A robust defense of intelligent design in a liberal Catholic mag?

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 8, 2015

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design}

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From National Catholic Register:

The Half-Truths of Materialist Evolution

COMMENTARY: Scientific study of the brain’s evolution exposes the non sequitur of mind-less evolution.

“The thing from which the world suffers just now more than any other evil,” wrote author and Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton, “is not the assertion of falsehood, but the endless and irrepressible repetition of half-truths.”

Jean-Paul Sartre emphasized freedom, but denied morality. Sigmund Freud stressed instinct, but suppressed the spiritual. Friedrich Nietzsche glorified the individual, but disdained the community. Karl Marx celebrated the community, but rejected the individual. Charles Darwin was enamored of empirical science, but excluded metaphysics.

It is an all-too common theme. Chesterton, himself, I am happy to note, was not speaking in half-truths. More.

…

The notion of intelligent design is the logical complement of scientific research. It offers a truth that has the salutary merit of not being a half-truth.

I hope the Catholic casuistry for naturalism crowd doesn’t get their hands on Donald Demarco.

Incidentally, Chesterton wrote an anti-Darwinism book as well.

Update: A friend advises that the Register is actually a fairly conservative Catholic newspaper, by comparison with the liberal National Catholic Reporter, but that said, conservative Catholic papers have hardly been very sympathetic to ID either. This is an unusually robust defense for any Catholic venue.

