You do know that organic chemistry will quickly degrade right? And they have no memory, correct?
So you're telling me that compounds floating around self-assemble into a factory and the information necessary for the factory, including error correcting code, in a short amount of time, randomly?
I'm still interested in any viable theory as to how random chemical processes are able to garner enough information in their own structure to replicate themselves.
That is, Von Neumann showed us that to have a self-replicating automaton we need both the factory and the information for the factory (saved within it). We know that's what a cell is. But how do random chemical processes get there?
Note: time works against chemical processes since the organic chemical compounds decay, keep that in mind when creating a hypothesis.
Note 2: remember that in this case, both the factory & the information gets randomly mutated until you have a factory and information that's complex enough to error correct.
Again, and last time: the fact that you can use mathematics to do physics to the point we've been able to do implies something about the universe. You should think about it a bit more.
The anthropic principle has nothing to do with why complex numbers are necessary for doing quantum mechanics. Complex numbers are purely abstract objects and yet are necessary for giving a proper account to the real world.
"From all of this I am forced to conclude both that mathematics is unreasonably effective and that all of the explanations I have given when added together simply are not enough to explain what I set out to account for." - Hamming
If your set of beliefs implies that your set of beliefs are not true, that's a contradiction.
In this case, thinking all of reality is material implies that you cannot believe your thoughts, including the thought that all of reality is material. But that was your original belief, meaning through your own worldview you've reached a contradiction.
Materialism is a self-defeating worldview because its implications are that you cannot trust it.
The whole purpose of a worldview is to be able to trust it as one trust one's own eyes - because a good mental model of reality affects how one acts and moves around the world.
If the worldview implies a contradiction it is not a worthwhile worldview to hold, because you know it to be logically false like any other set of statements that lead to a contradiction.
If the mathematics is not a priori, one must explain why it is the case particles follow particular mathematical laws instead of moving about randomly without any particular logic to them.
How do these elementary particles know what to do and have always known?
Can you explain why it is not the case everything happens at random? Why these particles seem to follow physical laws?
Realism/Anti-Realism has no bearing to the matter. I personally think mathematics is a priori and non-causal, and not necessarily correspondent to the real world. This would imply I'm technically an anti-realist. Certain mathematics correlates to the real world, others do not and are simply (interesting) mathematical structures.
Neither viewpoints can explain why certain mathematical statements actually correlate to reality. Mathematical entities are not causal - they do not have any causal connection to the real world since they are (obviously) abstract.
Maybe a good place to start thinking about this problem would be to read Wigner's work "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences".
All I'm claiming is that before whatever happened, there must have been a mathematical structure that allowed it to happen following certain physical laws. That's just a fact. So these mathematical laws exist before anything. This implies a realm that's not physical. Anything that is contingent such as all material things (why is there anything at all?) must have a prior cause - and that's an assumption of science.
All theories presuppose these mathematical structures.
That is, even if the current big bang is just one in a series of several, or however else you try to explain existence, you have to presuppose the mathematical structure that forces it to follow certain physical laws.
I also don't think you fully understand inflation and why it's been proposed but I'll ignore it since it's not useful for the conversation. Also read up on the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem as it basically proves that a beginning is necessary.
In addition, note that right now it seems almost certain that the universe had a beginning and any other explanation is not evidence based.
I disagree with your claim there's no free will and one's thoughts are out of one's control. I do not believe all of our actions and behaviors are determined. That's, like, just your opinion man ;)
Where determinism truly fails is at the transcendental argument level. The act of affirming determinism is self-defeating like affirming materialism: to rationally accept something as true you must have the freedom to weigh the evidence, but if determinism is true there's no true deliberation as everything is the result of prior causes, including its acceptance.
So you cannot trust your own belief system and thus your worldview is inconsistent at its core.
It also fails to account for our mental lives, given the experience we all have.
Uhh... I proved that it's false because it leads to contradictions. That is literally a reductio ad absurdum - a proper proof. It's a transcendental argument against materialism.
In addition to it, I personally reject materialism because it fails to describe the universe properly, in particular the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is the beginning of all material universe - creatio ex nihilo. However, if there was a mathematical structure that sets the framework for the physical laws, there's a reality that transcends the material universe and exists prior to it. It's the only logically consistent worldview in my opinion.
This has even further implications but, you know, you can figure it out yourself.
The whole idea of materialism is simply a bad and inconsistent worldview.
If you start under the assumption that materialism is true you have to also eat the idea that free will doesn't exist, and that you can't trust any of your thoughts since they are:
1. Out of your control, since it's all physics.
2. Created by a brain that evolved to survive, not to create logic.
Thus the idea of materialism itself would be just an illusion created by your brain's need to survive.
This implies it is a self-defeating worldview from the get-go - because you've reached a contradiction: the brain generates the thoughts in a deterministic fashion and you cannot trust your brain, so you cannot trust the thoughts you have about the material reality including materialism.
And the armchair philosophers misunderstand Godel literally all the time, including this time. All it says is that there are statements that are true that cannot be proven within the constraints of a finite set of axioms. It's not a limitation of math, it's a limitation of what can be proven true within the confines of a set of axioms.
Meaning there could be another set of axioms under which the limitation to prove that such a statement is true disappears. But it doesn't make math any less true.
This article was written by someone with very poor philosophical training.
I prefer Halmos' book.