Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Gaia is back, and she has discovered Darwinism

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Earth/NASA, DSCVR

The old Gaia asserts that

living organisms and their inorganic surroundings have evolved together as a single living system that greatly affects the chemistry and conditions of Earth’s surface. Some scientists believe that this “Gaian system” self-regulates global temperature, atmospheric content, ocean salinity, and other factors in an “automatic” manner. Earth’s living system appears to keep conditions on our planet just right for life to persist! The Gaia Theory has already inspired ideas and practical applications for economic systems, policy, scientific inquiry, and other valuable work. The future holds more of the same. More.

The new Gaia is leaner, greener, and meaner. She has discovered the “selfish gene”:

Doolittle has recently proposed that Gaia could have arisen through ‘selection by survival alone’ in which persistence of the biosphere increased its likelihood of acquiring further persistence-enhancing traits.

Several recent models demonstrate ‘sequential selection’ for global environmental regulation, in which systems that destabilize their environment are short-lived and result in extinctions and reorganizations until a stable state is found.

Evidence of microbial community coalescence provides a mechanism for heritability of ecosystems and their properties, making models of ecosystem-level selection for environmental regulation empirically plausible.

The Black Queen hypothesis – that production of ‘leaky’ ecological public goods is lost until there is negative frequency-dependent selection on the remaining producers – can help to explain regulation, for example, of the marine nitrogen cycle.

Recently postulated mechanisms and models can help explain the enduring ‘Gaia’ puzzle of environmental regulation mediated by life. Natural selection can produce nutrient recycling at local scales and regulation of heterogeneous environmental variables at ecosystem scales. However, global-scale environmental regulation involves a temporal and spatial decoupling of effects from actors that makes conventional evolutionary explanations problematic. Instead, global regulation can emerge by a process of ‘sequential selection’ in which systems that destabilize their environment are short-lived and result in extinctions and reorganizations until a stable attractor is found. Such persistence-enhancing properties can in turn increase the likelihood of acquiring further persistence-enhancing properties through ‘selection by survival alone’. Thus, Earth system feedbacks provide a filter for persistent combinations of macroevolutionary innovations. – – Timothy M. Lenton, Stuart J. Daines, James G. Dyke, Arwen E. Nicholson, David M. Wilkinson, Hywel T.P. Williams, Selection for Gaia across Multiple Scales: Trends in Ecology & Evolution: Volume 33, ISSUE 8, P633-645, August 01, 2018 Published:J uly 02, 2018 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.05.006 More.

We don’t predict a lasting relationship. The selfish gene will eat Gaia.

Seriously, this is another attempt to make information work as if it were magic: Such persistence-enhancing properties can, in turn, increase the likelihood of acquiring further persistence-enhancing properties through ‘selection by survival alone’. If that were true, rocks would slowly evolve into living beings. But they don’t.

See also: (for what is really changing) At the New York Times: Darwin skeptic Carl Woese “effectively founded a new branch of science”

and

Natural selection: Could it be the single greatest idea ever invented?

