intentionally obtuse.

How does looking for indications of design by God in nature make standard theology and standard science “incompatible?” If anything, proposing design would indicate an unsatisfied but inherent assumption that they are completely and essentially compatible.

Your illogic continues to baffle and confound.

In fact, to turn the tables on you: you appear to be the one quite willing to avoid the entire compatibility issue by declaring standard science and standard theology to be non-overlapping, I.e., that they have nothing to do with each other and refer to two completely separate realities as if creation has nothing to do with God and God nothing to do with creation. Doesn’t THAT assume incompatibility at its very core – that there is no need for God to explain nature and no need for nature to explain anything whatsoever about God?

I suppose the Patristic Fathers’ notion that God wrote two books – the book of Scripture and the book of Nature – means, for you, that the book of Nature is simply a user’s manual that tells us nothing of the design, the designer nor the intent or reason for existing behind nature.

I would submit that this perspective gives away your nineteenth century deistic core thinking that industrially designed creation is merely an artifact like a steam locomotive or gas oven which tells us nothing of its creator; as opposed to a work of art such as a fully fleshed out novel, sculpture or painting into which the Author has poured his heart and soul – his Word and Imago Dei.

Your post shows you haven’t a clue what my position is but you consistently seek to change it into a straw man that can be goaded by rhetorical flourish because it only exists as a tamed and chained enfeebled chimera in your own mind.

What on earth are you on about now? Nineteenth century deistic core thinking? Can you not resist the temptation to spin these wild fantasies?

I was responding to your strange claim that I excuse myself “from having to explain how “standard” theology integrates with “standard” science” and your “ID advocates claim the two are blended and try to account for that by attempting to fill in the details.”

Again, truth cannot contradict truth. That’s how theology and science integrate. Not by trying to glue them together with bits of string and sticking plasters, not by inventing personal theories, but by pruning and discarding wrong ideas. You sound like someone in Galileo’s day trying to integrate a belief that God placed the Earth at the center of the cosmos with the new science. You don’t have to, you work out what’s wrong and discard it, because if your theology and science don’t agree on something, one or both obviously cannot be truth. Why try to avoid that obvious solution?

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Again, agreed, but did past ages really interpret Genesis 1 as being about modern ideas of material complexity? Do most people eventoday? It isn’t self-evident in the text in the way that, for example, God creates everything is self-evident, and is so powerful that he merely has to speak commands. Surely the enduring truth must be the same across every era?

It is all there in Genesis, ever clearer to the earnest seeker of the truth.

 

[inocente]

You’ll find plenty of examples if you google them.

Google couldn’t find any either, it found no philosopher or theologian who has written about chance with a capital c existing together with design with a capital d along the lines of your personal theory. Are you saying you don’t personally know of any but you were hoping google might? Or if you do know of some, why not cite them?

You can download it for a small fee from EthOS. Send me a pm if you’re interested.

Probably not that interested, sorry.

You are assuming that given sufficient time there will necessarily be a world where there is sufficient order for life to exist. How do you justify that assumption?

Nope, never made that assumption, have another look.

Jesus pointed to the beauty of the lilies as unmistakable evidence that we have a loving Father in heaven.

And not evidence of design with a capital d as you previously claimed.

In that case they reject the teaching of Jesus.

No we do not, we reject your personal theory. If Jesus taught all the personal theories that various people claim then “I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” - John 21.

 

[Peter_Plato]

What on earth are you on about now? Nineteenth century deistic core thinking? Can you not resist the temptation to spin these wild fantasies?

I was responding to your strange claim that I excuse myself “from having to explain how “standard” theology integrates with “standard” science” and your “ID advocates claim the two are blended and try to account for that by attempting to fill in the details.”

Again, truth cannot contradict truth. That’s how theology and science integrate. Not by trying to glue them together with bits of string and sticking plasters, not by inventing personal theories, but by pruning and discarding wrong ideas. You sound like someone in Galileo’s day trying to integrate a belief that God placed the Earth at the center of the cosmos with the new science. You don’t have to, you work out what’s wrong and discard it, because if your theology and science don’t agree on something, one or both obviously cannot be truth. Why try to avoid that obvious solution?

