If Intelligent Design is a scientific theory...

[siti]

If we let both exist as possibilities, then we can deduce the least improbable explanation on it's own merits.

Right - exactly - so where is the scientific data - I mean genuine, peer-reviewed, scientific observation/experimental data to support ID? And I don't mean pointless mathematical calculations of how "improbable" a certain aspect of the evolution of life might have been - those are entirely irrelevant because the event has already happened and therefore has a probability of exactly 1.0!

 

[Guy Threepwood]

hey, just wanted to say that I enjoy your posts. I, too, have experienced in life that Darwinists are a priesthood. They demand utter obedience to the words of Holy Leader, and will not brook dissent from his revealed liturgy. I have yet to meet a crew as hostile to open discussion as Darwinists, except maybe some die hard fundies where I live. Even so, at least the have a case when they shout 'it SAY-ozz', as they are drawing on the words of a God and not a man, who my his own admission is a monkey deluxe. At least Darwinists don't burn people at the stake for blasphemy, so, credit where it is due. They will mock and ridicule ceaselessly, but that is survivable. Anyway, keep up the good work; your presentation is quite solid.

Thanks Davarr I appreciate that!

though I will also take issue with a couple of things (that's what we are here for!)

To compare Darwinism with a religion I think is a little unfair...... to religion. I think it would need to acknowledge it's own faith as such to rise to that distinction. There is no belief more intolerant and dangerous, than one which refuses to acknowledge itself as such. aka blind faith

Consider that atheist states like Stalin's USSR, North Korea, Communist China, killed more people in a single generation than every religious conflict in the history of humanity.

When we acknowledge our own personal faith, we admit that we can't prove it, we do not declare inherent intellectual superiority over all people with differing beliefs- isn't that where the problems always begin?


It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane: Dawkins

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Right - exactly - so where is the scientific data - I mean genuine, peer-reviewed, scientific observation/experimental data to support ID? And I don't mean pointless mathematical calculations of how "improbable" a certain aspect of the evolution of life might have been - those are entirely irrelevant because the event has already happened and therefore has a probability of exactly 1.0!

there is no genuine observable, measurable, repeatable experiment that shows a single cell morphing into a human being through millions of luck accidents. Peer pressure review or not!

The Math is not pointless, it's key to all the secrets of the universe.

If a gambler plays 5 royal flushes in a row, was this luck or ID? Ignoring the mathematical probabilities, Occam's razor and the empirical evidence, both point to the auto card shuffler being responsible do they not? It happened, so the chances at exactly 1.0! Suggesting otherwise asks more questions that it answers, it offers no direct mechanism we can study, right?

So why do you suspect ID and not chance?

 

[Jose Fly]

there is no genuine observable, measurable, repeatable experiment that shows a single cell morphing into a human being through millions of luck accidents. Peer pressure review or not!

Likewise, there's no repeatable experiment that shows the earth making an entire orbit around the sun. Not sure what your point is, unless you're operating under the mistaken impression that if something isn't directly repeatable in the lab then it isn't scientific.

The Math is not pointless, it's key to all the secrets of the universe.

If a gambler plays 5 royal flushes in a row, was this luck or ID? Ignoring the mathematical probabilities, Occam's razor and the empirical evidence, both point to the auto card shuffler being responsible do they not? It happened, so the chances at exactly 1.0! Suggesting otherwise asks more questions that it answers, it offers no direct mechanism we can study, right?

So why do you suspect ID and not chance?

Again we see how ID creationists can only use analogies, rather than actually point to something in nature and describe the methods by which they determined it to be "designed".

 

[siti]

there is no genuine observable, measurable, repeatable experiment that shows a single cell morphing into a human being through millions of luck accidents.

Indeed - but there are at least 7 or 8 billion observable, measurable but not exactly repeatable (that's kinda the point!) examples of human beings that prove it has happened. So if the level of variability among humans - from Pygmies to the Dinka, from Micronesians to Norsemen and Chinese to Australian Aborigines - was built in by design, why not the (sometimes only slightly more significant) variation between species?

