JCFolsom: Under the right circumstances, they will "fall" into that crystal lattice on their own. Not so with a watch.
Under the right circumstances, they will "fall" into that crystal lattice on their own. Not so with a watch.
I find that strange, if God is the ultimate universal authority It would be "him" controlling what happens to the crystal, It would not be a random event happening to a crystal but a planned one. Even if a watch came together in such a way, it would not mean intelligence wasn't part of such an occurance. To say it happened randomly requires just as much "proof" as to say it happened "intelligently".
banned:if God is the ultimate universal authority It would be "him" controlling what happens to the crystal, It would not be a random event happening to a crystal but a planned one.
"Ultimate" does not mean that He would control every instance of every happenstance - it can mean simply that He is the originator of the order that is manifested in natural occurences. There's a continuum between atheism and theistic predestinarianism that almost always gets left out of these conversations.
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
banned:To say it happened randomly requires just as much "proof" as to say it happened "intelligently".
I wonder, even, if randomness is not just an illusion caused by our limited ability to follow cause-and-effect relationships. For instance, when you flip a coin, while the result might appear random, it isn't really. It is completely determined by the amount and direction of the force you apply to the coin as it interacts with the amount and distribution of weight in the coin, the resistance and movement of air, etc. If you could get a reading of every force that would be involved, you could predict the behavior of the coin.
And of course, if randomness is illusiory, so is probability. They are just things that we use to describe aspects of reality which are too complex for us to predict completely at this time.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Juan:Probability is just a tool to deal - imperfectly- with our lack of complete information. The physical world is deterministic. The fact that we are not clever enough to fully know how it works doesn't mean it is random.
Your statement assumes that there are a finite number of rules in the physical world. But that's a different matter. Even in a purely deterministic universe, "first cause" is either designed or not designed. Since there was no cause of "first cause", by definition, If it was not designed, it was random.
faber est suae quisque fortunae
JackCuyler: Your statement assumes that there are a finite number of rules in the physical world. But that's a different matter. Even in a purely deterministic universe, "first cause" is either designed or not designed. Since there was no cause of "first cause", by definition, If it was not designed, it was random.
Unless it was neither designed nor random, but eternal.
JCFolsom: JackCuyler: Your statement assumes that there are a finite number of rules in the physical world. But that's a different matter. Even in a purely deterministic universe, "first cause" is either designed or not designed. Since there was no cause of "first cause", by definition, If it was not designed, it was random. Unless it was neither designed nor random, but eternal.
That is not a deterministic view of the universe. There's no a caused b caused c ....
JackCuyler: That is not a deterministic view of the universe. There's no a caused b caused c ....
Unless the first cause was not a part of the universe (really, it couldn't have been, unless you think things can cause themselves)...
JCFolsom:Unless it was neither designed nor random, but eternal.
Which is another way of saying it wasn't first, in the strictest sense. "First cause" is kind of like saying "the beginning of time", since time is how we percieve sequences of causality. But since "beginning" is defined in terms of time, the beginning of time has no meaning.
What I mean by all that is that the idea of first cause itself may be a fallacy, and that "eternal" is that same fallacy expressed in a different way.
The state won't go away once enough people want the state to go away, the state will effectively disappear once enough people no longer care that much whether it stays or goes. We don't need a revolution, we need millions of them.
JackCuyler: Since there was no cause of "first cause", by definition, If it was not designed, it was random.
Time began at t = 0. The First Cause Argument ask the question of what happened at t < 0. What happened before time? This question does not make sense?
There are only two explanations for the universe:
1. God did it.
2. There is a natural, unknown explanation.
As history has revealed, time and time again, it is a natural, unknown explanation. Man has been asking questions about his environment since man could ask questions. Time and time again, the answer has been a natural explanation, not god. Who makes the Sun set? Who makes it rise? Who through lightening at me? Who nourishes the land with rain?, etc, etc, etc,
As questions to these unknown answers evolve and take different form, the abstraction of god evolves also.
IDigSluts_ky:Time began at t = 0. The First Cause Argument ask the question of what happened at t < 0. What happened before time? This question does not make sense?
What is time? Do you have a definition for it? I don't. Who says there can't be time before the physical universe? Before you can say that, you have to get a widely accepted definition of time.
IDigSluts_ky:There are only two explanations for the universe: 1. God did it. 2. There is a natural, unknown explanation. As history has revealed, time and time again, it is a natural, unknown explanation. Man has been asking questions about his environment since man could ask questions. Time and time again, the answer has been a natural explanation, not god. Who makes the Sun set? Who makes it rise? Who through lightening at me? Who nourishes the land with rain?, etc, etc, etc, As questions to these unknown answers evolve and take different form, the abstraction of god evolves also.
