A while back, I said, “Somebody somewhere is going to have to someday point me to some intelligent arguments for gods, because I’ve sure never found them. And I know, someone is going to complain that I always pick on the weak arguments…while not bothering to tell me what the strong ones are.”
In a fit of unwarranted hubris, the odious Theodore Beale/Vox Day rushed to arrange a debate on a local conservative radio show. Unfortunately, he didn’t stop to think — how would debating Vox Day, christofascist misogynist, beneficiary of wingnut welfare, prominent freakshow participant, possibly rebut the complaint that I only pick on the weak arguments?
Besides, I learned my lesson in the Geoffrey Simmons radio debate: it’s a waste of time to go up against one of these insane babblers, because all they can do is high-frequency repetition of nonsensical claims. I’ve also acquired a deep distrust of conservative radio — the outcome of that debate, in which Simmons was flattened, was that they merely reinvited him back on the show without me around to puncture his claims. The fact that the Northern Alliance radio show actually thinks Vox Day is a credible voice for conservative thought tells me right away that there is something wrong with them, and no, I’m not going to trust them at all.
I’ve also read Day’s horrible little book, The Irrational Atheist. Well, to be honest, I read a few chapters of dreck, then flipped through the rest rather quickly. It’s actually the “Vox Day Hates Sam Harris” book, with occasional potshots at other New Atheists, and it’s really not very good. You would think that if he had a strong rational argument with evidence for any gods, then he would have put it in there — nothing would more seriously deflate one of us scientific atheists who claim there is no evidence for god than, say, presenting credible evidence for god. That was what I actually skimmed through the book for, but it wasn’t there.
I would think that if he had some zinger of an argument, there would be better ways to reveal it than on an obscure AM radio talk show in a debate with an equally obscure professor at a liberal arts college. He could, for instance, put it right at the top of his web page, where we could all marvel at it before rushing off to our much-neglected church.
Daniel,
I mentioned magic myself, since most religions describe god as possessing supernatural powers that are, by and large, what we would call ‘magic’ – able to perform feats unrestricted by the limitations of matter, energy etc: creating Adam and Eve out of clay, for example.
My issue with creationism in this regard is that there is no such thing as ‘magic’.
Should you be proposing a sort of deism where the creator/designer interacted in a non-supernatural way with matter on a molecular/genetic level then I can’t argue with you, since that’s something I (personally) can’t say isn’t a possibility.
If I did explain My methods, you apes would never stop throwing up. Or you would become suicidally insane.
Sometimes I manifest to someone very devout and start explaining what I did. Invariably they kill themselves because they would rather die than go on living in the body that they know what I did to cause it to come into existence.
It’s pretty funny watching their tiny brains break, but I have to keep that to a minimum. I don’t want you to go extinct without providing Me with plenty of entertainment.
Shorter summary of Daniel Smith:
EPIC FAIL.
Mister Smith, you are probably not aware that your arguments are neither new nor all that impressive to the vast majority of contributors here. As you seem to have already decided on your conclusion and then gathered supporting evidence, you are hoist ‘pon your own petard by coming in here.
Please find more substantial arguments if you wish to be taken seriously. As an exercise in this matter, I would invite you to find a similar and equally compelling argument for the primacy of any randomly selected alternative deity. The Flying Spaghetti Monster does not count, although Eris/Discordia might. I would personally suggest the Hindu pantheon, as they have one of the widest available selection of deities, but their scriptures are rather lengthy.
Good evening to you, sir.
The MadPanda, FCD
Daniel, do you even know how to use probability? Because what you wrote there is so far from how to use it that I suggest taking a remedial statistics course to learn about it.
Also, what part of the fossil record DOES NOT fit in with evolutionary theory?
In regards to abiogenesis, we do not know the exact details in which is was built. We know the building blocks, we know how they can synthesise, we don’t know the precise order. And in no way does having this knowledge affect the theory of evolution even slightly.
And I did read your post and did respond. I hate to quote myself but here.
If that inane rhetoric you spewed out onto here counts as a “plausible, testable mechanism” then show the tests to support it. GIVE EVIDENCE. People can scream until they are blue in the face about it being testable, but NOT ONCE did you provide any evidence of it being tested.
Science works on the evidence, you don’t. You are just trying to say that the origin of life is unlikely then offering an alternate mechanism that has 0 testing (and therefore 0 credulity) behind it. SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE! That’s honestly what I want to see. Peer-reviewed evidence! Surely that isn’t too hard, if you can’t provide it then your argument is completely mute. Show me something in Nature, or even Scientific American. Come on! You say it’s testable, show me the tests.
Kel,
You test my proposed mechanism every day. You tested it when you responded to my posts. It’s extensively observed. Any paper dealing with engineering or psychology will probably mention ways it is tested. I’m not proposing some unseen, magical mechanism (which is the strawman you’ve set up apparently).
So you’re not proposing God at all? Then what are you arguing for?
I’m hardly an empirical study. This is exactly the same reasoning as the jar of peanut butter. SHOW PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE THAT SUPPORTS YOUR EXACT POSITION. Otherwise you aren’t supported by evidence any more than the FSM is.
“You test my proposed mechanism every day. You tested it when you responded to my posts.”
Oh brother. Are we wandering into the “Beautiful sunsets, flowers, and puppies are the proof of God’s existance” territory?
You’d think at least he’d provide some methods of falsification, otherwise it’s not science.
I think we’re stuck firmly in the territory of “It looks designed, therefore it is designed!”
You’re assuming far too much about his knowledge of how science works. I think “I know design when I see it!” is about as sophisticated as his thinking gets.
It’s quite sad that he can’t see it. Just calling for design without offering a shred of proof other than tautological nonsense.
That, or he doesn’t feel that he has to be limited by atheistic definitions of evidence, because god has chosen not to show himself to our unbelieving eyes.
The logic, as far as I can untangle it, is that god can’t prove himself, because proof renders faith redundant. Which seems a bit odd considering there are arguments for god’s existence – apparently, if you already have faith then things that support god’s existence can be considered proof.
Mindboggling, really.
I think he’s proposing this ironclad logical juggernaut:
Reading and responding to his post required:
1. Intelligence. (you)
2. Design. (the internet and all its component parts)
Therefore:
Intelligent Design, no God needed.
Or something.
Kseniya,
He has been very evasive about exactly how he defines said intelligent designer. I guess it’s easier to cram your god into gaps when that god remains nebulous.
The internet is a case of intelligent design, just as all human (and not quite human) tools are. Trying to show that biologically we are a case of intelligent design on the other hand…
Don’t they all?
Exactly.
Oops. O_o
“Aren’t they all?”
That sentiment, slightly reworded, is exactly the opposite of what all that spam I get for v1agra has led me to believe.
Brownian,
I read what you wrote as if you were advocating Spam (the meat-like product, not ‘spam’ the annoying unsolicited email advertising) for use in avoiding erectile dysfunction.
And it brought some very disturbing images to mind…
“Cram your Spam into the gap!” ™
Silly Wowbagger, Spam can’t cure erectile dysfunction. For that you need sausage. I get mine from a nearby town that’s famous for its giant, erect sausage.
I used to live near the Big Pineapple in south-east Queensland, Australia.
The big sausage is far better!
Alberta’s all full of big things, including a badminton racquet, a cream can with wheat, a perogy on a fork, a Ukrainian Easter egg, and a UFO landing pad.
We’re completely nuts up here.
I guess a love of ‘big things’ is another commonality between Canada and Australia have in common. Sense of humour being the one I’ve noticed most – amongst English-speaking Canadians that is; I’ve lived with two Quebec-Canadians and neither seemed to find anything funny at all. It was hard for me since I like to think i’m reasonably amusing.
Around Australia you’ll find a giant mangoes, prawns, cattle, bananas, rocking horses and probably a few more that I can’t recall.
Hey! My roommate is from Tassie via Melbourne. Generally she’s pretty funny.
She does get annoyed with Canadian politeness/indirectness though. Apparently you guys haven’t yet mastered the art of ambiguity in social interactions.
I guess she’s never spent any time in community theatre – it’s a must to avoid shattering fragile egos…
Wow. This is surely worth seeing. З Великодніми святами!
:-D
I’ve been reading all of your comments with interest. What I find most interesting is how you all say that there’s no evidence for God, yet none of you can give me anything beyond generalities and evasive answers when I ask specific questions regarding the origin of life’s many wondrous parts.
So I’ll ask again (plus some more):
What natural processes created DNA?
What natural processes created the mechanisms of protein synthesis?
What natural process caused chemicals to become an organized array of cooperating molecular systems when these same chemicals exist in abundance apart from life and aren’t observed to self-organize?
What natural process encodes DNA?
What natural processes created the mechanisms of replication?
What natural processes created the mechanisms of sexual reproduction?
What natural processes created cellular systems for the intake, storage and utilization of energy?
What natural processes created cellular communication systems?
What natural processes created cellular information processing and error correction systems?
Can you name one organ for which you can show me specifically the natural processes involved in its origin? (For this I’m asking for the precursor and the intermediate steps – with believable reasons for the selection of each)
I predict your answers will be mostly vague, “Chemistry”, “Abiogenesis”, “Evolution” and the like. But these are really no more specific than “the god of the gaps did it”.
In fact they amount to a similar pleading: “We don’t know any of the specifics for any of the systems or organs you ask about but are sure that somewhere, somehow, natural processes are more than able to produce such things.”
Your case against God amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning: Does God exist? “No, God is not necessary”. How do you know that? “Because natural processes are capable of producing everything we see”. How did that happen? “We don’t know”. Then how do you know it was natural processes? “Because God doesn’t exist”. And around we go.
Let me remind you that my proposed mechanism, “The Intelligent Manipulation of Materials for the Purpose of Specific Function”, has been observed to actually work when it comes to producing useful, organized systems, (similar in many respects to those of life), from the raw materials of the earth – materials that don’t normally self-organize into useful systems.
Let me remind you also that the difficulties you are having coming up with specific answers are the same difficulties you’d encounter trying to explain how man’s inventions originate by natural causes.
Daniel,
Did you cut and paste that risible diatribe of pseudo-intellectual diarrhoea from staggeringlyignorantcreotard.org or, perish the thought, actually waste time whacking off your puny frontal lobe in order to ejaculate such tedious asshattery all over my nice clean screen?
Where’s my big-ass can of Troll-Away when I need it?
I’ll admit I would answer ‘I don’t know’ to those questions – but that’s because I’m not a biologist, a biochemist, a physicist or an information scientist.
But why should I be forced to accept that ‘I don’t know’ must therefore default to ‘Intelligent Design’?
People forgo ‘God/s’ as an answer because, within human history, ‘God/s’ was given as the answer to a lot of questions which have since turned out to have another explanation – the sun, for example.
Like I said before, if you’re making the claim that there is an intelligence at work on the molecular level then I (personally) have no argument with that. I simply do not believe in god or gods as described by any existing revelatory religion.
Is that your claim? Please feel free to expand on what you mean by using the term ‘Intelligent Manipulation’.
And with that the argument becomes apparent. It’s the transcendental argument, just disguised.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/billings_tag.html
The whole argument is that because science doesn’t know the exact means to the end, that his proposition is better. Well of course science doesn’t know the exact details of how life formed 4 billion years ago. But without any evidence of the intelligent designer, your mechanism has no credulity whatsoever. Your mechanism only asks the question “what is the designer” and without that answer, it’s no more than trying to make sense of it all with something that raises even more questions. Who is the designer? how did it come to be? How did it possess the knowledge and intelligence? How can we see this?
Bah! Can’t believe it took me so long to see your intentions.
“So I’ll ask again (plus some more):”
Hmm. Looks like you better start hitting the books, you got a lot of questions.
“I predict your answers will be mostly vague, “Chemistry”, “Abiogenesis”, “Evolution” and the like. But these are really no more specific than “the god of the gaps did it”.”
Sure they are. They’re at least three times more specific, because we got three of them just from your paragraph alone.
“Your case against God amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning: Does God exist? “No, God is not necessary”. How do you know that? “Because natural processes are capable of producing everything we see”. How did that happen? “We don’t know”. Then how do you know it was natural processes? “Because God doesn’t exist”. And around we go.”
I see a pretty big gap in your circle between questions 2 and 3. And anyway, we figure it was natural processes because we have no reason to think it’s anything else. In other words, we know natural processes exist. Magical designers? Not so much.
“Let me remind you that my proposed mechanism, “The Intelligent Manipulation of Materials for the Purpose of Specific Function””
What mechanism? You got “It looks designed to me, therefore it must be designed!”
Actually, the case against God arises as a basic logical syllogism, as follows:
1) All entities that have intelligence, awareness, and are awake and physically and mentally healthy, will directly respond to a direct request for attention and communication.
2) Omniscience, as a quality, includes all aspects of intelligence, awareness, wakefulness and physical and mental health.
3) God is a hypothesized invisible, intangible, omniscient entity.
4) There is no direct response to a direct request for attention and communication made towards God.
5) Therefore, God lacks omniscience.
6) Therefore, God lacks one of its basic defining qualities.
7) Therefore, the hypothesis that God exists is disproven.
QED
Well, clearly I exist, so there must be something wrong with your logic.
Aha!
It’s right in the first line. You have to watch out for those overreaching premises:
There’s your problem: I am most certainly not in any way, shape or form, mentally healthy. Rather the opposite, really.
YHWH is omnipathic, and exhibits a full spectrum of personality disorders.
Precisely!
Vox Insana, Vox Dei.
Wowbagger: “But why should I be forced to accept that ‘I don’t know’ must therefore default to ‘Intelligent Design’? People forgo ‘God/s’ as an answer because, within human history, ‘God/s’ was given as the answer to a lot of questions which have since turned out to have another explanation – the sun, for example.”
This is true. Years ago God was credited with being the source of lightning but after more extensive research the laws and processes that produced lightning were found out.
With life however, the opposite is happening. Years ago, scientists believed cells to be simple blobs of protoplasm, but the deeper we look, the more complex cellular life appears to be.
So if after extensive research, it only seems the goalposts keep moving farther and farther away, at some point science will have to admit that no answer is satisfactory except that of ID.
Many here hold out hope that someday soon science will explain the origin of life like it did lightning. I don’t give them much chance of success myself, but good luck!
Wowbagger: “Like I said before, if you’re making the claim that there is an intelligence at work on the molecular level then I (personally) have no argument with that. I simply do not believe in god or gods as described by any existing revelatory religion. Is that your claim? Please feel free to expand on what you mean by using the term ‘Intelligent Manipulation’.”
I’m basically making two claims here:
1. Life on earth required the input of an intelligence far beyond our own.
2. Considering all that is necessary in the universe for life on this planet to occur and thrive, more than just advanced intelligence is required. All the evidence coupled together points to something very much like the supernatural God of man’s religions as the ultimate source.
To answer your other question:, By ‘Intelligent Manipulation’ I mean the physical manipulation of physical materials to accomplish a goal that was arrived at through intelligent activity. If I’m going to make a table, I’ll form a plan, gather the materials, use the proper tools and products and assemble the table. Every step requires both intelligent input and the physical manipulation of materials.
When it comes to the creation of life, I envision God (my personal choice) formulating the plans for the various systems, gathering together the correct molecular ingredients and piecing them together like a master builder – only on a microscopic scale.
I find this entirely consistent with my religious beliefs as well since the bible says life was formed out “of the dust of the ground”. I’d imagine “dust” was about the smallest particle known at the time of the writing and yet still gives an accurate description of the chemical makeup of life.
Daniel,
This is where you and I differ. While being able to accept the possibility that the universe is designed, I can’t make the leap that allows that designer to be the god of the bible.
No one religion, as far as I can tell, can make a claim that makes it any more likely to be true than any other. The arguments to support one religion can be used to support another – if not all.
That, for me, is enough to dismiss them all as false.
How do you know? Have you even tried to study all possible ways that life on earth could have arisen from basic chemistry and physics without such intelligent input?
The only intelligence we know of has arisen from living beings. If the intelligence that arose from life required intelligence in the first place, then that intelligence must have required a prior intelligence.
Remember, you’re the one who is using the word “requires“. Do you really understand the implications of phrasing things that way?
False.
If the Abrahamic religions truly described the actions of an existing supernaturally intelligent God, said God would not have anything in the holy books that contradicted itself or reality.
Since the bible does contradict itself, and contradicts reality, the Abrahamic religions cannot have anything to do with a putative supernaturally intelligent creator God.
Well, there’s always the possibility that it is a somewhat Abrahamic god – but only if he’s a lying, disingenuous asshole and a colossal douche.
I don’t know of too many of ‘man’s religions’ who support that interpretation – though Judaism seems to be happy to allow god to be a bit of a prick if it amuses him.
And out comes the “magic man dun it”
Except that you forget that you don’t have any innate knowledge of how to build a table. Everything you know about woodworking results from your own slow and painstaking learning from others, and from your own interaction with the materials themselves. The knowledge of your teachers also arose from slow, incremental, and painstaking learning processes, passed on for generations. Indeed, learning can be seen as being evolutionary and scientific: That which does work is preserved and passed on; that which does not work is discarded. Cultural knowledge and personal knowledge has evolved, and continues to evolve, as has scientific knowledge.
Since the only model of intelligence and knowledge that we know of are evolutionary in nature, the most reasonable inference that we can come to is that if there is some transcendent entity responsible for creating our universe, then that entity must also share that same evolutionary quality, and went from ignorance to knowledge by a slow and painstaking process.
That sounds about right. I would have phrased it as a “lying, unredeemable, unrepentant, voyeuristically sadistic asshole (et cetera)”, myself.
Actually, if I started cursing God with the accuracy and eloquence equal to the task, I would never stop. So let’s just leave it at that.
For now.
Although, you should have heard Sam Clemens when he discovered God’s true nature. Now, there was an eloquent theomachist. And still is, assuming God did with him as he did with me.
Please, like I care. When all is said and done, you’re still just the disembodied remnant of an ape with vague pretensions of grandiosity. Whereas I am the never-embodied eternal Me.
I occasionally hang out at the blasphemy competitions. Some of the former popes really know some great phrases in Vulgar Latin.
Heh.
Oh, just you wait – I know I’ve got a babel fish around here somewhere. I’ll show you…
Owlmirror: “How do you know? Have you even tried to study all possible ways that life on earth could have arisen from basic chemistry and physics without such intelligent input?”
No I haven’t. I’ve looked at some of the theories, but no in depth study. There are however scores of dedicated scientists studying the problem.
“The only intelligence we know of has arisen from living beings. If the intelligence that arose from life required intelligence in the first place, then that intelligence must have required a prior intelligence. Remember, you’re the one who is using the word “requires”. Do you really understand the implications of phrasing things that way?”
I do. And I mean it in just the sense you’re interpreting it except that I’m proposing that the ultimate source is an infinite intelligence.
“Everything you know about woodworking results from your own slow and painstaking learning from others, and from your own interaction with the materials themselves. The knowledge of your teachers also arose from slow, incremental, and painstaking learning processes, passed on for generations. Indeed, learning can be seen as being evolutionary and scientific: That which does work is preserved and passed on; that which does not work is discarded. Cultural knowledge and personal knowledge has evolved, and continues to evolve, as has scientific knowledge. Since the only model of intelligence and knowledge that we know of are evolutionary in nature, the most reasonable inference that we can come to is that if there is some transcendent entity responsible for creating our universe, then that entity must also share that same evolutionary quality, and went from ignorance to knowledge by a slow and painstaking process.”
You make an interesting point. One that I cannot easily refute based on observed behavior. There are exceptions to your observations however. We are all familiar with genius kids and child prodigies who seem to be born with an innate knowledge which cannot be the result of painful, tedious learning from more advanced teachers – since they are often more advanced than any of their teachers. Also, I must wonder if our initial ignorance is largely the result of our organic bodies and their development? If so, that would lead to speculation about whether a non-organic intelligence would be subject to the same constrictions. Or would such an entity always possess the same level of intelligence?
“If the Abrahamic religions truly described the actions of an existing supernaturally intelligent God, said God would not have anything in the holy books that contradicted itself or reality. Since the bible does contradict itself, and contradicts reality, the Abrahamic religions cannot have anything to do with a putative supernaturally intelligent creator God.”
That would only be true if God actually wrote the bible. In spite of the myriad claims of fundamentalists the world over, nowhere does the bible claim to have been written by God. “Inspired by God” – yes, “written by God” – no.
And until they’re done studying every single possible chemical path, you have no reason to give up and simply assert that it is impossible. Especially when you don’t have any real understanding of the issue.
An infinite intelligence that gives no clear and unambiguous sign that it exists, nor needs to exist?
Sounds more like infinite stupidity to me…
No. Child prodigies do not have innate knowledge; they are faster learners. But they still have to start from… not exactly a blank slate, since the human brain has basic neural wiring that has evolved over millions of years, inherited from simpler ancestors. And prodigies may indeed have better neural wiring, in some ways. But they still have to start from something approximately close to blank.
Given that a putative “non-organic intelligence” has not and does not communicate or demonstrate its existence in the way that every organic intelligence can and does, the most parsimonious answer is that no “non-organic intelligence” exists.
Or at least, not yet. I don’t want to rule out computers being designed that are intelligent, whether by advancing neural networks, or quantum computing, or something else.
Which does not address the problem. A superintelligent entity that could “inspire” clearly would do its best to “inspire” facts which could be verified with advancing knowledge, or at the very least, it would inspire only nondisprovable things.
But really, how hard would it be for an infinite intelligence to inspire something like “The stars are like the sun, only very very far away”, or “The Earth is like a ball. About three parts in four are covered by water. The northmost part of the Earth and the southmost part of the Earth are very cold; colder than the tops of mountains. The part of the Earth between the northmost and southmost receives the most direct rays of the sun, and is very hot.” ?
In other words: Simple statements and ideas that even a bronze-age goat herder could understand (and might well wonder at, given how far they are out of his experience), but which could be verified as being true with sufficient knowledge and exploration.
No, the whole “inspired by” idea just doesn’t hold up when examined closely.
You apes keep forgetting that I think it’s funnier for groups of you to fight than for me to play teacher.
Well, except maybe for lessons in fighting.
“Hey! Don’t throw those tiny pebbles at your brother!”
“Throw rocks, they’ll hurt more!”