Comments
Of related interest is the "Privileged Planet" principle. Which is,,, "The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole."
"The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole." - Jay Richards The Privileged Planet – video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ohuG3Vj_48&list=PLbzQ4aXdqWD-9kjFsSm-cxNlzgrkJuko7 The Privileged Planet - The Correlation Of Habitability and Observability “The same narrow circumstances that allow us to exist also provide us with the best over all conditions for making scientific discoveries.” - Guillermo Gonzalez - Astronomer http://books.google.com/books?id=lMdwFWZ00GQC&pg=PT28#v=onepage&q&f=false
In regards to that claim, this following fine-tuned parameter for 'flatness' is very interesting,,, As the following paper states, by analyzing the tiny variations in the temperature of this background radiation, researchers have now found that “These tiny temperature variations correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable universe. A region that was a fraction of a degree warmer become a vast galaxy cluster, hundreds of millions of light-years across.” The researchers go on to state, “if the universe was curved in any way, these temperature variations would appear distorted compared to the actual size than we see these structures today. But they're not. Our best scientific instruments can't detect any distortion at all between the tiny temperature variations in the microwave background and the largest scale structures of the observable universe.
How do we know the universe is flat? Discovering the topology of the universe - by Fraser Cain - June 7, 2017 Excerpt: With the most sensitive space-based telescopes they have available, astronomers are able to detect tiny variations in the temperature of this background radiation. And here's the part that blows my mind every time I think about it. These tiny temperature variations correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable universe. A region that was a fraction of a degree warmer become a vast galaxy cluster, hundreds of millions of light-years across. The cosmic microwave background radiation just gives and gives, and when it comes to figuring out the topology of the universe, it has the answer we need. If the universe was curved in any way, these temperature variations would appear distorted compared to the actual size that we see these structures today. But they're not. To best of its ability, ESA's Planck space telescope, can't detect any distortion at all. The universe is flat. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-universe-flat-topology.html
As well, the researchers then go on to state that, "the universe must have been flat to 1 part within 1×10^57 parts over its entire 13.8 billion years of expansion."
How do we know the universe is flat? Discovering the topology of the universe - by Fraser Cain - June 7, 2017 Excerpt: We say that the universe is flat, and this means that parallel lines will always remain parallel. 90-degree turns behave as true 90-degree turns, and everything makes sense.,,, Since the universe is flat now, it must have been flat in the past, when the universe was an incredibly dense singularity. And for it to maintain this level of flatness over 13.8 billion years of expansion, in kind of amazing. In fact, astronomers estimate that the universe must have been flat to 1 part within 1×10^57 parts. Which seems like an insane coincidence. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-universe-flat-topology.html "The Universe today is actually very close to the most unlikely state of all, absolute flatness. And that means it must have been born in an even flatter state, as Dicke and Peebles, two of the Princeton astronomers involved in the discovery of the 3 K background radiation, pointed out in 1979. Finding the Universe in a state of even approximate flatness today is even less likely than finding a perfectly sharpened pencil balancing on its point for millions of years, for, as Dicke and Peebles pointed out, any deviation of the Universe from flatness in the Big Bang would have grown, and grown markedly, as the Universe expanded and aged. Like the pencil balanced on its point and given the tiniest nudges, the Universe soon shifts away from perfect flatness." ~ John Gribbin, In Search of the Big Bang
Of related note to that finding is this,,, "the intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio,,, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers."
The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability - Robin Collins - March 22, 2014 Excerpt: The most dramatic confirmation of the discoverability/livability optimality thesis (DLO) is the dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) on the baryon to photon ratio.,,, ...the intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio, (??b), which is the ratio of the average number of photons per unit volume of space to the average number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) per unit volume. At present this ratio is approximately a billion to one (10^9) , but it could be anywhere from one to infinity; it traces back to the degree of asymmetry in matter and anti - matter right after the beginning of the universe – for approximately every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particles of matter.,,, The only livability effect this ratio has is on whether or not galaxies can form that have near - optimally livability zones. As long as this condition is met, the value of this ratio has no further effects on livability. Hence, the DLO predicts that within this range, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers. According to my calculations – which have been verified by three other physicists -- to within the margin of error of the experimentally determined parameters (~20%), the value of the photon to baryon ratio is such that it maximizes the CMB. This is shown in Figure 1 below. (pg. 13) It is easy to see that this prediction could have been disconfirmed. In fact, when I first made the calculations in the fall of 2011, I made a mistake and thought I had refuted this thesis since those calculations showed the intensity of the CMB maximizes at a value different than the photon - baryon ratio in our universe. So, not only does the DLO lead us to expect this ratio, but it provides an ultimate explanation for why it has this value,,, This is a case of a teleological thesis serving both a predictive and an ultimate explanatory role.,,, http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard%20Forum%20paper%20draft%20for%20posting.pdf Greer Heard Forum: Robin Collins – “God and the Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Discovery” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBWmMU7BXGE
And of course all this evidence strongly supports the claim made in the video which I referenced in my previous post:, i.e. "there are anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) that are now found that ‘strangely’ line up with the earth and solar system."
Cosmic Microwave Background Proves Intelligent Design (disproves Copernican principle) (clip from “The Principle”) – (2018) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htV8WTyo4rw
Also of note:
We Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History to see the Cosmic Background Radiation - Hugh Ross – video (7:12 minute mark) https://youtu.be/MxOGeqVOsvc?t=431 Fine tuning of Light, to Atmosphere, Water, Photosynthesis, and Human Vision (etc.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiN9dU0W6rQ
Verses:
Job 38:4-5 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? Proverbs 8:26-27 While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, or the primeval dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, Job 26:10 He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.
bornagain77
August 20, 2018
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Gaia and Darwinian pseudoscience need not apply. The Earth was intelligently designed to be inhabited. Here is the final summary of Dr. Hugh Ross's 'conservative' estimate for the probability of finding another life-hosting world in this universe.
Linked from Appendix C from Dr. Ross's book, 'Why the Universe Is the Way It Is'; Probability Estimates for the Features Required by Various Life Forms: Excerpt: Requirements to sustain bacteria for 90 days or less: Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10-614 dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303 longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22 Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10^-333 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^311 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles. Requirements to sustain unicellar life for three billion year: Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-859 dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303 longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22 Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-578 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^556 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle Requirements to sustain intelligent physical life: Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1333 dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-324 longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^45 Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1054 Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22 Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle http://d4bge0zxg5qba.cloudfront.net/files/compendium/compendium_Part3_ver2.pdf
Interestingly, when Dr. Hugh Ross factors in the probability for 'simple' bacterial life randomly coming together in this universe, the probability for a planet which may host 'simple' life in the universe explodes into even more gargantuan proportions:
Does the Probability for ETI = 1? Excerpt: In another book I wrote with Fuz, Who Was Adam?, we describe calculations done by evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala and by astrophysicists John Barrow, Brandon Carter, and Frank Tipler for the probability that a bacterium would evolve under ideal natural conditions—given the presumption that the mechanisms for natural biological evolution are both effective and rapid. They determine that probability to be no more than 10-24,000,000. The bottom line is that rather than the probability for extraterrestrial intelligent life being 1 as Aczel claims, very conservatively from a naturalistic perspective it is much less than 10^500 + 22 -1054 -100,000,000,000 -24,000,000. That is, it is less than 10-100,024,000,532. In longhand notation it would be 0.00 … 001 with 100,024,000,531 zeros (100 billion, 24 million, 5 hundred and thirty-one zeros) between the decimal point and the 1. That longhand notation of the probability would fill over 20,000 complete Bibles. http://www.reasons.org/does-probability-eti-1 (As far as scientific calculations are concerned, determining how close a probability is to zero, only Penrose's 1 in 10^10^123 calculation, for the initial entropy of the universe, is, as far as I know, closer to zero)
Of related interest is this article from Eric Metaxas that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Christmas Eve in 2014
Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent design, anyone? - By ERIC METAXAS - Dec. 24, 2014 Excerpt: Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life —every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing. Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being? http://inters.org/files/metaxas-science-increasingly.pdf Eric Metaxas - Does Science Argue for or against God? – (2015) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjGPHF5A6Po
The following video touches upon 'terraforming' of the Earth to make it suitable for humans:
Life and Earth History Reveal God's Miraculous Preparation for Humans - Hugh Ross, PhD – video (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Y496NYnm8
Dr. Ross also points out that the extremely long amount of time it took to prepare a suitable place for technologically advanced humans to exist in this universe, for the relatively short period of time that we can exist on this planet, (Anthropic Inequality) is actually a point of evidence that argues strongly for Theism:
Anthropic Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity By Hugh Ross Excerpt: Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term “anthropic principle” (1974), noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years “preparing” for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).,, Carter and (later) astrophysicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for virtually any conceivable intelligent species under any conceivable life-support conditions. Roughly 15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of “just right” conditions reflect miraculous efficiency. Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth’s rotation period lengthens, Earth’s plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth’s atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now. http://christiangodblog.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html Lucky Us: Turning the Copernican Principle on Its Head - Daniel Bakken - January 26, 2015 Excerpt: What if intelligence and technology hadn't arisen in Earth's habitability time window? Waltham in Lucky Planet asks "So, how do we explain the remarkable coincidence that the timescale for the emergence of intelligence is almost the same as the timescale for habitability?" Researchers Carter and Watson have dubbed this idea the anthropic inequality and it seems surprising, if it is not for some purpose.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/lucky_us_turnin093011.html
Also of related interest, there are anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) that are now found that 'strangely' line up with the earth and solar system.
Cosmic Microwave Background Proves Intelligent Design (disproves Copernican principle) (clip of “The Principle”) - (2018) video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htV8WTyo4rw
At the 13:55 minute mark of this following video, Max Tegmark, an atheist who specializes in this area of study, finally admits, post-Planck 2013, that the CMBR anomalies do indeed line up with the earth and solar system
"Thoughtcrime: The Conspiracy to Stop The Principle" - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0eVUSDy_rO0#t=832
Verse:
Isaiah 40:28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
bornagain77
August 19, 2018
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More nonsense?jawa
August 19, 2018
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