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Comments

RDFish, on page 935 of your cited paper, which was written in 2011, it states:
"The existence of interference patterns depends solely on whether the “which-path” information is in principle obtainable. Whether such information is registered in consciousness of a human observer, one can conclude, is irrelevant. Consequently, this conclusion leaves no other option but to reject the collapse-by-consciousness hypothesis."
Yet that 2011 claim in your paper was falsified in 2012:
“If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance but also, as seen here, influence of future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded.” Asher Peres, Delayed choice for entanglement swapping. J. Mod. Opt. 47, 139-143 (2000). Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past – April 23, 2012 Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a “Gedankenexperiment” called “delayed-choice entanglement swapping”, formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000.,,, “We found that whether Alice’s and Bob’s photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured”, explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study. According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as “spooky action at a distance”. The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. “Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”, says Anton Zeilinger. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html
You can see a more complete explanation of the startling results of the preceding experiment, and the crucial role of the observer, at the 9:11 minute mark of the following video:
Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment Explained – 2014 video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6HLjpj4Nt4
Of note: RDFish you asked 'Did you even bother to look at the citation I offered?' at post 19 after I had already listed the evidence that refuted your position at post 13. So apparently you are he one who is guilty of 'not even bothering to look' since if you would had done so you would have realized your position was already refuted before you posted your 2011 paper. Of related interest:
Does Quantum Physics Make it Easier to Believe in God? Stephen M. Barr - July 10, 2012 Excerpt: Couldn’t an inanimate physical device (say, a Geiger counter) carry out a “measurement” (minus the 'observer' in quantum mechanics)? That would run into the very problem pointed out by von Neumann: If the “observer” were just a purely physical entity, such as a Geiger counter, one could in principle write down a bigger wavefunction that described not only the thing being measured but also the observer. And, when calculated with the Schrödinger equation, that bigger wave function would not jump! Again: as long as only purely physical entities are involved, they are governed by an equation that says that the probabilities don’t jump. That’s why, when Peierls was asked whether a machine could be an “observer,” he said no, explaining that “the quantum mechanical description is in terms of knowledge, and knowledge requires somebody who knows.” Not a purely physical thing, but a mind. https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/content/does-quantum-physics-make-it-easier-believe-god
bornagain77_{February 9, 2015
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RDF:
If you have evidence that mind can arise without physical complexity please provide it.
If you have evidence that mind requires physical complexity please provide it.Joe_{February 9, 2015
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RDF is confused:
It is just as ridiculous to assert that a mind can arise without material complexity as it is to assert that material complexity arose without a mind.
You are conflating "mind" with "brain".Joe_{February 9, 2015
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RDF:
ID observes that complex mechanism cannot arise without a conscious mind,
That is incorrect. ID is not an argument against mere complexity
yet ignores that conscious minds cannot arise without complex mechanism.
Tat is also incorrect. Geez it's as if RDFish thinks its ignorance is an argument.Joe_{February 9, 2015
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Of related note: although Naturalists have proposed various, far fetched, naturalistic scenarios to try to get around the Theistic implications of quantum non-locality, none of the ‘far fetched’ naturalistic solutions, in themselves, are compatible with the reductive materialism that undergirds neo-Darwinian thought.
“[while a number of philosophical ideas] may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics, …materialism is not.” Eugene Wigner Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TViAqtowpvZy5PZpn-MoSK_&v=4C5pq7W5yRM Why Quantum Theory Does Not Support Materialism By Bruce L Gordon, Ph.D Excerpt: The underlying problem is this: there are correlations in nature that require a causal explanation but for which no physical explanation is in principle possible. Furthermore, the nonlocalizability of field quanta entails that these entities, whatever they are, fail the criterion of material individuality. So, paradoxically and ironically, the most fundamental constituents and relations of the material world cannot, in principle, be understood in terms of material substances. Since there must be some explanation for these things, the correct explanation will have to be one which is non-physical – and this is plainly incompatible with any and all varieties of materialism. http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952939
Some of the 'far fetched' scenarios offered by Naturalists to try to deal with Quantum Mechanics are just plain pure fantasy:
A Critique of the Many Worlds Interpretation - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42skzOHjtA
bornagain77_{February 9, 2015