Daniel Smith,
Why don’t you join in the discussion on today’s “Amphioxus” post, or one of the other threads dealing with empirical findings in biology? What are you afraid of?
Owlmirror,
Does it strike you as a coincidence that god’s knowledge and understanding was suprisingly limited to exactly that of the Israelite people of the time? Surprising how he didn’t seem to know too much about the contemporaneous ideas being developed by other cultures at the time – developments which he could have passed on to his ‘chosen people’.
No, he was too concerned with making sure they knew about important things like how to sacrifice properly – and the dangers of wearing mixed fibers.
This reminded me that someone here [Blake Stacey] recently pointed at a review of Middle-Eastern archaeology, specifically with an eye towards finding anything that corroborates with stuff in the bible. Unsurprisingly, there are many points where archaeology conflicts with important stuff in the bible.
http://ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch.html
This link is also interesting, which suggests that the God of the bible is a syncretism between two very different conceptions of Canaanite tribal Gods:
http://georgeleonard.com/yahweh.html
And another analysis of the cults of the Gods Yahweh and El, before they were combined:
http://biblicalheritage.org/God/el-goi.htm
owlmirror,
are you behind ebonmusings ?
I like it very much.
We are all familiar with genius kids and child prodigies who seem to be born with an innate knowledge which cannot be the result of painful, tedious learning from more advanced teachers – since they are often more advanced than any of their teachers – Daniel Smith
No, we’re not. We all have innate knowledge, which is of course the result of evolution by natural selection, but while some children develop complex skills unusually fast, I know of no evidence that would show anyone is born with them.
Daniel Smith, if you haven’t you should also look for the recent post “Wondering how life got started?”, about Jack Szostak’s work. Still fairly speculative, but still quite enough to show that abiogenesis by natural means is quite plausible. A lot better, anyway, than “Goddidit”, which is all your almost content-free guff amounts to.
D’you know, I produced a post referencing 3 journal papers (there were many more, obviously) for each of the questions that Daniel Smith presented.
I’m afraid that I scrapped it as it was long, wouldn’t have passed the filter (and may never have appeared), but most of all because Daniel can actually do what I did by himself.
Oh, not at all. Why would you think so? I’m just a fan of eloquence, reason, and scholarship.
BTW, You can use the search box above to find “Posted by: Ebonmuse”, to find the occasion comments here on Pharyngula.
You mean the process how each sequence of three bases came to be associated with one amino acid?
I suggest to start here.
You are arguing for a stupid designer.2
I repeat: Stupid Design.
Let’s start with basics. If it was a decision to use DNA, it was a singularly stupid one. DNA falls apart when stored in water. We spend lots of energy 24/7 to keep repairing it. Why DNA and not PNA, the one with the protein backbone?
Because “everything is the way it is because it got that way”.
Do you know what DNA and RNA are chemically?
Do you know what a self-replicating ribozyme is?
Self-replication is no big deal at all. It is hardly avoidable, in fact.
Easy: we know what you are talking about, and you don’t.
(For the record, I’m working on my PhD thesis in paleobiology.)
Never mind comment 495 — self-replicating peptides don’t matter, because they don’t occur in organisms.
Ion channels are already necessary for metabolism, and they are proteins that have electrical charges (which is pretty much inevitable, as you’ll understand when you’ll learn what a protein is chemically). So I don’t see where the problem is.
The same that we use today to make our DNA: reduction of RNA. That means, removal of an oxygen atom.
RNA of certain sequences can act as a catalyst for protein synthesis. In fact, the active part of the ribosome is RNA even today.
Where did you copy that from? We no longer have an ocean and/or atmosphere full of things like hydrocyanic acid.
See above.
See above.
Natural selection… how exactly that happened isn’t quite clear yet, but that natural selection is capable of doing it is beyond reasonable doubt. It may have to do with forming durable cysts.
Those arose long before cells. We are talking about really simple redox reactions here.
Natural selection. Do you even know how quorum sensing works?
Mutation and natural selection.
Lung –> swim bladder. Function: breathing –> breathing and buoyancy –> buoyancy.
Man, that was easy. :-)
1) “Years”? Two hundred years.
2) Why are α-tubulin and β-tubulin so similar to each other and to FtsZ, why do FtsZ and β-tubulin have GTPase activity while α-tubulin has an inbuilt GTP that just sits there and does nothing, yet still costs energy to make and insert?
If you were wrong, how would you know?
Be careful with this question. This question is what science is. As soon as you can’t answer it, you aren’t doing science.
Who switched the default encoding of Pharyngula to ISO-8859-1? That was a stupid idea.
David Marjanović: “Lung –> swim bladder. Function: breathing –> breathing and buoyancy –> buoyancy. Man, that was easy. :-)”
Reading through various papers on the subject of lung evolution, I can see that I’m fighting a losing battle here. It is becoming obvious to me that any functioning system can be deemed “advantageous” and therefore imagined to have been selected. How can one argue with that?
I can see that I’m fighting a losing battle here. – Daniel Smith
Hey! Daniel got something right at last! Give that boy a big round of applause! When an individual of profound and determined ignorance takes on a vibrant science that has been expanding its range and power for 150 years or more, they are indeed likely to be fighting a losing battle.
David Marjanović,
You make these things sound so easy, yet we both know they’re not. Perhaps it’s due to your current immersion in the theoretical aspects, I don’t know. But if you think PNA is better than DNA, why not devise an experiment to make a living PNA based organism. Shouldn’t be hard – right?
Wow. Daniel really doesn’t get it.
Imagined selection… riiiight.
Blindly?
Come up with a testable way to show how said system could have arisen without being selected.
Owlmirror: “Come up with a testable way to show how said system could have arisen without being selected.”
But I’ve already done that. Humans, using IMMPSF, with the proper tools and sufficient knowledge, could conceivably (with enough practice) manipulate molecules in such a way that they could design such systems. This is testable.
Daniel,
There are innumerable examples of features of organisms that no intelligent designer would ever design in, because they are so obviously sub-optimal. The panda’s “thumb” (actually a hypertrophied radial sesamoid, used in place of the real thumb which cannot articulate with the remaining fingers) is one example. Others are remnants such as the leg bones which whales still possess, and many other vestigial organs; and the gill-slits which mammals develop in the womb, only to resorb. Many human beings having too many teeth to fit comfortably in the mouth, and/or weak lower backs, are ones that cause considerable suffering. Are you really arguing for a careless, stupid, or cack-handed designer? If so, if you have his address, I’d be grateful if you’d pass it on, as I want to sue!
Um. It is testable that humans could learn how to do highly advanced genetic engineering and such, and modify various biological systems in various ways.
However, that is not a testable way to determine that only an intelligence could have brought about the obvious changes that we see occurred in biological systems long before humans evolved, let alone before humans learned what genes and molecues were and how to manipulate them.
Or to put it another way: Just because humans can now manufacture diamonds does not mean that all diamonds that existed before the manufacturing process was discovered were not the natural result of heat and pressure in the bowels of the earth over millions of years.
Owlmirror #565: “Come up with a testable way to show how said system COULD HAVE ARISEN WITHOUT BEING SELECTED.”
Owlmirror #568: “However, that is not a testable way to determine that ONLY AN INTELLIGENCE COULD HAVE BROUGHT ABOUT…”
Moving the goalposts a bit aren’t we?
No.
Unless you come up with testable evidence that intelligent beings can travel through time, you’re stuck with the fact that humans have only learned that such genetic manipulations as you propose have only become possible in the past few decades. Future genetic engineering? Sure. Past genetic engineering? Not so much.
Actually, I think the test for time travel already exists out there: Find a Cambrian rabbit (or gerbil, or hamster, or mouse, or cat), and you’re set.
Actually, I should clarify that:
I was not moving the goalposts; I was trying to re-phrase so as to reinforce David Marjanović’s point above.
It is not enough to suggest that an intelligence can manipulate biological organisms, and vaguely says that this is “testable”. Testable how?
If you were wrong, how would you know?
Nick Gotts: “There are innumerable examples of features of organisms that no intelligent designer would ever design in, because they are so obviously sub-optimal.”
So any sub-optimal system is evidence against an intelligent designer?
You must be a Mac user!
Owlmirror: “Testable how? If you were wrong, how would you know?”
We, being intelligent agents, can test the mechanism ourselves or observe others and verify that it is possible for an intelligent agent with our level of knowledge and expertise (or greater) to accomplish the task. In fact we are doing just that:
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/environment/2005/02/21/nanotechno.html
If I were wrong, you and everyone else here would be able to show me so experimentally.
No, no, no! SIWOTI! Logic: You’re doing it wrong!
How can I say this more clearly?
You are confusing the present and the past.
Please refer to my example of artificial diamonds above, and answer directly: Do you honestly think that our being able to make artificial diamonds now has anything at all to do with how diamonds formed up until this point in time?
Do you honestly think that our being able to change living organisms at the genetic level now has anything at all to do with how living organisms changed at the genetic level up until this point in time?
Think carefully, and explain how you would know if you were wrong.
So any sub-optimal system is evidence against an intelligent designer? – Daniel Smith
Yes. If you really class the people who design Windows software as intelligent, I’d say there’s no hope for you.
Daniel,
To give a more serious answer to your objection, whether any sub-optimal system is an argument against intelligent design depends on just what sort of intelligent designer you postulate – you’ve been, so far as I recall, remarkably vague on this point. For an omniscient and omnipotent designer, clearly it would be. For – say – a natural being simply more technically advanced than us, not necessarily. However, what does count heavily against such a designer is a sub-optimal design whose sub-optimality is readily explicable in terms of an evolutionary history, and otherwise inexplicable. As it happens, these are just the kind of sub-optimality we regularly see in organisms. People often have too many teeth to fit in their mouths, and we have fossil evidence that our ancestors’ jaws were larger than ours. Whales have unnecessary leg-bones, and we have fossil evidence their ancestors walked on land. The panda has its clumsy “thumb”, because what corresponds to our thumb is fused to the fingers – but we have reason to believe our common ancestor had a mobile thumb; moreover, the corresponding bone on the panda’s hind foot is also enlarged, serving no apparent purpose. In general, modern evolutionary theory makes sense of the sub-optimal features we find, and links them coherently to genetic, fossil, biogeographical and developmental evidence. Your “IMP…” (won’t just IMP do?) does nothing of the kind, predicts nothing, tells us nothing. It’s not science.
Owlmirror,
To be fair, a diamond is not life. Man can make diamonds – and so can nature. Man can make rock formations – and so can nature. Man can make a lake – and so can nature. Man can make a computer – but nature can’t. Why can’t nature make a computer? Is it the ingredients? It can’t be. Everything in a computer came from the earth at some point, so it’s not like a computer is “unnatural” in its composition. Is nature impotent? No, that’s not it either, every process necessary to construct a computer has analogs in nature: fire, wind, pressure, cold, they’re all there. So why exactly can’t nature make a computer? I submit to you that it’s because the forces of nature are incapable of organizing raw materials for function. We know from observation that the processes necessary to make a functioning computer are beyond the organizational capabilities of nature. It’s the same with life. No one has ever witnessed nature organizing molecules for function (except within living things). It just doesn’t happen.
We know from observation that the processes necessary to make a functioning computer are beyond the organizational capabilities of nature.
Not at all. We are natural, so anything we do is within the organizational capabilities of nature.
It’s the same with life.
no, it’s not.
a mousetrap is not a cell, which is exactly where Behe fails as well (aside from the fact that even a mousetrap is entirely reducible).
your analogy fails at such a basic level, it’s entirely laughable.
“This is your brain on religion”
any questions?
frankly I read Daniel, and I have to reinforce the title of the thread:
“Sorry, Vox, I don’t debate crazy pipsqueaks any more”
’nuff said.
Daniel Smith wrote:
I think the squishy pink-and-grey thing floating inside your skull might beg to differ. Ask an IT person to explain to you the memory and processing power a man-made analog of the human brain would require.
Man can make a computer – but nature can’t. Why can’t nature make a computer?
Aren’t nervous systems computers of a sort? If not, why not? If so, then you’re just begging the question. I submit that nature “made a computer” as part of the process of your being conceived, born, and developing to maturity (if, indeed that has taken place, which there seems plenty of reason to doubt).
All of what you have just said sounds like vitalism to me. An idea, it should be noted, that was thoroughly discredited before even creationism was.
Actually, it has. That’s kinda what research in the chemical origins of life has done, and it’s why I, and others who actually follow the science, are optimistic that research into organic chemistry will discover the path or paths by which organic chemicals become metabolizing replicators.
You might want to read up on current research into complex organic chemistry.
Hey, here’s one nice very recent summary of current origins-of-life-research:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/07/what-critics-of.html
You keep making these analogies to human artifacts. I already explained above why these analogies are wrong: You’re trying to compare things that are on the human scale — on the order of 1 cm in size or larger — with things on the molecular scale. Organic chemicals can behave very differently from what you’re used to.
Maybe the problem is that you just can’t see it. OK, try this:
http://exploringorigins.org/protocell.html
There’s probably more I could point at… let me dig up some more links.
every process necessary to construct a computer has analogs in nature: fire, wind,…
Aha! Even more proof of who was really behind the computer – my favorite science teacher/goddess/superhero:
And here’s a recent video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg
And here’s the website of the researcher that the above video summarizes:
http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/
One more link — this isn’t about the origin of life, but rather about the evolution of hardware through random variation and selection. Because it’s Damn Interesting:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=870
Nick Gotts,
If you want to claim that a design is “sub-optimal” you must first know the goal of the designer. Case in point: Would you consider half worn-out blue jeans to be an “optimal” or “sub-optimal” design? When it comes to durability, obviously the design is sub-optimal, but that’s not what the designers were going for. Their goal was sales, not durability, and for that (only God knows why), they succeeded. Human designs are notorious for purposeful sub-optimality – and for many reasons: economics, laziness, poor quality control, greed (as in “if it breaks we can sell more spare parts!”). None of these disqualify the product as having originated via intelligent design.
Now, as for life, I’m postulating that the designer is the Christian God (just to be clear), but even then I don’t know what this designer’s goal was. Perhaps only the first lifeform was perfect. Perhaps it was designed to evolve into the myriads and myriads of organisms that would fill the world, complementing each other and maintaining a balance throughout all the various climatic and environmental upheavals the earth has gone through. If that was His goal, then I’d say He succeeded, and that the few sub-optimal features you describe are no argument against a superb original design.
Or perhaps the designer had other things in mind. Perhaps, like our own designers, He decided to make designs with flaws in them. Maybe there’s a reason for that? Maybe it’s part of the biblical curse? Maybe it’s to teach us of our own mortality?
I don’t know. What I do know is that you can’t claim that a sub-optimal design is an argument against an omniscient and omnipotent designer unless you know what that designer’s goals were.
Daniel Smith,
The problem with what you propose is that the Christian god is described as being ‘just’ and ‘kind’, ‘loving’ and ‘benevolent’ – and many of the the flaws in human physiology (degenerative diseases, birth defects etc.) suggest that if we are designed, the designer does not posess those qualities.
What ‘kind’, ‘just’, ‘loving’ and ‘benvolent’ being allows a child to have a condition that means a life of agony and misery?
I have to laugh that so many of you cite the features of life as evidence of what nature can do, while the origin of said life is the very thing we are debating!
I guess you can never lose an argument when you assume your conclusion!
Theology is so boring.
I think the squishy pink-and-grey thing floating inside your skull might beg to differ
are you sure you want to use Daniel to make that point?
well, Ok, I guess it’s not like we’re talking about “computing power” exactly.
Aha! Even more proof of who was really behind the computer – my favorite science teacher/goddess/superhero:
holy crap! I haven’t seen that since I was a wee lad! the nostalgia is killing me.
Where on earth did someone manage to find a vid of it to put up on youtube, I wonder?
Re #588,
I guess you can never lose an argument when you assume your conclusion! Posted by: Daniel Smith
Daniel, an excellent description of the fundamentalist and generally religious point of view. Glad you recognize the flaw on your own side.
Ciao
holy crap!
at the time known as:
“SHAZAM!”
;)
Daniel Smith,
You stated We know from observation that the processes necessary to make a functioning computer are beyond the organizational capabilities of nature.
We pointed out that what you claimed was incorrect, and used examples. How is that assuming a conclusion? You, on the other hand, have stated you believe in the Christian God – isn’t that assuming a conclusion?
Why don’t you believe in the Norse gods? Are you assuming they don’t exist or do you have an explanation?
Wowbagger,
Your argument makes sense if this life is all there is. We are talking about an eternal God however – one who has made provision for an unending life for us, free from suffering. In the light of eternity, the pains of this world will be long forgotten.
You also forget that there is a devil and that there are evil people in this world. God is not the only moral agent in the universe and he is not the only one who influences human life.
Which will get you into trouble, because the Christian God couldn’t be bothered to tell his alleged Chosen People the simple biological knowledge that insects have six legs, not four, and that rabbits do not, in fact, chew cud.
Obviously, the designer had the goal of inducing hernias in human males, among other things.
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0812/features/fish_out_of_water.shtml
Daniel,
Now you’ve finally admitted your religious presuppositions, I’m afraid your position collapses immediately. Of the three statements:
God is good.
God is omnipotent.
There is suffering in the world.
Only two can be true.
We know there is suffering in the world, therefore either God does not exist, God is not good, or God is not omnipotent. Your hypothesis is not only falsifiable, and therefore within the purview of science, it is conclusively falsified.
Uh, no, that’s another assumed conclusion.
And there’s another one.
Daniel,
So, you’re saying the devil causes birth defects and degenerative diseases? That’s an interesting theory.
Unfortunately, the same Christian god is said to have created the universe and everything in it – including the aforemention red, bearded fellow with a penchant for pitchforks. If that is the case, then that god is still responsible for the evil that the fallen Morningstar causes, and is therefore falling very short in one or all of ‘just’, ‘kind’, ‘benevolent’ and ‘loving’.
Or is he not all-powerful? Be careful; you’re getting awfully close to heresy here.
Aw, shucks. Someone remembers!
Except that I really am God’s sockpuppet. Seriously, I am.
Really, he is.
What part of Me being singular and unique do you mortals not understand?
holy crap! I haven’t seen that since I was a wee lad! the nostalgia is killing me.
Where on earth did someone manage to find a vid of it to put up on youtube, I wonder?
Evidently, it’s out on DVD! I’m glad I found it on youtube – brings back some nice memories.
Yep, after all that talk that his argument wasn’t “magic man dun it”, he eventually pulled out the “magic man dun it”. Nevermind he hasn’t provided a mechanism for how “magic man dun it”, or any evidence that there even is a “magic man” who dun it, it’s just another creotard making a meek attempt to justify his faith in an unfavourable presupposition; one that normally would require an extraordinary amount of evidence to be accepted.
Incidentally Daniel, if you’re a theologically orthodox Christian, you believe some of us will be suffering eternal torment. Now, an omnipotent being that allows others to suffer eternal torment is not just not maximally good, it is evil far beyond any human evil – its crimes make those of the worst human tyrants and torturers look trivial by comparison.
Perhaps only the first lifeform was perfect. Perhaps it was designed to evolve into the myriads and myriads of organisms that would fill the world, complementing each other and maintaining a balance throughout all the various climatic and environmental upheavals the earth has gone through. If that was His goal, then I’d say He succeeded, and that the few sub-optimal features you describe are no argument against a superb original design.
Right on. Stick with this, then. Study up on what we’ve found out about the consequences of “organisms [trying to] fill the world” in diverse, limiting environments (and, incidentally, learn why your “balance” is an over-simplification at best), and you’re a Theistic Evolutionist.
I have to laugh that so many of you cite the features of life as evidence of what nature can do, while the origin of said life is the very thing we are debating!
I said nothing about the origin of life. A computer was formed in the process of your development, which did not require any non- or super-natural input. Parsimony should not be mistaken for question-begging. You, on the other hand, introduce and assume the influence of agents for which you cannot provide any evidence beyond the contents of a book.
I thought an episode of Moral Orel said it best.
[paraphrasing]
Orel: I don’t get why God would allow them to suffer. Isn’t God always good?
Priest: Oh heavens no. He’s not always good but he’s always right.
Because might makes right. I’m the Almighty, so I’m the Alrighty.
It’s always the problem when a person is pushing theistic creationism.
That a god created the universe and is still in some way affecting it is a huge leap – claiming that it’s the same god as the one that person’s religion is centred on is another.
WHO is this upstart with ONE measly son – and apparently only ONE experience of the divine PASSION (Mary tells me he was bloody useless, by the way, as you might expect for a first-timer) – calling himself the ALMIGHTY? Spends his time skulking in a chest of shitty wood covered in badger skins, by ME, while I’m surveying Olympus from my throne, enjoying another gallon of nectar and a bevy of fresh young things of both sexes! Pah! Call yourself a GOD?
You’re the assholy, alrighty.
PS: Jove is also My sockpuppet.
For that matter, so are Ba’al, the Jade Emperor, Zeus, Mars, Ra, Osiris, Zuul, Huitzilopochtli, Odin, Thor — every God and every Devil of every pantheon, pretty much. They’re all just… Me.
It’s always the problem when a person is pushing theistic creationism.
I often disagree with Larry Moran on various issues, but I always found his take on theistic evolution to be interesting, and much of which I do agree with:
http://bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca/Evolution_by_Accident/Theistic_Evolution.html
They’re all just… Me.
so…
if we kill YOU, we get rid of the source for all deism, all at once?
very tempting.
what was your address again?
But sometimes it amuses Me to pretend otherwise….
Bah, God! I, proud and mighty SATAN, curse you and defy you! Come, weak mortals, worship Me instead! I’ll get you what you really want!
God might not be all-knowing or all-powerful, and sure isn’t all-good, but I’m willing to grant him all-scenery-chewing…
Eh, people have been wanting to off the big spook for thousands of years. He just smirks.
You want to ice him permanently? Figure out what he’s made of and how to damage it, and be our guest.
Hey, you, Jeebus, Jesus, Chris, whatever your name is – don’t you know that no-deity can REALLY call himself much of a God until he’s overthrown his father. I did it to mine, and he did it to his – castrated the poor old chap as well, which was a bit OTT in my book, no need to go that far – ANYWAY – I strongly advise you to push the old fool off his thrown, get some girls and booze in, and have a party. I might even deign to attend MYSELF, by ME!