Those are all how those things happen, not why. We still can't predict the weather, because we still don't know all the causal factors involved or how to measure them. So, you really have no basis in saying that some thunder god didn't cause you to be hit by lightning. You have no way of knowing.
No one knows why gravity happens either, so who can say that God does not make the sun "rise". Scientists like to make you believe they've answered all the questions, but they've actually answered very few. They've just made the questions more detailed.
Time may well not have had a beginning, but current thought and evidence indicates that the universe did. If these be the case, then there could have been time before there was a physical universe.
JCFolsom: Who says there can't be time before the physical universe?
There is no evidence for the supernatural.
So, you really have no basis in saying that some thunder god didn't cause you to be hit by lightning. You have no way of knowing.
I am confident that Perkele, Taranis, Chaac, Jupiter, Zeus, etc don't exist. Here is how science explains lightening:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~gbadams/lightning/lightning.html#explanation
No one knows why gravity happens either, so who can say that God does not make the sun "rise".
Either read up on Newton or Einstein or you can create your own gravity god. The field is wide open, so you have a chance to create a monopoly.
Scientists like to make you believe they've answered all the questions, but they've actually answered very few. They've just made the questions more detailed.
Science has not answered ALL the question. Science helps us explain the natural world, instead of saying "god did it". I am very biased towards a scientific explanation, than a theological/natural religion explanation.
I like how Stephen Hawking answered with a question: "What is North of the North Pole?"
JCFolsom:Time may well not have had a beginning, but current thought and evidence indicates that the universe did.
Current evidence strongly indicates that all matter and energy in our reference frame were once concentrated at a single point. That's all it indicates. Ideas about how that point came to be and about the state of the universe - if any - before it are purely speculation. Many concrete speculations exist, but until a way is found to test them, they remain nothing more than speculation.
The universe is, by definition, all that exists and all that has ever existed (even if God or something like it exists, then He is by definition included). We talk of a multiverse - multiple universes - only because we do not yet have terms to distinguish all the matter and energy we are aware from all that exists and has ever existed. If those turn out to be different, and separate terms are needed to differentiate them, terms will be chosen.
There is no evidence that the universe "began", nor is there any that it didn't. Science does very well tolerating open questions, unlike some other purported methodologies for discovering knowledge.
JackCuyler: IDigSluts_ky:Time began at t = 0. The First Cause Argument ask the question of what happened at t < 0. What happened before time? This question does not make sense? I like how Stephen Hawking answered with a question: "What is North of the North Pole?"
Exactly! I would like to stress that this only applies to The First Cause Argument, where you reach a negative time. We really do not know if time had a beginning or always existed.
Juan:Of course. And I consider such a 'principle' hilarious...
Why?
Still clinging to disproven hidden variable hypotheses?
Paul: Juan:Of course. And I consider such a 'principle' hilarious... Why? Still clinging to disproven hidden variable hypotheses?
I don't quite find it hilarious, but I'm skeptical of it because it violates causality, and causality is axiomatic. Instead of one causality-violating first cause, it creates an infinitude of them.
I'm not denying the science, and the fact that science cannot, in nearly a century of rigorous and apparently exhaustive search, find anything that causes certain quantum events, as well as the fact that the predictions of quantum theory have proven it to be one of the most sound theories in all of science. I believe the effects observed are real, and that the attempts to explain it have been successfully disproven. But still, I question the interpretations of what is happening. I suspect it's a limitation of the models used to describe what is happening rather than an observation of true irreducable randomness. I have no hypothesis as to a better model to use to evaluate the observations, and hidden variable hypotheses strike me as too simplistic.
Juan: I consider such a 'principle' [Heisenberg's] hilarious...
Paul: Why? - Still clinging to disproven hidden variable hypotheses?
histhasthai: I don't quite find it hilarious, but I'm skeptical of it because it violates causality, and causality is axiomatic.
I suspect it's a limitation of the models used to describe what is happening rather than an observation of true irreducable randomness.
Juan:You need to 'believe' that there's such a thing causality before experiments make any sense. You can't prove causality by experiment, and you can't disprove it either. Causality is an a-priori requirement for science.
Right. Now Folsom will take that as an admission that scientists operate from faith, also. He'll argue that axioms are nothing more than an arbitrary belief taken on faith as a good starting point, and that any axiom is just as valid as another. You see, ID is very bit as scientific as actual science, it just starts from diferent axioms.
