David Klinghoffer writes:
Here’s a really devilish problem to pose to your favorite friend, teacher, or relative who’s a Darwinist true believer. As Your Designed Body co-author Steve Laufmann observes, the relationship between an embryo and its mother is a relationship between unequals. The embryo’s systems are not yet complete so it depends on its mother for its life. This entails communication between the entities.
But as Laufmann asks, how could such a thing as pregnancy evolve gradually, without guidance or foresight, “when you have to have it in order to have a next generation. Nobody has ever addressed a problem like that.” No, they haven’t, at least not persuasively, which is why Laufmann calls it the “mother of all chicken-and-egg problems.” Darwinian evolution has many of those, as it takes an engineer like Steve Laufmann, or a physician like his co-author Howard Glicksman, to fully recognize. Evolutionary biologists tend to silently glide over such issues, which clearly point to intelligent design. Either that, or they are satisfied by vague speculations. Watch:
I’ve just ordered a copy of Your Designed Body and I look forward to reading it. Perceiving that the human body (or an animal’s body) is a designed system helps keep the wonder of life front and center. The reductionism approach, while useful for gaining knowledge of the biological details, carries the risk of losing sight of the big picture. Gandalf alludes to this in an argument against Saruman, “And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.” [J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston: 1994), p. 252).
It’s weird to see a criticism of reductionism in a post defending intelligent design. Intelligent design requires the idea that organized complexity cannot be “bottom-up” (spontaneous and emergent), but always “top-down” (some intelligent control). This entails that in the absence of design, a mere assemblage of disconnected parts is all that could exist. So reductionism is just revere-engineering intelligent design: the reductionist breaks things down into their constituent parts in order to disclose what the designer had to do in order to construct the organized whole.
In other words, any advocate of intelligent design ought to champion reductionism.
PM1 at 1,
Forget the ism’s. Useless. Intelligent Design shows that the complexity of living things exceeds man’s current level of technology. That it exceeds blind, unguided chance. So, EVOLUTION is incapable of the planning and engineering involved in creating living things.
PM @1. Do you really believe the nonsense you type out? Examine your verb again: reverse engineering. How does reductionism accomplish any of that? It wouldn’t even be an assemblage of disconnected parts. Even an “assemblage of disconnected parts” requires an assembler, and a designer of those parts. Your designer is chance and the laws of nature. Not possible.
That’s why being an atheist requires so much more faith. We are faithful because of the evidence. Your faith requires you to suppress the evidence. The evidence surrounds you.
PM1,
How about addressing the issue in the OP?
Andrew
@3
My point was that intelligent design should have no objections to reductionism as scientific method, since the intelligent design advocate can happily regard reductionism as reverse-engineering design.
I was not endorsing this view — I think I’ve made my criticisms about reductionism perfectly evident in the past few weeks.
@4
No, it’s far too stupid to merit a response. And no, I won’t explain why. If you don’t know enough biology to understand why the OP is inane, I don’t have the time or inclination to hold your hand.
“No, it’s far too stupid to merit a response.”
lol
Oooh. You are quite the intellectual.
Andrew
PyrrhoManiac1 writes
For the uninitiated, I will translate from Internet troll speak into plain English:
You’re welcome.
@7
Nice try, but if you’re trying to bait me into saying something intemperate that would justify banning me, you’ll have to be far more clever. This “translation” schtick is just quaint.
“Nobody has ever addressed a problem like that.”
And they still haven’t.
Andrew
PyrrhoManiac1
No, just pointing out that you are a coward and a fraud.
Does Mr Arrington require a stepwise explanation from the evolution of sex, evolution of gametes, differentiation into sperm and eggs, wind-borne pollination, motile gametes in ferns, egg-laying in dinosaurs and monotremes, marsupials (the genitalia in kangaroos is interesting) transitional placental mammals, human biology?
Oh, classy!
Alan Fox,
If you can point to me to any article that lays out the stepwise evolution of pregnancy, that would be sufficient. Everyone get ready for Alan’s literature bluff.
I ordered a copy too.
I was wondering what a fellow engineer has to say. I really hope, that I will learn something new, and not what I have heard 1000 times before.
Darwinian fantasy world:
Sorry to disappoint you, Barry. Whilst there’s a mountain of information on all aspects of biology, nothing is going to convince you that evolution is an explanation for the variety of life that has existed on Earth and what remains today. You can lead a horse to water…
Though as, as far as I am aware, this is the only place left where I can interact with proponents of “Intelligent Design” who all seem remarkably reticent about alternative explanations for observed biology.
Questions are easy to ask but hard to answer.
Pleased to see you making an effort, Martin_r.
On reflection, I’m quite interested in the evolution of “pregnancy” so I’ll do a bit of reading and report anything that I find that might interest others. It may take a while. Of course pregnancy, wombs, placentas, long gestation, and giving birth to well-developed young is a shared trait of a whole clade of mammals, Placentalia and it is in the lineage of the common ancestor of this clade that is the place to start.
Since Alan Fox at 16, like PMI at 5, finds it beneath his intellectual dignity to lay out the, (apparently simple for him), stepwise evolution of pregnancy, perhaps he can, at the very least, show us the very first, teeny-tiny, step of an evolutionary scenario? Perhaps he can show us the first ‘teeny-tiny’ step of a single protein of one type of function evolving into another protein of a different, but similar, type of function?
Is that too much to ask of AF and PMI? Especially since they, obviously, consider themselves to be so much more wise than those of us who are foolish enough to believe in intelligent design?
Blimey, more homework. Phil, have a look at this paper.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2015.0036
AF,
“The non-falsifiable nature of ancestral reconstructions places them in the realm of just-so stories, rather than hypotheses, and doubts have been raised about the ability of ASR studies to reach justifiable conclusions ”
Andrew
Warts and all, Andrew.
Per Alan Fox’s paper,
AF, you do realize that none of those examples are examples of proteins of one fold of one function evolving into a brand new protein of a new fold with an entirely new function, but are examples of preexistent proteins, with specific folds, making minor tweaks to peripheral loops to deal with environmental pressures?
All of which underscores Tawfik’s point, “Changes were not to central structures, but to peripheral loops”,,, “In fact, to our knowledge no macromutations … that gave birth to novel proteins have yet been identified.”