So which, theology or science, do not agree that the universe was intelligently designed?

It appears that God’s providential plan for the universe is a central tenet in theology and science continues to function as if the universe can be understood and reverse engineered by human intelligence. Otherwise, science would have moved on to other pursuits long ago.

What is left then, is for you to demonstrate that the universe is not intelligently designed by the God which theology proposes is the omniscient (all–knowing intelligence) who grounds all of existence and intelligently orders (or so science presupposes) the universe.

Now would you mind explaining how God could create the universe without intelligently designing it or how science could pursue its enterprise on the assumption that not a whit of intelligence went into the laws that govern the universe even though complex mathematical equations seem fully compliant with its ordering?

So, omniscient God AND complex mathematical ordering but NO intelligent design?

Your point, once again:

“You don’t have to, you work out what’s wrong and discard it, because if your theology and science don’t agree on something, one or both obviously cannot be truth. Why try to avoid that obvious solution?”

MY science and my theology both agree on design by intelligence, so I don’t need to reconcile one or both being true since they are both true as far as I am concerned AND both together make intelligent design a virtual certainty.

So I’ll leave it up to you to explain how both science and theology presume intelligent planning by God, but yet you still deny intelligent design as an essential element of creation. Why are YOU trying to avoid the obvious solution, then? I have NO problem with it.

 

[Bradski]

MY science and my theology both agree on design by intelligence, so I don’t need to reconcile one or both being true since they are both true as far as I am concerned…

Except that you want to separate them at certain points. And, not surprisingly, those points occur at the exact same place every time. Where science is still looking for an answer.

God created the universe! Well, OK, I’m good with that.
God wrote the laws that govern the universe! Well, OK, I’m good with that as well.
God made us in His own image! Sure, if that’s what you say.

If all that is true, He has left us clues as to how He did it. We know the process. We know the steps that nature took. We can work it out. It’s all. What we term ‘natural’.

But then you want to insist that there are parts of the system that couldn’t be included into the laws of nature. Some points where God had to step in and give it a helping hand. As if He couldn’t set things up correctly in the first place.

Oops, that isn’t turning out as I wanted. Better step in here and point things in the right direction again.

Darn it. Why didn’t that work out? Here I go again, fixing stuff…

Oh no. That flagellum is simply not going to develop as it should. Hey, nobody will notice if I just…add a bit here and…change that there…

Behe: Hey, I discovered that God isn’t as omnipotent as we thought! Look at this. It isn’t natural. It’s SUPERNATURAL!

Edit: Sorry, did I say God. Hey, no. Not God. Nobody mentioned God. Well, I did but I meant to say ‘Intelligent Designer’. Which could be anything. I mean literally anything. Why would you think it was God. Because I and all the members of the ID movement are Christian? Seriously? You must be confusing us with those idiotic Creationists.

 

[tonyrey]

Except that you want to separate them at certain points. And, not surprisingly, those points occur at the exact same place every time. Where science is still looking for an answer.

God created the universe! Well, OK, I’m good with that.
God wrote the laws that govern the universe! Well, OK, I’m good with that as well.
God made us in His own image! Sure, if that’s what you say.

If all that is true, He has left us clues as to how He did it. We know the process. We know the steps that nature took. We can work it out. It’s all. What we term ‘natural’.

But then you want to insist that there are parts of the system that couldn’t be included into the laws of nature. Some points where God had to step in and give it a helping hand. As if He couldn’t set things up correctly in the first place.

Oops, that isn’t turning out as I wanted. Better step in here and point things in the right direction again.

Darn it. Why didn’t that work out? Here I go again, fixing stuff…

Oh no. That flagellum is simply not going to develop as it should. Hey, nobody will notice if I just…add a bit here and…change that there…

Behe: Hey, I discovered that God isn’t as omnipotent as we thought! Look at this. It isn’t natural. It’s SUPERNATURAL!

Edit: Sorry, did I say God. Hey, no. Not God. Nobody mentioned God. Well, I did but I meant to say ‘Intelligent Designer’. Which could be anything. I mean literally anything. Why would you think it was God. Because I and all the members of the ID movement are Christian? Seriously? You must be confusing us with those idiotic Creationists.