I'm sure he's frantically riffing through the pages of Behe's book to find the part where that is explained, to make sure he doesn't get it wrong.
histhasthai:Right. Now Folsom will take that as an admission that scientists operate from faith, also. He'll argue that axioms are nothing more than an arbitrary belief taken on faith as a good starting point, and that any axiom is just as valid as another. You see, ID is very bit as scientific as actual science, it just starts from different axioms. I'm sure he's frantically riffing through the pages of Behe's book to find the part where that is explained, to make sure he doesn't get it wrong.
I'm don't recall Behe's book ever actually getting into this level of philosophy. It mostly stayed at the level of examining particular subjects in biology and making probabilistic arguments against evolutionary theory. Given that I do not believe that life is a matter for which probability is a factor, I am, in fact, in disagreement with Behe. Which you would know, if you were not merely trying to be clever and snide.
I never claimed to operate from faith. Although indeed, I believe many scientists often operate more from faith (or desperation, really) than reason. Causality has been something observed over and over... in cases where we can actually observe anything. Quantum physics is a subject that is more mathematical fantasy than reality, the prime example of how science has been corrupted. The scientific establishment has forgotten that scientific models describe reality; they do not define it. Much of advanced physics today is completely mathematical.
Someone brought up Hawking awhile back. Here is a man who was catapulted into fame for a mathematical "proof" that black holes destroyed information. A few years later and with little popular reporting, he admitted he was wrong. Yet in all that time intervening, he was hailed as one of the smartest men who ever lived. The mathematics he used were so complex that no one else could really figure out where he made the mistake. Scientists keep their authority over fact with a little bit of knowledge and a lot of what I call "expertese", a mass of jargon that, because they say it with authority and most don't understand, makes them seem very knowledgeable. It's just hype.
What is revealed by common sense and a bit of rational thought is more reliable than the great masses of undecipherable theory scientists confuse us, each other and themselves with.
JCFolsom: if you were not merely trying to be clever and snide.
if you were not merely trying to be clever and snide.
I was indeed.
JCFolsom:Yet in all that time intervening, he was hailed as one of the smartest men who ever lived.
Being wrong on something, even something that fundamental to his reputation, does not disqualify him from being one of the smartest men who ever lived.
JCFolsom:What is revealed by common sense and a bit of rational thought is more reliable than the great masses of undecipherable theory scientists confuse us, each other and themselves with.
Ahh, the fear of scary and conspiratorial science comes out. I think you are projecting.
Theory is not the opposite of common sense and rational thought, it is a function of it. These theories are undecipherable to you, not to everyone. Sure, mostly to me as well, but not all of them. I have deciphered a few here and there, not the cutting edge ones, of course. Like the Pythagorean theorem - I've worked through the proof of it, and am satisfied. It's nowhere near as complex as Hawking's theory on information loss in black holes, but it's pretty fundamental to a lot of things we do.
The point is that all the theorems are out there, you can go and read the entire derivation and proof of any of them any time you want. Except for a very small number of very cutting edge ones, there are a lot of people who can understand them, and the most cutting edge of them are being scrutinized as we speak. I don't have to trust any one person, or small group of people, that they are right, I only have to trust that most errors will be caught, and that outright lying is pretty much out of the question.
Even the complete fraud of anthropogenic catastrohic global warming is slowly being exposed, and that one has massive political backing and funding, including actual cover-ups of some of the data and methodology - a nearly unprecidented circumstance in the history of modern basic science. In a way, it brings the world full circle from Copernicus. Instead of the religious zealots surpressing science, they are now fraudulently claiming it's mantle. In that, ID is no different from Al Gore.
histhasthai: Ahh, the fear of scary and conspiratorial science comes out.
histhasthai:Ahh, the fear of scary and conspiratorial science comes out. I think you are projecting.
Think what you like. I claim no conspiracies. I believe the overwhelming house of cards that is the error of the modern scientific establishment is the result of a spontaneous order. Scientists have a subculture, a society all their own, and norms that you violate at your peril. As has been said, in this day of government grants and government schools, it is as much or more politics than the evidence which guides investigations. A professor can be denied tenure or even lose their jobs at most universities if they try to investigate or even express a willingness to hear ID-related theories.