And the examples cited in your paper, (as well as the discussion on ancestral enzymes in the paper), also underscore Dr. Gauger’s point, “some have said we should have used the ancestral enzyme as our starting point, because they believe modern enzymes are somehow different from ancient ones. Why do they think that? It’s because modern enzymes can’t be coopted to anything except trivial changes in function. In other words, they don’t evolve!
That is precisely the point we are making.”
In short AF, you receive an F on your homework assignment. Try again, and don’t tell me the dog ate your homework.
P.S.
Also from AF’s cited paper,
Thanks for pointing their honest admission out Asauber, Their honest admission that their ‘just-so stories’ for ancestral proteins are unscientific ‘just-so stories’, put a huge smile on my face. 🙂
This gem from Caspian is priceless:
The “biological details,” indeed………
OT: Professor Dave is the unfortunate recipient of a first class intellectual butt-whooping at the hands of Günter Bechly. I especially liked the closing remark, “Farina doesn’t have a grasp of the basics of cladistic terminology. Maybe he should study my online “Glossary of Phylogenetic Systematics” to learn something before he tries to teach others.”
of related note:
BA77
when you mentioned ‘professor’ Dave Farina ….
As you may know, this clown attacked Dr. Tour as well.
Dr. Tour will release ANOTHER series of rebuttal videos on OoL (starting DEC 6).
From what i could understand, what some ‘professor’ Dave says doesn’t matter (which is self-evident), but Dr. Tour will go after those 3 OoL experts who were mentioned in Farina’s videos …
Here is a video teaser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rwPi1miWu4
PS: by the way, perhaps you missed it, but in 2020, Dr. Tour received a very prestigious Royal Society price. I learned it only yesterday (from the teaser video)
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/678304
Yes Martin. I am very much expectantly waiting for Dr. Tour’s take down of the three ‘experts’, one by one, coming Dec. 6.
I guess It is kind of like a series of world championship prize fights for geeks. 🙂
BA77
yes, these videos are exceptional … when you consider that such a honored and busy scientist spends his valuable time to shoot these videos. Hours of videos ….
I find Suppressor Dave incredibly annoying. The kind of sneering, condescending atheism I know it all attitude that he displays constantly in his videos. And he doesn’t attempt to refute the science of Professor Tour.
Professor Tour’s work as a synthetic chemist is not the issue. His attack on OOL research – and by extension, evolution – is.
And for me Tour, like Egnor, displays a belligerent and condescending manner which really doesn’t help his case.
Seversky, in regards to a belligerent and condescending manner, perhaps you might find this interesting,
I commented on Farina’s first video after Tour’s first series of responses. I pointed out a factual error that was very elemental, and one of the main points of his perspective on origin of life.
He just deleted it.
Seversky at 30,
So what is the solution to people who insist on holding onto a worldview called evolution? And that’s all it is at this point. Regardless of what is written here that shows it to be false and usually supported by atheists and to promote atheism.
You rail against God, and judge Him.
JVL insists on ‘unguided evolution’ ONLY – no matter the evidence to the contrary.
AF is the Town Rabble-Rouser whose only apparent purpose is to show off his dodging and weaving skills here. He avoids answering questions that would reveal evolution to be the wrong answer to how and why living things are the way they are.
For the record, I expect all of you to soldier on. Whenever evidence contrary to unguided evolution appears, you will all continue to hold up a sign that reads ‘Evolution is a fact,’ as if that were true.
All of you are here to cause confusion and to help sell a product called evolution. If you were not here then ID would become popular, it would get into public schools. I know none of you want that to happen.
Relatd/33
Evolution is not a “world view,” it’s a scientific theory…….
Evolution is a religious belief that a Magical Force named Evolution turned mud to men.
Sound familiar?
Andrew
CD at 34,
Are living things designed? Or do they only look designed but are not actually designed?
Related at 33:
And the worst part is, at the moment they take their last breath, they will have to answer for their deeds. What is absolutely true is that they won’t be able to claim they didn’t have enough evidence.
CD at 34:
The worldview precedes the scientific theory. Remember Lewontin. The commitment to materialism is absolute, for a Divine foot cannot be allowed in the door.
In case you forgot.
*chuckles*
It’s mean of me, sorry. But ID advocates have such a poor hand to play. I can summarize the basic tenets of evolutionary theory in a sentence or two. There’s an expanding data base of evidence on evolutionary biology. Field observation of species on their natural habitat is incredible with developments in recording devices. Heck, I can do my own observations in my own backyard.
It must be tough to be an ID proponent without even a hypothesis to promote.
“ID advocates have such a poor hand to play.”
The Black Knight has spoken, “Tis but a scratch”!
Meanwhile, a few severed limbs laying on the ground beg to differ,,
etc.. etc.. etc..
Why, just yesterday Alan observed nearby coyote turn into a small whale in his backyard. Good thing he had a pool!
AD at 41,
I want photos of the transformation.
Ba77,
In the late 1980s I stumbled across a book with a compelling title: Engines of Creation.
This was a clear exposition of how nanotechnology might work to build a jet engine, among other things. A large container like an oil drum cut in half but much larger would contain water and molecule-sized “assemblers.” Various metallic molecules would be injected into the water. The assemblers, under radio guidance, would begin building a scaffold and the engine. The assemblers could be be grouped to perform different tasks, building the inside and outside components of the engine. Various metals could be combined at the molecular level to create alloys as opposed to trying to melt them together at high temperatures. As the assemblers finished a section, they would back out slowly to complete what remained. The completed engine would be stronger, lightweight and better than what could be done by using more conventional construction processes. Once completed, various hooks would attach to lifting lugs. After the engine cleared the container, the remaining metal molecules would be flushed out and stored for reuse.
Later, I saw a video of a computer that was built at the atomic level. It was not an actual computer but a theoretical model. The finished computer was square and about six inches on each side. It was explained that such a computer would be far more powerful than any commercial computer available.
At first, the idea of nanotechnology was not accepted. The technology to create the things mentioned in the book did not exist but I was able to glimpse stories here and there about nanotechnology actually being applied as the years passed. It was being used by the military primarily.
IF scientists attempt to do this with a cell, it would be a clear example of Intelligent Design, assuming they could make it work.
AD/41
Actually whales share a common ancestor with hippos, not coyotes…….
SEV at 30 , Dont just mock Dr Tours criticism of OOL research debunk it , ah thats right you can`t
CD at 44, what is that common ancestor and how do you know its the common ancestor , seeing it cannot be tested , or maybe you guys have discover a testing method since the last time I asked.