In any case, asking for proof of the entire evolutionary process is extremely disproportionate - there are thousands upon thousands of research papers every year that show evidence of evolution in some small aspect and offer perfectly reasonable explanations of how this could have come about without the aid of divine intervention. I am only asking you for ONE paper that shows genuine evidence of any ONE genetic (or - as we on this side would say - evolutionary) trait that was not possible through natural processes and could only have occurred through deliberate "intelligent design". I am taking your silence on this question as an indication (please correct me if I am wrong) that you - as a vociferous defender, and presumably reasonably well-read proponent of ID - are not aware of one.

Probability calculations of the sort used to support ID are pointless because we have no way of knowing how big, how old or how many the universe(s) really is (are). Even if we subscribe to the (actually non-scientific idea) that the Big Bang was the true beginning of all things and there is just one universe (which I think is probably true) we still have no idea how big the universe is because we can only calculate based on the extent of the "observable universe". For all we know, the entire universe could have been the size of the current "observable universe" when the Big Bang happened. The universe could, for all we know, be infinite in extent - in which case, any event, no matter how "improbable", would be certain to occur somewhere - an infinite number of times. I am talking silly because probability applied to this question IS silly - and that is my point. And this post is already far too long...

 

[KBC1963]

Looking for information about ID's science based evidences then go here;
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=10141

For those who use the whine that ID has no science based evidence for their theory then check out this paper;

Mariclair A. Reeves, Ann K. Gauger, and Douglas D. Axe, "Enzyme Families–Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design? A Study of the GABA-Aminotransferase Family," BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2014 (4).

When Michael Behe published Darwin’s Black Box in 1996, he outlined irreducible complexity as a biochemical challenge to Darwinian evolution. Evolutionists responded by claiming that irreducibly complex features can be built through co-option, where a gene may be duplicated, and then the extra copy borrowed and retooled, or "co-opted," to perform some new function. This peer-reviewed research paper from protein scientists at Biologic Institute experimentally tests the co-option model, showing it's very difficult for proteins to evolve new functions.
The project began in 2011, when Biologic researchers Ann Gauger and Douglas Axe published results of laboratory experiments trying to convert one enzyme (Kbl2) to perform the function of another enzyme (BioF2). Because these two proteins have a similar structure and are members of the same family, they are thought to be very closely related. Converting one protein to perform the function of a closely related protein is the sort of change which ought to be easily accomplished under the co-option model....

....Axe and Gauger's 2011 study only investigated the evolvability of two proteins. Now in this 2014 paper, Axe, Gauger, and biochemist Mariclair Reeves, present new research on additional proteins from the same family, showing that they too are not amenable to an evolutionary conversion.....


If you feel that their research has no merit then you are free to recreate their experiment ....
This is the great thing about actual physical research.... it is repeatable and since it is fully defined in the research paper you can perform the exact same experiment.... you could also show by experiment just how they are wrong in methodology or conclusion, that is how science operates.

 

[Jose Fly]

For those who use the whine that ID has no science based evidence for their theory then check out this paper;

Mariclair A. Reeves, Ann K. Gauger, and Douglas D. Axe, "Enzyme Families–Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design? A Study of the GABA-Aminotransferase Family," BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2014 (4).

I read that. Their argument is basically "We can't imagine how evolution would have generated these enzyme families, therefore they must have been designed".

No wonder they had to publish it in their own fake journal rather than an actual scientific one.

If you feel that their research has no merit then you are free to recreate their experiment ....

It's fundamentally flawed from the start. They took enzyme sequences from extant E. coli and tried to get them to gain the function of a different extant enzyme sequence, and when they couldn't do it, they concluded that it couldn't have happened in the past, at all.

Do you see the fundamental problem there?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Indeed - but there are at least 7 or 8 billion observable, measurable but not exactly repeatable (that's kinda the point!) examples of human beings that prove it has happened.

proves that millions of significant design improvements from molecules to man were happened upon by chance?

So if the level of variability among humans - from Pygmies to the Dinka, from Micronesians to Norsemen and Chinese to Australian Aborigines - was built in by design, why not the (sometimes only slightly more significant) variation between species?

by that rationale, Ford's current line up of cars suggests that they were not designed, or they'd all be the same?