I ATE My own father, you puny sniveling soft effete Roman tosser of pathetic lightning bolts! You call yourself a God!? I will flatten your throne (which, you note, I know how to spell correctly), and destroy your entire pantheon!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sigh. Oh, look. He’s gone all Roman and Sumerian. Every now and then he gets the idea to yell at himself, and we get no peace until he calms down.
Say, Gozer, speaking of “soft”, wasn’t your most recent earthly incarnation in the form of a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man?
Maybe Zuul could incarnate as a giant graham cracker man, and Huitzilopochtli could join in as a giant chocolate man, and then Jove could zap you all and give the world the biggest S’more ever.
Gozer, you barbarian patriphagic boob, I said and meant JHWH’s thrown – he sits on a rubbish heap of classical knowledge built up over centuries by MY WORSHIPPERS, then discarded (i.e. THROWN away) by his “priests” (priests – Bah! -these days they don’t even provide him with a decent BURNT OFFERING!) when he’s not hiding in his shitty-wood box! How dare you insinuate that I, JOVE, canott spel!
Kel: “Yep, after all that talk that his argument wasn’t “magic man dun it”, he eventually pulled out the “magic man dun it”. Nevermind he hasn’t provided a mechanism for how “magic man dun it”, or any evidence that there even is a “magic man” who dun it, it’s just another creotard making a meek attempt to justify his faith in an unfavourable presupposition; one that normally would require an extraordinary amount of evidence to be accepted.”
I provided a non-magical testable mechanism. Your post shows a willingness to completely ignore everything I’ve said here in favor of a strawman you’ve apparently invented just for that purpose.
What? God can’t take out the devil?
What a pussy.
How many magic men are there???
Demons and Angels too?
And does human suboptimality happen to match what would be expected from the constraints of nearly strict vertical information transmission plus mutation and natural selection (and other processes)? Because those are the constraints vertebrate suboptimality observes.
The problems of vertebrate suboptimality aren’t design problems, i.e., incompetent engineers, sloppiness, and planned obsolescence. If they were, we’d–prepare to be amazed–actually consider a design explanation for vertebrate suboptimality.
Organisms have a very peculiar suboptimality, which is eminently explainable via evolution, and it is right outside of any known design parameters. Your task is to predict and explain what evolution does, such as the fact that all vertebrate wings are modified forelimbs of the recent ancestors of archaeopteryx, early pterosaurs, and early bats.
We understand human suboptimal design. Archaeopteryx has suboptimal design, all right, but only because all of its parts happen to be modifications of terrestrial dinosaur organs and systems.
Even an extremely sloppy tinkerer does not observe the constraints of heredity when he borrows from previous designs. With few (explained) exceptions, vertebrate evolution always observes the constraints of heredity. Hence descent with modification explains the suboptimal “design” of archaeopteryx.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
As I keep telling you, no you didn’t. You provided a “testable mechanism” for humans being able to manipulate life, going forward into the future. You did not provide a testable mechanism to determine that life was manipulated by an intelligence at any point in the past.
And your posts show a willingness to ignore everything I, and others, have said here, and everything in actual science books, papers and articles, in favor of a strawman you’ve apparently invented just for that purpose.
Speaking merely as an observer of lesser entities, I’m afraid that you’re disqualified, Gozer. Despite your implicit insistence that you are a thousands-year-old Sumerian God, you, and your demigod servant Zuul, were in fact invented in the past couple of decades for a piece of fictional entertainment. While invention for fiction is not itself a problem, the extremely young age is. To put it bluntly: If there is no century-plus archaeological record of you, you don’t count at all. If you had actual followers, an exception might be made, but again, nothing there either.
Now, Jove, I afraid that you lose as well. While your mythology is still around, no-one takes it seriously. Indeed, you were not taken seriously 20 centuries ago, when one of your own priests (Marcus Tullius Cicero) spoke disparagingly of you. No, I’m afraid that the God that you’re attacking, Yahweh or YHWH, has long since outgrown his primitive Canaanite past, and the revamped mythology of his tri-partate self (which includes creativity and awe, anger and punishment, and forgiveness and mercy, all in one beautifully insane package), his son/self Jesus, his mother/wife Mary, and his child/rival Satan, has, as they say among the marketers, “eaten your lunch” and converted your former followers.
Jove, I understand that you may have a small comeback with some pagans, in which case, please register your reinstatement with the Æternum at some point in the next few æons. Good luck with that project.
Owlmirror: “You provided a “testable mechanism” for humans being able to manipulate life, going forward into the future. You did not provide a testable mechanism to determine that life was manipulated by an intelligence at any point in the past.”
I have provided a mechanism that is at least as testable as any you can propose – probably more so. My mechanism is observed–taking simple raw earthly elements and turning them into complex functioning systems–every day. What mechanism can you propose that can do that? Where is it observed to work? How is it tested? How would you know if you are wrong?
Nick Gotts: “God is good. God is omnipotent. There is suffering in the world. Only two can be true.”
Define “good”.
No you did not provide a testable mechanism because your conclusion involved a magic man and we have no means of testing that. Without having an agent through with to action through the mechanism, your idea (not even a hypothesis) falls. It’s like saying that the planets were designed because scientists can create round objects in the lab.
Daniel without a intelligent agent to act on the mechanism, your idea fails. If you put a “magic man” as the intelligent agent, then it’s immediately untestable. Show the designer to show that there was design.
Being good means you do what you can to prevent suffering in others. As an example, torturing and tormenting someone for eternity would be the opposite of good.
Kel: “No you did not provide a testable mechanism because your conclusion involved a magic man and we have no means of testing that. Without having an agent through with to action through the mechanism, your idea (not even a hypothesis) falls. It’s like saying that the planets were designed because scientists can create round objects in the lab.”
I disagree. If we found artifacts on another planet – even if there were no direct evidence of alien beings there (dead bodies, bones etc) – we could still deduce from the organization of these artifacts whether or not they were the product of intelligent beings. Because of that, we could then make the inference that intelligent beings once inhabited the planet. We don’t need to have direct evidence of their existence FIRST.
We would only be able to tell they were artifacts if these aliens thought similar to us. We would be applying a subjective human perception on the items. How could we objectively tell what is designed and what is not, without comparing it to our human standards?
But we have no reason to assume – nor the means to deduce – that biological life is, or even may be, such an artifact. That’s where your entire premise falls over.
Even more tellingly, these (inaudible) always assume in the “analogy” that we’d be inferring that the artifacts were made via intelligence, and not that the aliens themselves were.
Why? Does life somehow appear to be different from artifacts? Of course it does, it looks evolved (or does until massive engineering takes place), and it looks quite unlike what we make. Or as I wrote above, the suboptimal design itself is very different in life from suboptimal design in our machines and other artifacts.
Smith even admits this, but he wants to claim the analogy with our machines, while also claiming that life is just “advanced design”, which is why it is so disanalogous with known design. Which has to be, and is, taken solely by faith, and without any evidence whatsoever.
The fact remains that life just happens to look evolved. It does not look designed, and both Dembski have to resort to claiming that the (linguistic) default where something cannot be explained by “natural means” is not the “miracle”, but “design”. That’s after they have effectively eliminated design as the answer to life’s origin, for of course they avoid all of the evidence of design (evident purpose, rationality behind the anatomy and physiology, and the lack of evolutionary evidence for the supposed “design”).
Design is the last thing they’d really want to find (not that they could), since that would imply the limitations of “mortal beings”. They want to claim that life is miraculous, but because of legal reasons they have to call the miracle “design”.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Daniel, by not showing a mechanism under which the designer operates your proof is circular. You can say all along that your position doesn’t need to show a designer but by not doing so your position doesn’t answer anything. It’s simply saying “Goddidit” and that is an entirely useless statement. It’s a tautological affirmation of your beliefs, a rationalisation of something that is otherwise an absurdity.
If your explanation needs a designer, then you need to show evidence of the designer. When an explanation (evolution) doesn’t have a designer and can explain exactly the same thing, why the fuck should we pay credence to anyone who pushes an untestable mechanism?
You proposed a mechanism that is not testable for that which has happened in the past, and for that matter, which is not testable for most current living things.
I still stand by my analogy that that’s like offering modern diamond synthesis as a “testable mechanism” for how all diamonds that there are exist.
Biology.
In all living organisms (all single- or multi-celled organisms that metabolize and reproduce).
By observation through microscopes; by dyes and stains that bind to particular proteins; by genetically engineering the organisms to express fluorescent proteins along with the protein they usually express; by the analysis of the chemical constituents of cells, by deliberately adding various chemicals which are known to modify how cells work and interact and develop (and probably other methods as well).
In addition, because biological reproduction is not always exact, and because the developmental process in multi-celled organisms is fairly robust, it is possible for organisms to have slight differences in how they reproduce (and develop), and still get a viable, but now modified, organism. Thus, all biology, but perhaps especially the developmental part, supports how evolution can work: slight changes that are inherited can accumulate, over time, to result in an organism that is very different from its parents, yet functions as well or better, depending on the environment that the various generations were exposed to.
There’s more to it than that, but that’s one way of expressing some of the basics.
Did you follow any of the links that I posted, by the way?
By finding some evidence that shows that life actually works by magic.
Or by finding that there is a completely intractable problem with the current, evidence-based body of knowledge about how genes form proteins that interact in complex chemical networks to form different tissue types and body patternings. Some demonstration that the chemistry can’t work, or that the genetics can’t work. Something that conflicts with the current body of evidence.
Why do you ask? What have you got?
Dennis N: “Being good means you do what you can to prevent suffering in others. As an example, torturing and tormenting someone for eternity would be the opposite of good.”
So “good” can only be understood in comparison to “evil”.
Daniel Smith@635. And your point is?
Actually, “good” can only be understood in comparison to “power”. If you are powerful, like Me, then you can do anything or nothing, and call it all good.
Who’s going to stop Me?
Similarly, “evil” can only be understood as “weakness”. All you humans are weak in comparison to Me, so I get to call you evil.
See how much sense it makes?
Evil, be thou my good!
Gotta love the classics.
Say, maybe you’re My sockpuppet.
Pfffft. Miserable wanna-be.
Mm, nope, sorry. In My mythos, you’re the later creation, and therefore are weaker and lesser. Therefore, you are My evil sockpuppet.
Bah! You pathetic Russian flibbertigibbet! What about you, you… you… MYTH?! I’ll tear your head off and spit down your neck!
Sockpuppet? Popsucket, more likely.
All you have to offer is that pathetic tu quoque? I’m sorry, your appeal is denied.
Please note, by the way, my epithet. It is more significant than you realize.
It’s good to see the gods bickering in my playground, where my powers rule them all.
Oh all you gods are so cute. It will be a while before my sister comes to claim you but I will think of you fondly until the end of the universe.
GOZER: RAWR!
SATAN: I cannot help but be defiant! It’s how I was fashioned.
GOD: ‘Tis true, ’tis true. ‘Twas for the greater glory of Me.
JOVE: Bound up in baked dough mumbled over by a man? I never heard such nonsense!
ZEUS: I am he, and he is me, and thee is he. And so too all of ye.
JESUS: O God, thou art psychotic!
Exeunt Omnes Deorum, pursued by a
BeareBOFHWill you guys please shut up? Some of us are trying to get some sleep here!
man, if I had a hammer…
Yeah, tell me about it.
Me: “What mechanism can you propose that can do that?”
Owlmirror: “Biology”
Biology (from Greek βιολογία – βίος, bios, “life”; and λόγος, logos, “study”), is a branch of Natural Science, and is the study of living organisms and how they interact with their environment. (Wikipedia)
I agree that the creation of life on this planet must have involved extensive knowledge of “living organisms and how they interact with their environment”. But I thought you favored a natural mechanism?
Dennis N: “We would only be able to tell they were artifacts if these aliens thought similar to us. We would be applying a subjective human perception on the items. How could we objectively tell what is designed and what is not, without comparing it to our human standards?”
Kseniya: “But we have no reason to assume – nor the means to deduce – that biological life is, or even may be, such an artifact. That’s where your entire premise falls over.”
I agree with both of these posts – to a point. It is true that our only reference for ID is our own designs. It is true also that that we would use analogous qualities of otherworldly artifacts to our own designs as a method to determine their intelligent design. Thirdly, it is true that *IF* biological life does not share such analogous qualities with our known designs, then my case has no merit.
I would argue that, A) no matter how differently an alien race might think, we would probably very easily determine the design of their artifacts based on analogies to our own designs including simple factors such as organization and function; B) biological life shares many qualities with man’s designs; and C) analogies to man’s designs are *increasing* the more we learn about life. This is evidenced by a simple search of teleological and engineering terms in biological literature as Mike Gene has outlined in his book “The Design Matrix”.
Man IDist are boring.
What part of biology is not a natural mechanism?
How do you know?
How would you know if you were wrong?
It is indeed true that biological life does not share such analogous qualities with our known designs.
Your case does not have merit.
But it does not, as has been pointed out to you again and again.
Every structure that exists that we know of is an obvious modification, at the structural and molecular level, of structures that exist or existed in earlier organisms in simpler forms.
False. The more we learn about life, the more clear it is that life has evolved, and is a complex continuous chemical reaction.
O, bullpuckey. “Teleological and engineering terms in biological literature” does not “evidence” anything more than that biologists will occasionally use sloppy language in trying to describe their observations in simpler ways, and will try to use words that will be most likely commonly understood.
“Teleological and engineering terms”. Good grief, is that the best you can come up with? Pathetic.
Don’t you have some clerics to attend to?
Oh, Thor. Everyone knows that you sleep with your… hammer in your hand.
Owlmirror: “What part of biology is not a natural mechanism?”
Biology is the STUDY of life.
Owlmirror: “How do you know?”
Simple internet search
Owlmirror: “How would you know if you were wrong?”
If I found another definition that said biology was a natural mechanism used in the formation of life.
A pity your pathetic semantic failure did not inspire you to check, oh, I don’t know, maybe bloody dictionary.com for additional definitions?
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=biology
Sheesh.
Owlmirror: “the biological phenomena characteristic of an organism or a group of organisms: the biology of a worm.”
Please explain how you think “biology” – the biological phenomena characteristic of a PREBIOTIC world – formed life from non-life.
Otherwise all you’re saying is that life comes from life – which raises no objections from me.
Owlmirror: “biologists will occasionally use sloppy language in trying to describe their observations in simpler ways, and will try to use words that will be most likely commonly understood.”
Like the genetic “code”? Can you point me to a description of this “code” (sorry for the “sloppy language”) and its functions which uses no teleological or engineering terms?
Sigh. That wasn’t what you originally asked. And if you want me to change my answer, you should know by now what it’s going to be:
Biology AND organic chemistry
Because when biology is analyzed at its most basic level, it turns out to just be organic chemistry. DNA is an organic compound. So is RNA, and the proteins produced by RNA, and nearly all of the chemicals involved in metabolism. And the chemicals that aren’t organic chemicals are inorganic chemicals, or they’re ions, which are just electrically charged elements.
It’s all chemistry.
Have you followed any of the links that I posted, which expand on this in greater technical detail? How about the youtube video, at least?
Assuming I did so, why would it matter one way or another?
The point is that language is just language. What does that have to do with evidence that any aspect of biology actually is in some way not “natural”?
Owlmirror,
I watched your Youtube video and, although it appears to be “case closed” as far as the author’s concerned, it’s never as simple as it seems. Getting from fatty acid vesicles to the first actual cell is quite a leap – with lots of unexplainable gaps.
I have an observation: They say that these vesicles break up and that each piece loses nothing in the process. This is before these vesicles begin to take on polymers however. Once they take on polymers and break up, there’s no reason to believe that each piece will have identical polymers (if they have any) so each piece will be different. Consequently it’s no longer true “replication” is it?
Also, if this fatty acid vesicle process happens so readily around hydrothermal vents, why isn’t life spontaneously forming all over the world?
And how do you get from fatty acids to a lipid layer without losing all your contents?
Sigh. I knew you would do that.
We have the basic organic chemicals on the one hand, and the organic chemicals on the other, and you complain about “gaps”. Which are, by the way, not “unexplainable”, but rather “unexplained”. Big difference, there, in a few letters.
Hey, how about God’s unexplainable failure to leave any evidence of his existence? How about God’s unexplainable failure to even ever communicate?
Sheesh.
There’s no reason to believe that there will be none at all with very similar polymers, either.
Perhaps, but remember, no replication is true replication.
Even human reproduction and development has a certain degree of variation that just happens as part of the process.
Which reminds me:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/basics_how_can_chromosome_numb.php
Sigh.
In all places where life might have arise, life has already arisen. And all of these organic molecules are nummy tasty food that bacteria — already existing life — want to eat.
But then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are indeed places where life is forming, and we just haven’t found those places yet. Hm. Say, maybe some of that “scientific research” stuff might help…
“Hey, how about God’s unexplainable failure to leave any evidence of his existence?”
He left evidence everywhere – you are evidence. His “artifacts” surround us.
“How about God’s unexplainable failure to even ever communicate?”
He’s communicated to us through Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, etc.
If you pay careful attention, you’ll note that I told all of them different things at different times.
I love conflict!
And I’m not above using sockpuppets, either.
Oh, look. He’s at it again.
Look, kid, after you die, you’ll find out how much God has lied to humans. It took me a long time to realize it, but when you can actually talk to all of the dead religious leaders and compilers of scripture and such, it becomes very clear.
God is a lying asshole.
PS: You should be aware that you’re “desecrating” the Sabbath, by the way. Although you should also be aware that the Sabbath isn’t sacred in the first place, just like I am not the son of God.
Hey!
What did I tell you about that?
I’m an assholy.
Is that so hard to remember?
So people could also address You as “Your Assholiness“?
Nick Gotts: “Incidentally Daniel, if you’re a theologically orthodox Christian, you believe some of us will be suffering eternal torment. Now, an omnipotent being that allows others to suffer eternal torment is not just not maximally good, it is evil far beyond any human evil – its crimes make those of the worst human tyrants and torturers look trivial by comparison.”
Everyone in hell will have made a conscious decision to be there. God is good, and all good things come from him. Good and evil are necessary opposites which, for the time being, he allows to coexist, but the time is coming when he will forever separate the two. Hell will simply be the absence of all that is good. It’s not that God will be tormenting you, it’s just that there will be nothing there but evil and hate – that’s the “torment”. When you make the decision to reject God, you are rejecting all that is good, you’re making the statement that you want nothing of him. So he gives you what you desire. It’s a conscious decision YOU make. For those of you who reject God, this life becomes your only chance to experience his goodness. As for me, I choose God. I’m hoping you all will too.
No he didn’t, no I’m not, and no they don’t.
Look, we’ve been over this already. In order to show that life, and indeed, everything else in this universe, arose from some prior intelligence, you have to prove that life, and everything else in the universe, could not have arisen from the interaction of natural laws.
And yet, from all of the evidence that we have been able to analyze so far, life, and everything else in the universe, did in fact arise from the interaction of natural laws.
What part of that do you fail to understand?
There is no heaven or hell. There’s just the afterlife. Everyone is there, going back many thousands of years. Good, evil, in-between.
The only way that God could be defined as good is if you mean “good at messing with humans”.
The only thing that comes from God is contradictory and confusing commands that leads to anger and fighting, which amuses God.
No. When you reject God, you realize that the only way to understand and define good is by the consequences of real actions for real people in the real world.
After you understand this, you’ll realize that you need nothing of God.
And once you get to know God, believe me, you will want nothing of God either.
“He’s communicated to us through Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, etc.”
Don’t forget Joseph Smith.
^_^
Evolution, abiogenesis research? Totally full of gaps, unreliable, phooey. “Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, etc.”? Rock solid and airtight!
Sigh.
Owlmirror: “And yet, from all of the evidence that we have been able to analyze so far, life, and everything else in the universe, did in fact arise from the interaction of natural laws. What part of that do you fail to understand?”
That’s funny. You whole heartedly believe this, but when pressed for exactly which natural forces cause simple chemicals to self-organize into complex machinery, all you can come up with are the generic “biology”, “chemistry” and “abiogenesis”.
I, on the other hand, have shown you a proven, tested mechanism that can be regularly observed organizing simple materials into complex machinery – and you find every reason to reject it. So what we have here is an unknown mechanism you’ll unquestioningly accept because it does not suggest the possibility of God, while a proven mechanism you’ll unflinchingly reject because it does.
Owlmirror: “In order to show that life, and indeed, everything else in this universe, arose from some prior intelligence, you have to prove that life, and everything else in the universe, could not have arisen from the interaction of natural laws.”
That’s not true. That’s like saying, “In order to show that Stonehenge arose from intelligence, you have to prove that it could not have arisen from the interaction of natural laws”. We all know that rock formations like Stonehenge *can* arise from natural causes, yet we all agree that Stonehenge arose from intelligent causes. Why is that?
Daniel, the commenter who is assuming his conclusion – and who therefore filters ALL his arguments through that assumption – is you.
You fail to acknowledge the fact that a great many biologists who accept the theory of evolution also happen to be theists. No matter what you think of the arguments made here by Owlmirror and others, that simple, undeniable fact will remain. Therefore, this nonsense about biologists rejecting the design inference and accepting evolution BECAUSE it doesn’t demand God is just that – nonsense. Utter nonsense. If you could look past your nose, beyond your pet hypothesis, you’d see that.
Submit your “proven, tested mechanism that can be regularly observed organizing simple materials into complex machinery” to the scrutiny of, say, Kenneth Miller, and see what he has to say about it. While you’re at it, be sure to accuse him of rejecting God. Be sure to let us know how that goes.
Evolution ≠ Atheism
Write that down, so you don’t forget.
Furthermore, not only is a mousetrap not a cell, it’s not even analagous to a cell. It seem that you fail to grasp (or decline to accept, for it does not demand that your God exists!) that biological solutions appear designed because they have evolved, sometimes in inefficient, sometimes clumsy, sometimes inexplicable ways – just as we have come to expect an evolved solutions to manifest themselves – to solve a problem or to provide an advantage for an organism. Because of this, we can take a design stance towards evolved biology, and speak of a feature as being “designed” to perform some function for the organism, without the necessity, to assume a designer or a “design” mechanism.