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Jim Smith, you stated that imaginary just so stories are a problem for ID (irreducible complexity). Apparently you and I disagree profoundly on what constitutes a problem in science. I say real evidence, if there were any, would constitute a real problem for ID and imaginary evidence, which is all Darwinists really have, constitutes an imaginary problem for ID.bornagain77_{February 9, 2015
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RDFish Please note, at the 8:22 mark of the following video, how ‘metaphysical prejudice’ drastically alters what many physicists are willing to say they believe about quantum mechanics from what they say quantum mechanics actually indicates. The Measurement Problem in quantum mechanics – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB7d5V71vUEbornagain77_{February 9, 2015
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RDfish says, If you have evidence that mind can arise without physical complexity please provide it. The entire ID enterprise depends on it! I say, Strange I happen to believe that Mind can't.... arise ,,, without physical complexity yet I'm a ID enthusiast. Arise is a temporal verb and I assume time requires matter. I think you are confusing the phrase arise without physical complexity with the phrase exist without physical complexity The latter phrase is very different than the former. ID requires the latter but is agnostic about the former You say, it is both the mind and the body......required to create anything at all. I say, I agree ever hear of the incarnation? You say, they are really two aspects of the same thing, it seems I say, It only seems so to someone locked into a pantheist world view. peacefifthmonarchyman_{February 9, 2015
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' In this case you’d find that the idea that conscious perception is somehow causal in somehow “collapsing” the waveform is an idea that persists in only a tiny minority of physicists. That is not “evidence” of any sort at all.' Some of the major breakthroughs in medicine were not only rejected by the large majority of physicians, but viciously contested. Garbage In-Garbage Out. You start off form a materialist premise, you are bound to get lost very quickly; and ironically, the more so, the more logically you pursue the false assumptions. Look at the Multiverse, Many Worlds, String Theory, etc. The vast majority, remember, are literally groundlings, 'dirt-worshippers' - not the likes of Einstein, Bohr, Pauli et all, to a man, unshakably convinced of intelligent design.Axel_{February 9, 2015
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RDFish, You will surely find - indeed, you surely have already on a number of occasions - that BA77's knowledge and understanding is far too encyclopaedic for your little forays beyond the confines of scientism. If this is a rare lacuna in his knowledge, then when he does understand it, you'll lose yet again. Just as sure as God made little apples. Top marks, though, for persevering when heavily outgunned. Having truth on your side, though, is a sine qua non, the fundamental truth you people never seem to learn.Axel_{February 9, 2015
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ba77, Did you even bother to look at the citation I offered? Or was it too scientific for you?RDFish_{February 9, 2015
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I'm just glad that some of my fellow Catholics are starting to wake up to ID as an explanation for life . It maybe be small now but God willing it will keep growing every year . I know buffalo has an is friendly catholic site called idvolution .wallstreeter43_{February 8, 2015
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... (continued) Arguments based on irreducible complexity depend on the fact that there is no way to explain how it could have evolved piece by piece from something simpler. But if you look at successively simpler organisms, I suppose you could explain how the human brain could have evolved from something simpler. You might reply with a different argument that the human brain could not have evolved for other reasons such as too many mutations needed in the allowed time, but that is not an argument made in the linked article.Jim Smith_{February 8, 2015
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Bornagain77, I believe in ID, but the article didn't say all those things you wrote. My point, which I admit I didn't not state explicitly, is that the article is a weak argument for ID not a robust defense. I wrote "Can’t you explain the evolution of the human brain by examining the brains of successively simpler organisms?" I didn't write you can "prove" evolution. I used the word "explain" so yes I think you can make an imaginary just so story. These just so stories actually are a problem for arguments based on irreducible complexity. Again, I believe in ID, but I think the linked article is not a robust defense of ID.Jim Smith_{February 8, 2015
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RDFish, as soon as you can explain anything within material reality to me without your being conscious to do it, I will then admit that your unconscious self has 'burst my bubble'. Until then you are the one cherry picking and ignoring evidence. The evidence from quantum mechanics for consciousness being integral is consistent and strong:
Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger by Richard Conn Henry - Physics Professor - John Hopkins University Excerpt: Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the "illusion" of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism (solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist). (Dr. Henry's referenced experiment and paper - “An experimental test of non-local realism” by S. Gröblacher et. al., Nature 446, 871, April 2007 - “To be or not to be local” by Alain Aspect, Nature 446, 866, April 2007 (Leggett's Inequality: Verified, as of 2011, to 120 standard deviations) http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system - Zeilinger 2011 Excerpt: Page 491: "This represents a violation of (Leggett's) inequality (3) by more than 120 standard deviations, demonstrating that no joint probability distribution is capable of describing our results." The violation also excludes any non-contextual hidden-variable model. The result does, however, agree well with quantum mechanical predictions, as we will show now.,,, https://vcq.quantum.at/fileadmin/Publications/Experimental%20non-classicality%20of%20an%20indivisible.pdf The preceding experiment, and the mathematics behind it, are discussed beginning at the 24:15 minute mark of the following video: Quantum Weirdness and God 8-9-2014 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=N7HHz14tS1c#t=1449