Governments don't like God. God is competition for their supreme authority. A truly religious person will disobey civil law for the sake of their faith, so it is a danger. Politicians don't mind a bit of religion, as long as the "adherents" are basically secular people that go to church on holidays mostly out of habit and for appearances, like them. Religion needs to be something you're slightly embarrassed about, something marginalized to the point that, if it actually influences your actions, you must be a fanatic. The way of the politician is going to church in the morning before spending the afternoon with your mistress.
Scientists also don't have any reason to like god. Scientists know they don't know everything, but if there is no God, at lest they know more than anyone else. Without God, politicians and scientists are the ultimate authorities. With God, they will always take second place. Do you really think they are objective?
histhasthai:Theory is not the opposite of common sense and rational thought, it is a function of it.
Theory is a function of human thought, which may or may not be rational, and indeed, often is not.
histhasthai:These theories are undecipherable to you, not to everyone. Sure, mostly to me as well, but not all of them. I have deciphered a few here and there, not the cutting edge ones, of course. Like the Pythagorean theorem - I've worked through the proof of it, and am satisfied. It's nowhere near as complex as Hawking's theory on information loss in black holes, but it's pretty fundamental to a lot of things we do.
The Pythagorean theorem is about an abstraction. There are many things which hold for abstractions which will never, ever hold literally. You will never find a true triangle anywhere in the universe. You will never even find a straight line. Why? Because there are literally infinite ways for anything close to a line to be not truly linear, and only one way for it to be truly linear.
And therein lies the problem. All theories describe some abstracted model of reality, and the possibility is always there that you have either missed a detail or come at the question from the wrong angle. If your assumptions are wrong, all conclusions that follow, however logical in progression, will be wrong as well. I am saying that the assumptions were wrong, and I am saying that it would be obvious to everyone, if they did not have something invested in not seeing it.
scineram:Stop giving me this nonsense!
Libertarians love being told to stop. Really likely to produce compliance, that.
scineram:QM grow out of CM because the empirical evidences forced the new paradigm. Read on EPR paradox, Bell inequality, all experiments in past century verified the basic tenets of QM, including some nondeterminacy.
No, incredibly sensitive instruments measured what they thought was the rather esoteric quality called the "electron spin", the momentum of the magnetic field of a "particle" which, like its spin, can be detected only indirectly.
Further, even if what their instrument does what they think it does (they think it does only because its readings behave as they expect them to), we are talking about the manipulation of incredibly small quantities here, indeed, quantities that are neither greater in scale nor particularly different in type than those that would be required for a human spirit to manipulate the brain. Combine this with the extensive (though, via the bigotry of materialists, somewhat suppressed) results obtained by such parapsychological studies as were done at Princeton, and you have a situation there a known factor (the influence of the brain on electrons) is being compared to an unknown factor (spooky action at a distance), and scientists will actually prefer the latter.
JCFolsom: A professor can be denied tenure or even lose their jobs at most universities if they try to investigate or even express a willingness to hear ID-related theories.
A professor can be denied tenure or even lose their jobs at most universities if they try to investigate or even express a willingness to hear ID-related theories.
I doubt that, but if you're paying people to spend their time doing scientific research and they spend their time doing something else, it makes perfect sense to get rid of them and hire people who'll do what you're paying for. "ID" is not science.
JCFolsom: All theories describe some abstracted model of reality, and the possibility is always there that you have either missed a detail or come at the question from the wrong angle. If your assumptions are wrong, all conclusions that follow, however logical in progression, will be wrong as well.
All theories describe some abstracted model of reality, and the possibility is always there that you have either missed a detail or come at the question from the wrong angle. If your assumptions are wrong, all conclusions that follow, however logical in progression, will be wrong as well.
Sure; details get missed - Newton didn't come up with GR and QM...but sooner or later the missing details are noticed and corrected. When the theory is able to correctly and accurately predict effects that you haven't seen yet, etc., there must be something to it. And modern physics does that, in spades - the "weirdest" QM most of all!
Every creationist idea that actually provides for any kind of testable hypothesis (few and far between) has quickly been roundly debunked (although creationists still seem to hold them up as some kind of evidence that they're right...e.g., you're still suggesting people read Behe on the bacterial flagellum even after he's been proven utterly wrong...)
So just which is missing details and approaching things from the wrong angle, again?
Paul: "ID" is not science.
Wrong. Science is an attempt to understand how the universe works within it's physicality. ID hypothesizes on how to understand or interpret intelligent causation within a historical context, divine or not. How do you know a stone structure was built or planned by a human and not just some random occurance (caused by inanimacy), is it unscientific to say it was designed through intelligence? If that's the case Science should shun the teachings of contemproary History and Archeology.