In any case, asking for proof of the entire evolutionary process is extremely disproportionate - there are thousands upon thousands of research papers every year that show evidence of evolution in some small aspect and offer perfectly reasonable explanations of how this could have come about without the aid of divine intervention. I am only asking you for ONE paper that shows genuine evidence of any ONE genetic (or - as we on this side would say - evolutionary) trait that was not possible through natural processes and could only have occurred through deliberate "intelligent design". I am taking your silence on this question as an indication (please correct me if I am wrong) that you - as a vociferous defender, and presumably reasonably well-read proponent of ID - are not aware of one.

I'm not aware of any papers explicitly concluding that unicorns don't exist either, unless you are aware of ONE? it's the old proving the negative thing right?.

I've also never seen a single paper, which details a single scientific experiment, that proves that any genetic trait must have arrived entirely by accident, and could not possible have involved ID at any stage.

Having said all that, there are countless evolutionary claims that have been utterly debunked yes, Piltdown man being a fairly prominent one.

And regarding your question of ID being explicitly required as part of the process

Here are a few papers just to get you started!

The Limits of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations PDF
Douglas D. Axe
A Vivisection of the ev Computer Organism: Identifying Sources of Active Information PDF
George Montañez, Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II
Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness PDF
Ann K. Gauger, Stephanie Ebnet, Pamela F. Fahey, Ralph Seelke
A Stylus-Generated Artificial Genome with Analogy to Minimal Bacterial Genomes PDF
Douglas D. Axe, Philip Lu, Stephanie Flatau
The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzymes Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway PDF
Ann K. Gauger, Douglas D. Axe
A Tetrahedral Representation of the Genetic Code Emphasizing Aspects of Symmetry PDF
Fernando Castro-Chavez
Climbing the Steiner Tree--Sources of Active Information in a Genetic Algorithm for Solving the Euclidean Steiner Tree Problem PDF
Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II
Active Information in Metabiology PDF
Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II
Enzyme Families--Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design? A Study of the GABA-Aminotransferase Family PDF
Mariclair A. Reeves, Ann K. Gauger, Douglas D. Axe
Model and Laboratory Demonstrations That Evolutionary Optimization Works Well Only If Preceded by Invention--Selection Itself Is Not Inventive PDF
Douglas D. Axe, Ann K. Gauger
Overabundant mutations help potentiate evolution: The effect of biologically realistic mutation rates on computer models of evolution PDF
Winston Ewert
Genetic Modeling of Human History Part 1: Comparison of Common Descent and Unique Origin Approaches PDF
Ola Hössjer, Ann K. Gauger, Colin Reeves
Genetic Modeling of Human History Part 2: A Unique Origin Algorithm PDF
Ola Hössjer, Ann K. Gauger, Colin Reeves

Probability calculations of the sort used to support ID are pointless because we have no way of knowing how big, how old or how many the universe(s) really is (are). Even if we subscribe to the (actually non-scientific idea) that the Big Bang was the true beginning of all things and there is just one universe (which I think is probably true) we still have no idea how big the universe is because we can only calculate based on the extent of the "observable universe". For all we know, the entire universe could have been the size of the current "observable universe" when the Big Bang happened. The universe could, for all we know, be infinite in extent - in which case, any event, no matter how "improbable", would be certain to occur somewhere - an infinite number of times.

except the appearance of anything that could ever be decribed as God, right? that's the only thing infinite probability machines are never allowed to do, they all come with safety mechanisms preventing this!

I am talking silly because probability applied to this question IS silly - and that is my point. And this post is already far too long...

Not at all, I think you make pretty interesting points

But I don't think we can disregard probability, if a gambler plays a couple of royal flushes in an evening, we (in the fraud dept) would keep an eye on him for cheating, if he plays 5 in a row, we know he's cheating.

And I think a lucky streak of 25 cards from a deck of 52 would be selling the universe very short.

