Bill Dembski’s University of Chicago talk, August 15, 2014

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 14, 2014

Darwinism, Informatics, Intelligent Design}

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Conservation of Information in Evolutionary Search by William Dembski

Here’s Jerry “Why Evolution Is True” Coyne advance complaining about it.

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I've transcribed this video at my blog: William Dembski's talk at the University of ChicagoDiEb_{September 28, 2014
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Natural processes do not ask for explanations.Mung_{September 15, 2014
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What I found interesting at the end of the talk (around the 59 minute mark) was the challenge from the astrophysicist. His argument seemed to be that star formation is very difficult to explain, but we are figuring it out. No additional information needed, natural processes can explain it. So if that is true in cosmology, couldn't it also be true in biology? Maybe we just haven't figured it out yet... Dembski admitted that he is not an expert in astrophysics and would have to research the question. I'm no expert in astrophysics either, but it seems to me there is an obvious gigantic flaw in this argument. As Roger Penrose has pointed out, unguided natural processes must be fantastically fine-tuned to create a universe with such a low entropy level as our own(ie, matter organized into super galaxies, galaxies, stars, planets, etc.) This fine-tuning constitutes information, as it excludes other possibilities -- A LOT OF OTHER POSSIBILITIES. Don't recall exactly Penrose's calculation, but it was something like once chance in 10 ^ 3,000,000 (or maybe even higher, there were a lot of zeros!). In other words, the organized structure of our Universe is likely the most information-rich event we currently understand. Not such good evidence for the power of unguided, information-free processes after all! ;)anthropic_{September 15, 2014
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It was nice to see James Shapiro in the audience,,, ,,, IMHO, James Shapiro, although he is not an Intelligent Design proponent, none-the-less, has also done tremendous work in exposing the sheer inadequacy of the 'bottom up' neo-Darwinian framework,,, For instance,,,
Why the 'Gene' Concept Holds Back Evolutionary Thinking - James Shapiro - 11/30/2012 Excerpt: The Century of the Gene. In a 1948 Scientific American article, soon-to-be Nobel Laureate George Beadle wrote: "genes are the basic units of all living things.",,, This notion of the genome as a collection of discrete gene units prevailed when the neo-Darwinian "Modern Synthesis" emerged in the pre-DNA 1940s. Some prominent theorists even proposed that evolution could be defined simply as a change over time in the frequencies of different gene forms in a population.,,, The basic issue is that molecular genetics has made it impossible to provide a consistent, or even useful, definition of the term "gene." In March 2009, I attended a workshop at the Santa Fe Institute entitled "Complexity of the Gene Concept." Although we had a lot of smart people around the table, we failed as a group to agree on a clear meaning for the term. The modern concept of the genome has no basic units. It has literally become "systems all the way down." There are piecemeal coding sequences, expression signals, splicing signals, regulatory signals, epigenetic formatting signals, and many other "DNA elements" (to use the neutral ENCODE terminology) that participate in the multiple functions involved in genome expression, replication, transmission, repair and evolution.,,, Conventional thinkers may claim that molecular data only add details to a well-established evolutionary paradigm. But the diehard defenders of orthodoxy in evolutionary biology are grievously mistaken in their stubbornness. DNA and molecular genetics have brought us to a fundamentally new conceptual understanding of genomes, how they are organized and how they function. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/why-the-gene-concept-hold_b_2207245.html
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How life changes itself: the Read-Write (RW) genome. - 2013 Excerpt: Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23876611 The Genome is a Read-Write Memory System - James Shapiro - video https://vimeo.com/74618934
Although I disagree with Dr. Shapiro in regards to his proposed mechanism of 'natural' genetic engineering instead of Intelligent Design, my hat is off to him for his boldness in proclaiming the neo-Darwinian emperor has no clothes,, http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1-DyHm9JQ68/UMJCQEssiLI/AAAAAAAAIDQ/ixEjQ_jd3BA/s1600/emperor_has+no+clothes.gifbornagain77_{September 14, 2014
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Yeah,,,, of note, besides Coynes sulking, Dembski Speaks at the University of Chicago; Mathematician Leo Kadanoff Says Darwinists Need to "Deal with These Questions" http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/dembski_speaks088961.htmlbornagain77_{September 14, 2014
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