How would you justify your implicit assumption that a physical universe can be perfect in every respect without any defects, misfortunes or limitations?

 

[tonyrey]

Google couldn’t find any either, it found no philosopher or theologian who has written about chance with a capital c existing together with design with a capital d along the lines of your personal theory. Are you saying you don’t personally know of any but you were hoping google might? Or if you do know of some, why not cite them?

princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/design.html
plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/
It would be unbalanced to write about “Design” and “chance” as alternative explanations of reality. How else can they be distinguished?

Probably not that interested, sorry.

After stating that “It would be good to finally see one of these many varied theories written down in with academic rigor”!

Nope, never made that assumption, have another look.

So time is irrelevant?

No we do not, we reject your personal theory.

“we”?

If Jesus taught all the personal theories that various people claim then “I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” - John 21.

The words of Jesus about the beauty of the lilies are clear enough for a child to understand…

 

[Bradski]

How would you justify your implicit assumption that a physical universe can be perfect in every respect without any defects, misfortunes or limitations?

Mmmm. So God cannot make something without defects. He has to fine tune it now and then.

You sell God short, Tony.

I write computer programmes in work. They never work perfectly under all conditions the first time. Well enough, maybe. But I always need to revisit the code now and then and tinker with it. Make adjustments. Fine tune it.

I guess if I were good enough, I’d get it right the first time.

 

[Aloysium]

A step to understanding the reality of our own existence would be to dump the poor analogy that it is like a computer program. Our free will denies that. We are works of art, who make of our lives what we will, with the materials and tools we are given. With all the ups and downs, the successes and the failures, in spite of and perhaps because of the sorrows we endure and overcome, it is simply amazing!!

 

[tonyrey]

How would you justify your implicit assumption that a physical universe can be perfect in every respect without any defects, misfortunes or limitations?

There is a slight difference between creating a universe and writing computer programmes… I think you’re selling life short, Brad. Do you regret having been born?

 

[tonyrey]

Why has no one ever produced a feasible blueprint of a flawless universe? Or a lawless universe for that matter? Chaos is supposed to be a logical possibility.

 

[tonyrey]

A step to understanding the reality of our own existence would be to dump the poor analogy that it is like a computer program. Our free will denies that. We are works of art, who make of our lives what we will, with the materials and tools we are given. With all the ups and downs, the successes and the failures, in spite of and perhaps because of the sorrows we endure and overcome, it is simply amazing!!

John Keats believed this is “a vale of soul-making” which is far more inspiring and creative than a mechanistic view of reality. Even though he died at 25 his poetry justifies his view that “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever”…

 

[Peter_Plato]

Except that you want to separate them at certain points. And, not surprisingly, those points occur at the exact same place every time. Where science is still looking for an answer.

God created the universe! Well, OK, I’m good with that.
God wrote the laws that govern the universe! Well, OK, I’m good with that as well.
God made us in His own image! Sure, if that’s what you say.

If all that is true, He has left us clues as to how He did it. We know the process. We know the steps that nature took. We can work it out. It’s all. What we term ‘natural’.

But then you want to insist that there are parts of the system that couldn’t be included into the laws of nature. Some points where God had to step in and give it a helping hand. As if He couldn’t set things up correctly in the first place.

Oops, that isn’t turning out as I wanted. Better step in here and point things in the right direction again.

Darn it. Why didn’t that work out? Here I go again, fixing stuff…

Oh no. That flagellum is simply not going to develop as it should. Hey, nobody will notice if I just…add a bit here and…change that there…

Behe: Hey, I discovered that God isn’t as omnipotent as we thought! Look at this. It isn’t natural. It’s SUPERNATURAL!

Edit: Sorry, did I say God. Hey, no. Not God. Nobody mentioned God. Well, I did but I meant to say ‘Intelligent Designer’. Which could be anything. I mean literally anything. Why would you think it was God. Because I and all the members of the ID movement are Christian? Seriously? You must be confusing us with those idiotic Creationists.

Your design “vision” still appears so nineteenth century. Nothing like imposing your intentions and plans for creation on God.