of related note, even the esteemed Atheist Philosopher Thomas Nagel admits that materialists are barking up the wrong tree in regards to consciousness:
Mind and Cosmos - Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False - Thomas Nagel Excerpt: If materialism cannot accommodate consciousness and other mind-related aspects of reality, then we must abandon a purely materialist understanding of nature in general, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history.
bornagain77_{February 8, 2015
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Hi fmm,
Do you have evidence that Mind requires change to exist?
We all have evidence that mind requires complex mechanism. That is why even Demarco agrees in the essay quoted here that it is our brain that allows us to think.
Mind can create complex things don’t you agree?
Nothing of the sort of course - it is both the mind and the body (and they are really two aspects of the same thing, it seems) required to create anything at all.
By the same token thermodynamics demonstrates that over time left to itself in a closed system mater becomes less and not more complex.
Just as we can demonstrate that without your brain, you cannot create complex mechanism either.
If you have evidence that unified complexity can arise without mind please provide it.
If you have evidence that mind can arise without physical complexity please provide it. The entire ID enterprise depends on it!RDFish_{February 8, 2015
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fifth you may appreciate this: Einstein was asked (by a philosopher):
"Can physics demonstrate the existence of 'the now' in order to make the notion of 'now' into a scientifically valid term?"
Einstein's answer was categorical, he said:
"The experience of 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics."
Quote was taken from the last few minutes of this following video or can be read in full context in the article following the video:
Stanley L. Jaki: "The Mind and Its Now" https://vimeo.com/10588094 The Mind and Its Now - Stanley L. Jaki, July 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind's baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS. http://www.saintcd.com/science-and-faith/277-the-mind-and-its-now.html?showall=1&limitstart=
The statement, 'the now' cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement’, was an interesting statement for Einstein to make since 'the now of the mind' has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, undermined the space-time of Einstein's General Relativity as to being the absolute frame of reference for reality.
“Thus one decides the photon shall have come by one route or by both routes after it has already done its travel” John A. Wheeler Wheeler’s Classic Delayed Choice Experiment: Excerpt: Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments. We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles “have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy,” so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory. http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/basic_delayed_choice.htm Genesis, Quantum Physics and Reality Excerpt: Simply put, an experiment on Earth can be made in such a way that it determines if one photon comes along either on the right or the left side or if it comes (as a wave) along both sides of the gravitational lens (of the galaxy) at the same time. However, how could the photons have known billions of years ago that someday there would be an earth with inhabitants on it, making just this experiment? ,,, This is big trouble for the multi-universe theory and for the “hidden-variables” approach. - per Greer “It begins to look as we ourselves, by our last minute decision, have an influence on what a photon will do when it has already accomplished most of its doing… we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in what we have always called the past. The past is not really the past until is has been registered. Or to put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present.” – John Wheeler – The Ghost In The Atom – Page 66-68 “If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance but also, as seen here, influence of future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded.” Asher Peres, Delayed choice for entanglement swapping. J. Mod. Opt. 47, 139-143 (2000). Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past – April 23, 2012 Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a “Gedankenexperiment” called “delayed-choice entanglement swapping”, formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000.,,, “We found that whether Alice’s and Bob’s photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured”, explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study. According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as “spooky action at a distance”. The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. “Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”, says Anton Zeilinger. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html
You can see a more complete explanation of the startling results of the preceding experiment at the 9:11 minute mark of the following video:
Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment Explained – 2014 video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6HLjpj4Nt4