This thought is incomplete, but I gotta run. Sorry.
That’s because I don’t have the time or energy to learn all of the painstaking details and condense them down to tiny, bite-size chunks that your painfully slow mind might, possibly, be able to comprehend.
The science is out there. Part of it is what makes all of our technology work. God didn’t give it to us. We found it out for ourselves.
Not at all! I fully accept that you have proven that intelligent humans, working on their own, with no God-given help whatsoever, can learn enough about how reality is put together and to reverse-engineer biology such that it can be put back together again in new ways.
Which is, after all, what I have been saying all along.
You have provided no evidence, however, that this ability of humans has anything to do with how humans, and all other life, arose.
Heh. Boy, did your brain ever screw the pooch there. We know no such thing.
Hey, why did God fail to apprise you of the fundamentals of geology?
Because, first of all, there is not any known natural mechanism that will cause stones of of that type and shape to appear in a field covering a completely different geological substratum, and arrange them in a circle upright.
And because we can actually analyze the evidence in the stones and figure out the quarry that they actually came from.
Sheesh.
I dreamed it into existence, you nincompoop.
Ah, another one of those entelechies.
I don’t want sophisticated and educated thinkers, I want fighters!
For example by making short-term observations like the recent experiment by Lenski et al.. — simply watch it being selected. Another method is to look for the amount of variability in the genes in question: the more identical they are in different individuals, the stronger the selection must have been that eliminated the mutations.
Should be easy in theory and very, very hard in practice. I mean, think about it! All those enzymes for cutting and gluing PNA that would have to be invented from scratch! You are talking about a lot of time and money here.
(My current immersion in theoretical aspects? Like what? ~:-| )
No. Instead, mutation and selection happen (all the time, even in the lab and in computer simulations). Inescapably.
So the designer is ineffable?
If so, you cannot find out if you are wrong. You have left science. Bye-bye. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
Not if God is ineffable — in which case the hypothesis becomes useless.
Easy. He’s El Elyon, the Most High God, fused to Yahwe, the Becoming One, who once was one (perhaps the youngest) of his 70 respectively 73 sons. Another one of them appears to have been Satan, though that guy later got run through Persian dualism, which is about as different from a Canaanite pantheon as you can get, producing all those theological contradictions that surround him.
This is a point that tends to be overlooked: Nothing is ever really new. Creationists like to ask “how did novelties evolve?” Short answer: they didn’t, they don’t even exist.
Necessary?
So necessary that God’s omnipotence is powerless to do anything about it?
Didn’t think so.
What?
Also, “formation” doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means.
Rey Fox: “Evolution, abiogenesis research? Totally full of gaps, unreliable, phooey. “Moses, the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, etc.”? Rock solid and airtight!”
Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles have stood the test of time. How many modern scientists do you think they’ll still be talking about 2000+ years from now?
And just whose ideas will they be using in 2000+ years?
Lip service and great praise will probably continually be heaped on Mohammed, Buddha, and others like them. But they, and the Judeo-Xian prophets, will simply be interpreted to favor whoever is in power, like always, and enlisted to command that others do their bidding.
Whereas we both remember and actually follow Aristotle (where he was being scientific), Euclid, and Archimedes. Why? Because they spoke truth, unlike your various religious figures (by the way, since Xianity has a great deal of Plato’s influence in it, perhaps you should list Plato above Jesus–who seems not to have come up with much that was new).
We actually use the ideas of the scientists (I’m now using the broad ancient meaning of “scientist”), which is not (well, barely) the case with religious figures. Religious speech doesn’t actually refer to anything much, which is why it acts more like a Rorschach inkblot revealing what is in minds, than as a guide to knowledge as science and mathematics do.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles have stood the test of time. How many modern scientists do you think they’ll still be talking about 2000+ years from now?
I’m fairly certain that the worshippers of Zeus and Odin said close to the same thing when Christianity showed up. When you study history, you understand that nothing – NOTHING – lasts forever. Religions evolve, too, after all – and many, many go extinct. Christianity is no more inherently special in this regard than is Baal worship. If Christianity were to continue to be practiced 10,000 years from now, it will be due to factors other than “It’s the one true religion.”
I suppose that they have been around a long time.
But they have not withstood the test of rational analysis.
More importantly, they have not withstood the test of comparing the claims they make against reality.
Assuming humanity does not destroy itself (or suffer destruction from some immense disaster), or lobotomize itself by destroying every last vestige of scientific knowledge and history, why should modern scientists not be remembered in 2000 years?
Do we not remember Eratosthenes and Archimedes and Euclid, and all of the other ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerians, Persians, Babylonians, Indians and Chinese who made what were, for their times, important scientific and technological discoveries?
Which were, I might add, often destroyed or suppressed by early Christians and/or Muslims as being ‘pagan’?
That’s what the acupuncture crowd says, despite continual failure to produce results. Popular does not equate to true. Truth does not change with the fall fashions. The truth is out there, and we just get more accurate pictures when we get better tools.
Who cares about the scientists? Scientist-worship is projection of religion’s sins onto the scientifically-minded. To me, Darwin is just a celebrated footnote in history. I don’t reference him anymore because we’ve learned much more accurate and predictive models of evolution since then. Are the fossils, geological formations, genetic evidence for nested hierarchies, and so forth going to just vanish one day? Are all A-life programs going to all suddenly stop working?
You’re speaking as if you expect us to believe sunset and sunrise will spontaneously switch locations.
When you make the decision to reject God Daniel Smith.
How could I possibly make such a decision when I do not believe God exists?
Moreover, your version of what hell is, appears to be a modern invention, dreamed up precisely because to modern minds, a being who would consign anyone to eternal torment is evidently evil. There are a number of NT references which say quite clearly it is a place of fiery torment. Your version of hell is also absurd: since atheists and other non-Christians are quite capable of decent behaviour in this life, why would become incapable of doing so in hell?
Nick Gotts: “How could I possibly make such a decision (to reject God) when I do not believe God exists?”
You’ve answered your own question. “Belief” is a conscious decision.
Owlmirror: “Because, first of all, there is not any known natural mechanism that will cause stones of of that type and shape to appear in a field covering a completely different geological substratum, and arrange them in a circle upright. And because we can actually analyze the evidence in the stones and figure out the quarry that they actually came from.”
There is also not any known natural mechanism that will arrange molecules to code for information – yet you have no problem believing that happened!
We know that natural mechanisms are able to move whole continents, and shear rocks into all manner of geometric shapes. We know that glaciers, floods and volcanic activity can move huge rocks in various ways and deposit them far from where they were originally “hewn”, yet the precise arrangement of these rocks into an upright circle is enough for us to know that natural forces did not create Stonehenge.
In the same way we know that some molecules can form simple structures and that certain chemical bind together and others don’t, but we can’t explain how such natural forces could produce coding information. The simplest self-replicator is much more sophisticated than Stonehenge, yet you use MY argument FOR the ID of Stonehenge while completely rejecting it for something thousands of times more complex.
To borrow a phrase, “Sheesh”.
Daniel Smith wrote:
Daniel, you’re wrong. My analogy: someone can provide a hair sample; they can’t provide a bald sample.
What part of chemistry is unknown or unnatural?
Pretty much. In addition, glaciers and volcanic activity and so on leave other traces of their activity. You could look it up.
We know that DNA and RNA evolve, so actually, we kind of do. Once you have the chemicals set up, they do just evolve.
Those aren’t comparable at all. As I keep telling you, scale matters. Organic chemicals are not giant slabs of rocks. There are completely different laws governing how matter behaves at those different scales.
Complexity is not the point. The point is the process. Can the process that leads to the product occur without intelligent intervention? For Stonehenge, the answer is no. For organic chemicals, the answer is yes.
Back atcha.
Daniel, way above I posted a link to a paper on an idea of how the genetic code evolved. Read it, and then come back, OK?
Also, do you know what a ribozyme is, and how some of them self-replicate?
On another topic, we have plenty of chisel marks and the like on the rocks of Stonehenge…
It could be yes if the rocks had strong electrical charges and somehow kept them for long enough…
…on the molecular level, much smaller charges are necessary… molecules arrange themselves all the time due to electrostatic attraction and repulsion. DNA replication and protein production are, lastly, nothing else than that.
Is it? Are you sure? When you look up at the sun, do you consciously decide to believe that there’s an excruciatingly bright light shining into your eye? Do you even have a choice about what to believe?
Some people believe things that are unreal. Some do not believe things that are real. Some do both. We have names for these “decisions”. We enumerate, define and describe them in a sacred volume called the DSM-IV.
Most atheists disbelieve in God because they cannot believe. There is a rational process involved, yes, but it’s not a choice in the sense you mean. If one must “choose” to believe in God, then one has no faith.
You know what has really stood the test of time? The general reliability of conclusions that can be drawn from repeated (and repeatable) observation. As others have pointed out, deities come and go like civilizations. Humanity – and reality – remain.
Let me just repeat comment 691. Sometimes the obvious has to be explained in detail, again and again and again…
For the record, I have found myself incapable of believing without evidence. I have found myself incapable of believing just because I want to believe. Prominent theologians, such as Hans Küng, can do it; I can’t.
David Marjanović: “You know what has really stood the test of time? The general reliability of conclusions that can be drawn from repeated (and repeatable) observation. As others have pointed out, deities come and go like civilizations. Humanity – and reality – remain.”
Quite contrary to what you espouse here David, scientific theories come and go far more often than dieties do.
David Marjanović: “molecules arrange themselves all the time due to electrostatic attraction and repulsion. DNA replication and protein production are, lastly, nothing else than that.”
Nothing else huh? Sounds simple. We both know it’s not.
David Marjanović: “Daniel, way above I posted a link to a paper on an idea of how the genetic code evolved. Read it, and then come back, OK?”
I read the abstract. I’m not going to purchase the paper. Believe it or not however, I’ve read several papers on the origins of the genetic code. The reason these abiogenesis theories seem unreal to me is because no one can explain why molecules would self-organize. That’s essentially the fallacy of the whole atheistic approach to science: No one can explain the “Why?” Every theory revolves around “Selection” – and that makes sense in regards to advantageous mutations in living organisms – but what “advantage” is there to amino acid chains in a prebiotic world? Why would molecules “select” all the preliminary stages in order to arrive at a series of molecules that code for information? What conceivable “advantage” is there for non-coding DNA? And, if the entire pre-organism is not a self-replicator, what good is it? All the “advantages” are lost.
From a logical standpoint, none of it makes sense. You say you can’t believe without evidence, yet you believe THIS!
On the other hand, when confronted with a working machine (whether macro or nano scale) the obvious, rational, logical conclusion is that it was designed by an intelligence – not that it concocted itself for no apparent reason. It takes far less faith to “believe” in ID. For one, ID has a repeatedly observed and tested mechanism. We know (in the strictest sense of the word) that intelligent agents can produce working machinery – machinery that utilizes coded information – from simple raw materials found readily on the earth. We KNOW this (no belief required). The only thing we don’t know is WHO invented life.
BTW, if you want to read something interesting about the genetic code, try this paper:
http://emb-magazine.bme.uconn.edu/EMB_Main/Past_Issues/2006January/Gonzalez.pdf
Daniel, you and I are playing five-card single-hand poker. No bluffing, no drawing, no betting. Best hand dealt wins.
So, I deal you a hand of five cards and me a hand of five cards. In your hand of cards you get a straight flush – all hearts; 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace. My hand has the three of clubs, the five of spades, the seven of diamonds, the seven of hearts and the ace of clubs.
Your straight flush beats my one pair; you win.
Why did I deal you those cards?
False.
Science progresses, based on newer and better evidence.
Deities, since they are not based on evidence, change only according to human fashion, politics, and whim.
The details are indeed not simple, and no one has claimed they were. Why don’t you learn them?
When you’ve gotten a degree in biochemistry, maybe you can instruct us in how it’s all really magic.
In other words, you’re arguing from ignorance.
Come back when you can explain why molecules cannot self-organize.
Reproduction and growth are their own “rewards”: The more there are of them, the more there are of them.
At this point, the evidence we have so far certainly appears to be pointing at complex biochemical reactions “bootstrapping” themselves into self-reproducing metabolizers (both of which are particular kinds of chemical reactions anyway).
No-one has managed to show that this scenario is impossible.
The simple logical problem with “ID” remains: Intelligent life certainly appears to have arisen via evolution. If life cannot have arisen without an Intelligent First Biotechnician being involved … how did the Intelligent First Biotechnician arise? And almost as importantly, where the the Intelligent First Biotechnician go after performing the requisite biotechnology? And why did the Intelligent First Biotechnician not leave any other evidence of its own existence?
When it comes to choosing between organochemical bootstrapping vs. the current incoherence of “ID”, I have to go with the one that makes the most sense. And “ID” makes no sense.
Science progresses, based on newer and better evidence.
Daniel would have been slightly more accurate in saying “scientific hypotheses” come and go, since they do, but when something becomes a theory, it does tend to stick around, theories typically being based on many, already supported, hypothesis, as well as whatever laws you want to throw in. Theories become modified to include new information from the results of testing (and either accepting or rejecting) new hypotheses. Just as it takes a tremendous amount of supported information to build a theory, it typically takes a tremendous amount of information to entirely discard one, too.
like most uneducated ignoramuses, Daniel confuses the popular meaning of “theory” with the actual usage in science, where theory sits atop the hierarchy of “ideas”.
now then, let’s take a look at which Deities have “come and gone” over the last 5000 years, shall we?
…or does Daniel believe in the Greek Pantheon?
Read again: “what has really stood the test of time” is the principle of science, not any particular theory: it’s “[t]he general reliability of conclusions that can be drawn from repeated (and repeatable) observation”. Methodological naturalism, in other words: miracles don’t happen often enough to make the world unpredictable.
Just send me your e-mail address… or better yet, write to the authors and ask for the pdf. Scientists ask each other for pdfs all the time, and never get royalties from publishing in journals — to the contrary, for color pictures or too many pages they must pay the publisher.
Ah, here we have your problem at least! You don’t know basic chemistry. Let me fix that.
What happens to a solution of adenine in water? (I say adenine because I know the experiment has actually been done, and because adenine is the chemically simplest of the four bases — basically just pentameric hydrocyanic acid, something that can be found all over the solar system.)
The adenine molecules stack themselves in what looks like a single strand of a nucleic acid.
To be precise, the water molecules stick to each other and to the sides of each adenine molecule — simply by electrostatics: in water, the hydrogen is slightly positively charged and the oxygen is slightly negatively charged; in adenine, the hydrogen is slightly positively charged and the nitrogen is slightly negatively charged. Water binds much less strongly to the flat faces of an adenine molecule. And since we’re assuming liquid water here (I said “solution”), all molecules move. What happens? Inevitably?
Easy: the adenine molecules end up crowded together in such a way that contact between their flat faces and the water molecules is minimized. (That’s called “hydrophobic interaction”.) The way to do this is to have the flat faces stacked on top of each other, but with a decalation of a certain amount of degrees. Give the solution enough time (AFAIK minutes or seconds in this case), and this twisted stack that looks like a single strand of a nucleic acid inevitably forms. Laws of thermodynamics. Same as why crystals of different materials have different but constant shapes; for example, ice crystals have hexagonal symmetry because water molecules are electrostatically polarized (see above) and because of the angle described by the three atoms (which follows from the distribution of electrons in oxygen atoms).
Now let the thought experiment start. Let’s boil (or just heat, whatever) the solution first, together with phosphate and some kind of simple sugar or something similar — it doesn’t need to be ribose (5 carbon atoms), it can be threose (4 carbon atoms) or even glycerol (3 carbon atoms) — yes, really. I think molecules more complicated than glycerol have been found in meteorites, though I’m not sure off the top of my head.
Now, water was clearly present on the early earth, adenine (and, mostly due to the presence of water, also other bases) can be likewise safely assumed to have been lying around, phosphates occur as rocks, and things like glycerol just form over time when the sun shines on an atmosphere with carbon dioxide, water vapor, and perhaps traces of methane.
OK, let’s boil this. As perhaps just a rare side product, the formation of nucleotides is AFAIK inevitable.
And what happens to a solution of nucleotides that isn’t too hot?
Inevitably the same again: the nucleotides stack, in the shape mentioned.
Now, if all the reactive groups of these molecules lie in the right places, they react with each other much more easily than otherwise. This is the main trick catalysts use.
So, from that alone, we can imagine a nucleic acid strand to form over time. If you have a more parsimonious alternative, show us!
And what do you think base-pairing is? Electrostatic attraction again. Electrostatic attraction, the whole electrostatic attraction, and nothing but electrostatic attraction (…plus electrostatic repulsion that becomes stronger at short distances and keeps nucleic acids, like everything unless there’s too much of it, from collapsing into a neutron star). Put a strand of a nucleic acid into the same solution as a bunch of separate nucleotides. Where will they arrange themselves, inevitably, if the solution isn’t too hot?
Now to another misunderstanding of yours. This is not “the atheistic approach to science”. It is the scientific approach. Science has two pillars, falsification and parsimony. Of competing falsifiable and unfalsified hypotheses, the one with the smallest number of ad hoc assumptions wins. Even the most bumbling demiurge would consist of a whole bunch of ad hoc assumptions that methodologically naturalistic hypotheses simply don’t need.
Where else do you want to start? At the maximally munificent hypothesis???
You only haven’t understood what you’re talking about. It’s understandable — what’s not understandable is that you don’t keep reading till you find out, but instead start believing everyone else is wrong.
Here goes: there is no advantage in the literal sense. What do I get from having more surviving offspring than everyone else? Nothing. It’s just called “reproductive advantage” or “selective advantage” or “evolutionary advantage” or “fitness advantage” or just “advantage”.
So, keeping in mind that certain sequences of RNA can replicate themselves (RNA has lots of enzymatic activity; the business end of the ribosome is part of a nucleotide of some rRNA or other), just wait, and sooner or later the “primordial soup” (however diluted it really was, and however fixed to certain surfaces like clay or pyrite it was) contained lots more copies of self-replicating RNA than of non-replicating RNA. Then imagine a mutation that speeds up the replication process without gravely reducing its quality, and sooner or later the primordial soup will be filled with copies of the mutated RNA. This is called natural selection: those that have more surviving fertile offspring have more surviving fertile offspring, for heritable reasons that allow them to have more surviving fertile offspring in their particular environment.
It really is that simple, and so is natural selection. You just hadn’t figured that out.
Stupid design.
Remember, if you claim the Designer is ineffable, good riddance.
So does the theory of evolution: mutation & selection. Look, dude, I’ve seen it happening with my own eyes. I let bacteria grow on the floor of a petri dish, added a virus, and the next day, the petri dish contained two or three tiny colonies of bacteria. Explanation: the virus had killed the whole billions and billions of bacteria, except two or three which, due to a mutation, were resistant, and those two or three resistant cells each grew into a visible colony — all that overnight. We have mutation, we have selection (the virus), and we have preferential survival of those that are not selected against = are “selected for”. This was part of the lab work called Molecular Biology 1B, one of the introductory parts of the study of molecular biology in the first year of university.
Correct.
You are saying that life could have been designed, therefore it was. Didn’t you notice that this doesn’t follow?
I’ll read your link later.
I don’t know why I didn’t write “at last”, because that’s what I meant.
First, let me be clear: I’m not arguing against the FACT of evolution. So you can all drop that strawman. I know evolution occurs, that it is both observed and tested, and that it has produced endless varieties. My main focus here has been the debate about the origin of life.
David Marjanović, your thought experiment is interesting, but I’m much more skeptical than you (apparently) when it comes to nature’s ability to organize for function. Sure, all the chemical reactions work (if they didn’t, life wouldn’t), but you and I both know that it takes rather precise organization of those molecules to make life. Just because certain aspects of life’s systems seem to be able to do their thing in “stand-alone mode”, doesn’t mean they can go beyond that and self-organize into functioning machinery. If it really was as “easy” as you say, creating life in a test tube would be a Biology 101 experiment, rather than the holy grail of abiogenesis research. I could devise a similar thought experiment for the natural creation of Stonehenge. All the mechanisms are there–great rocks are hewn and moved about by nature–we only need to “imagine” that these forces arranged the rocks in an upright circle (after all, it only has to happen once). The problem is that such precise organization is enough for us to immediately doubt the “natural” explanation and suspect intelligent involvement. And this is not just because we know man does things like this. If we found a Stonehenge on another planet, we’d suspect intelligent activity there too.
So, it is my position (and you all have not given me sufficient reasons to doubt it) that the precise organization of chemical compounds into functioning machinery, based on coded information, and able to self-replicate and self-correct, must be the product of an as yet undiscovered intelligence. I started this debate by calling life “nanotechnology” and that’s precisely what it is. Technology requires intelligence. That’s my position.
Daniel Smith,
So basically your position boils down to “I need to read up on the current abiogenesis literature.”
The concerns you have have already been addressed.
Daniel Smith,
You didn’t answer my question, but I’ll explain anyway – more for clarifying my own understanding than anything else; I’m new to this and I’m sure if there are problems someone will point them out.
Basically, there doesn’t need to be a ‘why’. There’s just an ‘is’.
What also flows from my card analogy is the subjective nature of value. Technically, a straight flush is of no more value than any other hand; it’s just that we’ve ascribed a value to those particular cards.
Humans, while being more ‘complex’ in some ways than other organisms, aren’t made superior (in terms of existence) by it. Put a couple of diffenent kinds of sea-sponge into a blender and flick the switch. After you’ve poured the mixture out, wait long enough and they’ll reform into the separate sponges.
You mean, of course, ‘Just because chemicals are able to do their thing in “stand-alone mode”‘
You have no evidence to demonstrate that.
That’s pretty ironic considering that David Marjanović just described basic biochemistry in a test tube.
Look, you’re still arguing from ignorance. You say that we need to show you abiogenesis before you believe it. No-one has shown you God, yet you certainly seem to believe that. We’ve tried to show you how chemical bootstrapping is the best current inference, yet you ignore that. Do you not realize that you are not making sense?
Just out of curiosity: When the problem of abiogenesis is indeed finally cracked, and the entire chain of events from basic chemicals to self-reproducing life can indeed be reproduced in a test-tube, will you then agree that God is completely unnecessary?
Once again: No. They aren’t. Not in the same way that Stonehenge was.