Nitpick, Whales share a more recent common ancestor with hippos than they do with coyotes. Whales, hippos, and coyotes are all mammals. Whales and hippos (hindsight makes me wonder why it wasn’t always thought obvious) are now classified as members of the clade Cetartiodactyla, whereas coyotes are in the Carnivora clade.
Depends when you last asked. Molecular phylogenetics is a recent addition to the evidence of common descent. It was important in confirming the relationship between Whales and hippos.
@ BA77
Phil, I made an exception and glanced at rather than scrolled through your comment 40. It’s a mish-mash of scoffing at evolutionary strawmen. Where’s the beef? How does Intelligent Design work? You forgot that bit.
Seversky
do you remember our recent conversation on OoL ?
I wrote, that you guys (Darwinists) still believe in spontaneous generation (of life). Like in 19th century.
Spontaneous generation – Wikipedia:
Seversky, you have replied as follows:
NO ?
then look here, what a 31-year-old MIT Physicist Jeremy England claims in his “A New Physics Theory of Life” article.
If this is not a spontaneous generation of life, then what is it ? :)))))))))
Full article:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIt9mPuezY-wIVM4FQBh2sEQKhEAAYASAAEgJ45fD_BwE
AF at 46:
That is all unsubstantiated speculations and ‘just-so stories’ on the part of Darwinists. Apparently Darwinists believe that if they can simply imagine a coyote and/or hippo morphing into a whale, well then, that qualifies as irrefutable scientific proof that it must have happened that way. Sorry, but science just does not work that way.
No matter how much they may imagine it to be true, Darwinists simply don’t have any real time empirical evidence, nor mathematical evidence, that it is remotely possible to change one species of bacteria into another species of bacteria,
,,, much less do Darwinists have any real time empirical evidence, or mathematical evidence, that it is possible to change a some coyote and/or hippo into a whale,
Darwinists simply have no real time empirical evidence, nor mathematical evidence, to support any of their imaginary just-so stories. And as much as it may hurt Darwinists’ feelings to know this, imaginary ‘just-so stories’ are NOT science. They are the antithesis of science. In fact, science is successful precisely because it separates the chaff of hypothetical imaginary conjectures about reality, from the wheat of what is actually true about reality.
Moreover, to make it even worse for Darwinists, Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, can’t even define what a species, clade, or any other biological classification, actually is.
You see, in order to classify organisms into specific groups, such as species, clades, or etc.., one is forced to abandon purely materialistic explanations about reality and reach over into the immaterial realm of abstract universals.
As Logan Paul Gage states in the following article, ”In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms.”,,, ” this denial (of true species) is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge.”
And as Dr. Michael Egnor explains, the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution simply doesn’t do abstract, immaterial, universals. And as a result, Darwinian materialists, (with their implicit denial of the immaterial realm altogether), simply leave everything that is truly important, and interesting, about what it really means to be human on the cutting room floor.
And you don’t have to take Logan Paul Gage’s, or Michael Egnor’s, word for it. In 2019, a Darwinist honestly admitted that “The most important concept in all of biology, (i.e. species), is a complete mystery”
And as the following 2020 article pointed out, Darwinists simply have no rigid, ‘one size fits all’, demarcation criteria for what actually constitutes a species.
The abstract concept of species simply can’t be reduced to materialistic explanations. How much does the concept of species weigh? Is the concept of species positively or negatively charged? Is the concept of species closer to Minnesota or Zimbabwe? or etc.. etc..? Those questions are all, obviously, nonsensical simply because the concept of Species is an abstract, immaterial, classification of the immaterial mind. Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no basis in which to classify organisms into different categories, whether it be categories of species, genus, clades, phylum, or etc…
Even Charles Darwin himself inadvertently admitted, (as Logan Paul Gage pointed out), that he did not have a rigid ‘materialistic’ definition for what a species actually was when he stated, “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience,”
As should be needless to say, if your theory can’t even provide a rigid ‘scientific’ definition for what a ‘species’ actually is in the first place, (in your theory that adamantly claims to be the ‘be all/end all’ scientific explanation for the ‘origin of species’), well then, so much for your claim that you have scientifically explained the ‘origin of species’. i.e. Scientifically speaking, your claim is worse than useless, and as Wolfgang Pauli might have put it, your theory is, ‘Not even wrong’.
Quotes and verse
AF at 48: “I made an exception and glanced at rather than scrolled through your comment 40.”
I guess I’m suppose to be honored that AF has graciously humbled himself, and slowed down enough, to at least ‘glance’ at my post and spit on it ???
Oh well,,,
Anyways AF continues: “It’s a mish-mash of scoffing at evolutionary strawmen. Where’s the beef? How does Intelligent Design work? You forgot that bit.”
AF keeps saying that as if that is suppose to make logical sense. AF apparently does not realize that if ID does not have a plausible ‘causal mechanism’ in which to explain the information in life, well then, AF is also left without a plausible ‘causal mechanism’ to explain the information he himself is writing in his posts.
And in my honest opinion, this denial of agent causality, and/or free will, as a legitimate form of causation is the primary, and fatal, flaw in the Darwinist’s materialistic account of nature.
In their denial of free will, and/or agent causality, the Darwinist is simply left floating in mid-air without any plausible explanation as to how the words on his computer screen might ‘magically’ appear as he is writing them,
Indeed, in his denial of free will, and/or his denial of agent causality, the Darwinist, (instead of being ‘scientific’ as he adamantly insist he is doing), actually reveals that he does not have nearly as good of a grasp on the actual ’cause and effect’ relationships of reality as he seems to believe that he has,
To clearly demonstrate just how unscientific the Darwinist’s denial of agent causality, and/or, free will actually is, “if Einstein did not have free will in some meaningful sense, then he could not have been responsible for the theory of relativity – it would have been a product of lower level processes but not of an intelligent mind choosing between possible options.”
Moreover, (as if that was not bad enough), in their denial of reality of free will, Darwinian atheists have also forsaken any claim that they are making, and/or that they are even capable of making, logically coherent arguments,,
Moreover, as if that was not bad enough, nobody lives their life as if they do not have free will,
Even leading Darwinian atheists themselves have honestly admitted that it impossible for them to live their lives as if they do not have free will,
Even Richard Dawkins himself admitted that it would be ‘intolerable’ for him to live his life as if his atheistic materialism were actually true and that he had no free will, i.e. no moral agency,
In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.