Paul:Sure; details get missed - Newton didn't come up with GR and QM...but sooner or later the missing details are noticed and corrected. When the theory is able to correctly and accurately predict effects that you haven't seen yet, etc., there must be something to it. And modern physics does that, in spades - the "weirdest" QM most of all!
Again, weird, isn't it. How well QM predicts what we "see" in experiments. Almost like their expectations had something to do with the outcome. We already know observation does. My contention is that the experiments in quantum physics measure the scientists doing the experimenting, not the "particles" they're "observing".
Paul:Every creationist
You deliberately mischaracterize the argument of ID when you call it creationism. You know darn well that when you say that, people think of a garden with an apple tree, two naked people and a snake. Again, your refusal to actually address the arguments of ID as if it were a real school of thought discredits your side of the argument. Maybe you don't really have any good arguments, eh?
Paul:idea that actually provides for any kind of testable hypothesis (few and far between) has quickly been roundly debunked (although creationists still seem to hold them up as some kind of evidence that they're right...e.g., you're still suggesting people read Behe on the bacterial flagellum even after he's been proven utterly wrong...)
Where was that proven? Refer me to the paper. Because in every case I've seen, it isn't a refutation, it's just like your other "arguments"; sophisticated and overlong ways of saying, "nuh-uh, is so, it coulda been a, um, thing to sit on for the bacteria before". And when asked to propose an actual mutationally-accessible chain of functional structures, people tend to say, "NO! I don't have to, cause you are creationists and the burden of proof is on YOU!".
Paul:So just which is missing details and approaching things from the wrong angle, again?
When it comes right down to it, if I show you an electric motor with a propeller attached, no sane person would think other than that it was designed by a conscious being. This holds in all cases; except for when it's stuck in the end of a bacteria. Then, materialist prejudice demands that it came about by chance alone. Prejudice is all you have. It's all you ever had. Your derision and hostility towards these ideas is an argument against your credulity. Since when did truth need such a ferocious defense?
JCFolsom:if I show you an electric motor with a propeller attached, no sane person would think other than that it was designed by a conscious being. This holds in all cases; except for when it's stuck in the end of a bacteria.
This "common sense" argument is pretty selective. Let's look at what else common sense tells us. And let's, for the moment, just look at individual organisms and leave evolution aside.
If an alien spacecraft crashed on Earth, and you were looking at the wreckage, you'd probably be able to tell what parts were the alien's bodies, and which were it's machines. Common sense is enough to know the difference between mechanical devices, and biology.
It's more than just form. Mechanical devices have to be constructed piece by piece, with each individual part placed deliberately - it requires an act of consciousness. Biology, on the other hand, doesn't. I'm sure you accept the science that shows us in excruciating detail how nearly every part of an organism grows into its final form, without conscious intervention. Further, I'm pretty sure you accept the science that shows us that it all grows from DNA in some form, that the DNA directs automatic chemical and physical processes that create each of the structures of the final organism. If you don't accept at least that much, there's really no point arguing any further.
So we're down to the level of the DNA, the code that contains all the information needed to construct an organism, but does not itself contain anything in the final form of those structures.
Common sense, then, shows you the difference between a conciously constructed mechanical device and a bilogical organism. It shows you that consciousness is needed in every step of production of a mechanical device (modern automation notwithstanding - it doesn't change the argument, it only obscures the common-sense conclusions), and that biological organisms grow without conscious intervention, at least from the point where the DNA exists. And common sense lets you see the difference, including the difference in the method of construction between an electric motor with a propeller and that of a bacterial flagellum.
So the only real question left is how the DNA, the code for creating the organism, is created. One of the questions is: can the code change without conscious intervention? There are common concrete demonstrations, both indirect and direct, that show that it can. Indirect proof comes in the form of computer code. Of course, computers and the code that run on them are consciously created. But it is easily demonstrable that the code can be created in such a way that it responds to its "environment" and changes itself in ways that are never intended by the person creating the original code - in ways that do not require conscious intervention.
The more direct proof is found all over genetic science. We have seen untold instances of organisms that change in response to their environment in ways that provide them an increased ability to survive in that environment. And we've seen directly that such a change in the DNA, including when it has been changed directly through genetic engineering, results in changes to the form, cellular chemical processes, and behavior of the organism.
So we see, by common sense, that the DNA code can change without conscious intervention. We're at what the creationists distinguish as "microevolution", the modification of an already existing genome. The evidence that this does indeed occur is so strong as to be reasonably considered irrefutable.