Even human engineers and designers build into their designs planned obsolescence. A creature going extinct is only a design flaw if the designer did not intend the extinction.

Now you may insist that I am merely imposing on nature a defensible theology to exonerate God. Well, isn’t that what you are doing simply to impugn God? I mean someone would have to know the full purpose behind creation and the intentions of the designer in order to properly call some events flaws and others successes.

The reason I say your view is so nineteenth century is because it imposes an unchanging, mechanical view upon nature as if any departure from the apparent initial trajectory is seen by you as a “flaw.”

What if creation isn’t like that at all? What if it more akin to the performance of a symphony orchestra with vocalists joining at certain points? Instrument parts come and go just as animal and plant species enter the stage and then depart sometimes engendering feelings of exhultant joy, at others great pathos or sadness – and all of it intended by the composer.
What if life, like the vocalist parts was never meant to be performed by the instruments but by its very nature required the addition of voice or word (genetic code) of which instruments are simply incapable?

You seem to imply that every imposition by God in nature is to be viewed as a shortcoming or sign of weak design, yet if the entire creation is viewed as a performance with various instruments and vocal tracks improvised as the piece develops, then why should we be compelled to your view that interventions by God are necessarily “fixing” broken stuff? I mean, if it is ALL improvised as a dramatic performance then the intention of the great performer playing off the reactions of the conscious audience may be what the conductor/performer intended all along.

Again, your mechanistic view seems so, well… contrived and constrained by your familiarity with human designers and your desire to impose that model on God as if it the only one he is necessarily confined by.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Mmmm. So God cannot make something without defects. He has to fine tune it now and then.

You sell God short, Tony.

I write computer programmes in work. They never work perfectly under all conditions the first time. Well enough, maybe. But I always need to revisit the code now and then and tinker with it. Make adjustments. Fine tune it.

I guess if I were good enough, I’d get it right the first time.

Brad, when you are sufficiently competent at writing computer programs that they evolve themselves and spawn millions and millions of different versions which adapt and adjust to the changing needs of users and self-initiate consistently novel and complex features then you might have something to compare to and you might – at that point – have some street cred.

Given that, I would suppose, the programs you write are static, tedious and only slightly different from the originals – along with the fact that the development of new features by you requires great expenditures of mental effort and collaboration with others, it would seem that what God accomplishes in nature and what you do in software coding are two quite different realities.

Get back to us when the software you develop begins to self-replicate and responds to “environmental” pressures by spawning an incredible and continuous series of new and novel iterations on its own. At that time, you will be taken more seriously as a critic.

 

[yppop]

Innocente, and whoever else is interested.

To better understand where I am going (and I am pretty far along). Here is my opening statement of a synopsis I am writing.

1. The purpose of my thesis is to provide a plausible argument for those that believe in God with which to counter the secular materialists that use modern science as the main weapon in their argument that there is no God and that reality can be completely described based on nothing but matter, energy and the laws of physics.
2. The following synopsis presents the main ideas expressed in the full text of a book currently being written. The basic thesis is based on the premise that God exists and He creates and sustains the universe and everything in it at the ground of reality (the implicate view). That which God creates and sustains is manifested at an observable level that we experience and science describes (the explicate view). This approach avoids a conflict between science and religion.
3. A model that explains reality as having a hylomorphic nature—material and spiritual—is constructed by utilizing both modalities of space, continuous and discrete. The model describes a basic mechanism, called the holonomic mechanism, that operates at the implicate level, the results of which are manifested at the explicate level as matter, time, and energy. The holonomic mechanism not only explains the basic nature of objective reality, but also those phenomena that form subjective, rational, and transcendental reality, namely: life, mind, and soul.
4. If what I believe about the duality of space and the holonomic mechanism is at all realistic, then what I present is a plausible explanation of HOW God creates and sustains reality.

I realize that a plausible explanation does not meet the standards of a scientific description ( I have a master’s degree in physics so I do know science), but we are in a philosophical environment and in that regard an explanation trumps a description. Science does not explain, it merely describes. And if you doubt that, try explaining what energy is. Might take some deep thought, more than you applied to my chart, (not graph as you assumed).