Perhaps the most dramatic example of 'the now of the mind’ within quantum physics is Leggett’s Inequality:
Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables – Scott Aaronson Excerpt: “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec11.html Quantum Physics – (material reality does not exist until we look at it) – Dr. Quantum video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ezNvpFcJU Do we create the world just by looking at it? – 2008 Excerpt: In mid-2007 Fedrizzi found that the new realism model was violated by 80 orders of magnitude; the group was even more assured that quantum mechanics was correct. Leggett agrees with Zeilinger that realism is wrong in quantum mechanics, but when I asked him whether he now believes in the theory, he answered only “no” before demurring, “I’m in a small minority with that point of view and I wouldn’t stake my life on it.” For Leggett there are still enough loopholes to disbelieve. I asked him what could finally change his mind about quantum mechanics. Without hesitation, he said sending humans into space as detectors to test the theory.,,, (to which Anton Zeilinger responded) When I mentioned this to Prof. Zeilinger he said, “That will happen someday. There is no doubt in my mind. It is just a question of technology.” Alessandro Fedrizzi had already shown me a prototype of a realism experiment he is hoping to send up in a satellite. It’s a heavy, metallic slab the size of a dinner plate. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_reality_tests/P3/
bornagain77_{February 8, 2015
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Oh, ba77, hate to burst your bubble, since you obviously put a great deal of effort into cataloguing your cherry-picked quotes and data. And yet you can spend merely a few seconds on the web and you find this: http://www.danko-nikolic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Yu-and-Nikolic-Qm-and-consciousness-Annalen-Physik.pdf Do yourself an intellectual favor and attempt an actual summary article instead of your usual canvassing for anything you perceive to somehow support your preconceived notions and shovelling them into a bin. In this case you'd find that the idea that conscious perception is somehow causal in somehow "collapsing" the waveform is an idea that persists in only a tiny minority of physicists. That is not "evidence" of any sort at all.RDFish_{February 8, 2015
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RDFish asks. Mind requires physical complexity, just as Demarco points out. I say, I would say that change requires phyiscal complexity. however I see no reason to say that Mind requires change. Do you have evidence that Mind requires change to exist? You say, To then try to explain physical complexity by invoking mind is to offer a half-truth, just like Darwin does. I say, Mind can create complex things don't you agree? By the same token thermodynamics demonstrates that over time left to itself in a closed system mater becomes less and not more complex. It seems that the presence of complexity would require a cause that is capable of producing it don't you agree? If you have evidence that unified complexity can arise without mind please provide it. Peacefifthmonarchyman_{February 8, 2015
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"There is no evidence from QM for dualism, much less “mind preceding matter”." and yet:
"It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality" - Eugene Wigner - (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 - received Nobel Prize in 1963 for 'Quantum Symmetries'
Of supplemental note to the preceding Wigner 'consciousness' quote, it is interesting to note that many of Wigner's insights into quantum mechanics and consciousness have now been experimentally verified and are also now fostering a 'second revolution' in quantum mechanics,,,
Eugene Wigner – A Gedanken Pioneer of the Second Quantum Revolution - Anton Zeilinger - Sept. 2014 Conclusion It would be fascinating to know Eugene Wigner’s reaction to the fact that the gedanken experiments he discussed (in 1963 and 1970) have not only become reality, but building on his gedanken experiments, new ideas have developed which on the one hand probe the foundations of quantum mechanics even deeper, and which on the other hand also provide the foundations to the new field of quantum information technology. All these experiments pay homage to the great insight Wigner expressed in developing these gedanken experiments and in his analyses of the foundations of quantum mechanics, http://epjwoc.epj.org/articles/epjconf/pdf/2014/15/epjconf_wigner2014_01010.pdf
Further quotes:
“No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Planck (1858–1947), the originator of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931 “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” (Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.)
Hardly 'no evidence',,,bornagain77_{February 8, 2015
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Either matter preceded mind or mind preceded matter.
No, these are not the only choices obviously. For starters you're simply assuming dualism.
The evidence from quantum mechanics is heavily in favor of mind preceding matter:
This isn't even close to being true. There is no evidence from QM for dualism, much less "mind preceding matter". I've come to see that the single characteristic that unifies ID enthusiasts isn't even theism - it is that they all crave certainty, and find answers where none exist.
I think that RDFish’s confusion is his confounding of logical antecedence with the temporal antecedence.
fmm, your confusion is that you seem to think I have mentioned either one. Mind requires physical complexity, just as Demarco points out. To then try to explain physical complexity by invoking mind is to offer a half-truth, just like Darwin does. Why do you all agree with Demarco about all the half-truths except the one you need to believe in?RDFish_{February 8, 2015