 

[gnostic]

When Michael Behe published Darwin’s Black Box in 1996, he outlined irreducible complexity as a biochemical challenge to Darwinian evolution.

Except that most Behe reject his pseudoscience proposition of Irreducible Complexity (IC) and his position on Intelligent Design (ID).

The only people who accept Behe's paper on IC are those who members of Discovery Institute (DI), and DI is not scientific organisation. DI has no authority to say "what is science" and "what isn't science".

The founding members of DI, Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, don't have science backgrounds. Chapman being a politician and journalist, while Gilder is a journalist and economist.

Behe is one of the senior members of DI, and DI is the only one bankrolling his refuted IC proposition.

Irreducible Complexity is not even a scientific hypothesis. Hypothesis required to be testable, and IC isn't testable. And since it cannot be tested, it failed to be scientific theory, because IC has already been debunked by the scientific community around the world.

Behe may have background in biochemistry and may worked in university, but his own department deny any support of Behe's involvement with Intelligent Design, they also don't accept his work on Irreducible Complexity.

 

[Valjean]

Except that most Behe reject his pseudoscience proposition of Irreducible Complexity (IC) and his position on Intelligent Design (ID).

The only people who accept Behe's paper on IC are those who members of Discovery Institute (DI), and DI is not scientific organisation. DI has no authority to say "what is science" and "what isn't science".

The founding members of DI, Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, don't have science backgrounds. Chapman being a politician and journalist, while Gilder is a journalist and economist.

Behe is one of the senior members of DI, and DI is the only one bankrolling his refuted IC proposition.

Irreducible Complexity is not even a scientific hypothesis. Hypothesis required to be testable, and IC isn't testable. And since it cannot be tested, it failed to be scientific theory, because IC has already been debunked by the scientific community around the world.

Behe may have background in biochemistry and may worked in university, but his own department deny any support of Behe's involvement with Intelligent Design, they also don't accept his work on Irreducible Complexity.

YouTube's full of videos refuting irreducible complexity.

 

[gnostic]

YouTube's full of videos refuting irreducible complexity.

And there are many YT videos that sprout pseudoscience ID nonsense. Unfortunately.

 

[Jose Fly]

YouTube's full of videos refuting irreducible complexity.

You don't have to rely on YT to demonstrate the scientific irrelevance of "irreducible complexity". The best way to do that is simply to review the shifting, oftentimes contradictory, definitions for the term given by ID creationists themselves.

That, plus the fact that it has had absolutely no effect at all on actual science is enough to justify rejecting it.

 

[metis]

The only people who accept Behe's paper on IC are those who members of Discovery Institute (DI), and DI is not scientific organisation. DI has no authority to say "what is science" and "what isn't science".

And Behe made a complete fool of himself at the Dover trial, whereas the judge, who's a Christian and a Republican appointee, accused him of lying by claiming that the Discovery Institute had no religious connections.

I've read and heard Behe on several different occasions, and his approach to ID is illogical and, frankly, disingenuous. There's an argument to be made for ID, but his approach simply should not be taken seriously.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The deistic position can't be refuted scientifically.

Nor need it be. It's an unsupported claim.

Do you disagree with this? If so, why?

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." - Christopher Hitchens

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

And regarding your question of ID being explicitly required as part of the process

Here are a few papers just to get you started!

The Limits of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations PDF
Douglas D. Axe
A Vivisection of the ev Computer Organism: Identifying Sources of Active Information PDF
George Montañez, Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II
Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness PDF
Ann K. Gauger, Stephanie Ebnet, Pamela F. Fahey, Ralph Seelke
A Stylus-Generated Artificial Genome with Analogy to Minimal Bacterial Genomes PDF
Douglas D. Axe, Philip Lu, Stephanie Flatau
The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzymes Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway PDF
Ann K. Gauger, Douglas D. Axe
A Tetrahedral Representation of the Genetic Code Emphasizing Aspects of Symmetry PDF
Fernando Castro-Chavez
Climbing the Steiner Tree--Sources of Active Information in a Genetic Algorithm for Solving the Euclidean Steiner Tree Problem PDF
Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II
Active Information in Metabiology PDF
Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II
Enzyme Families--Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design? A Study of the GABA-Aminotransferase Family PDF
Mariclair A. Reeves, Ann K. Gauger, Douglas D. Axe
Model and Laboratory Demonstrations That Evolutionary Optimization Works Well Only If Preceded by Invention--Selection Itself Is Not Inventive PDF
Douglas D. Axe, Ann K. Gauger
Overabundant mutations help potentiate evolution: The effect of biologically realistic mutation rates on computer models of evolution PDF
Winston Ewert
Genetic Modeling of Human History Part 1: Comparison of Common Descent and Unique Origin Approaches PDF
Ola Hössjer, Ann K. Gauger, Colin Reeves
Genetic Modeling of Human History Part 2: A Unique Origin Algorithm PDF