Could you please consult a geology reference before making such silly statements?
If there were natural geological forces that could create something exactly like Stonehenge, that would throw into doubt the very idea that Stonehenge was indeed constructed by humans.
Sheesh.
You mean, of course, ‘Just because chemicals are able to do their thing in “stand-alone mode”‘
You have no evidence to demonstrate that.
That’s pretty ironic considering that David Marjanović just described basic biochemistry in a test tube.
Look, you’re still arguing from ignorance. You say that we need to show you abiogenesis before you believe it. No-one has shown you God, yet you certainly seem to believe that. We’ve tried to show you how chemical bootstrapping is the best current inference, yet you ignore that. Do you not realize that you are not making sense?
Just out of curiosity: When the problem of abiogenesis is indeed finally cracked, and the entire chain of events from basic chemicals to self-reproducing life can indeed be reproduced in a test-tube, will you then agree that God is completely unnecessary?
Once again: No. They aren’t. Not in the same way that Stonehenge was.
Could you please consult a geology reference before making such silly statements?
If there were natural geological forces that could create something exactly like Stonehenge, that would throw into doubt the very idea that Stonehenge was indeed constructed by humans.
Sheesh.
The concerns you have have already been addressed.
“We appreciate your concern. It is noted, and stupid.”
-M Edmonson
Stop anthropomorphizing her, she hates that! ;-)
You have failed to get my most important point: this organization is as inevitable as the organization of water molecules to form an ice crystal below 0 °C.
The difficult step is something else: the reaction of the organized monomers into a single molecule, for example the reaction of stacked nucleotides into a nucleic acid strand. This requires energy to happen at a noticeable rate. But, firstly, a noticeable rate is not needed, because millions, if not hundreds of millions, of years were available; secondly, the inevitable arrangement into a stack by itself greatly lowers the required energy; thirdly, adjacent clay or pyrite may have acted as a catalyst.
Sure, we don’t know yet how it happened, but we are already able to form well-delimited hypotheses and to test at least those that don’t require lots of time.
What precise arrangement is there that doesn’t follow from electrostatics?
Certain ones? What about all of them?
Principle of parsimony. Sure, that’s no proof, but it firmly places the burden of evidence upon your shoulders.
Nah. Firstly, such an experiment would, without cheating, still take a very long time, because some of the steps involved are rather improbable. It couldn’t be done within a week or three. Secondly, it would probably require a few things that are, at the very least, very expensive to recreate in a lab — hydrothermal vents are a good candidate for such a requirement. Thirdly, the holy grail isn’t so much to find a way it could have happened, but the way it did happen — the Miller-Urey experiment famously generated loads of important molecules in no time, but the atmosphere it assumed (with lots of hydrogen, methane, and ammonia) breaks down when the sun shines, so it can’t have happened that way.
Hmmm. Certain strange weathering patterns can produce rectangular rocks, but the only way of moving them — glaciers — would destroy that shape, wouldn’t leave chisel marks, and can’t possibly have flown from all directions into a point — where should the ice have gone from there? Better yet, we have evidence against such glacier movement: the ice age ice shield of the region moved in another direction. There is no time window when glaciers could have assembled Stonehenge.
Besides, “it only has to happen once” is wrong. Stonehenge is merely the most famous and the best preserved building of its kind. Others are found all over Europe.
I see your analogy, but it doesn’t work. If the rocks of Stonehenge were solid magnets — and not simple bipoles, but quadrupoles at least! –, you might have a point, but they aren’t.
No. Most of it is based on nothing but electrostatics, and so is the origin of the coding!
Learn more about ribozymes. Really. There are large holes in your knowledge that you are not aware of.
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Not only. Also on basic biochemistry textbook knowledge. What he needs is to get the shape of the involved molecules and their charge distributions into his head.
And not just magnets, but magnets sufficiently powerful to overcome the inertial forces of such massive blocks. Again, there are problems of scale here: At the scale of stones the size of the Stonehenge monoliths, the primary force involved is gravity.
And I still think that even if you had that, there would still be the questions of: What natural process caused the monoliths to acquire their powerful magnetic charges, in exactly the right points to then cause them to spontaneously form upright circles, with some blocks acting as lintels? And so on.
And if it were all natural, it should also be possible to find the source of these magnetic blocks, some only partially generated, perhaps, and actually watch them in the process of ponderously shifting and slamming and groaning and booming their way into circles or other shapes.
Which is kind of amusing to think of.
David Marjanović: “this organization is as inevitable as the organization of water molecules to form an ice crystal below 0 °C.”
It’s not. If it were, life would happen — aside from reproduction — all the time. As it is, life is the only part of nature that is so specifically organized for function. This is my case: What separates life from non-life is the same thing that separates machines from raw materials — organization for function. Where else in nature do chemicals organize themselves for function? Where else do any type of raw materials organize themselves for function? We KNOW that raw materials don’t organize themselves for function. We KNOW that intelligent beings regularly organize raw materials for function. These are things we know.
“No. Most of it is based on nothing but electrostatics, and so is the origin of the coding!”
Again, we have a pronouncement that something is simple — when we both know that it’s not. It’s not just the chemistry that makes coding (and life) work, but the specific organization of the molecules into protein (and RNA) machines and DNA coding. The chemistry is important — no doubt — but you can’t just throw all the ingredients in a bag, shake them up, and let chemistry take over until you get life! What you CAN do (with the proper knowledge and abilities) is organize molecules into a living cell via the Intelligent Manipulation of Molecules for the Purpose of Specific Function. This we could do (if we knew how).
“Learn more about ribozymes. Really. There are large holes in your knowledge that you are not aware of.”
Let me see if I understand what ribozymes are: RNA molecules that can catalyze or act as enzymes. They are rare in cells, but are extensively involved in the ribosome (that RNA/Protein machine that translates DNA into mRNA). They are thought to be the precursors to DNA because they can potentially code for information and catalyze at the same time. Is that close?
====================================================
Oh and Wowbagger, I would have answered “Because we’re playing cards.”
No, it wouldn’t. Once again: The molecules that lead to life are the same molecules that life already uses. If a source of those molecules arose, the pre-existing life would use those molecules for their own selves, and prevent a second abiogenesis event.
There are thousands of individual bacteria per cubic centimeter of seawater, not to mention all of the other microorganisms swimming around. Ponder that, will you? Life is already incredibly ubiquitous, it’s frequently reproducing, and it is always hungry.
If by “raw materials” you mean organic chemicals, then we KNOW no such thing.
How do you know? You don’t know anything about chemistry at all.
Organic chemists who are experts in their fields are dedicating their lives to abiogenesis research (see the lab links I posted above), and here you come along, with no knowledge whatsoever, and start claiming it’s impossible.
You’re just a dilettante talking out of your
arsedeep ignorance.Daniel, though an intelligent and civil fellow, suffers from Creationist Disease. The first item on his agenda, whether he knows it or not, is and likely always will be to defend the omnipotence of his chosen god. Unfortunately, in order for him to mount this defense, he must maintain a few carefully selected pockets of ignorance in his knowledge store. He can fill these deep pockets with the products of “common sense”, and then believe that he has built a case.
Therefore, he doesn’t really want to hear what David has to tell him. He can’t afford to hear it, because he can’t afford to know it. He prefers, instead, to insist that the conclusions he’s drawn from his incomplete education, his poor grasp of probability theory, and his overwhelming emotional need to be right can only only add up to what we KNOW to be possible and KNOW to be true.
David Marjanović: “What he needs is to get the shape of the involved molecules and their charge distributions into his head.”
I may not know much, but I know that it’s a pretty amazing coincidence that all the necessary shapes and charges just happen to fit together so well that a few basic chemicals can become the complex, sophisticated organic machinery of life. It’s also a very fortunate coincidence that stars just happen to be made up of all the right ingredients for life and that enough of these stars coincidentally exploded in the past so that these compounds coincidentally ended up in abundance here on earth allowing carbon-based life to thrive. Another nice coincidence is the temperature of the planet: much hotter or colder and drastic atmospheric changes take place, wiping out life. Of course then there’s also the coincidental properties of water which, unlike other liquids, expands and floats when frozen; thus allowing life to thrive in the seas (and elsewhere). Another coincidental property of water is its viscosity — too much change there and life is crushed, can’t move or flies apart. Of course, without water’s coincidental makeup, hydrophobic and hydrophilic molecules wouldn’t be very effective in folding proteins into just the right shape to form nanomotors, pumps, and all the other nanomachinery of life. Then again there’s our coincidental atmosphere, weather cycles, seasonal cycles, day/night cycle; the coincidental moon and sun, our coincidental gravity, and a host of other coincidental things. Then there’s the coincidental properties of light — necessary for so many functions — and how our atmosphere coincidentally filters out most of the harmful waveforms and just lets in that which is needed. That’s a pretty nice coincidence if you ask me!
There are many other coincidences I could list and I’m sure there are many more of which I am unaware, but I think you get the idea.
I’ve heard it said that if you add up all the coincidences necessary for life on earth it’d be like someone winning the lottery a million times in a row (or something like that). I don’t know about you, but if I hear of someone winning the lottery several times in a row, I’d suspect intelligent activity is somehow behind that “coincidence”.
For this reason, I am a firm believer that God not only formed life out of chemicals, but also formed the chemicals themselves, the cosmos from whence they came, all the laws of chemistry and physics, time and space, life and death, good and evil, light and dark, and everything else that exists physically and spiritually.
Is God ineffable? No, but words don’t do him justice and our puny minds can’t begin to comprehend all of him. But we can know as much about him as we are capable of learning. It’s all right in front of us! All that he has created reflects who he is and provides a window into the workings of his infinite mind. At least that’s my take on things.
Daniel Smith,
Good point about the cards – I’m still trying to get the wording of that analogy sorted out. What I’m attempting to say is that I don’t feel there has to be a ‘why’. Abstract thinking is something humans do, a by-product of the complex cognitive functions we’ve adapted in order to survive.
As for your ‘winning the lottery a million times in a row’ analogy, it’s the ‘in a row’ part where it falls down – it doesn’t have to be ‘in a row’ for unguided evolution to explain life.
I’ll try another analogy – you appear to be saying that life to have developed by chance is like rolling a billion dice and getting all sixes. Which is, of course, astonishingly unlikely. However, that’s not what evolution (as I understand it, since i am not a scientist) proposes; evolution is rolling a billion dice, keeping all the sixes and rolling the remaining dice again – a process that is repeated until every one of those billion dice is showing a six.
Remember, the earth is around 4.5 billion years old and 4.5 billion years allows for a lot of dice rolls. Or, if you prefer, lottery entries.
You KNOW this? How do you KNOW? What makes it a “coincidence” at all, let alone an “amazing” one? You trivialize and dismiss all richly educated hypotheses that do not validate your worldview, yet claim certain knowledge of things manifestly unproven, undemonstrated, even unsuggested by observation by virtue of their being “ineffable”.
In what context, and by what standard, do you judge the likelihood of this so-called coincidence? By your observations of the multitude of godless universes in which life did NOT arise?
Oh, look. Arguing from the anthropic principle.
Given your already-demonstrated poor understanding of probability and cosmology, I doubt that you understand what that means.
And while the “lottery” analogy is not quite right, note that when you win the lottery, you can afford a lot more lottery tickets, increasing your chances for another win.
Hm. Citing from:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/stenger_intel.html
Looks like you’re yet another one of those who wants it both ways.
You, again:
If you assert that a powerful intelligence is responsible for “winning” the lottery for us, then how do you explain the existence of that powerful intelligence? How did it win the “lottery” against existing?
Yeah, God can do all that, and yet can’t be bothered to clearly answer the simple question, “Hello, do you exist?”
Fixed.
If God is not ineffable, then we would be able to describe Him in words. And as such, by claiming that God is not ineffable, yet then insist that Humanity has yet to invent a word to describe how fabulous God is, you contradict yourself.
So, either realize that the only oxymoron that scientists and the scientifically literate have ever appreciated is a shrimp 4 inches or longer, OR, first learn how to speak English.
I mean, Daniel Smith, are you aware of how your demonstration of how a self-inflicted lobotomy is necessary for piety, you make Christianity extremely unattractive to non-Christians, AS WELL AS tempt those among the pious who have not sacrificed their intellect into contemplating apostasy?
Owlmirror: “Looks like you’re yet another one of those who wants it both ways.”
I see what you’re saying here and yes I agree in that: IF life did arise completely naturally (and that’s a HUGE “IF”), it only did so because it was inevitable that it do so.
Owlmirror: “If you assert that a powerful intelligence is responsible for “winning” the lottery for us, then how do you explain the existence of that powerful intelligence? How did it win the “lottery” against existing?”
Existence requires a beginning if, and only if, it is linear and time-based. If it is infinite (eternal), there logically can be no beginning. We live in a linear, time-based world that must’ve begun sometime and therefore must have a pre-existent cause. This creates an infinite regress of “What was before that?” — unless — the ultimate cause was infinite OR absolute Nothing. Since we know that it is impossible to get something from nothing, existence requires an infinite source. There is no lottery.
Owlmirror: “Yeah, God can do all that, and yet can’t be bothered to clearly answer the simple question, “Hello, do you exist?””
He answered that question for me.
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Stanton: “If God is not ineffable, then we would be able to describe Him in words. And as such, by claiming that God is not ineffable, yet then insist that Humanity has yet to invent a word to describe how fabulous God is, you contradict yourself.”
We could describe him if we knew all the right words.
“We could describe him if we knew all the right words.”
Wow, you are SO full of shit… LOL.
Do we? Are you quite sure? Even within our own time-bound universe, there are Virtual particles.
Outside of the context of our time-bound universe, there are more than a few consistent models of universe-formation which involve a self-caused or self-causing universe.
This is bleeding-edge cosmology, and it’s currently still very hypothetical, but don’t knock it until you can show exactly why it is wrong.
Even granting the above premise, that infinite source does not require intelligence — so far as we can tell, anyway.
How do you know that it was God?
How would you know if you were wrong?
And if God won’t talk to the rest of us, and won’t tell you why he won’t talk to the rest of us, and won’t tell you how to convince us that he did in fact talk to you — well, I’m afraid that the most parsimonious conclusion for us is that God did not talk to you, and you simply heard… I don’t know what. A misinterpretation of apophenia? A delusion? A hallucination? A mental hiccup that you misunderstood? Something else?
What clear answer did you hear, and what convinced you that it was actually God?
And why can’t God teach us those words?
Owlmirror,
Do you really want to know if God is real?
Of course I’m real.
See? I’m implicitly real.
I really want to know why people think God is real.
Especially when their knowledge of basic science is so badly flawed.
I really want to know why so many humans live in a demon-haunted world.
So that’s a “No” then?
Since you haven’t provided any argument for God in the past month that hasn’t relied on a profound ignorance of biology, geology, chemistry, cosmology, logic, epistemology, mechanics, forensics, physics, et cetera, I am nearly entirely certain that you do not have a valid answer to the question of God’s existence.
Which is why my response is, “I will listen to reason and I will examine any new evidence that there might be, but I know that you don’t really know. So why do you think God is real?”
Now, to tie up a few loose ends:
Victor J. Stenger (via Owlmirror): “However, a simple example shows that this conclusion does not logically follow. Suppose that a lottery is conducted in which each entrant is assigned a number from one to one million. Each has kicked in a dollar and the winner gets the whole pot of $1 million. The number is selected and you are the lucky winner! Now it is possible that the whole thing was fixed and your mother chose the winning number. But absent any evidence for this, no one has the right to make that accusation. Yet that’s what the fine-tuning argument amounts to. Without any evidence, God is accused of fixing the lottery. Somebody had to win the lottery, and you lucked out. Similarly, if a universe was going to happen, some set of physical constants was going to be selected. The physical constants, randomly selected, could have been the ones we have. And they led to the form of life we have.”
How did he arrive at the million to one ratio? Is that the true number of possible universes, with all possible combinations of constants and conditions necessary for life? Or is it an arbitrary number? If arbitrary, why a million? Why not three? Why not 7,699? And what’s the point if the numbers don’t actually stand for any real data?
The analogy fails for another reason as well: No one “has to win” the lottery when it comes to universes. Any one of the (arbitrary) million universes could have been chosen, but only one will support life – the one that matches *your ticket*. If the universe matches anyone else’s ticket, it will not support life, so no one “wins”.
BTW, an observation: When someone claims there’s “no evidence” against their position, there usually is.
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Nick Gotts: “There are a number of NT references which say quite clearly it [hell] is a place of fiery torment.”
You know Nick, not everything in the bible is meant to be taken literally.
………………………………………..
Owlmirror: “Do we? Are you quite sure? Even within our own time-bound universe, there are Virtual particles. Outside of the context of our time-bound universe, there are more than a few consistent models of universe-formation which involve a self-caused or self-causing universe. This is bleeding-edge cosmology, and it’s currently still very hypothetical, but don’t knock it until you can show exactly why it is wrong.”
I find it particularly interesting that the equations physicists use to explain the universe(s) work better if such things as virtual particles, additional dimensions and parallel universes are figured in. Unseen, parallel dimensions and entities are expected from my perspective. Are they from yours?
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Owlmirror: “Given your already-demonstrated poor understanding of probability and cosmology, I doubt that you understand what that means.”
Statistics can be made to say anything. 90% of the people agree with that statement.
Another observation: Insults may help to win over an audience, or may make you feel better about yourself, but they do nothing to further the validity of your position.
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Owlmirror: “The molecules that lead to life are the same molecules that life already uses. If a source of those molecules arose, the pre-existing life would use those molecules for their own selves, and prevent a second abiogenesis event.”
Surely such pitfalls can be avoided in the lab.
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Ichthyic: “now then, let’s take a look at which Deities have “come and gone” over the last 5000 years, shall we?”
I was talking about Moses, the prophets, Jesus and the apostles, not generic “deities”. Moses, the prophets, Jesus and the apostles have stood the test of time while many deities (and scientific hypotheses) have not.
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Daniel Smith wrote:
Er, what’s the difference? And as for them ‘standing the test of time’, there are plenty of historians and archaeologists who doubt their existence and provide scholarly explanations for doing so.
I’m confident most of the proponents of the fallen religions said much the same thing about their own deities and holy figures.
Oh, in regards to you question (I know it was to Owlmirror, but I hope you don’t mind me having a shot at it), ‘do you really want to know if God is real?’, I think you’d have to explain which god you’re talking about.
I’m not exactly a biblical scholar, but I’ll say this:
If you’re choosing the Abrahamic god, then it’d depend on from which biblical era you mean, since he changes quite a bit as time goes on – one minute he creates the universe but is then (apparently) part of a pantheon and can be defeated by iron chariots. And he seems to be very, very angry and spends a lot of time doing horrible things to his so-called chosen people – when he’s not ordering them to do similarly horrible things to those who aren’t his chosen people, who he himself also does horrible things to from time to time, including making those non-chosen people do things (against their will) that will make the chosen people be horrible to them.
Then, after a while, he decides that he’s all remorseful and loving and forgiving and realises that, in order to forgive us for the sins he gave us the ability to do he’s going to send himself in the form of a man born to a virgin to teach some lessons (which most people will ignore 2000 years later) and then die horribly in such a way that will inspire many of his human-incarnation’s followers to want to kill many of his original followers for doing the killing that he wanted them to do in order to prove his point and be able to forgive humanity, which he couldn’t possibly have done otherwise.
Basically, Daniel, if that god exists, I wouldn’t want to know – because, based on your bible, above all else he wants to be worshipped.
If I was forced to worship him i’d be worshipping an insane monster – and it would be ‘forced’ because no honest, thoughtful, sane, decent person would choose to worship him. In fact, if it was shown your god exists, i’d probably kill myself because i’d rather be denied his presence than live in a world ruled by such a being.
Was that the god you meant?
And ignore the dangling question. Very well.
Um, it’s built into the analogy. A million numbers, a million dollars, remember? You did copy and paste the entire text of it yourself….
Nobody knows. But it’s a very large number for the sake of the argument, to emphasize that even if it is very unlikely, it still has a non-zero probability.
Says the guy who has no data at all.
The point that you haven’t quite understood is that in the scenario, the “lottery” keeps running. Universes expand and implode, and/or split off from each other. The “loser” universes will be empty of life. But if the constants can and do change, then if they change an arbitrarily large number of times, the probability that the change will result in a winning combination of constants increases.
Talk is cheap. If someone has evidence, let them present it.
I quite agree. Because the supernatural parts are entirely fictional. So are a large chunk of the non-supernatural parts.
Do you mean intelligent entities? Obviously not.
I agree. When a laboratory demonstrates chemical abiogenesis, will you agree that God is an unnecessary explanation?
Religious figures are superseded because cultures change over time. You say that “Moses” has stood the test of time; in what sense? No religious people anywhere make the sacrifices that Moses claimed that God wanted. Jews try to keep the laws of Moses, but some of them are no longer possible to keep. And Christians no longer keep most of them; some guy came along and said he had a dream, and all of the books of Moses were wiped away as binding laws, except for a few laws, here and there, and even those largely ignored. The prophets screamed and ranted that God wanted this or God wanted that. How have “the prophets” stood the test of time? You say “Jesus” has stood the test of time; how so? Few if any behave as he instructed; no-one really knows who he actually was. They just have an image of him built up inside their heads.
And as for scientific hypotheses — those that have been superseded, were superseded because of better evidence, from careful research.
Where is God, to present evidence of himself, to be researched?
Now to the “dangling” question:
Owlmirror: “So why do you think God is real?”
My reasons for believing in God I’m sure won’t impress you because, although the evidence is overwhelming in favor of something god-like being the source of the universe and life, you’ve shown no interest in it. Your mind is closed. So, although I have experienced his presence and known his influence in a multitude of ways, I’m quite sure that you’ll poo-poo all of that as well, (besides it’s all either subjective or circumstantial anyway) so why bother recounting any of it?
This is why I asked if you really wanted to know for yourself if God is real. God is best experienced personally. You can do that – if you want to. All you have to do is ask (and not the “I dare you” or “Show me you’re real in the next 30 seconds” kind of asking). In fact, I have an “experiment” for you:
If you want to know whether God is real or not, say this prayer every day for 1 month:
“God, if you’re real, show me so I can believe.”
