The Evolution will not be televised
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- discipler0
The truth is that in 10 - 20 years, naturalistic explanations for molecular complexity and steamboat era Darwinian science, is going to be a thing of the past. Science is leaving it all behind.
- paraselene0
*wakes up
**blinks
***rubs eyes
****looks aroundphew! for a minute there i thought that i had slept pure through the enlightenment! thank god it's still the 13th century!
*wipes brow
- discipler0
heh, I love how you put the "work" of a revered Professor of Biochemistry in quotes because you don't want to believe it. Priceless.
- discipler0
*wakes up
**blinks
***rubs eyes
****looks aroundphew! for a minute there i thought that i had slept pure through the enlightenment! thank god it's still the 13th century!
*wipes brow
paraselene
(Jul 20 05, 09:03)
-----------------------------Who was it that said something about "ridicule and insult is natural defense mechanism of the simple and uninformed"?
- discipler0
paraselene, we're actually discussing modern science here, you see, love. ;)
- discipler0
behe also puts his critics misunderstandings to rest quite effectively in his interview/chapter in:
- paraselene0
don't call me love.
you're back on your same old one-trick pony. not discussing modern 'science' but using a lot of pop 'science' to defend a religious position that has become untenable (factually and culturally) in our post-relativism world.
it's a shame that what could've come over as a pretty analogy is getting hijacked by xenophobia and what are, at base, purely existential fears.
*yawn
**goes back to sleepwake me up in the 21st century.
- discipler0
Define for me, "pop-science", paraselene. Rather than looking at the evidence, it's more conducive to your philosophical position to just caricature and categorize... and unjustly. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, as they say. And it would be more accurate to say that we are living in a post-modern culture which is recognizing that empty pseudo-enlightenment philosophies do not satisfy the deepest longings of the soul and therefore we are a culture that is hungry and on the hunt for meaning and purpose. And how xenophobia fits into your dissertation is dizzying to try and determine, at best.
Your analogy was weak, not pretty. Now, sleep on and please... please awake with a more objective demeanor.
- mikotondria20
Whether or not you cite scientific theory, and associated facts that purport to 'prove' that natural systems are so irreducibly complex as to warrant unnatural design, the fact remains that this is a philosophical debate:
Discipler, your position, (and please use only your words to refute or support this), seems to me to be the following:
Biological systems are fundamentally complex interactions of unique groups of chemicals that are in fact, so complex, that knowing not of any other analogous complexity engineering, OTHER than that produced by human design means that these complex systems MUST have had a pre-determined design and specifically engineered origins.
Please correct me if any of those assumptions and the resulting proposition is incorrect...
This is the unseen hand that ID postulates, the same unseen hand that once held the planets in their orbits, or that kept the birds in the sky.
The unseen forces that manifest themselves in the appearance of stable complex systems are not some spooky supernatural entity pulling strings and arranging molecules..There are literally trillions of failures of complex systems before stable, sustainable, reproducable ones emerge...ones that carry with them this 'information' of their own creation. Those that did not have the information within them ceased to continue..
What continues through the ages is the pattern, the template for reproducable templates. Were this not the case, we would not be here to discuss it.
You, discipler, were once the same cloud of stardust as I, until natural selective processes arranged us into the salty electric machines with the power to imagine ourselves as separate from those processes and forces that created us..you are in total, only the imagination of yourself, and hence this illusiory void of your own creation causes you to try to fill it with concepts of a supreme deity, a creator, an 'other', onto which you project the curiously human ideas of 'unnatural' design. There is nothing unnatural, only human principals of what is unnatural, based upon man's false idea that he is separate from the universe.
Remove that idea, and the need to invoke a spooky God disappears.
Come into the light, discipler, and stop waving at the back of your own head in a mirror, its only you..
- uberdesigner0
terribly simplified system, nothing at all in comparison to a cell."
discipler
(Jul 20 05, 06:50)but it shows the tendency of molecules to form the basic shape of life. all that was needed from this was a symbiotic relationship with a virus and single-celled aniimals would've been born.
Q: How long before researchers find the gene sequence that relates to humanity's belief in God? Belief in God could have arose as our basic social structure. Is it possible that everyone believes in God because we have to and that it was important during our evolution? What if this genetic programming were to change over time?
- uberdesigner0
Why do I have the feeling that Discipler is like the Uber Creationist Ninja,,he sits and waits dressed in black, perched over his keyboard. Waits. Watches. Beads of sweat form on his brow, his piercing eyes ceaselessly and relentless trolling the PVN for the opening - a mention of evolution, or dinosaurs, or something even remotely biological - to charge in with the Bible in one hand and his other hand tearing vengefully across his Staples ergonomic keyboard burning with Christian Warrior Zeal to bring the very word of the Divine into our shallow and meaningless existence.
TheTick
(Jul 20 05, 07:11)You just killed God a second time.