And indeed the Atheist’s denial of free will does not ‘reflect reality as it really is’. Neuroscience itself, despite the atheist’s constant denial to the contrary, shows that we do indeed have free will,
In further demonstrating that the atheist’s denial of the reality of free will does not “reflect reality as it really is’, in quantum mechanics we also now find that, via their free will, “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,,”
As newly minted Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Moreover, advances in quantum information theory, as well as the experimental realization of the Maxwell demon thought experiment, have now shown that intelligent agents do indeed have the capacity within themselves, the ‘causal power’, to ‘thermodynamically’ move a system ‘uphill’ towards life,
Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally held with the presupposition of ‘contingency’), and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the “freedom-of-choice” loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
Verse:
All in all, when we rightly, (and sanely I might add), recognize agent causality as legitimate form of causation in science, the many outstanding, seemingly irresolvable, problems in science find ready solutions.
Whereas, on the other hand, denying the reality of agent causation as a legitimate form of causation in science creates situations where, as George Ellis pointed out, “we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,,”
In short, and in conclusion, the denial of agent causality, and/or free will, as a legitimate form of causation by Atheistic Naturalists, is the primary, and fatal flaw, in their worldview.
AF/46
Yes, “a more recent” common ancestor. Thanks for the catch. My old brain ain’t what it used to be…… 🙂
AD/38
You lost me at “Divine”……
@38
I think this quote is often misinterpreted, and while my remarks will fall mostly on deaf ears, I live in hope that at the least the truth will be where it belongs.
The fuller quote is
This indicates pretty clearly that by materialism, Lewontin means the a priori commitment to causal regularity. It means assuming that God will not tweak the causal structure of the universe so that the results of an experiment are different from what they would have otherwise been. In metaphysical terms, it means that science requires an a priori rejection of occasionalism. (I have heard it said that the rise of occasionalism in Islamic theology led to the demise of Islamic science, but I have not corroborated this claim for myself.)
Nothing in his conception of materialism entails that God is not the author and guarantor of the causal order — all that it rules out is the possibility that God might, at any time, interfere in an experiment or observation for reasons known only to Him and inscrutable to us.
It is true that as a Marxist, Lewontin had political objections to organized religion, but with regard to his philosophy of science, Lewontin is objecting only to a very specific conception of God — one that even most people of faith would reject.
“Lewontin is objecting only to a very specific conception of God — one that even most people of faith would reject.”
Most people of faith would reject that ‘miracles may happen’?
ID supports 99.999+% of scientific findings.
All ID says is that at some time in the history of the universe, that some intelligence interfered in the basic laws of physics that were originally created. Whether it be the standard model or some other current version.
It could have been at the beginning by setting up boundary conditions that led not only to the fine tuning of the universe and our solar system but also led to life and complex life. We have no idea of how these boundary conditions were implemented and if they were only implemented at the creation event. Or the creator could have acted later after the creation to implement life and complex life.
What we do know is that the current laws of physics as we know them does not allow for OOL or complex life to arise once life began. This has led many to speculate that the creator intervened at specific times to allow life and complex life to arise.
Is part of the message the creator left is that special events had to happen. And this led to what we see in the universe? Some religions have argued not only that these events happened after the creation event but have been ongoing since the beginning of the universe. None of these events which must counter act the laws of physics mean that the laws of physics are not still foremost except for some rare occurrences.
To preclude that an intelligence existed when the fine tuning of the universe screams design seems ludicrous. But that’s what we speculate about. We will probably never know the exact truth and is this by design?
To argue that there was some emergent events just begs the question as most science on life and Evolution does. Emergence just transfers the event from gradual accumulation to some magical event. If either was science then there should be a forensic trail or the ability to repeat the emergent events.
Aside: if emergent events were the cause of life and complex life, where did this power to cause the emergence come from? Is it in the laws of physics? If so, is it then due to the creator of the laws of physics? If so, how is this different from the creator implementing OOL and after that implementing complex life and consciousness?
Jerry/58
So, are we to understand that deism and theism are equally plausible (contra Meyer’s God Hypothesis ruling out deism) explanations for the universe and life within the ID scheme?
I didn’t say that.
Everything I said supports a creator that had very specific interest in the creation and orchestrated life and its progression. It all points to a plan, not disinterest. The deist interpretation is nonsense based on these scientific findings of OOL, complex life, consciousness and human nature itself. Some conspicuous choices by the creator no matter when they were made.
I’m not aware of an ID scheme.
I am aware of an attempt to make sense of our world based on science and logic. Thus, ID is science+
Aside: Meyer’s book does not point to any specific religion, only to a creator that he calls God. Hence, God Hypothesis.
Christianity is barely mentioned in his book. When it is, it mainly with the rise of science.
Aside2: genetics which now contains epigenetics is completely compatible with ID. Thus, my recommendation of Darwin’s finches as appropriate mascots for ID. Since any changes in them is due to genetics.
Let’s Go Finches
Jerry/60
To say something is “compatible with ID” is an empty statement, because ID can be made compatible with anything, even atheism, if you believe some of the more bizarre commentators on this blog. However, ID adds nothing to the findings of science.
Meyer clearly rejects, along with atheism, pantheism and deism, as inconsistent with his “evidence.” He has confirmed this position over and over ad nauseum in his book-hawking interviews and podcasts. To his credit, he agreed in an interview with Frank Turek that his “hypothesis” only gets you to theism, not Christianity which requires “augmentation” by faith in scripture. Thus, Meyer’s “hypothesis” is anemic at best, and useless in “proving” Christianity.
Finally, deism doesn’t necessarily imply a “disinterested” God but rather, rejects the idea of a “personal” God. The key component of deism, however, is its rejection of revealed knowledge or truth and miracles (the hallmark of a personal God). It is no more “nonsensical” than theism. In fact, it is more parsimonious and more in keeping with a creator powerful enough to bring the universe into existence. All he/she/it needed was one shot, not needless and repetitious tinkering with the ghosts in the machine….
Absolute nonsense.
When every scientist around is hawking Darwin as one of the great scientists in history, the purveyors of science are in a sense bankrupt. If they are completely lacking in integrity on this, where else are they also empty suits.
As I said ID is science+ . It cannot afford to be wrong. It obvious that modern science is intellectually deficient.
More nonsense.
Meyer’s work is absolutely accurate and very complete as far as I can see so it is the opposite of anemic. It certainly isn’t useless in proving there is a creator which is a major step in accepting a specific religion.