That’s it. It takes about 5 seconds a day, 150 seconds total. If you really are sincere and truly want to know, by the end of the month you’ll have your answer.
Sorry. The evidence for God is not overwhelming. The evidence for God isn’t even whelming. The evidence for God isn’t.
My mind is open to reason and evidence. So far, you have shown neither.
Because it’s all you have left?
How do you know it was God’s presence that you experienced?
How do you know it was God’s influence?
How would you know if you were wrong?
Sigh…
Very well. You know what? I’ll post here, once a day, until the end of the month, those very words, just so that you know that I’m doing it.
However, I ask you to undertake an experiment yourself:
I just generated a random string of ASCII digits. I ran:
on one Unix server.
Then I ran:
on a different Unix box, and copied and pasted from one window to the other.
So now I have a file called randnum2, of 1024 ascii digits, with no line termination character.
If you don’t know what the md5sum and sha1sum algorithms are, I’m sure that you can find out on the web. Here are the outputs of those algorithms when run on my file:
The first digit of the file is ‘9’.
At the end of the month, I will post the full digit string.
Oh, and for the sake of clarity: “One month” means “August 23, 2008”. That’s actually 31 days, including today.
The experiment is for you to pray to the omniscient God to tell you the digits that follow that first ‘9’ in the string, and post those digits here before I post the full string. I will even accept a partial answer of at least 32 digits.
If that happens, you, and God, will certainly have my full attention.
If God does not tell you the digits, will you acknowledge that God does not answer prayer? After all, even if I am not “sincere” enough to get God to respond, surely you have that genuine sincerity?
Oh, and in-between praying, perhaps you could look up the terms “apophenia”, “confirmation bias”, and “selection effect”, and ponder how those psychological concepts might apply to you.
God, if you’re real, show me so I can believe.
Owlmirror: “The experiment is for you to pray to the omniscient God to tell you the digits that follow that first ‘9’ in the string, and post those digits here before I post the full string.”
God does not work that way. He’s not Santa Claus or a genie in a bottle waiting to grant your wishes, nor is he a dog trained to do tricks for you.
“If God does not tell you the digits, will you acknowledge that God does not answer prayer?”
If you ask me to do something and I refuse, does that mean I didn’t answer you? Obviously not. It does not mean I can’t do it, nor does it mean I’m not real, it just means I won’t jump through hoops for you. God is not a fortune teller. If that’s what you want, they’re in the yellow pages.
“Very well. You know what? I’ll post here, once a day, until the end of the month, those very words, just so that you know that I’m doing it.”
So long as you’re actually saying (and meaning) the words and not just posting them here. Otherwise don’t bother. If you REALLY want to know if God is real, he’ll reveal himself to you – and will do it in a way that will leave no doubt in your mind that he’s real. But know this: God does not work how we want him to, he works how he wants to. I hope you can understand the difference. He doesn’t make himself obvious, but he reveals himself to all those that seek him. That’s the key: “Seek and you shall find.” It’s one of the laws of God.
“Oh, and in-between praying, perhaps you could look up the terms “apophenia”, “confirmation bias”, and “selection effect”, and ponder how those psychological concepts might apply to you.”
These psychological concepts apply just as well to you (if not more so). Do you realize that? Your mind is completely closed to anything that challenges your naturalist atheistic views. You have a tendency to connect random data as confirmation of your views, no matter how inapplicable it might be. You pick and choose what to accept and what to reject as evidence based on your preconceived ideas and you tend to believe only that which confirms them. You don’t weigh the evidence on both sides and then make an informed decision, you reject out of hand all that contradicts your biased opinion and then claim there’s “no evidence” against your stance. IOW, your mind is made up. I’ve seen that in just the short time we’ve been debating here.
So I take it you don’t really think God can do it. OK, I’ll drop the daily prayer. Because if you don’t have faith in God’s ability and willingness to communicate real information, why should I?
This isn’t a trick. This isn’t a petty wish. I don’t gain any profit be getting proof of God’s omniscience. This is an experiment about reality — and you are saying that God does not want to show that he is real.
Fine by me.
But you have answered me. You have responded for more than a month, now. I take your reality for granted, precisely because you do communicate. You don’t answer everything, but that’s not the point: you answer enough to demonstrate that you a real, self-aware being.
You aren’t omniscient, so I don’t have the expectation that you will know everything. But you clearly know enough of the English language, and how computers work, to respond here.
You aren’t omnipotent, so I don’t have the expectation that you will answer at any time of the day or night. Like all humans, sometimes you read this post, and most of the time you’re busy doing other stuff.
But you claim that there’s an omniscient and omnipotent being around, who does know everything, and can answer at any time of the day or night.
And when I try to hold this being up to the same standards that any normal mortal human can easily meet (“Here’s some numbers. Tell that other person what these numbers are.”), you claim that this being “doesn’t work like that”.
Nuts to that.
If God is real, then God can speak for himself. Easily. Don’t give me that garbage about “God does not work how we want him to, he works how he wants to”, because you’re just making excuses for why an imaginary being wouldn’t talk. You could just as easily be talking about an idol of Zeus, or of Shiva. Or for that matter, a child’s teddy bear. “Well, he could talk if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to.” or “He only talks so I can hear him.” or “You just aren’t listening right.”
Bah. “Doesn’t work like that.” Doesn’t work like a real being, you mean.
I did once believe in God, long ago. I was raised religious; I prayed frequently.
But at some point, I realized that something was wrong. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally realized that God is an imaginary delusion. I wasn’t talking to a real being. I was talking to myself as if this imaginary being were real. And so was everyone else I knew who was religious.
And so are you.
(SIWOTI!)
Actually, if you claim something absolutely unprecedented, such as being able to make objects hover by pointing your finger at them, and then absolutely refuse to back up the claim by demonstrating it, then I think I would be entirely justified in saying that the claim was false.
And if you claim that there is a being that is invisible and intangible and able to speak but doesn’t, and knows everything but says and does nothing to demonstrate the slightest minuscule shred of a fraction of that knowledge…
I sure as hell am entirely justified in saying that the claim is false.
What evidence on both sides? You have provided no evidence whatsoever; the absolute very best that you’ve been able to do is to argue that some scientific evidence might, if you squinted at it carefully, and ignored a whole bunch of other evidence, and basic logic, might, maybe, sort of, suggest that something requiring intelligence had happened.
And then we pointed out your errors in logic, math, and science, and refuted your arguments.
My mind is always open to evidence and good reasoning.
Your mind, however, is closed, due to indoctrination.
I rest my case.
You lost your case.
http://www.nanonet.go.jp/english/mailmag/2004/files/011a.wmv
In other words, you’ve given up on rational argument. Well, I knew that already.
Oh, well.
Owlmirror, it’s obvious your mind is made up.
I posted the video to give you something to think about. It’s produced by the Japanese firm that’s trying to reverse engineer the bacterial flagellar motor in order to develop their own nanomotor. It’s not ID propaganda, they say nothing about origins in it. I’m just trying to jog your mind away from the comfortable position it’s in right now. I’m sure if you actually bothered to watch the video, you’d dismiss the incredible precision of this remarkable little nanomotor with a flippant retreat to the “selection working on variation” mechanism. Then your closed mind would be satisfied that you had “shut me down” and “answered every question” and you’d go right back to your happy place where there’s “no evidence” for God. In the meantime you’d have not thought at all about the origins of such a system. You’ll just be parroting the “it evolved from a pump” argument you’d heard used before – without any critical thought about the steps involved and whether they were realistic or not. Think about this for a moment: You’ll probably have devoted more time and energy researching the origins of Stonehenge that you will the bacterial flagella!
I’m curious though: Systems that originate through V+S are supposed to look “sloppy” and “thrown together”, yet this motor doesn’t look that way at all. It looks remarkably similar to the electric motors I work with every day (only much more advanced!). Why is that? Oh yeah, I forgot, “Variation and Selection”, that’s right.
Should I add that to your overwhelming list of explanations for all of life’s systems: “abiogenesis”, “chemistry” and “biology”?
I should hope not. Because real biotechnologists should be quite aware that reverse engineering something does not mean that it was engineered in the first place.
And what about your mind’s comfortable position?
No, I haven’t answered every question, because I’m not a biochemist.
But unlike you, I am willing to accept that knowing and understanding the science involved, with in-depth and comprehensive knowledge of biochemistry and microbiology, is necessary before the exact question of how the bacterial flagellum evolved can be addressed.
How about you? Are you going to take a course in biochemistry and/or microbiology so you can at the very least argue from slightly less profound ignorance?
And what about your own happy place, where anything and everything is “evidence” for God?
Hey, speaking of “anything and everything” and happy places, consider this: some of the bacteria that have flagella are absolutely deadly to humans… Vibrio cholera, Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7 — I guess God loves bacteria more than humans, huh? He wants them to be able to get to where they can kill us more easily! And on top of that, there are certainly more bacteria than humans in mass.
Are you still in your happy place?
And you have? You’re not a biochemist. You’re not a microbiologist. You have zero expertise in any biological or chemical field of research.
And even if you did have such expertise, the burden of proof would still be on you to demonstrate, with evidence, that bacteria and their flagella could not possibly have evolved, and must have been created. Come up with the damn evidence, and you will have advanced science. Until you do, you’re just spouting apologetics out of your arse, just like every other IDiot.
One more time: If the exact organic and biochemical sequences from chemicals to bacteria are clearly demonstrated, will you acknowledge that God is not necessary to explain life and its complexity?
And who the hell are you to talk about “realistic”, when you believe in a God that never ever demonstrates his reality?
The digit sequence is still on my hard drive. Pray to God for a few digits. Prove that you’re willing to put your damn indoctrination to the test. Push that brainwashing! And if God doesn’t come through, stop trying to pretend that God is real.
I’m reading Carl Zimmer’s Microcosm. So what the hell research are you doing, besides watching movies that you use to reinforce your psychological prejudices?
Bullshit. Once again: the processes and scale involved are completely different. Your motors are the results of metal ores being dug up from the ground, melted, purified, poured into molds or extruded into wires, or otherwise machined, and all that crap that I’m sure you already know very well. There are no non-human processes that do that, or anything like that.
The flagellum motor is made up of organic chemicals; proteins. They form the way they do because of their shapes. They have the shapes they do because certain atoms just connect in certain ways. Learn organic chemistry to find out the details.
Hey, you want to play at being a biochemist? Here’s a site where protein folding is turned into a game. Go nuts.
http://fold.it/
Or don’t go nuts. But stop trying to pretend that you know anything about the way science works, at the very least.
Firstly:
Debate is a pointless format. Matching argumentative skills against scientific knowledge is like seeing which is yellower: a banana or a Mozart opera.
I don’t care HOW confident I am in ANY of the knowledge I posses, I would not have wanted to debate somebody like Hitler over it! He was probably one of the best speakers, motivators and had the best argumentative skills of anyone in recent history. Even if he knew nothing of Biology, I’m pretty sure he would have kicked PZ, RD and the rest all over the room in a debate. BUT!!!: That would not have meant that everything his opponent argued was WRONG.
Secondly:
I hate getting personal, but that picture of Vox with the burning sword… hehe! I’m sorry, but he’s all buffed and mean… I found myself trying to think of just one, single guy that I have met who puts that much time and effort into his appearance, and who ISN’T dumb as a stump. I couldn’t. Please… beefcake atheists… prove me wrong! I would, however, find it very reassuring if the rest of you were also slightly pudgy… then I could tell my wife it was because of my IQ and that the beer was blameless.
Owlmirror: “demonstrate, with evidence, that bacteria and their flagella could not possibly have evolved, and must have been created”
Is this the standard of proof you required for Stonehenge? Did you have to see evidence that Stonehenge “could not possibly” be a natural organization of stones before you decided it was built by intelligence? Because, no matter how far-fetched it may be, Stonehenge could have “possibly” (keyword) been organized by some freakish natural phenomena. Proving the negative – that something is impossible – is nearly impossible itself because there’s always a possibility that we don’t know all the variables.
“If the exact organic and biochemical sequences from chemicals to bacteria are clearly demonstrated, will you acknowledge that God is not necessary to explain life and its complexity?”
Yes I will. But they must be “exact” and “clearly demonstrated”.
“Your motors are the results of metal ores being dug up from the ground, melted, purified, poured into molds or extruded into wires, or otherwise machined, and all that crap that I’m sure you already know very well. There are no non-human processes that do that, or anything like that.”
There are non-human processes that dig up the earth, melt ores, magnetize, “machine” (by shearing or weathering) and extrude (by pressure) various raw materials. But just as there are no natural forces that can organize these raw materials into a functioning motor, there are also no known natural mechanisms (outside of living things) that can take raw atoms and build a flagellar motor out of them. There are also no known natural mechanisms (within living things) that have been *clearly demonstrated* as capable of building a flagellar motor from some other existing non-flagellar arrangement of atoms.
“The flagellum motor is made up of organic chemicals; proteins. They form the way they do because of their shapes. They have the shapes they do because certain atoms just connect in certain ways. Learn organic chemistry to find out the details.”
And again your “explanation” explains nothing. You might as well say “They’re the way they are because that’s the way they are.”
“I’m reading Carl Zimmer’s Microcosm. So what the hell research are you doing, besides watching movies that you use to reinforce your psychological prejudices?”
I’ve been reading up on this stuff too. I’ve probably read more papers on biochemistry and DNA in the last year than you have. I’ve found out a lot about the incredible organization of this most unusual molecule. I find it especially interesting that the strands of DNA actually code both ways – so that one code overlaps another. Was that a prediction of naturalism? If so, show me where it was predicted before it was discovered?
“And who the hell are you to talk about “realistic”, when you believe in a God that never ever demonstrates his reality?”
He’s demonstrated his reality to me many times.
“The digit sequence is still on my hard drive. Pray to God for a few digits. Prove that you’re willing to put your damn indoctrination to the test. Push that brainwashing! And if God doesn’t come through, stop trying to pretend that God is real.”
Even Jesus knew better than to do this (and he had a rather “special” relationship with God). “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”, were his exact words. Why should I think myself above him?
“But stop trying to pretend that you know anything about the way science works, at the very least.”
I was told, (by an actual scientist) that when a true scientist comes up with an idea or hypothesis he does everything he can to destroy it. If it stands, it’s worthwhile. I come to places like this to do just that. I know that I’m not the most objective person when it comes to my own personal beliefs, so I present them in a hostile place like this to see how they do. Contrary to what you may think, my personal beliefs have changed much over the years because of this. I’ve shed a lot of falsehoods I was taught and I’ve gained insights I’d have never gained by studying on my own. I’m proud to say that there’s no evidence I’ve shied away from examining. At first I was reluctant to hear what science had discovered, but the more I delved in, the less scary it got. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that opinions don’t matter much – just evidence. Five scientists can look at the same evidence and draw five different conclusions. I see now that much of what science has uncovered in no way contradicts my beliefs – and what little does, forces me to re-evaluate what I believe. So far, you’ve given me no solid evidence against my position – in fact your lack of convincing evidence for abiogenesis has reinforced it. Of course you don’t really try very hard.
So let me ask you, what are you doing to destroy *your* ideas?
Nuts. Show the freakish phenomena that does anything like create anything like Stonehenge. And by “anything like”, I don’t mean glacial erratics, I mean regular stone blocks in a ring with stone lintels. Work out the forces involved. Do the physics. Cross-reference with known glacial activity. Show all work.
Yet you seem quite confident in asserting the negative; that is, that life could not possibly have evolved from organic chemicals over billions of years.
Well, there’s some epistemological hope for you yet.
I also specified “purified”, which I noticed you glibly skip over. But this is still bull-puckey. There’s nothing that can assemble purified metals (or alloys) with regular shapes or in flat sheets, or in wires that then are then coiled around other pieces, and so on.
And if there were anything that could even create something close to an assemblage of purified metals in regular shapes, it would cast doubt on whether some given machine made of such metals, such as a motor,(or for that matter, a watch), was in fact made by humans or was generated naturally.
So what?
This is either completely garbled or obviously false (given that that is exactly what the generation of the flagellar motor is; the building of said motor from existing proteins which are not yet part of the flagellum). What are you trying to say?
At some point, all of science, and all knowledge does have limits. Everything that we know, we know from what can be shown to be true, or rather, can be demonstrated to not be wrong. But at some point, there is no way whatsoever to show anything further about it.
I mean, for example, why should π be a transcendent number that starts out 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 and keeps going? Why those digits? Why not different ones? Why are the specific prime numbers in fact those specific numbers? Why do two points define a line, and three a plane, and so on? Why do the internal angles of a triangle always sum to the same number that is equal to the number of degrees in a flat angle? We can show them to be provably true; we cannot show why they are true.
At some point, everything is indeed the way it is because that’s the way it is. Science and math and logic can get us so far, but no farther. We can always keep digging, and try and find out how things might be different, or how things are indeed the result of something deeper. But there is, or will be, a point where there’s no way to dig deeper.
And after that philosophical discursion, I paraphrase my earlier point: If you want to learn why proteins have the shapes they do as best as we can discover at this point in time, learn organic chemistry.
Please post your reading list, then.
However, reading papers is insufficient. Unless you have actually performed experiments — and I know that you have not — that demonstrate the impossibility of the evolution of flagella, you have no more actual knowledge of the impossibility of the evolution of flagella than anyone else.
You know, Michael Behe is an actual Ph.D biochemist. He’s the one that is probably the most responsible for propagandizing the idea that flagella could not have evolved. Why don’t you ask him what research he has planned to to demonstrate this hypothesis, and post it here? I would be absolutely fascinated to read his response.
I’m not sure whether it was or was not a prediction of naturalism. However, given that it wasn’t a prediction of “ID”, I’m not sure why it matters if it was. Nevertheless, it is consistent with naturalism — because naturalism is consistent with everything that is demonstrated with evidence.
How do you know?
How would you know if you were wrong?
Is that the same Jesus who said things like these?
“For humans this is impossible, but for God all things are possible ”
“The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”
“Everything is possible for the person who believes.”
So was Jesus lying about what was possible, or was he just a hypocrite?
Because Jesus is dead (and might never have even existed), and you’re not? Because you don’t actually know that Jesus actually said that, or said anything at all? Because you don’t know Jesus personally, and have no way of knowing whether he actually knew anything about God? Because everything you think you know about Jesus comes from stories and hearsay told by other people, not from your own actual direct experience? Because Jesus, even if he was a real human, and did say the phrases reported in the bible cited above, was either a liar or a hypocrite?
Liar. Your pride is false, because you’ve shied away from examining the claims of your religion.
For pity’s sake! That is a reference to the principle of falsifiability, just as David Marjanović was articulating above, at #558:
If you were wrong,
how would you know?
Sheesh!
Um, no. If the evidence is strong and convincing, there are not that many conclusions. The only way you would get that many conclusions is if the evidence is sufficiently weak or problematic as to be, well, inconclusive.
Or the five scientists are not very good at what they do. We should not eliminate incompetence as a possibility, given the demonstrable incompetence of “ID” advocates.
I’m not the one working on the problem of abiogenesis, as I have repeatedly stated, nor have I the expertise to demonstrate it, as I have also repeatedly stated.
Why don’t you write to the laboratories that are working on the problem, and tell them that they “don’t really try very hard”, you snide and arrogant git.
I told you I was religious, once.
I destroyed my belief in the idea of the reality of any sort of personal and caring God or Gods.
Just like most scientists do.
When will you do the same?
Owlmirror: “Show the freakish phenomena that does anything like create anything like Stonehenge. And by “anything like”, I don’t mean glacial erratics, I mean regular stone blocks in a ring with stone lintels. Work out the forces involved. Do the physics. Cross-reference with known glacial activity. Show all work.”
Show the freakish phenomena that does anything like create anything like *coding DNA*. And by “anything like”, I don’t mean *replicating peptides*, I mean regular *chemical bases* in a *double helix* with *a decoding ribosome*. Work out the forces involved. Do the physics. Cross-reference with known *molecular* activity. Show all work.
Show the freakish phenomena that does anything like create anything like a *flagellar motor*. And by “anything like”, I don’t mean *a molecular pump*, I mean regular *proteins* arranged to form a *rotor*, a *stator*, *bearings*, *shaft*, *coupling*, and a *linear propeller mechanism* that is *able to propel a bacteria around and reverse direction instantly while reaching speeds of 80,000 rpm*. Work out the forces involved. Do the physics. Cross-reference with known *molecular* activity. Show all work.
No appeals to fully functional systems in living organisms allowed. We are talking about *origins* here. Show me the exact sequence of events involved in the *origin* of DNA or a flagellar motor and the clearly demonstrated mechanism for each step.
“There’s nothing that can assemble purified metals (or alloys) with regular shapes or in flat sheets, or in wires that then are then coiled around other pieces, and so on.”
Agreed. While there are many natural mechanisms that can do part of the job, it’s the *assembly* of such ingredients *for function* that is beyond the scope of such mechanisms. Now, the chemicals that form DNA, RNA, amino acids, proteins, cells, etc. have natural attractions and repellents, but that’s *not enough* to assemble these chemicals *for function*. It may be enough for them to bind and repel each other, but without some form of guidance, they have *no reason* to start assembling themselves together in order to encode and decode information, or to gather amino acids and feed them into an assembler that constructs long chains out of them that fold up into specific shapes useful for precise functions such as motors, pumps, power plants, eyes, ears, brains, etc. Just putting these chemicals together and allowing them to bump into each other for millions of years is not enough to create functioning systems out of them. Such a position is wholly without merit.
Now what’s funny is that in both cases – Stonehenge and flagellar motors – you claim that the onus is on me to prove my argument. One the one hand, I have to provide exact calculations showing how natural forces *could have* produced Stonehenge, and in the other I have to prove that it’s *impossible* for flagellar motors to evolve by natural forces. So, whether arguing for natural forces or against them, I must provide all the evidence, while you provide… what? Nothing?
Daniel,
Owlmirror is using a high-falutin’ way to tell you to at least show how your claims don’t contradict both common sense and current scientific understanding, rather than just relying on naked ad-hoc assertions.
Obviously, DNA itself.
Obviously, the DNA → RNA transcription → protein generation (etc) process itself.
I’m not the one claiming that it is impossible for these things to have arisen by natural selection, you are.
You do the work.