- discipler0
mikotondria,
Let me try to address everything in your last post... Firstly, yes you are essentially correct about my position on irreducible complexity: there are many biological organs which function like "machines”: they work only if all their parts are present. If one part is removed, the entire machine “breaks down” and will not function. Evolution (natural processes + random mutation) cannot build irreducibly complex structures because evolution requires that biological structures arise in small steps, each of which allows for the structure to perform some function. For irreducibly complex organs, the organ is only functional if all parts are present. Now, here's the deal breaker for the dated-naturalist view: Intermediate stages of evolution in these machines are impossible because they would not function. Period. So, it's not a question of enough time - billions of years does not help. So, your suggestion that enough time and enough failures will ultimately render these machines, is unscientific. Furthermore, I disagree that this is fundamentally a philosophical issue. It's about observing this complexity and making a logical conclusion that selective natural processes could not, I repeat, could not produce said complexity. It would be one thing if these machines could function with one or more of their components removed, but they cannot. Keep in mind that random mutations do not add information... information is always lost. And even if we were to assume that beneficial mutations occured, they could not structurally develop into an irreducibly complex machine (because of my above explanation).
It is therefore innacurate to posit that the "unseen hand" of I.D. is to be likened to things like gravity and such. The fact that science has proven that chemical attractions mixed with electricity cannot produce life, let alone irreducibly complex machines, is no secret in the mainstream scientific community. There simply is no materialistic explanation for this so what you end up with are exotic faith-based theories by scientists which present a sort of evolution-of-the-gaps. An "unseen hand" of natural processes, somehow. Your "unseen forces", to put it as you did. I maintain that science has no sufficient evidence that such a long trial and error sequence even occurred.
"Natural selective processes arranged us..." - do you realize how lacking in evidence that statement is? How would you explain the "autograph" in every DNA and it's code-like sequence? This is information my friend and some nebulous naturalistic "something" cannot generate information. Again, information is lost in physical mutations. What I'm demonstrating is that when you combine irreducible complexity, with things like the Cambrian Explosion, human consciousness, the precision fine-tuning of our planet and position in the solar system, the embarrasment of the fossil record, you have no choice but to arrive at the conclusion that an intelligent designer is responsible for it all. This of course does not negate microevolutionary adaptation due to environment, etc... It simply suggests that ultimately, a cognizant designer would have to be the cause.
Stardust? In a sense, sure. Molecular Homology would demonstrate that, just as a human engineer would re-use the same or similar materials, so does the engineer of the universe in his "machines". So, I would agree that man is, in a sense, "one" with the creation. Fundamentally, all matter is broken down to the same material, even on the quantum level. Again, demonstrating the "stuff" of the designer. Yet at the same time, our consciousness also demonstrates that we are more than just the collection of biological material. Our longings, our emotions, our first-person perspective... hardly the bi-product of simply brain activity.
At the end of the day, something does not come from nothing. Wherever there is design, there must be a designer. And all the time and natural processes acting on random mutation, in the world would not and could not produce what science observes. I believe I have found the light. :)
- TheTick0
been reading alot of Nietszche lately. probably 'splains it..
- TheTick0
mikotondria - wow. Love the verbage. Copy and pasting and savin' that one. Rock on...
- discipler0
"but it shows the tendency of molecules to form the basic shape of life. all that was needed from this was a symbiotic relationship with a virus and single-celled aniimals would've been born."
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False. The experiments show that when a researcher (intelligent entity) uses the wrong atmosphere in a controlled environment he can produce simple proteins. Not even in the same realm as life, even in it's simplest form. The jump from a protein to the supercomputer that is a single strand of DNA is not improbable, it's impossible. And that's just a single strand of DNA. We're not even considering irreducibly complex machines.
- uberdesigner0
Actually Oparin showed that amino acids chains form spotaneously under heat and pressure (conditions similar to what would be found in a primordial tide pool).
Life congeals, then fights, then congeals again, and so on.
Discipler is fighting now, and he should know that his belief system will not survive. As sad as that is, you cannot fight progress.
- discipler0
Far from the truth, uber. Get all the facts about what Oparin (and Miller) found:
http://www.ideacenter.org/conten…
I'm not fighting, I'm happily sharing the latest scientific findings. :) And progress is going to make your Civil War era notions about biological origins, a thing of the past. ;)
- discipler0
learn about the relationship to RNA, as well...
- mikotondria20
Hey discipler, I do appreicate your response to my post - at least you are a good argument, lol..
The point I was trying to make in the second half of my post was that the philosophical construction of a 'God' is necessary only because of the way our minds conceptualise our limited experience..The debate on the exact manner in which environmental forces and chemical properties shape and refine complex systems is somewhat secondary to fundamental principal that we do not yet have the symbolic models to describe everything we observe.
Science, the unending process of conceptualising and modelling experimental experience has not yet reached the point at which it can account entirely for the appearance of said irreducible complexity; the math has probably already been discovered and sat in a paper on a dusty shelf somewhere..
There is no need for any 'faith' from the scientists involved, of anything, least of all 'gaps'..it is the gaps that science seeks to fill.
Is not scientific approach, logic and reason the 'God' at work here ? Surely these aspects of existence are more fundamentally 'magic' and supernatural that the mechanistic processes that you wish to see as 'proof' ?
It is the paradigm of the observer and the observed, the hand that cannot touch itself, or in the case of the creationists, the cart that cannot pull the horse.Again, the back of that head in the mirror is your own, not God.