What where you suggesting was the value of those papers? I didn't read any of them, just looked their titles and at the source of five, all the same - a journal in disrepute. Could find a reason to study them more, which is why I ask you now what their significance is to a discussion of ID.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Looking for information about ID's science based evidences then go here;
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=10141

For those who use the whine that ID has no science based evidence for their theory then check out this paper;

Mariclair A. Reeves, Ann K. Gauger, and Douglas D. Axe, "Enzyme Families–Shared Evolutionary History or Shared Design? A Study of the GABA-Aminotransferase Family," BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2014 (4).

When Michael Behe published Darwin’s Black Box in 1996, he outlined irreducible complexity as a biochemical challenge to Darwinian evolution. Evolutionists responded by claiming that irreducibly complex features can be built through co-option, where a gene may be duplicated, and then the extra copy borrowed and retooled, or "co-opted," to perform some new function. This peer-reviewed research paper from protein scientists at Biologic Institute experimentally tests the co-option model, showing it's very difficult for proteins to evolve new functions.
The project began in 2011, when Biologic researchers Ann Gauger and Douglas Axe published results of laboratory experiments trying to convert one enzyme (Kbl2) to perform the function of another enzyme (BioF2). Because these two proteins have a similar structure and are members of the same family, they are thought to be very closely related. Converting one protein to perform the function of a closely related protein is the sort of change which ought to be easily accomplished under the co-option model....

....Axe and Gauger's 2011 study only investigated the evolvability of two proteins. Now in this 2014 paper, Axe, Gauger, and biochemist Mariclair Reeves, present new research on additional proteins from the same family, showing that they too are not amenable to an evolutionary conversion.....


If you feel that their research has no merit then you are free to recreate their experiment ....
This is the great thing about actual physical research.... it is repeatable and since it is fully defined in the research paper you can perform the exact same experiment.... you could also show by experiment just how they are wrong in methodology or conclusion, that is how science operates.

A lot of people are not listening to the ID people any more.

The ID movement has been called pseudoscience in the courts and banned from the public schools. Their purpose is to promote a religious belief however they can. Several of their most visible advocates (Behe, Dembski, and Sternberg) have been tarnished bu their choices. They have made multiple claims of irreducibility only to have it revealed that they were wrong,meaning that they couldn't identify irreducible complexity even if it existed in a biological system and they claimed as much. They'd be guessing again even if right. The movement has produced nothing of value to the world. It has no theory and is not falsifiable. Several got caught lying in court. It's reputation is zero in scientific circle.

They should get back to us when they actually identify an intelligent designer. At that point, they'll need to begin preparing to argue that they know who it or they are and why.

Sorry, but like I said, nobody's listening to the creationists but other creationists. Values matter. Methods matter. Agendas matter. Past performance matters. Reputation matters.

 

[gnostic]

What where you suggesting was the value of those papers? I didn't read any of them, just looked their titles and at the source of five, all the same - a journal in disrepute. Could find a reason to study them more, which is why I ask you now what their significance is to a discussion of ID.

Even Ann Gauger allowed her reputation as a zoologist to be used by Biologic Institute and Discovery Institute, in a deception, and that involvement have tarnished her own credibility. No biologists, outside of Biologic Institute and Discovery Institute believe in her.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

And Behe made a complete fool of himself at the Dover trial, whereas the judge, who's a Christian and a Republican appointee, accused him of lying by claiming that the Discovery Institute had no religious connections.