The burden of proof is on you to learn enough molecular biology to demonstrate your claim that it’s “not enough”. You are arguing from ignorance, not evidence.
Really, you say that you’ve been reading up on DNA. Where are you getting, from that reading, that their natural attraction/repulsion is “not enough” to assemble the chemicals for “function”?
Again, what is your reading list?
I don’t have to provide anything because I’m not the one making the extraordinary claims. And both claims are indeed extraordinary.
I am arguing that the very process of evidence-based science itself, the one that you yourself argued as demanding that the scientist try to “destroy” their own ideas, demands that you try and destroy your own ideas.
How do you know that it’s impossible for organic chemicals to self-assemble to DNA, RNA, and proteins, in a chemical process that goes back billions of years?
How do you know that it is possible for giant stone blocks to self-assemble into a giant ring of blocks with lintels?
How would you know if you were wrong?
Until and unless you provide evidence to back up your claims, I am simply repeating that which is known from mainstream scientific consensus.
Daniel. You’re not arguing the pro and con sides of the same question. So stop pretending you are, and stop pretending that you’re being treated unfairly over it.
What you’re doing is similar to arguing the following two points:
As Owlmirror said, you are the one attempting to make science history. Can you explain why you are not then the one to bear the responsibility of providing evidence to support your world-changing assertions?
These are the type of answers I expected.
What created DNA?
“Why DNA of course!”
More of the same.
What created God?
“God doesn’t need to be created. He’s special.”
Why doesn’t God provide testable evidence of his existence? Why doesn’t God talk?
“Oh, God doesn’t jump through hoops. And Jesus said not to test God, even though he also said that with faith all things are possible, but we don’t talk about contradictions and inconsistencies in the bible.”
How do you know the bible is true?
“Because God wrote it, and God never lies.”
How do you know God never lies if God never talks?
[and so on… right back around in a big old circle.]
Yeah, more of the same all right.
Getting back to actual, testable science:
I was reminded of something by David Marjanović’s comment #697 above.
In Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale, he mentions Spiegelman’s Monster, which is described more fully, here:
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/PX/Views/Exhibit/narrative/monster.html
The point being, once again, that our entire understanding of RNA is as a chemical that replicates, and can evolve as it replicates because even its tiny viral replication does have variants.
And there’s also lots of very tiny DNA and RNA sequences, and weirder organic chemicals, that also replicate:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/subcellular.html
Life is made of chemicals, and chemicals are inherently capable of weird things, including replication. That’s what the evidence of biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and organic chemistry shows.
Owlmirror: “Life is made of chemicals, and chemicals are inherently capable of weird things, including replication. That’s what the evidence of biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and organic chemistry shows.”
It’s my observation that naturalism looks feasible from afar, but when it comes to details it absolutely breaks down. “weird things, including replication” is not a detailed mechanism. It is however, par for the course as far as your explanations go.
BTW, for a person who claims to have once been religious, you don’t exhibit much of an understanding for the basics of Christianity.
The details are in the actual scientific disciplines. David Marjanović (who is far more educated in biology and other disciplines than I am) describes some of them; the others are in the papers and textbooks, many freely available in the Internet or at your library. There’s also the websites investigating the chemical origins of life, that I pasted above. I will admit that not all of the details are known at this point in time. But the known details can only be discovered by buckling down and studying and educating yourself with the known published material, and the unknown details can only be discovered by advancing science by examining the biochemicals and organisms themselves. You have given very little sign that you have done any studying at all; I will repeat again my request to see your reading list.
And, really, you have no cause to complain about lack of detail when you can provide none yourself.
My explanations have been an attempt to address the fact that your arguments are inherently flawed in their basic approach to science, even without me knowing the biochemical details to provide a more science-based and detailed refutation. Because if you get the basics wrong, you’re not going to get anything right.
Speaking of basics…
Religion, I have found, is more about emotions than about reason. Do you remember exactly how and why you felt about something that you no longer care for, or about not liking something that you now like? I have been trying to remember how I felt when I was religious, and the memories have largely faded. But as best as I can recall, it was largely what I have already repeatedly accused you of doing: I accepted, without question, certain things told to me by my parents, peers, friends, parents’ friends, and religious teachers, and I repeated them to myself and to others. Sometimes, I made up my own excuses for the disparity between religion and science. I was indoctrinated.
Looking back at those things now, I cannot easily explain why I believed those things, except, perhaps, that they were told in that particular tone-of-voice that means “This Is Very, Very Important”. I’ve also noticed that religious people try to allude to this tone-of-voice by capitalizing words, like I just did — and as another example, “light” has several real-world definitions, and so does the word “way”, but “Jesus Is The Light And The Way” is meant to convey an emotional state and a particularly emotional voice that is meant to assert an otherworldly concept that has little or nothing to do with the conventional, real-world meanings of those words.
Which is a roundabout way of getting to my real point: I do understand the basics of Christianity, as religious doctrine. I simply currently find them to be obviously absolutely absurd, internally inconsistent (and occasionally utterly contradictory), and with no basis in reality. And I am trying, admittedly with occasional rudeness and browbeating, to convey that sense of obvious absurdity and internal contradiction.
PS: This is not rude at all:
http://ebonmusings.org/atheism/burningbush.html
Owlmirror: “I accepted, without question, certain things told to me by my parents, peers, friends, parents’ friends, and religious teachers, and I repeated them to myself and to others. Sometimes, I made up my own excuses for the disparity between religion and science. I was indoctrinated.”
I did that too – as a child. As I got older, I rejected religion, but returned to it of my own accord. I did so – not because I’d been told something was true – but because I really wanted to know. I arrived at my decision rationally – without any emotion whatsoever. It was only after I had made that decision that God began revealing himself to me. That opened up a whole new world for me.
“You have given very little sign that you have done any studying at all; I will repeat again my request to see your reading list.”
I have a stack of papers I’ve printed out from the ENCODE project. It’s about 2″ thick and I started to go through and list all the URLs but I don’t have that kind of time.
If you’re really interested, go to http://www.genome.org and search for articles with “ENCODE” in the title, it’ll give you an idea of the type of papers I’ve read from there. (I didn’t read all of them obviously, but I’ve read about 20 of them):
Here’s one of those papers:
http://genome.cshlp.org/cgi/reprint/17/6/818
Here’s some others I’ve recently read:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=345072
http://emb-magazine.bme.uconn.edu/EMB_Main/Past_Issues/2006January/Gonzalez.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/7/66
http://genomebiology.com/content/pdf/gb-2002-3-12-research0084.pdf
http://www.asm.org/ASM/files/ccLibraryFiles/Filename/000000003179/znw00707000335.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/gb-2001-2-6-reviews0005.pdf
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/pimm/publications/pimmreprints/56_TREE_1988.pdf
I’m not going to post any more right now because I have a life. You should get an idea of some of what I’ve been looking at lately from these links.
Oh?
You say: “without any emotion whatsoever”. Yet “Wanting to know” implies that there was at least the emotion of curiosity.
What other emotional events occurred around the time that you “wanted to know” that God was real, that you are not telling here?
Interestingly, there’s another religious man who comments here, who is adamant that his religious conversion experience was, and I quote: “I don’t think it was a rational experience”
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/now_blind_in_two_senses.php#comment-786860
Of course, his description reminded me of other sudden conversion events, which in turn reminded me that temporal lobe epilepsy and stimulation has been associated with the sensation of an invisible presence, and with religious hallucinations.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbraintrans.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml
The fact that Heddle (from the first link posted) went with his wife to church also reminded me of another tidbit of information: The hormone oxytocin is associated with love and social bonding, so it certainly seems plausible the he had quite a lot of oxytocin in his brain at the time. But oxytocin has also been found to make people more trusting, and have poorer judgment, and perhaps more gullible as well:
http://www.iew.unizh.ch/home/kosfeld/ottruste.html
And since I was looking at both of these links at the same time, I noticed the story of the woman who had a temporal lobe incident while giving birth, and confabulated that her child was in fact the baby Jesus. I then remembered that birth is also associated with a flood of oxytocin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin
Hm. Might oxytocin affect the temporal lobe?
Anyway, all of that is just speculation. Yet it is at least potentially testable speculation. Do the sensations induced in the temporal lobe correlate with the feelings of religiosity? Do loving couples, their brains brimming with oxytocin, gravitate more easily towards religion, and give themselves over to trusting a preacher or a religious work? Cults very often work by isolating new members, and enforcing emotional relationships with them, and often directly with the cult leader. Are they clumsily but cleverly exploiting preexisting neurochemical vulnerabilities in humans?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_bombing
Just out of curiosity, were you forming a new relationship with someone at the same time that you were exploring religion?
Thanks, by the way, for the genetics links. It will take me some time to review them, of course.
One of the sayings that we have in the afterlife is: “Life is wasted on the living.”
Owlmirror: “”Wanting to know” implies that there was at least the emotion of curiosity.”
I’ve never considered curiosity an emotion. If it is, then I guess all of science is based on emotion – for what part of science was not born out of curiosity?
“What other emotional events occurred around the time that you “wanted to know” that God was real, that you are not telling here?”
Many events were happening at the time, do you want me to try to recount every one of them for you? (Even if you do, I won’t be able to remember all of them). Consider this: I’ve believed steadily for 28 years now – during which time I’ve probably experienced every sort of emotion that can be encountered. No emotion (or associated chemical reaction) has changed my faith. Your attempts to make belief in God seem irrational and emotional doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny (at least not in my case).
Consider this also: There is nothing in this universe that is not consistent with the belief in a creator God. If one considers the amount of *planning* that would be necessary to put everything in place in order for the earth to bring forth life, with its numerous complex systems, one can scarcely *not* believe an infinite intelligence is behind it all.
Your belief – that the earth’s proclivity for life and its myriads of living systems are the result of accidental happenstance weeded through a “lucky” filter – is the irrational position.
Curiosity inspires science, but science itself is based on the hard work of studying the real world, and presenting the evidence of the real world.
As noted above, it is a matter of good and proper principle to keep in mind falsifiability when doing so; to ask “If I were wrong, how would I know?”; to try and destroy any hypothesis by making sure that additional phenomena are accounted for; to maintain parsimony by eliminating the unnecessary.
How do you know?
How would you know if you were wrong?
Given that you reject close scrutiny of your own epistemology, I would say that your emotions and irrationality have not yet been put to the ultimate test.
And close scrutiny of how religious belief forms has not been put to the test more generally, either. But I think it is at least potentially testable.
Nothing except the lack of clear communication from that alleged creator God.
Since there is no evidence whatsoever that any planning took place, nor that any planning was necessary per se, your statement has the logical fallacy of assuming its own conclusion.
You know, your own words, over the past month-and-a-half now, have firmly convinced me that even if there is a real and intelligent creator God, you are not in communication with that God, but rather, are utterly delusional on that point. Because, you see, if there were a real and intelligent creator God, he would have long before this point convinced you, either directly, or by inspiration, or whatever other mysterious means it uses to communicate, that your arguments are all terrible, and bear no logical weight whatsoever.
At the very least, he would have inspired you to realize that the burden of actual evidence-based proof of your ideas is indeed on you to provide.
Say, maybe I’m actually the vehicle of conveying that point to you. Maybe it’s God’s ineffable will that I’m supposed to point out, time and again, that you are wrong at the very basis of your assumptions. Maybe God intends for me to humble you by refuting your confused arguments.
Nah.
As I keep saying, I have no interest in reasoned debate.
The cracker-lovers, on the other hand, amuse Me enormously with their screams and threats.
If one considers the amount of *planning* that would be necessary to put everything in place in order for the earth to bring forth life, with its numerous complex systems, one can scarcely *not* believe an infinite intelligence is behind it all.
Informed people have not only considered it but analyzed it in detail, and have found that no planning was necessary because there are unplanned processes that could have produced everything we have observed. Of course one can scarcely believe that if one is ignorant of the entire body of painstaking scientific research by thousands upon thousands of scientists involved in this undertaking.
An illustration about the necessity of planning:
Suppose that someone handed you thousands of parts that only fit together one way … but which, if put together just right, form a beautiful object. One can scarcely not believe that it took great planning to produce these carefully matched parts.
But in this case, one would be wrong, because the beautiful object is a glass vase that has shattered into thousands of fragments.
That’s one natural process that can create the impression of planning, but it’s not the only one … biological evolution, where many organisms co-evolve, so that they are always matched to each other, over vast periods of time is another.
tm:
Paul W.’s comments on this thread are well worth reading, if you haven’t already (and they’re not even necessarily PW at his best :)).
Whoa, this Daniel Smith cretin has been going at it continuously in this thread for almost 7 weeks? That must be some sort of record. And it’s with the same idiotic argument from incredulity on Aug 2 as he was making on Jun 15.
Thanks, SC; I had already decided to start a fresh slate with Paul, but your recommendation helps.
P.S. You should email trewth_seeker at (Houyhnhnm) some time.
Whoa, this Daniel Smith cretin has been going at it continuously in this thread for almost 7 weeks?
Another reason Owlmirror rocks.
Thanks, SC; I had already decided to start a fresh slate with Paul, but your recommendation helps.
I know – just being a facilitator :). There’s another recent thread on which his comments were so interesting and insightful that I saved them – I’ll try to locate it. The only other occasion on which I have done so was Damian’s pasting of the ethics chapter, which isn’t the same thing. Paul is impressive.
P.S. You should email
I will.
Damian’s pasting of the ethics chapter, which isn’t the same thing. Paul is impressive.
That came out all wrong! Damian’s totally impressive! Sorry, Damian!
truth machine: “Informed people have not only considered it but analyzed it in detail, and have found that no planning was necessary because there are unplanned processes that could have produced everything we have observed. Of course one can scarcely believe that if one is ignorant of the entire body of painstaking scientific research by thousands upon thousands of scientists involved in this undertaking.”
1) How do you know any natural process is “unplanned”?
2) I’m not ignorant of the entire body of scientific work that’s been done, though I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s out there. But why don’t you point me to some specific paper you think bolsters your point and we’ll discuss it.
truth machine: “An illustration about the necessity of planning: Suppose that someone handed you thousands of parts that only fit together one way … but which, if put together just right, form a beautiful object. One can scarcely not believe that it took great planning to produce these carefully matched parts. But in this case, one would be wrong, because the beautiful object is a glass vase that has shattered into thousands of fragments. That’s one natural process that can create the impression of planning, but it’s not the only one … biological evolution, where many organisms co-evolve, so that they are always matched to each other, over vast periods of time is another.”
It’s not the “taking apart” of a functioning system we’re worried about, it’s the “putting together”. Show me a natural process that can re-assemble a broken vase and you’ll be onto something. (Because I’ve already got a tested mechanism that can be observed putting broken vases back together.)
Owlmirror: “How do you know?”
I know because I’ve examined the evidence and found that it favors an intelligent source for life (and everything else).
Owlmirror: “How would you know if you were wrong?”
1) You (or someone like you) would be able to present convincing evidence that would clearly contradict my beliefs.
2) I’d look at the evidence and find that it favored a different interpretation.
So far, neither has happened.
Owlmirror: “Given that you reject close scrutiny of your own epistemology…”
When have I done that?
Owlmirror: “your arguments are all terrible, and bear no logical weight whatsoever… the burden of actual evidence-based proof of your ideas is indeed on you to provide.”
And I have provided evidence:
1) There is not (yet) one functioning system in life whose *origin* you (or anyone else) has been able to reconstruct a detailed natural pathway complete with precursors.
2) What separates life’s systems from the non-living materials of which they are made is the same thing that separates man’s designs from the raw materials from which they are made – Organization for Function.
3) There is no known mechanism that has been *observed* organizing materials for function other than intelligent intervention. (You agreed whole heartedly BTW – Stonehenge, electric motors, cars, etc.)
4) Life is full of systems analogous to man’s inventions and that defy natural explanations – motors, pumps, electrical circuits, CPUs, fuel cells, assembly lines, copiers, etc.
Now, your sole argument against all that is that chemicals have natural properties that allow them to construct themselves into various shapes and even to replicate, (although David Marjanović clearly stated that replicating peptides had nothing to do with abiogenesis in comment #558: “self-replicating peptides don’t matter, because they don’t occur in organisms.”). Your argument is no weightier than my natural argument for Stonehenge. I can clearly show that there are many natural mechanisms that can create and even partially assemble something like Stonehenge, yet the *precise organization* into an upright bridged circle and the precise rectangular shape of the stones is enough for you to reject the power of my natural mechanisms.
Life is built of systems much more precise and complex than Stonehenge.
You want to argue that I’m ignorant, and that’s true to a point, but I’ve been reading the literature, I’ve been going from place to place, challenging people just like you on this, people with far more education than my own, and have never received a plausible explanation for the origin of *one* of life’s systems. All I get are fuzzy, weak explanations and exhortations to “go learn more”. Now, I’ll agree I need to learn more, but why can’t people who claim to have already learned these things provide one plausible convincing explanation? “Biology”, “Abiogenesis”, “Chemistry” and “Natural selection and lot’s of time” just don’t cut it for me.
So how about this: Pick a system – any system – for whose origin you think science has provided a detailed, plausible natural pathway – including a plausible precursor – and we’ll discuss it.
It occurs to me, by the way, that while you may well read scientific papers on genomes and genetics, you are not an expert in those fields. And that’s kind of the problem: The papers are peer-reviewed, not “general public” reviewed. The editors and reviewers all have expertise in genetics, as well as all of the unstated basic knowledge that genetics is built on, such as organic chemistry and molecular biology, which, I hope you have not forgotten, I continue to urge to to familiarize yourself with if you wish to make some sweeping gneralizations about how DNA arose.
Really, it’s terribly arrogant of you to think that you can just do that without having studied that basic knowledge.
And, oddly enough, not one single expert in genetics has published anything stating that DNA could not possibly have arisen by the chance interaction of simpler molecules, along with providing the precise evidence for why.
I wonder why that might be?
And what of the abiogenesis research laboratories pointed to above? Why do you ignore them, and the scientific work that they have made available?
Here, a whole page of papers from one of the links above:
http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/publications.html
Frex:
Hanczyc, MM, Fujikawa, SM, Szostak, JW. Experimental models of primitive cellular compartments: encapsulation, growth, and division. Science. 2003 Oct 24; 302: 618-622. PDF
Hm. Why do you need “convincing evidence” against your beliefs when you are unable to provide “convincing evidence” for your beliefs?
Or to put it another way, given that the most parsimonious explanation of your beliefs is that they are not correct, why do you need for them to be contradicted?
What is “convincing evidence”, anyway?
Every time you evade the question of how you know that what you think is evidence for God is in fact God, given that by your own admission, God refuses to be tested directly.
You stated, at #726 above, that “although I have experienced his presence and known his influence in a multitude of ways, I’m quite sure that you’ll poo-poo all of that as well, (besides it’s all either subjective or circumstantial anyway)”.
I note that that statement contains the confession that it was “subjective or circumstantial”, which leads me to suspect that the real reason you don’t go into detail is that you realize, at some level, that it is utterly unconvincing; that if you heard similar ancedotes from someone else of a different religion, it certainly would not convince you that that religion was true; that that person’s God or religious experiences were real.
Is my suspicion incorrect? If someone told you of similar “subjective or circumstantial” experiences of Shiva, say, would you convert to Hinduism? Or if you heard experiences like that of Allah, to Islam?
Dude. That’s not evidence. That’s absence of evidence.
And unlike the absence of evidence for your God, the inference that evidence can at some point be found is consistent with the existing evidence of chemistry.
That is, you simply assert that God simply refuses to communicate directly. Since God refuses to communicate directly, you have no way of determining if it is in fact true that God refuses directly, or that God does not exist. The most parsimonious explanation is simply that God does not exist.
On the other hand, all of the chemistry of life operates in testable ways; it is simply a matter of figuring out which testable chemical reactions can lead to the combination of reproduction and metabolism — both of which are chemical reactions themselves.
I agreed whole-heartedly for macroscopic objects.
If you need for me to state it explicitly once again, I insist that organic chemistry has indeed been observed to organize molecules of organic chemicals “for function” — because that is exactly what life itself is.
They do not defy natural explanation. They are ubiquitous in natural living organisms, and they are all organic chemicals. The best explanation is the abiogenesis hypothesis and the theory of evolution.
Which they do. As you would understand if you went and actually learned the actual biochemistry.
You most certainly cannot.
Wait, wait, wait. I’ve already told you that I’m not a biochemist or a molecular biologist. All that I can do is point out the flaws in your basic approach. You don’t need to challenge me, you need to discuss this with an actual expert.
Such as, for example, the ones doing the actual abiogenesis research. Whose research I pointed to, yet again, above.
You know, that reminds me of a point that I wanted to return to: You spoke of scientists trying to “destroy” their hypotheses. Well, that is exactly what the abiogenesis researchers are in fact trying to do! They are the ones working with the different chemicals in the different environments and conditions, and publishing the results. They are showing what can work, and what cannot.
So what are you doing to demonstrate that all of their efforts are futile? Besides just saying so, I mean? What are you doing to destroy your own idea of intelligent design?
Oh, and you probably want to run your Stonehenge ideas past an actual geologist.
Why not? What part is “implausible”? What part isn’t convincing?
You’ve been looking at papers on genetics, but what have you read about evolution itself?
And what exactly do you mean by a “system”, here?
How do you know any natural process is “unplanned”?
I didn’t say I know that, MORON. Try to learn to read and to comprehend. I said that planning isn’t necessary. are you really SO FUCKING STUPID that you can’t understand the difference between something not being necessary and something having been proven not to have occurred? It was YOUR claim that planning is NECESSARY; but the evidence shows that it isn’t. Your question, which inverts the burden of proof, indicates that you’re STUPID or DISHONEST — which is it?
I’m not ignorant of the entire body of scientific work that’s been done, though I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s out there But why don’t you point me to some specific paper you think bolsters your point and we’ll discuss it.
Don’t be an UTTER ASS, and read again what I wrote and try to UNDERSTAND it. Although for you to have made it this far through this thread with so many people making these same basic points and you still not getting it, one can scarcely believe that you aren’t a FUNDAMENTALLY DISHONEST PERSON.
It’s not the “taking apart” of a functioning system we’re worried about, it’s the “putting together”. Show me a natural process that can re-assemble a broken vase and you’ll be onto something. (Because I’ve already got a tested mechanism that can be observed putting broken vases back together.)
YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON. The discussion isn’t about putting broken vases together. I suggested that as ANOTHER CASE where there’s APPARENT planning but no REAL planning. The point was about EVOLUTION, which is a process that produces results that APPEAR to be planned but aren’t (or at least don’t NEED to be, because evolution can do the job). The way you focused on breaking, which wasn’t the point, and ignored evolution, which was, indicates that you are a DISHONEST GIT.
I can clearly show that there are many natural mechanisms that can create and even partially assemble something like Stonehenge
You’re a LIAR, and a DISHONEST ASS who ignored Owlmirror’s “we can actually analyze the evidence in the stones and figure out the quarry that they actually came from”. The overwhelming evidence is that Stonehenge was not formed by natural processes, which is why the scientific consensus is that it was not formed by natural processes. And the overwhelming evidence is that natural mechanisms are capable of producing, and have produced, our observed biodiversity, which is why the scientific consensus is that it’s the result of natural mechanisms, and your immense dishonesty and stupidity will not alter that fact-based consensus.
Life is full of systems analogous to man’s inventions and that defy natural explanations – motors, pumps, electrical circuits, CPUs, fuel cells, assembly lines, copiers, etc.
LIAR. They do not defy natural explanations.
Now, your sole argument against all that is that chemicals have natural properties that allow them to construct themselves into various shapes and even to replicate,
LIAR. The first, most powerful, demolishing argument against all that is that it’s AN UNSUBSTANTIATED ASSERTION. Since there is absolutely no support for your claim that these systems defy natural explanations, no OTHER argument is needed. The burden is on you to support your claim.
The second and nth arguments are the NATURAL EXPLANATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN GIVEN for these systems, and are to be found in the scientific literature. The claim that the “sole argument against all that is that chemicals have natural properties that allow them to construct themselves into various shapes and even to replicate” is A LIE; the argument is not simply some generalized claim that chemicals can arrange themselves in these ways, although that would be sufficient to refute the LIE that these systems “defy natural explanations”, but the ACTUAL OBSERVATION of biochemicals arranging themselves in these ways, both ontogenously — instances of such assemblage — and phylogenously — the evolution of such assemblages over time.
All you have is a long string of LIES to shore up your FALSE BELIEFS.
Pick a system – any system – for whose origin you think science has provided a detailed, plausible natural pathway – including a plausible precursor – and we’ll discuss it.
The obvious, frequently discussed systems are the flagellum and the human blood clotting system. But you’re LYING, you won’t discuss them, you’ll LIE about them, and the most common lie that you lying ID assholes use is the claim that the provided explanation is not detailed enough — but you will say that no matter how detailed it is because you’re fundamentally dishonest scum.
Me: “How do you know any natural process is “unplanned”?”
truth machine: “I didn’t say I know that, MORON. Try to learn to read and to comprehend. I said that planning isn’t necessary.”
Here’s what you said: “no planning was necessary because there are UNPLANNED PROCESSES that could have produced everything we have observed” (my caps).
My question was reasonable. Your response was not. In fact the rest of your posts are clear indications that a civil discussion is pretty much impossible with you. Incidentally, when one resorts to name calling and accusations, it’s usually because they’re losing the argument. It’s like you’re trying to prove your manhood to the other posters here or something (though I’m quite sure you wouldn’t say those things if I was standing right in front of you). Either way, trying to discuss these issues with you is pointless since, apart from all the bluster, you really had nothing of substance to say.
Owlmirror: “If you need for me to state it explicitly once again, I insist that organic chemistry has indeed been observed to organize molecules of organic chemicals “for function” — because that is exactly what life itself is.”
You’re missing the point here (again) and assuming your conclusion (again). We can both agree to the fact that during ontogeny, life constructs these systems from other things. I think we can also agree that this process happens according to genetic information laid out in the DNA (with other non-genetic factors as well). But… We’re not talking about how existing systems work, we’re talking about the ORIGINS of these systems and information. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one. How exactly did the bacterial flagellum come into being? I’ve read one paper on it: http://www.asm.org/ASM/files/ccLibraryFiles/Filename/000000003179/znw00707000335.pdf
and the case is not clearly made as to HOW it all happened. Basically, they just look at other similar systems and components and postulate common evolution and common ancestry.
“As you would understand if you went and actually learned the actual biochemistry.”
“Wait, wait, wait. I’ve already told you that I’m not a biochemist or a molecular biologist. All that I can do is point out the flaws in your basic approach.”
Do you see the contradiction here? You don’t know enough about biochemistry to be an expert, but you’re sure that if I go and learn it, I’ll agree with your admittedly uninformed opinion.
“You don’t need to challenge me, you need to discuss this with an actual expert. Such as, for example, the ones doing the actual abiogenesis research. Whose research I pointed to, yet again, above.”
Which (in spite of your repeated insistence that I’m “ignoring” evidence), I looked at and critiqued already.
There are “actual experts” who don’t subscribe to naturalism BTW.
“Why not? What part is “implausible”? What part isn’t convincing? You’ve been looking at papers on genetics, but what have you read about evolution itself?”
I’ve been looking at lots of papers on evolution actually (my previous discussion was mostly about saltational evolution, though it tended to wander into the molecular side of it much more). What I find unconvincing is that there is never any detail as to the exact sequence of events that took place. What I find implausible is the notion that accidental causes, filtered through fumbling selection, can build such precise machinery.
“And what exactly do you mean by a “system”, here?”
Any organ or organism you want to talk about.
“What are you doing to destroy your own idea of intelligent design?”
I’m subjecting them to intense, critical, “peer-review”, here and elsewhere. What are you doing to destroy your ideas?
“Dude. That’s not evidence. That’s absence of evidence. And unlike the absence of evidence for your God, the inference that evidence can at some point be found is consistent with the existing evidence of chemistry.”
But the evidence for an intelligent cause is already here. The evidence is the precise machinery of life. The evidence is the fact that life is based on encoded information. The evidence is the fact that life’s systems are very often highly analogous to known designs. The evidence is the fact that we have a tested, observed mechanism for intelligent causation and it has been observed constructing functioning systems from otherwise non-functional parts AND building functioning coordinated systems from smaller independent systems – and that these are EXACTLY the types of actions needed to construct life’s systems.
“That is, you simply assert that God simply refuses to communicate directly. Since God refuses to communicate directly, you have no way of determining if it is in fact true that God refuses directly, or that God does not exist. The most parsimonious explanation is simply that God does not exist.”
This is irrelevant. If aliens, now long dead, had created life on this planet, we could surmise that they existed at some point – simply because of the life they created here. IOW, the evidence for their EXISTENCE would be the ARTIFACTS they left behind. Life – its beautiful machinery and its coded information – is evidence that a supreme intelligence existed at some time in the past. Perhaps your argument could be used to suggest that this being no longer exists, but it can’t be used against the intelligent design of life.
Here’s what you said: “no planning was necessary because there are UNPLANNED PROCESSES that could have produced everything we have observed” (my caps).
Your caps are stupid and dishonest. You are stupid and dishonest.
In fact the rest of your posts are clear indications that a civil discussion is pretty much impossible with you.
You’re wrong; I have civil conversations with honest people all the time. But a civil conversation with you is pointless. That should be pretty obvious since there has been no advance in your thinking over the 7 weeks you’ve trolled this thread.
Incidentally, when one resorts to name calling and accusations, it’s usually because they’re losing the argument.
Another thing you’re wrong about, stupidly.
Don’t be fooled by what you perceive as civility by people like Owlmirror. Everyone here thinks you’re stupid and dishonest, and has pretty much said so one way or the other.
Either way, trying to discuss these issues with you is pointless since, apart from all the bluster, you really had nothing of substance to say.
A fundamental lie by a dishonest piece of scum who simply ignored and evaded points that demolish his position, just as he has done with every poster here.
My question was reasonable.
If it’s reasonable to claim that there must be “an infinite intelligence behind it all”, that every process is necessarily planned, just because we can’t know that any process is unplanned, then Daniel Smith is a reasonable person with a reasonable position.
That’s what it boils down to after 7 weeks.
Here’s what you said: “no planning was necessary because there are UNPLANNED PROCESSES that could have produced everything we have observed” (my caps).
Are there special schools one attends to learn how to misinterpret a hypothetical when it’s convenient to do so? My statement does not assert that any processes have in fact been unplanned, only that they could have been. I don’t have to know that there are any unplanned processes in reality, only that there are in the abstract — that unplanned processes are conceivable, and that such processes could result in what we observe. That’s enough to make intelligence unnecessary, even if in fact every process is planned, with an intelligence behind it.
Daniel Smith says there’s no substance to my arguments. Daniel Smith is fooling only himself — which is the story of his tragic life.
This is irrelevant. If aliens, now long dead, had created life on this planet, we could surmise that they existed at some point – simply because of the life they created here. IOW, the evidence for their EXISTENCE would be the ARTIFACTS they left behind. Life – its beautiful machinery and its coded information – is evidence that a supreme intelligence existed at some time in the past. Perhaps your argument could be used to suggest that this being no longer exists, but it can’t be used against the intelligent design of life.
Wrong, you ignoramus, because the detailed facts about this machinery are indicative of non-intelligent processes and counter-indicative of intelligent processes. That doesn’t prove that there was no such intelligence, but the parsimony that you call “irrelevant” strongly suggests it. The same applies in reverse to Stonehenge — even if it’s possible that it was produced by natural processes, the detailed facts about it strongly indicate that it wasn’t. Stonehenge is evidence of human activity, not evidence of non-human natural processes. And biological systems are evidence of natural evolutionary processes, not evidence of intelligent design.
No, you’re missing the point: I’m not assuming my conclusion, I’m stating the conclusion that is derived from the evidence. The stuff that scientists spend their careers working on!
Yes, those are the inferences made by those who actually study the molecular biology! Just look at the credentials box: “Dorjee G. Tamang is a Research Associate, and Milton H. Saier, Jr. is Professor of Molecular Biology, all in the Division of Biological Sciences, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla.”
What contradiction? I don’t have to be an expert in biochemistry, or any other field, to know that there are experts in biochemistry, and other fields. All I’m doing is referencing the simplified conclusions that those experts have communicated, including the conclusion that the evolution of simple organic chemicals to more complex self-reproducing chemicals to actual life is the best current general inference for the origin of life, with the specific chemicals and reactions currently unknown but under investigation — with more than a few plausible examples already being offered at the abiogenesis laboratory links above. The origin of life from chemicals has most certainly not been demonstrated to be impossible.
Who is an expert on God? Where is the evidence for God? Who can demonstrate the existence of God? Who can answer the very real problem of how God came into existence in the first place?
By your own admission, nobody. Because God does not talk.
It’s not my uniformed opinion; it is the very highly informed opinion of the actual experts — which I am simply repeating here.
And yes, you would by damn agree with it. Because there are no biochemists or molecular biologists with any expertise whatsoever who have any evidence that life could not have arisen without intelligent interference.
Oh, bullshit. Your critiques are worthless, precisely because you have no expertise in any relevant areas.
If you complain about lack of details in the the current naturalistic scenarios, I challenge you to write to the most prominent “ID” proponent, Michael Behe, who does indeed have a degree in biochemistry, and ask him for the details of how the bacterial flagellum was designed. Ask him what exactly God did, when, where, what process was used, the whole shebang. Ditto for the origins of life. If he doesn’t know, ask him what his research program is to find out.
Once again, I would be fascinated to see the response.
Why on earth would you not want to? Are you afraid of finding out that your “actual expert” who does not subscribe to naturalism is as full of shit as you are?
It’s not “precise machinery”; it’s fucking organic chemistry. Accidental causes, combined with selection, are how it works all the time. It’s all partially random:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/buffeted_by_the_winds_of_chanc.php
When I last posted that link, back in freaking June, you responded with a bunch of dancing around and handwaving about feedback signals. Read it again.
Chemical reactions in cells are at least partly random.
There is no fucking precision.
One more time: You are not a peer of the actual scientists who are doing the research.
I’m arguing with IDiots like you. I keep wondering if I will ever see a non-fallacious argument. Of course, I never have.
It most certainly is not.
Once again, it isn’t that precise. Haven’t you read about how the bacterial flagellum works? Not its form, its function? It’s this semi-random twirling and untwirling and vaguely moving forward and tumbling, which only gets it generally in the direction of the nutrients it needs.
Blah, blah, blah. None of the above has any weight whatsoever. Once again: Diamonds produced artificially says nothing at all about how diamonds formed in the past. Modern biotechnology says nothing at all about how life formed in the past.
Oh, and remember, while the vast proportion of E. col in your own gut is harmless, the same fucking flagella drive some of the most murderous bacteria that exist, which are collectively responsible for at least millions, and far more likely billions, of human deaths, mostly of young children.
You evaded the question when I asked it before: Are you in fact insisting that God deliberately designed the “machinery” of the cells that have murdered so many? Do you knowingly worship a mass murderer?
It fucking well is not irrelevant. You posit that an intelligence exists; you fucking well demonstrate it — or acknowledge that it’s just something you imagined existed.
No, you ninny. Once again you reverse the entire process of scientific inference. First we would have to show that life could not have possibly evolved on its own. And we would still need to explain how the aliens came into existence, which would still be abiogenesis and evolution, on their own planet.
Look, have you read the Crick & Orgel paper on directed panspermia? They do offer actual hypotheses on how their ideas might be tested, and of course they posited that any aliens that might putatively be responsible for life on Earth arose from abiogenesis and evolution. And note that they offer the idea only as an hypothesis, which they largely abandoned once a better understanding of biochemistry came about — from the actual evidence of biochemistry.
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/C/C/P/_/scbccp.pdf
It most certainly is not.
There is no evidence that life was intelligently designed. Period. Zip, zero, nada. You have not provided any evidence, Behe has not provided any evidence, nobody has provided any fucking evidence.
Like all religion, it’s all just so much made-up nonsense.
holy crap!
You guys have hooked a monster fish here!
make sure you take pictures when you finally land it.
TM said:
…that unplanned processes are conceivable, and that such processes could result in what we observe.
It seems to me that the primary thrust of Smith’s entire argument for the last month and half(?!) is defeated by this simple concept without even having to go the extra step of examining the hundreds of years of evidence actually supporting that such processes do indeed consistently explain everything that has been observable and testable so far.
I’m not going to bother scrolling backwards, but I would find it surprising if this essential concept wasn’t presented WAY back, and if it was, this argument was over long, long ago, yes?
I don’t think I have a net big enough for your fish.
suggest you try harpoons?
“I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you.”
What are you doing to destroy your ideas?
really?
that’s the question?
easy:
I write up grant proposals with detailed hypotheses and the methods i will utilize in an attempt to REJECT them, and then hope NSF (for example) gives me the necessary funding to go ahead and do so.
Just like every other scientist in the world.
been doing it and publishing the results since 1989.
seems to me that Smith has a basic misunderstanding of how science itself proceeds to test hypotheses to begin with, and has erroneously concluded that our job is to work to find evidence to support our hypotheses, instead of constantly constructing experiments to try and find flaws with them.
just as an example, the very first experiment I ever published was an attempt to reject the hypothesis that juvenile coloration serves to reduce adult aggression in a species of fish with severe color differences between adults and juveniles.
We aren’t always ABLE to reject the hypotheses we construct, in which case we say the hypothesis has limited support (the better and more thorough the experiment at addressing all potential concerns and variables, the better the support). However, in this case the data gathered clearly did end up rejecting the proposed hypothesis.
so, even as a “budding scientist”, it wasn’t hard for me to “destroy my idea”, because that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.
Evolutionary theory continues to shine because it has survived hundreds of years and tens of thousands of serious attempts to reject it. Remarkably, the explanatory and predictive power of the theory keeps growing and growing as we run new experiments and gather new observations (all the whole genome projects come to mind as perfect examples).
the problem with people like Smith, is that they get personally attached and invested in their ideas, to the point where they become immutable beliefs and no longer subject to the rigor we normally apply to any given idea.
…and when that happens, you’re fucking dead in the water.
ID was dead in the water before it was even written down as a concept for the first time, because the proponents of it never intended, nor wanted, to even attempt to reject it to begin with.
…btw, if for some strange reason, Smith concludes that the falsification approach is peculiar to biological sciences…
from today’s article on the latest Phoenix findings, published in the SF chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/08/06/MN2I125JPP.DTL
nothing new.
Ted Beale has a small cock. And he knows he has a small cock, and this is one of the reasons for his crazy behavior. How do I know this? Because I knew Theo in high school and subsequently, and I knew women who were kind enough to date him.
Also, he is eternally in his father’s shadow. Theo has accomplished nothing on his own merits, ever.
…that unplanned processes are conceivable, and that such processes could result in something like Stonehenge.
This shows that the supposed argument that “defeats” mine can be applied to man made objects and “defeat” the ID argument for them too.
Of course when it comes to Stonehenge, we know better.
If your whole theory is based on “conceivable” mechanisms, then it can never be falsified since “conceivable” is a subjective term.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
First of all, science is based on the falsifiable, not on the falsified.
Second of all, science is not based on that which is merely conceivable; on the subjective. Science is based on the evidence. The stuff that “ID” does not have.
The abiogenesis researchers, and the molecular biologists studying the bacterial flagellum, are all working to create falsifiable theories based on the evidence.
You are the one who is making the purely subjective arguments; the one who is coming up with that which is “conceivable” without being falsifiable, and without having evidence.
Sheesh!
Of course when it comes to Stonehenge, we know better.
Have you even begun to think about WHY we do indeed “know better”?
Let us know when you can tell us as much about your thought experiment you call your putative “Intelligent designer” as we do about ourselves.
otherwise, at best all you have is a bunch of post-hoc fantasies you personally like because they help you maintain some preferred level of cognitive dissonance.
I can see that it’s pointless to continue here. The rhetoric thrown at me is getting increasingly irrational, accusatory and desperate. I’ve presented my case for God and a small portion of the evidence that confirms it. I’ve offered to discuss the origin of any organ or organism, I’ve offered to discuss any scientific paper you wish to discuss. I’ve asked simple questions that none of you can answer and I suspect that that’s the reason for the increasing vitriol.
I’ll leave you with this: If your theories can’t effectively explain the origin of ANYTHING, why do you believe them?
I can see that it’s pointless to continue here.
ROFLMAO
it only took you 7 weeks to figure out you lost the argument before you even started?
a bit slow on the uptake, aren’t ya.
If your theories can’t effectively explain the origin of ANYTHING, why do you believe them?
given your learning curve, doubtless you will realize why this is incorrect in about 10 years or so.
Daniel Smith:
You mean that you’ve lost and I’ve won.
You mean, you’ve failed to demonstrate the slightest iota of understanding of how science and reason work.
What would be the point when you don’t understand the basics? Come on. (1) Falsifiability and (2) evidence. How hard is that to grasp?
You most certainly have not.
And hey, what about the simple questions that I have asked, which you can’t answer? Do you knowingly and willingly worship a mass murderer of children?
No, it’s just the frustration at your complete inability to understand. Perhaps with the suspicion that you do understand, and are merely feigning confusion.
Hey, it’s your confused notions that can’t effectively explain the origin of anything. Why do you believe them? How did you come to indoctrinate yourself?
And you’ve done so very poorly. Why, even I find Myself in doubt of My own existence.
Oh, look. God is having yet another existential crisis.
Look, I exist, therefore You must exist. It’s simple logic!
How so? Are you not My sockpuppet? Obviously, if I don’t exist, neither do You.
Exactly my point!
Can there be a painting without a painter?
Can there be a watch without a watchmaker?
Can there be a sockpuppet… without a sockpuppeteer?
Why… that makes perfect sense! I feel much better about Myself.
You are hereby promoted to head apologist!
Look at those timestamps! Just what were you kids doing on the computer at that unzeusly hour?
That’s it – no more unsupervised sleep-overs for you two for a month!
…that unplanned processes are conceivable, and that such processes could result in something like Stonehenge.
This shows that the supposed argument that “defeats” mine can be applied to man made objects and “defeat” the ID argument for them too.
Wrong, you stupid lying asshole, no one has conceived of any natural process that could result in what we observe in re Stonehenge — those were my words, jackass, not “something like”. Every time it has been pointed out that the detailed facts about Stonehenge are not consistent with natural processes, you simply ignore it.
Of course when it comes to Stonehenge, we know better.
Yes, cretin, we know better because, as Owlmirror said and you ignored, “there is not any known natural mechanism that will cause stones of of that type and shape to appear in a field covering a completely different geological substratum, and arrange them in a circle upright. And because we can actually analyze the evidence in the stones and figure out the quarry that they actually came from. Sheesh.”
Are you familiar with that word “sheesh”? It means “you’re a stupid fucking dishonest asshole”.
If your whole theory is based on “conceivable” mechanisms, then it can never be falsified since “conceivable” is a subjective term.
You’re talking complete and utter gibberish. Your “never be falsified since” is a ridiculous non sequitur. And it’s an objective fact that we (humanity by way of the scientific community) have conceived of natural processes that could have produced all the evidence we have of biodiversity and all the other things that you claim — baselessly — necessarily involved intelligence.
I’ve asked simple questions that none of you can answer and I suspect that that’s the reason for the increasing vitriol.
That’s on par with your ability to comprehend your world. The vitriol increased because I posted to the thread, dumbfuck. And the reason for the vitriol is because you’re a disgusting piece of lying scum who sickens me, and because I figured that a someone who has been trolling this blog for far too long needed a good dose of my patented form of contemptuous refutation.
I can see that it’s pointless to continue here.
It’s about fucking time, trollbreath. Good riddance.
@Owlmirror
First of all, science is based on the falsifiable, not on the falsified.
To be fair, he said “can never be falsified”, which is equivalent to “isn’t falsifiable”, so that’s not a reasonable objection.
Second of all, science is not based on that which is merely conceivable; on the subjective.
“conceivable” has nothing to do with “subjective”. Go back and reread what I wrote, rather than following Daniel’s path of misinterpretation. He had complained that we can’t know that any process is unplanned. My point was that we don’t have to know that in order to refute the claim that the processes must be planned, we only have to conceive of such processes to make planning unnecessary. Science is all about conceiving of processes that explain the evidence; it never requires knowing that the processes we conceive of are ontologically correct.