Why do you make stuff up? It’s embarrassing for any adult to do so to prove a bogus point.
ID has more coherence that modern science.
Then take up your advocacy some place else.
This site is not for the discussion of a particular religion. I’m sure you can find lots of Christian/Jewish/Muslim sites that will be better fodder for you.
True, but why create conscious and intelligent entities?
That says something about the purpose of the creation. One has to be incredibly naive to not believe the creator knew exactly what these entities would think. So how can one argue that this creator had no interest in the creation. A very strange creator don’t you think?
There may be a reason for this.
There may not have been any tinkering. Especially if it was planned. Whatever changes were made were conscious, planned and chosen. May the answer is in exploring that?
CD at 61,
Answer the question. Is life actually designed? Yes or no.
Bornagain
Thank you for your excellent posts such as #52 and #53. In particular I fully enjoyed the following takedown of Alan Fox:
Ba77,
It is worth repeating that here, science is ultimately not the most important issue. It is worldview. On one side there are atheist materialists who are very sensitive to any mention of God here. They are quick to bring in deism or a non-personal God. Why is that? And your detailed posts need to be here.
Lurkers and casual readers on this site are meant to be distracted by posts by atheist materialists. They want their worldview to be true regardless of what you post. Or posts made in support of things you’ve mentioned.
The atheist materialists stand on one side of a chasm of infinite depth. There is a way for them to cross over to the theist position. To the ID position, but they cannot bring themselves to do it. Regardless of any apparent intelligence they possess, they must defend evolution/Darwinism. No matter how irrational that is. Regardless of the evidence showing that it is.
2 Timothy 3:7
“always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”
John 3:19
“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”
Thanks, Origenes. I would have missed this had you not quoted BA77.
But evolution has a causal mechanism. I have mentioned it many times. The niche. I’ll point out again that I don’t know but I can’t rule out a Creator of the Universe who would then be the cause of everything.
So evolution has the niche environment and a mechanism to explain observed change over time.
“Intelligent Design” has?
as to:
So AF holds that the ‘niche”, not AF himself, is responsible for the information that he himself is writing in his posts? And he says that as if that is suppose to make any logical sense?
Again, the denial of agent causality, and/or free will, as a legitimate form of causation by Atheistic Naturalists, is the primary, and fatal flaw, in their worldview.
Yes, sort of, though I don’t know, as I said. The current mountain of evidence overwhelmingly supports the the ideas of common descent and change over time. Why there is a universe and why there are humans has not been answered yet.
I report, you decide. For yourself, of course. God forbid you are ever in a position of authority over anyone else.
To reassure lurkers here, I have no and seek no authority over others’ lives. Live and let live.
BA77: “So AF holds that the ‘niche”, not AF himself, is responsible for the information that he himself is writing in his posts?”
AF: “Yes, sort of, though I don’t know,,,,”
So AF, if you yourself are not actually responsible for what you are writing in your posts, why on God’s green earth should I, or anyone else, pay any attention whatsoever to your posts? By your own admission, you are not responsible for what you are saying/writing. We might as well debate a brick wall for all the good it would do, since you yourself, by your own admission, are not actually responsible for what you are saying.
You don’t pay attention. The bulk of what you post allegedly in response to me are non sequiturs, irrelevancies, and (if I’m lucky) strawman misrepresentations of what I write.
ID agrees.
Though what one means by common descent is up for grabs. If one means that all life descended from a common ancestor naturally, that is nonsense. There is zero proof of that. So ID being science+ cannot accept that.
If one means that all life has a common genetic code, then that is fairly well established. A couple of exceptions.
The expression “overwhelmingly supports” doesn’t have any basis in actual proof. It means one can speculate and then present that as proof. For example, niches and small changes just don’t get it done. So speculation there is fruitless. Niches overwhelmingly frustrates common descent by natural means.
The fact that anyone would propose it, is proof that there is no proof. It’s desperation.
Bornagain @69
Alan Fox and PyrrhoManiac1 hold that they are not in control of their ‘own’ thoughts. They are disengaged bystanders to their ‘own’ internal theater. Thoughts concocted by some unknown source (niche?), beyond their control, are forming in their heads and they are simply powerless to intervene.
Things are really bad, they continually say and do stuff—or rather things are being said and done—, without them even being consulted.
Perhaps the most baffling aspect to all of it is their total unawareness of any problem with their situation.
Where have I asserted that? Where has PM1 asserted that? What does “in control of one’s own thoughts” even mean? And once we decide, we are, as always, in the same boat.
As PM1 has already noted, folks are very fond of loaded “gotcha” questions while being utterly unable to come up with answers to these questions themselves.
Frankly, Origenes, you disappoint me.
@72
None of this resembles anything that I said, nor is it implied by what I did say. If it is implied, one would need to demonstrate the implication and not merely insinuate it.
Origenes: “Perhaps the most baffling aspect to all of it is their total unawareness of any problem with their situation.”
And right on cue, the Darwinbots, via bleeps, gurgles, and various squeaks, that bear an uncanny resemblance to meaningful human language, immediately display “their total unawareness of any problem with their situation.”
🙂
… Yesterday, in another thread, the following exchange:
– – – –
LOL
@76
Are you cognizant of the difference between answering a question in the negative and giving reasons for rejecting the question?
Origenes, you are under the false impression that words are actually suppose to mean something when a Darwinist says them. But alas, under atheism, meaning is only an illusion. Their words are as meaningless, and make as much logical sense, as the burbling and wheezing sounds of rotting meat, (and, I might add, their words, logically speaking, have very much the same putrid odor of rotting meant) 🙂
@78
It is, however, simply false that “if naturalism is true, no sentence has meaning”. So the ‘argument from meaning’ is valid, but it is not sound, since it relies on a false premise.
The real problem is that Craig is arguing against Rosenberg’s version of naturalism. To be sure, Rosenberg’s view has a lot of serious problems, and I’m not going to defend it in any way. But Craig’s mistake is to think that he has refuted metaphysical naturalism as such rather than just refuting Rosenberg’s specific version of it.
Rosenberg has, I think, done us a major disservice by articulating a version of metaphysical naturalism that is so extreme and so badly reasoned that it ends up making all of metaphysical naturalism look bad.