I've read and heard Behe on several different occasions, and his approach to ID is illogical and, frankly, disingenuous. There's an argument to be made for ID, but his approach simply should not be taken seriously.

Behe has been shamed at least twice more than that.

Once was at the Dover trial, where the prosecutors forced Behe into a corner and made him confess that the unorthodox definition that he was using for a scientific theory in the hopes of including ID would also include astrology as a scientific theory.

Another was fellow Christian (but ID detractor) Ken Miller's rebuttal to Behe's claim that a typical 5-part mousetrap was irreducibly complex. Miller appeared wearing such a device missing parts that was being used as a tie clip.

Irreducible complexity has no scientific or mathematical definition, and there would be no way to identify it in a biological system if it were present. One can only claim it, and doing that hasn't worked out so well for the movement. The eye, the bacterial flagellum, the coagulation cascade, and the immune system are well publicized examples of biological complexes originally called irreducibly complex that were shown not to be.

Another problem for the movement is that an object may be irreducibly complex in the sense that it doesn't function if you remove one of its parts, but that that might not be the case if you add something first that was formerly present but has now dropped out.

The example of the Roman arch can be used. The arch is irreducible complex in the sense that the stones each support one another, and removal of any of them causes the arch to come tumbling down:

Behe: "By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."

But replace the removed scaffolding used to construct it - a wooden arch support onto which stones can be added - and the problem vanishes. Sometimes, reducing decrementally requires increasing first.

 

[siti]

except the appearance of anything that could ever be decribed as God, right? that's the only thing infinite probability machines are never allowed to do, they all come with safety mechanisms preventing this!

No - not in my infinite probability machine (and I have argued this very point - that the 'emergence' of deity from the naturally evolving universe cannot be ruled out - with atheists on RF) - but the problem with that is that such a "God" (i.e. one that emerged from the natural universe) could not be the primordial Creator, the ultimate cause of all existence because its existence would be contingent. Now, if someone could come up with a testable hypothesis of how higher orders of intelligent creativity could emerge naturally - they might be able to prove or disprove the existence of God. But until they've done that, the God hypothesis is no more than conjecture. Irreducible complexity (which is what most of the papers you linked to are about) - even if correct - only proves that certain biological aspects of reality must occur synergistically. And that could - for all we know - be explainable by a somewhat selectively but synthetically (perhaps even 'intelligently') creative universe (or even biome for that matter). It does not provide 'proof' for the existence of a primordial intelligent Creator at all.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No - not in my infinite probability machine (and I have argued this very point - that the 'emergence' of deity from the naturally evolving universe cannot be ruled out - with atheists on RF) - but the problem with that is that such a "God" (i.e. one that emerged from the natural universe) could not be the primordial Creator, the ultimate cause of all existence because its existence would be contingent. Now, if someone could come up with a testable hypothesis of how higher orders of intelligent creativity could emerge naturally - they might be able to prove or disprove the existence of God. But until they've done that, the God hypothesis is no more than conjecture. Irreducible complexity (which is what most of the papers you linked to are about) - even if correct - only proves that certain biological aspects of reality must occur synergistically. And that could - for all we know - be explainable by a somewhat selectively but synthetically (perhaps even 'intelligently') creative universe (or even biome for that matter). It does not provide 'proof' for the existence of a primordial intelligent Creator at all.

We have some common ground then.. If you concede that an infinite probability machine multiverse is NOT specially restricted from creating creators... how could it not? It created us somehow after all, and we're not without a little creative capacity ourselves.

Andre Linde, principle in modern inflationary theory agrees with us, he sees nothing ultimately preventing us from creating our own universe, if we can reverse engineer this one, and that is may be where ours came from... and so on..
Sure that still leaves us with the old first cause paradox...

But leaving that aside for now, what makes you so sure, that this universe must be that special virgin birth, immaculate conception, organic, free range, universe. Rather than what would inevitably become infinite iterations of plain old copies. Isn't that special pleading?