So we're left with the creation of the DNA itself, and the addition of new pieces of code to it. The latter is not difficult to imagine happening, although there is not nearly such solid demonstrations of it available yet. Even so, this is the realm where common sense does not provide as much help. But it is the last part of the chain in which common sense does not help. Everything after this, from modification of DNA to the construction of biological stuctures all happening without conscious intervention is just as much a matter of common sense as the fact that a mechanical device was created by conscious deliberation.
The idea that common sense should treat the observation of an unknown mechanical device the same way it treats the observation of an unknown biological structure, and that it demands that we come to the same conclusions about how each came to be in the form we observe it in, is comically naive, and need not be taken seriously by anyone.
JCFolsom:materialist prejudice demands that it came about by chance alone
That one is getting so overused and worn out that I cannot treat it as anything but a deliberate lie. You know as well as I do that evolution theory does not rely on chance alone. The fact that creationists still trot it out as a rhetorical ploy every chance they get is proof of their inherent dishonesty... unless it's proof of a cognitive disability so severe it borders on mental retardation. Take your pick which way you prefer me to think of you.
histhasthai:If an alien spacecraft crashed on Earth, and you were looking at the wreckage, you'd probably be able to tell what parts were the alien's bodies, and which were it's machines. Common sense is enough to know the difference between mechanical devices, and biology. It's more than just form. Mechanical devices have to be constructed piece by piece, with each individual part placed deliberately - it requires an act of consciousness. Biology, on the other hand, doesn't. I'm sure you accept the science that shows us in excruciating detail how nearly every part of an organism grows into its final form, without conscious intervention. Further, I'm pretty sure you accept the science that shows us that it all grows from DNA in some form, that the DNA directs automatic chemical and physical processes that create each of the structures of the final organism. If you don't accept at least that much, there's really no point arguing any further.
Well, of course I know that each individual organism doesn't appear to be built bit by bit by the hand of God. However, contrary to your point above, machines need not be built by hand. Many cars and other devices are built by machines in an automated fashion. Like with organisms, only the initial program need be designed. A self-replicating man-made machine, at least of a simple sort, is possible now.
histhasthai:So we're down to the level of the DNA, the code that contains all the information needed to construct an organism, but does not itself contain anything in the final form of those structures. Common sense, then, shows you the difference between a conciously constructed mechanical device and a bilogical organism. It shows you that consciousness is needed in every step of production of a mechanical device (modern automation notwithstanding - it doesn't change the argument, it only obscures the common-sense conclusions),
Common sense, then, shows you the difference between a conciously constructed mechanical device and a bilogical organism. It shows you that consciousness is needed in every step of production of a mechanical device (modern automation notwithstanding - it doesn't change the argument, it only obscures the common-sense conclusions),
You can't just toss that aside as an obscuration. Modern automation is a fairly precise analogy to the mechanisms of biology. I'm almost stunned that you can't see that. Methinks your understanding is the only thing obscured.
histhasthai:and that biological organisms grow without conscious intervention, at least from the point where the DNA exists. And common sense lets you see the difference, including the difference in the method of construction between an electric motor with a propeller and that of a bacterial flagellum.
It is possible, with today's technology, to build a machine that would build electric motors. This precisely analogous to the machines in the bacteria that build the flagellum, according to the program, in the bacteria's case found in (we think) DNA.
histhasthai:So the only real question left is how the DNA, the code for creating the organism, is created. One of the questions is: can the code change without conscious intervention?
No, the question is, can the code change on a large scale and remain coherent and useful without conscious intervention. No one denies that mutations happen. However, those changes must not only be beneficial, but capable, with each step being at worst neutral, of taking us stepwise, say, between not having a limb and having a limb.
histhasthai:There are common concrete demonstrations, both indirect and direct, that show that it can. Indirect proof comes in the form of computer code. Of course, computers and the code that run on them are consciously created. But it is easily demonstrable that the code can be created in such a way that it responds to its "environment" and changes itself in ways that are never intended by the person creating the original code - in ways that do not require conscious intervention.
But it is easily demonstrable that the code can be created in such a way that it responds to its "environment" and changes itself in ways that are never intended by the person creating the original code - in ways that do not require conscious intervention.
These programs are vastly less complex in both the original code and the environment than that which organisms exist in. They are poor models at best, and, as you say, in any case only come about because of conscious intervention.
histhasthai:We're at what the creationists distinguish as "microevolution", the modification of an already existing genome. The evidence that this does indeed occur is so strong as to be reasonably considered irrefutable.