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Verse and Music: Colossians 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Brooke Fraser- “C S Lewis Song” http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=DL6LPLNXbornagain77_{February 8, 2015
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BA77 says, Either matter preceded mind or mind preceded matter. I say, I'm not sure how anything can "precede" matter temporally. I think a strong argument can be made that matter is necessary for time to exist. I will agree that mind proceeds mater logically I think that much is obvious. I think that RDFish's confusion is his confounding of logical antecedence with the temporal antecedence. peacefifthmonarchyman_{February 8, 2015
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Either matter preceded mind or mind preceded matter. The evidence from quantum mechanics is heavily in favor of mind preceding matter:
A Short Survey Of Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Excerpt: Putting all the lines of evidence together the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this: 1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’, or 'emergent property', of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. Four intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness precedes material reality (Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries, Wheeler’s Delayed Choice, Leggett’s Inequalities, Quantum Zeno effect) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLcJUgLm1vwFyjwcbwuYP0bK6k8mXy-of990HudzduI/edit
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From Demarco's essay: It is supremely ironic that Dawkins relies on his brain to deny the implications of its unified complexity. Just as ironic is that ID enthusiasts rely on their brain to deny the implications of its material complexity. It is just as ridiculous to assert that a mind can arise without material complexity as it is to assert that material complexity arose without a mind.RDFish_{February 8, 2015
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Ah, but Intelligent Design is PRECISELY a half-truth. ID observes that complex mechanism cannot arise without a conscious mind, yet ignores that conscious minds cannot arise without complex mechanism. No different from Sartre, Freud, Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin, ID offers only a half-truth.RDFish_{February 8, 2015
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Jim Smith, making up imaginary just so stories from imaginary sequences in the fossil record is all Darwinists ever do (save for when they make up imaginary sequences in the genetic evidence).
“No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.” - Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life “We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh (i.e. nonsense). Yet we cling to it. Ideas of what human evolution ought to have been like still colour our debates.” Henry Gee, editor of Nature (478, 6 October 2011, page 34, doi:10.1038/478034a),
Darwinists NEVER empirically demonstrate the feasibility that unguided chance processes can actually do anything that they claim for them.
"Charles Darwin said (paraphrase), 'If anyone could find anything that could not be had through a number of slight, successive, modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.' Well that condition has been met time and time again. Basically every gene, every protein fold. There is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in a gradualist way. It's a mirage. None of it happens that way. - Doug Axe PhD. https://vimeo.com/118128889
Moreover, away from Darwinian rhetoric, the fossil record itself is certainly not one of gradualism:
“A number of hominid crania are known from sites in eastern and southern Africa in the 400- to 200-thousand-year range, but none of them looks like a close antecedent of the anatomically distinctive Homo sapiens…Even allowing for the poor record we have of our close extinct kin, Homo sapiens appears as distinctive and unprecedented…there is certainly no evidence to support the notion that we gradually became who we inherently are over an extended period, in either the physical or the intellectual sense.” Dr. Ian Tattersall: – paleoanthropologist – emeritus curator of the American Museum of Natural History – (Masters of the Planet, 2012) In the following podcasts, Casey Luskin, speaking at a recent Science and Human Origins conference, discusses why the fossil evidence doesn’t support the claim that humans evolved from ape-like precursors. 2014 - podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 1 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us/ podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 2 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us-pt-2/ podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 3 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us-pt-3/ podcast - Casey Luskin - On Human Origins: What the Fossils Tell Us, part 4 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/12/on-human-origins-what-the-fossils-tell-us-pt-4/
bornagain77_{February 8, 2015
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"The human brain could not have evolved as a result of the addition of one factor at a time. Its unity and phantasmagorical complexity defies any explanation that relies on pure chance." Can't you explain the evolution of the human brain by examining the brains of successively simpler organisms?Jim Smith_{February 8, 2015
