Some might argue that there cannot be a first moment of the universe, because every moment, by definition has a past from which it comes (as well as a future toward which...). Here is a counter-argument. Every adult human being has, whenever he or she makes an observation, a present that has a past (and is the at least partially fulfilling future of that now gone-by past). So that human might generalize and say that experiences of the present includes, as a component of that present, the past. But if we treat this generalization as a necessary truth, then no human can have an experience of the present that does not include its having come from the past. In such a case, no human being could have a finite age. Each must have an infinite series of presents, each of which has a past. Which seems pretty absurd. The move from experiencing the present as having a past to assigning a necessity to this relationship is unwarranted, both in this case and in the previous one.
Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
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