And I will make no attempt to refute it. Microevolution does occur.
histhasthai:That one is getting so overused and worn out that I cannot treat it as anything but a deliberate lie. You know as well as I do that evolution theory does not rely on chance alone. The fact that creationists still trot it out as a rhetorical ploy every chance they get is proof of their inherent dishonesty... unless it's proof of a cognitive disability so severe it borders on mental retardation. Take your pick which way you prefer me to think of you.
Natural selection never does anything but reduce diversity, diversity which, you claim, can only come about randomly. You can think of me how you like... I do appreciate, however, that you at least have tried to address the arguments I put forth. I think your reasoning is deeply flawed, but despite your obvious and ham-handed attempts to pick a fight, you at least have shown more respect than some others.
JCFolsom:Modern automation is a fairly precise analogy to the mechanisms of biology.
I do see an analogy, but not as precise a one as you see, at least in current capabilities. In any case, the point of the whole thing is that construction without conscious intervention is possible. If full automation was fully possible (and it likely will be eventually), that would only support the argument. I'm trying to reduce the argument by eliminating those parts that we both agree do not require direct conscious manipulation. Common sense, at that level, is enough to see the difference, even if that difference becomes less clear as modern automation methods improve. It is not, in itself, an argument for or against your "common sense" notion that the overall design was consciously produced, only that the design need not be consciously carried out, and that we can see the difference between those that are and those that are not.
JCFolsom:Natural selection never does anything but reduce diversity, diversity which, you claim, can only come about randomly.
True, and I'm pleasantly surprised that you have insight enough to recognize it. But that non-random reduction in diversity is a vital part of evolutionary theory, evolution could not happen without it. The reduction in diversity clears the way for the selected traits to operate. Otherwise, no trait would have any advantage over another, and there wouldn't be large enough populations of any given trait to build further changes upon. We'd have a completly random variety of bacteria (if even that), and little more.
JCFolsom: I do appreciate, however, that you at least have tried to address the arguments I put forth. I think your reasoning is deeply flawed, but despite your obvious and ham-handed attempts to pick a fight, you at least have shown more respect than some others.
My respect for you is very thin, though I try to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm maintaining what civility I do more out of respect for the venue, and for the fact that changing your mind is not the point of my taking up this argument. I was not trying to pick a fight, I was being completely honest about what I think.
histhasthai:The more direct proof is found all over genetic science. We have seen untold instances of organisms that change in response to their environment in ways that provide them an increased ability to survive in that environment. And we've seen directly that such a change in the DNA, including when it has been changed directly through genetic engineering, results in changes to the form, cellular chemical processes, and behavior of the organism.
This directly contradicts my understanding of natural selection. Organisms do not change in responce to their environment; the changes happen regardless. If a change increases the surviavability or that organism, that change tends to live on in the species. As an example, bacteria don't become resitant to a antibiotic as a result of being exposed to the antibiotic. Rather, a small mutant portion of the population of the bacteria are already resitant. When the population is exposed to the antibiotic, the non-mutants die. The mutants that are resistant continue to reproduce, without competition from the dead non-mutants. The mutation is not a response to changes in the environment, but rather, the changes in the environment make the mutants more likely to survive than the non-mutants.
On the other hand, fiddling with the environment of a group that does not contain mutants will not result in a change in that group. No matter how many generations of dogs you lop off the tails of, the offspring will continue to have tails, until a mutant without a tail is born. That mutant's lack of tail has nothing to do with the removal of its ancestors' tails.
histhasthai:I do see an analogy, but not as precise a one as you see, at least in current capabilities. In any case, the point of the whole thing is that construction without conscious intervention is possible.
Conscious intervention was still involved at some point in the process. Again, we can confirm no instance where intelligence was not involved at least at some stage of initial design.
histhasthai:If full automation was fully possible (and it likely will be eventually), that would only support the argument.
Indeed, my argument. For full automation will only be possible via conscious planning and construction.
histhasthai:I'm trying to reduce the argument by eliminating those parts that we both agree do not require direct conscious manipulation. Common sense, at that level, is enough to see the difference, even if that difference becomes less clear as modern automation methods improve. It is not, in itself, an argument for or against your "common sense" notion that the overall design was consciously produced, only that the design need not be consciously carried out, and that we can see the difference between those that are and those that are not.