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Nice: The Half-Truths of Materialist Evolution - DONALD DeMARCO - 02/06/2015 Excerpt: but I would like to direct attention to the unsupportable notion that the human brain, to focus on a single phenomenon, could possibly have evolved by sheer chance. One of the great stumbling blocks for Darwin and other chance evolutionists is explaining how a multitude of factors simultaneously coalesce to form a unified, functioning system. The human brain could not have evolved as a result of the addition of one factor at a time. Its unity and phantasmagorical complexity defies any explanation that relies on pure chance. It would be an underestimation of the first magnitude to say that today’s neurophysiologists know more about the structure and workings of the brain than did Darwin and his associates. Scientists in the field of brain research now inform us that a single human brain contains more molecular-scale switches than all the computers, routers and Internet connections on the entire planet! According to Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the brain’s complexity is staggering, beyond anything his team of researchers had ever imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief. In the cerebral cortex alone, each neuron has between 1,000 to 10,000 synapses that result, roughly, in a total of 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies! A single synapse may contain 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A synapse, simply stated, is the place where a nerve impulse passes from one nerve cell to another. Phantasmagorical as this level of unified complexity is, it places us merely at the doorway of the brain’s even deeper mind-boggling organization. Glial cells in the brain assist in neuron speed. These cells outnumber neurons 10 times over, with 860 billion cells. All of this activity is monitored by microglia cells that not only clean up damaged cells but also prune dendrites, forming part of the learning process. The cortex alone contains 100,000 miles of myelin-covered, insulated nerve fibers. The process of mapping the brain would indeed be time-consuming. It would entail identifying every synaptic neuron. If it took a mere second to identify each neuron, it would require four billion years to complete the project. http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-half-truths-of-materialist-evolution/ Of related note: "Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html Component placement optimization in the brain – 1994 As he comments [106], “To current limits of accuracy … the actual placement appears to be the best of all possible layouts; this constitutes strong evidence of perfect optimization.,, among about 40,000,000 alternative layout orderings, the actual ganglion placement in fact requires the least total connection length. http://www.jneurosci.org/content/14/4/2418.abstract Does Thinking Really Hard Burn More Calories? - By Ferris Jabr - July 2012 Excerpt: a typical adult human brain runs on around 12 watts—a fifth of the power required by a standard 60 watt lightbulb. Compared with most other organs, the brain is greedy; pitted against man-made electronics, it is astoundingly efficient. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=thinking-hard-calories Appraising the brain's energy budget: Excerpt: The metabolic activity of the brain is remarkably constant over time. http://www.pnas.org/content/99/16/10237.full The Puzzling Role Of Biophotons In The Brain - Dec. 17, 2010 Excerpt:,, Rahnama and co point out that neurons contain many light sensitive molecules, such as porphyrin rings, flavinic, pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores and aromatic amino acids. In particular, mitochondria, the machines inside cells which produce energy, contain several prominent chromophores. The presence of light sensitive molecules makes it hard to imagine how they might not be not influenced by biophotons.,,, They go on to suggest that the light channelled by microtubules can help to co-ordinate activities in different parts of the brain. It’s certainly true that electrical activity in the brain is synchronised over distances that cannot be easily explained. Electrical signals travel too slowly to do this job, so something else must be at work.,,, (So) It’s a big jump to assume that photons do this job. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/422069/the-puzzling-role-of-biophotons-in-the-brain/ Of related note to “It’s certainly true that electrical activity in the brain is synchronised over distances that cannot be easily explained”, the following paper comments on ‘zero time lag’ in synchronous brain activity: ,,, zero time lag neuronal synchrony despite long conduction delays - 2008 Excerpt: Multielectrode recordings have revealed zero time lag synchronization among remote cerebral cortical areas. However, the axonal conduction delays among such distant regions can amount to several tens of milliseconds. It is still unclear which mechanism is giving rise to isochronous discharge of widely distributed neurons, despite such latencies,,, Remarkably, synchrony of neuronal activity is not limited to short-range interactions within a cortical patch. Interareal synchronization across cortical regions including interhemispheric areas has been observed in several tasks (7, 9, 11–14).,,, Beyond its functional relevance, the zero time lag synchrony among such distant neuronal ensembles must be established by mechanisms that are able to compensate for the delays involved in the neuronal communication. Latencies in conducting nerve impulses down axonal processes can amount to delays of several tens of milliseconds between the generation of a spike in a presynaptic cell and the elicitation of a postsynaptic potential (16). The question is how, despite such temporal delays, the reciprocal interactions between two brain regions can lead to the associated neural populations to fire in unison (i.e. zero time lag).,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2575223/ The following paper appeals to a ‘non-local’, (i.e. beyond space and time), cause to try to explain the zero lag synchronization in remote neural circuits,,, Nonlocal mechanism for cluster synchronization in neural circuits – 2011 Excerpt: The findings,,, call for reexamining sources of correlated activity in cortex,,, http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3634bornagain77_{February 8, 2015
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