For far more coherent versions of metaphysical naturalism that are not vulnerable to Craig’s objections to Rosenberg, I recommend Life After Faith (for an explanation of secular humanism) and Incomplete Nature (for an explanation of how to naturalize intentionality and meaning, which is exactly what Rosenberg denies can be done).
Origenes, methinks the meat robot, referred to as PM1, and through no will of its own, “doth protest too much”.
PyrrhoManiac1, some positions are unacceptable in the context of rational debate—the title “The Thought that Stops Thought” was well chosen by Caspian. There is simply no rational way forward once someone claims that he does not exist and/or is not in control of his thoughts. Everything that follows has to be utterly absurd; in particular, an expose of the reasons by a nonexistent person or ‘by’ a person who has no control of his thoughts.
– – – – –
Bornagain, ‘no meaning’, well yes, of course, how could thoughts have meaning? As Rosenberg has pointed out repeatedly thoughts aren’t about anything.
@81
I gave arguments for why I think that the concept of control is not the right concept to use here. If you refuse to engage with me because of that, it’s not because I have failed to give reasons for my views.
I’m acting exactly as a rational being does: giving reasons for my commitments and asking for your reasons for yours. If you decide that this is insufficient for continued discussion, that’s an irrational decision on your part. But, if you want to be irrational, by all means, be my guest.
I’ve demonstrated my commitment to rational discourse and I’ve demonstrated why rationality and naturalism are fully consistent. If you simply refuse to be convinced and refuse to give reasons for why you aren’t convinced, that’s your own irrational intransigence. Against such stubbornness there is no argument.
PM1@82, you are wasting your time if you are expecting an honest and fair discussion here. With few exceptions, those who comment here simply misrepresent opposing views, or never make an attempt to understand them, raise strawmen based on these misrepresented interpretations, apply a label to you and then feel justified in dismissing everything you say. Regardless of the logic of your argument. Hence the childish use of terms like “meat robot”, “fellow travellers”, “your ilk”.
Another common approach is to start every response to a comment that opposes their deeply held world view (faith) with dismissive accusations. Things like “strawman”, “red herring”, “turnabout projection”, “ad hominem attack”, etc.
People who do this are not interested in a fair and open discussion. They are just interested in sermonizing to and belittling those who have views different than they have.
PM1
Let us be very clear here. Are you the one who gave arguments? Are you the one who thinks? IOW are you the one who is in control? Or is something else, other than you, in control?
@82
I reluctantly agree. Most of the people here have no interest in fair and honest discussion, because they are believe that their view is the only rational view, and that therefore anyone who disagrees with them must be in conflict with reason itself. It does not and cannot occur to them that it is they who are in conflict with reason itself, because it is they who refuse to engage in fair and honest discussion. Well, at least I tried.
PM1@85, a sure sign that they have no cogent response to the logic of your argument is when they start their response with “Whatever” and then paste thousands of words from others’ non relevant articles. Or when they accuse you of having some ulterior motive for disagreeing, as if wishing to have an honest discussion isn’t motive enough, and then claiming that this justifies casting doubt on anything you have to say.
Oh well, if nothing else, it is entertaining to watch them dance. 🙂
PM1, an excellent example of someone misrepresenting your view in a childish ploy to justify dismissing your view rather than honestly addressing it can be seen @84 above.
@84
I think I made it pretty clear that I regard myself (and most other people, with various caveats as appropriate) as having limited, partial control over what we say and do.
I don’t think that control extends all the day down to what we think — what we can do, of course, is decide what we’re doing to do with our thoughts: are we going to express them? If so, how? and to whom? and in what ways?
Or are our thoughts inappropriate, silly, misguided, disrespectful, or even unethical? In those cases, are we going to simply suppress them? Or will we engage in further self-analysis about what is causing those thoughts, so as to weaken their influence?
PM1 @, Giles @
That’s weird, in post @84 I make no attempt whatsoever to (mis)represent anyone’s view. All I do is ask a straightforward question.
For shame, Origenes. There is a serious point as to whether we can or do control our own thoughts. First, we could try to establish the common ground. But shy away if you need to, discussing ideas can be a bit scary.
PM1 @88
In the context of rationality, this is highly problematic. How does ‘limited, partial control over what you say and do’ not undercut any position you take? Including the position you express here, since it follows that you have limited, partial control over regarding yourself to have limited, partial control over what you say or do ….
Utterly baffling. But you cannot help thinking this, because you have no control over what you think … PM1, by claiming that you have no control over your thoughts, you step outside of the realm of rationality.
Utter nonsense. If you have no control over your thoughts, you obviously cannot have control over the thought process leading up to the decision concerning what to do with your thoughts.
More nonsense. Obviously, one needs to have control over one’s thoughts in order to make those decisions.
Game over.
Ah, a goalpost move. Evolutionary changes over time contribute to what the human species are today. There are many aspects of how and what we are that are constrained by our evolutionary history. Our thinking processes are no exception.
However, that has nothing to do with (hoe I understood) Origenes’ question. I reflected on how, at any one moment, I choose what to think. I don’t believe I can choose. My thoughts rise unbidden. Can I separate my thoughts from being me? On this perhaps Descartes was right.
Cogito ergo sum
To be clear about ‘control.’
My position is that rationality requires a person who is in control of his thoughts.
If I understand Alan Fox correctly then he is saying that, at times, he loosens his control over his thoughts a bit and lets them wander off.
Then again, I may very well be wrong about my interpretation of what Alan is writing here … Anyway, I want to make the point that I too can, on occasion, engage in daydreaming and let my thoughts wander off somewhat unsupervised, so to speak.
What I mean by being in control of one’s thoughts, is that when we put in the effort, when we believe that it truly matters, we really are in control of our thoughts. So, I am not making the claim that we are in control “at any one moment.”
I would argue that when it really matters (to us) that is the time when you are not in control of your thoughts. If you were truly in control of your thoughts you should be able to think that pedophilia was good. Assuming that you are straight, you should be able to think that it would be really fun to have sex with someone of your own sex. You should be able to think that it is fine to steal or kill for your own gain.
Free will, and/or agent causality, in any real and meaningful sense, is simply completely incompatible with Atheistic Naturalism. And it is on free will, and/or agent causality, that Atheistic Naturalism, as a coherent worldview, is dealt a particularly nasty, and fatal, blow.
see posts 52 & 53
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-evolution-news-for-darwinism-pregnancy-is-the-mother-of-all-chicken-and-egg-problems/#comment-771050
Of course, Darwinian atheists resolutely deny that their denial of free will, and/or agent causality, is fatal for their worldview. But alas, denying what is right in front of them is mandatory if they are to maintain an atheistic worldview.