This should be enough for now. When I get the urge I will deal with your questions on complexity and specific points in history when science believed the quantum jumps occurred. Incidentally, I do not include cycles in my thesis, reality is moving in a single direction.

Yppop

Yppop.

 

[tonyrey]

Your design “vision” still appears so nineteenth century. Nothing like imposing your intentions and plans for creation on God.

Even human engineers and designers build into their designs planned obsolescence. A creature going extinct is only a design flaw if the designer did not intend the extinction.

Now you may insist that I am merely imposing on nature a defensible theology to exonerate God. Well, isn’t that what you are doing simply to impugn God? I mean someone would have to know the full purpose behind creation and the intentions of the designer in order to properly call some events flaws and others successes.

The reason I say your view is so nineteenth century is because it imposes an unchanging, mechanical view upon nature as if any departure from the apparent initial trajectory is seen by you as a “flaw.”

What if creation isn’t like that at all? What if it more akin to the performance of a symphony orchestra with vocalists joining at certain points? Instrument parts come and go just as animal and plant species enter the stage and then depart sometimes engendering feelings of exhultant joy, at others great pathos or sadness – and all of it intended by the composer.
What if life, like the vocalist parts was never meant to be performed by the instruments but by its very nature required the addition of voice or word (genetic code) of which instruments are simply incapable?

You seem to imply that every imposition by God in nature is to be viewed as a shortcoming or sign of weak design, yet if the entire creation is viewed as a performance with various instruments and vocal tracks improvised as the piece develops, then why should we be compelled to your view that interventions by God are necessarily “fixing” broken stuff? I mean, if it is ALL improvised as a dramatic performance then the intention of the great performer playing off the reactions of the conscious audience may be what the conductor/performer intended all along.

Again, your mechanistic view seems so, well… contrived and constrained by your familiarity with human designers and your desire to impose that model on God as if it the only one he is necessarily confined by.

All of us are probably the victims of an occupational hazard because we develop habits according to the nature of our work. One of the most extreme materialists I have come across was a programmer on this forum who regarded truth as simply an “isomorphism” of atomic particles. I’m always amused by the implication that programs can explain programmers. Intelligence seems to have disappeared from the scene…

 

[tonyrey]

Innocente, and whoever else is interested.

To better understand where I am going (and I am pretty far along). Here is my opening statement of a synopsis I am writing.

1. The purpose of my thesis is to provide a plausible argument for those that believe in God with which to counter the secular materialists that use modern science as the main weapon in their argument that there is no God and that reality can be completely described based on nothing but matter, energy and the laws of physics.
2. The following synopsis presents the main ideas expressed in the full text of a book currently being written. The basic thesis is based on the premise that God exists and He creates and sustains the universe and everything in it at the ground of reality (the implicate view). That which God creates and sustains is manifested at an observable level that we experience and science describes (the explicate view). This approach avoids a conflict between science and religion.
3. A model that explains reality as having a hylomorphic nature—material and spiritual—is constructed by utilizing both modalities of space, continuous and discrete. The model describes a basic mechanism, called the holonomic mechanism, that operates at the implicate level, the results of which are manifested at the explicate level as matter, time, and energy. The holonomic mechanism not only explains the basic nature of objective reality, but also those phenomena that form subjective, rational, and transcendental reality, namely: life, mind, and soul.
4. If what I believe about the duality of space and the holonomic mechanism is at all realistic, then what I present is a plausible explanation of HOW God creates and sustains reality.

I realize that a plausible explanation does not meet the standards of a scientific description ( I have a master’s degree in physics so I do know science), but we are in a philosophical environment and in that regard an explanation trumps a description. Science does not explain, it merely describes. And if you doubt that, try explaining what energy is. Might take some deep thought, more than you applied to my chart, (not graph as you assumed).

This should be enough for now. When I get the urge I will deal with your questions on complexity and specific points in history when science believed the quantum jumps occurred. Incidentally, I do not include cycles in my thesis, reality is moving in a single direction.

Yppop.

Materialists would of course reject your view that science does not explain but they overlook its dependence on the metascientific principle that the universe is intelligible which in turn implies the power of intelligence. In other words science doesn’t exist in a mindless universe…