Those differences become less clear only because they are quantitative rather than qualitative. There is nothing essentially different between living machines and unliving machines, at least in their physical aspects, only differences in degree. And further, this difference is opposite to what we would think it should be if your beliefs are true; living beings are more complex than man-made machines, and full automation as is found in life will only be possible when our conscious understanding is comprehensive and complex enough to make it so. It does not require less, but more consciousness, to produce automation as is found in life.
histhasthai: JCFolsom:Natural selection never does anything but reduce diversity, diversity which, you claim, can only come about randomly. True, and I'm pleasantly surprised that you have insight enough to recognize it. But that non-random reduction in diversity is a vital part of evolutionary theory, evolution could not happen without it. The reduction in diversity clears the way for the selected traits to operate. Otherwise, no trait would have any advantage over another, and there wouldn't be large enough populations of any given trait to build further changes upon. We'd have a completely random variety of bacteria (if even that), and little more.
True, and I'm pleasantly surprised that you have insight enough to recognize it. But that non-random reduction in diversity is a vital part of evolutionary theory, evolution could not happen without it. The reduction in diversity clears the way for the selected traits to operate. Otherwise, no trait would have any advantage over another, and there wouldn't be large enough populations of any given trait to build further changes upon. We'd have a completely random variety of bacteria (if even that), and little more.
You miss the point. Because the non-random part of evolutionary theory, natural selection, can only select between extant characteristics, it contributes nothing to the generation of those characteristics in the first place, but only their predominance once present. Further, in the early stages of evolution (when the first limb was a little lump, for instance, really a mere benign tumor) it is what would prevent new macroevolutionary features from arising.
histhasthai:My respect for you is very thin, though I try to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm maintaining what civility I do more out of respect for the venue, and for the fact that changing your mind is not the point of my taking up this argument. I was not trying to pick a fight, I was being completely honest about what I think.
I am aware of your attitude towards me, I was speaking of the respect you show towards my arguments, in that you actually address them. Your recourse to insults only weakens your position in an honest debate. When I was mocking IDigSluts_ky, I was doing so because he was making no real arguments and had left a spot which clearly annoyed him quite visible. Thus, rather than actually debating him, I used him as a foil. We, on the other hand, are actually discussing points, and as such your insults do nothing but make you look like a jerk.
JackCuyler:Organisms do not change in responce to their environment; the changes happen regardless.
Correct. Once a new trait emerges that confers a reproductive advantage, the population with that trait grows disproportionally to the others. In that sense, the population changes to the new form, either entirely or in some significant proportion. For conversation's sake, it's sometimes useful to take shortcuts. I didn't expect that to be a source of confusion.
JCFolsom:Because the non-random part of evolutionary theory, natural selection, can only select between extant characteristics, it contributes nothing to the generation of those characteristics in the first place
Not entirely correct. Evolution posits small, atomic changes, not wholesale random mutations to create, say, an eye in its entirety. These incremental changes are an iterative process, each change builds on the other. By the theory - whether you agree with it or not, it is the theory - each new change can only usefully come from the population of those with the previous trait required for a complex structure. Again using the eye as an example, the mutation that creates a cupping of surface cells only matters if it happens to organisms with light sensitive cells in the place where the cup forms.
Natural selection allows the population of organisms with the light-sensitive cells to increase disproportionately to those without, increasing the odds that that particular mutation will occur in that population. In doing so, it increases the benefit of a random mutation. Both together serve to increase the odds for beneficial mutations dramatically - not by increasing the odds of it happening (although an argument could be made that the mutation itself could not occur without the necessary genes to be mutated existing in the first place), but by increasing the odds it will be beneficial.
It is analogous to the idea of "make you own luck" in human affairs - you may not be able to change the opportunities available, but you can arrange things so that you are in a better position to take advantage of them. Without it, the evolution of the eye, or any other complex feature, would indeed be as astronomically unlikely as creationists say it is. It would require a large series of beneficial and interdependent mutations to happen all at once, and to happen to an organism that then goes on to reproduce itself. Natural selection removes the requirement that they happen all at once by preserving the effects of the first one until such time as the others occur in their random time.
JCFolsom:your insults do nothing but make you look like a jerk.
I refer you to your opening post in this thread, for starters.
And don't throw "tu quoque" at me. I'm not disputing whether or not my insults - which I have not used as ad hominem argument - make me look like a jerk. I'm saying you've earned them, and I'm willing to incur the cost, if there is to be one.
And slutsky, despite his subsequent whining about it, did not deserve the treatment you gave him. He was making good faith, if clumsy, arguments.
If I'm a jerk, then welcome to the club.