For instance, studies have now established that the design inference is ‘knee jerk’ inference that is built into everyone, even including atheists, and that atheists themselves have to ‘mentally work’ suppressing their “knee jerk” design inference!
As the following study found, seeing design is intuitive whereas “religious non-belief is cognitively effortful.”
i.e. It is not that Atheists do not see purpose and/or Design in nature and biology, it is that Atheists, for whatever severely misguided reason, live in denial of the purpose and/or Design that they themselves see in nature. And yes, ‘denialism’ is considered a mental illness.
Perhaps the two most famous quotes of atheists suppressing their innate ‘design inference’ are the two following quotes:
It is very easy to see why Francis Crick in particular, co-discoverer of the DNA helix, would have to constantly suppress his innate design inference, DNA itself literally screams, “I AM INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED” from every angle that you look at it.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/movie-night-with-illustra-a-whale-of-a-story-and-18-trillion-feet-of-you/#comment-745611
Of supplemental note:
Again, what is meant by being in control of one’s thoughts? The question implies that our conscious self is some sort of “controller”‘ that manipulates thoughts which are a separate entity under its control. That, in turn, seems to harken back to the concept of our conscious self being like a little homunculus sitting inside the brain watching the image presented to us by our senses.
But how much control is our conscious self able to exert?
For example, although we are aware of seeing the world around us, we are not aware of the considerable amount of processing the brain performs on the images gathered by our eyes. We are only aware of the final result. The same is true for our other senses.
We are not aware of the work done by the brain making our heart beat. We are not aware of the work done by the brain controlling our breathing or managing our digestive system.
We are not even fully in control of thoughts entering our conscious awareness from the unconscious regions of the mind. Thoughts, memories, sensations, ideas can pop into our minds apparently unbidden.
What we do appear to have a measure of control over are what thoughts we focus on consciously a any given time, although that is far from the imaginary total control claimed to be possible by some here.
‘You’ tell em Seversky, not a word/thought in your entire post was written by ‘you’. 🙂 (assuming of course that ‘you’ really do exist as a real person and that ‘you’ are not just a ‘neuronal illusion’, and also assuming that ‘you’ have some capacity to write your thought down,, i.e. your thought that ‘you’ are not in control of your thoughts) 🙂
That statement by Coyne should literally be the number one example of a self-refuting statement that is given in philosophy/logic 101 classes.
Verse:
Bornagain77
Truth.
At the very outset of rational inquiry, when one embarks on the search for the truth, when one aims to find & understand the truth, one should be aware of a few very obvious requirements in order to be successful.
First, one must exist, because if one does not exist, one cannot find the truth.
Second, one must have the ability to think & understand [one must control one’s thoughts], because if something else does the thinking and understanding, then one does not understand anything, much less the truth.
Third, one must be free in conducting the search, because if something else steers one’s search, then one cannot conduct a search for the truth.
– – –
These requirements are sacred to those who search the Truth.
Bornagain77/96
Atheism and naturalism are metaphysical positions on respectively the existence of gods and the nature of observable reality. There are a number of philosophies or worldviews which are compatible with either or both. How does denying the existence of the Christian God or holding “that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”” – to quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – undermine free will?
You do realize that, in order to maintain your absolutist notion of free will, you are forced to deny that we are contingent beings, that who and what we are was – and is – shaped by influences over which we have no control whatsoever?
From Wikipedia
If our built-in “pattern recognition” systems can produce false positives then how much more likely is it that our perception of apparent design is also unreliable?
It may scream it to those whose religious predispositions demand that there to be physical evidence for the existence of their preferred deity, not so much for those of us who do not share those beliefs.
Seversky at 100,
Answer the question. Are living things actually designed? Yes or no.
Seversky, your post might make a lot more sense if ‘you’ actually existed, (and if ‘you’ had the free will necessary), to write your post. Just a suggestion,,,, (of course I am saying this to ‘you’ assuming that ‘you’ really do exist as real person, and that ‘you’ are not a ‘controlled hallucination”, and I am also assuming, contrary to your claims, that ‘you’ are not just some meat robot with no more control over your actions than a leaf has control over the trajectory of its fall from a tree.)
Verse and video
Seversky 97@
You try to make it sound weird, but is the one who writes your posts, who I suggest to be you, not UTTERLY OBVIOUSLY “some sort of controller” who UTTERLY OBVIOUSLY “manipulates thoughts”?
You try to make it sound weird, but let’s consider, arguendo, the possibility that “your” thoughts are not under your control …. Instead something other than you is doing the thinking, something other than you tells you what makes sense, and when you understand something. Consider the possibility that all the thoughts that ever inhabited your ‘internal theater’ do not stem from you, and in fact have nothing to do with you. You are, in fact, a powerless bystander in relation to “your” thoughts. Consider the possibility that you completely lack the ability to understand anything. Do you feel nausea creeping up on you already?
Unwarranted nonsensical imagery.
Another example of a commenter misrepresenting the views of another to make it a caricature. Very dishonest.
Two can play at that childish game. If you believe in an all knowing omniscient god then you have no free will and are nothing more than a meat robot.
Sir Giles @95
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that we are unable to think certain things, because they are forbidden. And not being able to think certain things would show that we are not in control of our thoughts. Do I represent your point correctly?
Well, if we were indeed not able to think certain things, I would agree with you. However, I hold that we are able to think all things including outrageous stuff like “pedophilia is good” and even “Joe Biden is an intellectual powerhouse”. But surely to believe the crazy things we are able to think is another matter entirely.
Seversky at 97,
Do you have trouble navigating the grocery store? With finding the items you actually want? With interacting with strangers? How about driving? Is your sense of awareness so poor that you can’t gauge what the driver in front of you might do? Especially if he’s weaving across the road?
Quit using the smokescreen. I know you know better.
Seversky at 100,
Here is the summary:
1) Atheist naturalism is dead. Intelligent Design involves a being not constrained by physical laws.
2) Evolution/Darwinism is dead. There is no evidence that unguided evolution can produce the diversity of life that we see around us.
It appears you want to continue to assert the opposite.
BA77, the fact remains, if god is omniscient and all knowing, we can’t have free will. No amount of apologetics will change that.
I’m still not entirely sure what “controlling one’s own thoughts” means.
But if it means is something like, being able to evaluate one’s ideas according to epistemic criteria, and reject those ideas that don’t conform to those criteria, then yes, of course I’m happy enough with that!
By “epistemic criteria” I mean both rules of inference and rules of evidence. That is, we can ask of ourselves, does this idea make sense? Does it conflict with other things I already believe? How should my other beliefs be revised, modified, or abandoned in order to integrate this idea into what I already take to be the case? What is entailed by this idea? What evidence is there for it? What kinds of evidence would I need in order to confirm or discomfirm this idea? etc.
I agree that you could think of the concept, as I could think about Santa Clause, unicorns and god. But I doubt very much that I could think they existed without more evidence than currently exists.
Do you honestly believe that you could truly think that pedophilia was good? Or that killing and stealing for your own gain was acceptable?
Sir Giles claims, “if god is omniscient and all knowing, we can’t have free will. No amount of apologetics will change that.”
So Sir Giles, you hold that God could not create beings with free will, and that God can only create automatons? Really???
Well, to be short and sweet, and as I’ve heard from time to time, “Your God is too Small.”
Discussions with you would be much more productive if you made an attempt to read comments for content and not twist them to suit your narrative.
If god exists, of course he can produce beings with free will. But if he is omniscient and all knowing, as is the claim, then his creations can’t have free will.
@114
I don’t think this is right. There are least two strategies for reconciling human free will with divine omniscience.
Firstly, divine omniscience means at most that God knows what we will choose before we make up our minds. But God’s knowledge doesn’t interfere with our choices or somehow cause them. God knows what it is that we shall freely choose, but that doesn’t negate the fact that we do indeed choose freely.
Secondly (and this is more tentative, but it makes sense to me): divine omniscience is limited to all possible facts: for every proposition p, God knows whether p or ~p. But in the case of human freedom, if one takes seriously the idea that a free choice is its own kind of creation ex nihilo, then prior to choice there is simply is no fact of the matter to be known.
I don’t know if this idea of free choice as its own kind of creation ex nihilo is theologically mainstream. I got it from my reading of Descartes, who does try to be theologically mainstream (relative to the version of Scholastic Catholicism that was dominant in French academia at the time).
Sir Giles, so in your book, only if God is NOT Omniscient can we have free will?
Baloney!
As I referenced above, “God stands above all human choices and works through human freedom to bring about His own providential goals.”
i.e. Being Omniscient, and having perfect foreknowledge of what each man will freely choose to do, does not equal coercion of men to make those free choices.
For a prime example of God working “through human freedom to bring about His own providential goals”, I simply reference His atoning sacrifice on the cross. God did not prevent men from freely choosing to do evil, rather than doing good, instead He used human choices to do evil against itself, so as to accomplish His ultimate goal of defeating death. i.e. “They nailed him to the tree, not knowing that by that very act they were bringing the world to his feet. They gave him a cross, not guessing that he would make it a throne.”
Video and Verses:
Supplemental note and Verse
Not having free will does not mean coercion. If god knows that I am going to steal a Snickers bar, I do not have the free will not to steal it. If I truly have free will then god cannot have inerrant foreknowledge of my decisions. If you want to argue that can predict to a high probability what my choice will be, then I can accept that. But that is not what believers are saying.
Sir Giles @
Yes, I honestly believe that I can truly think (and truly write) the sentence “pedophilia is good”, and I can also think “I am a unicorn living just beneath the surface of the sun.” However, as I have stated before, believing such crazy stuff is another matter entirely.
To be clear, I can think those sentences, no problem, but I cannot believe them to be true.
SG, back to relevant focus. For, absent responsible rational freedom, there is no credible base to trust soundness of thought, reasoning, claimed knowledge, so — and it seems you are supporting the Provine, Crick, Rosenberg et al view — we have a clear case of self-defeating self reference. As for the attempted side track, start with, the North Pole is due north of every other point on the Earth’s surface, giving us an idea of what being polar to time and space would be like. In that context, we can not only reason out but appreciate that God’s polar point awareness of outcomes is not equal to nor does it imply that we do not have responsible rational freedom and therefore lack rationality. Rationality, knowledge and freedom are inextricably entangled. As a result a claimed reasoned case that we lack freedom is self defeating. There are some things that cannot be reasonably argued to and this is one of them. Of course, the root problem is reduction of reason to gigo limited computation on wetware, has no room for responsible, rational freedom. Take that as being a good reason to reject computationalism. Mindedness is evidence of reality beyond what physicalism tries to insist on. KF
Origenes, to write, say or think sentences one knows not to be warranted by reason of absurdity automatically means not believing them to be the case. KF
Relatd/101
I don’t know if living things are actually designed. No one does. I can’t, therefore, rule out the possibility but I don’t think that, on balance, the available data supports it. To that extent, I would say no. But I could be wrong. We both could.
Relatd/107
I remember watching a TV science show many years ago which invited viewers to take part in a simple experiment. They told us they were going to play a short clip of some basketball players bouncing an passing a ball between them. We were asked to count the number of bounces as a test of our visual acuity. I watched the clip, counted the bounces but was one short. They then told us the total and then replayed the clip. This time I saw someone dressed in a gorilla suit walk slowly into shot, stop in the center of the frame, turn, wave at the camera and then walk out of shot the other side. I was literally staggered. I had not seen that figure at all in my first viewing If I had been told beforehand that my attention could be so distracted that I would not see something that was so plainly there, I would not have believed it. Yet it happened.
This is also why we now understand that eyewitness testimony is no longer as reliable as once thought.
We are fallible creatures. Our knowledge is limited as are our faculties and senses yet, by and large, they are good enough to enable us to navigate this world in reasonable safety. Which is what we would expect of a natural process like evolution. Evolution doesn’t do “perfect” or even “optimal”. When it works to our advantage, it does just good enough to give us an edge over the competition. That’s the best we can hope for.
Dear onlooker, perhaps you are wondering why it is that certain participants on this forum insist that they do not control their thoughts, have only limited control and/or feign that they do not know what ‘control’ means. The explanation for their baffling behavior is that once they admit that they do control their thoughts, they are no longer able to defend their preferred worldview; which is naturalism.
Dear onlooker, can you imagine having to argue that you are not in control of your mind, in order to defend your belief-system? Yet, that’s where some of us are.
The following argument has hit them like a brick wall:
1. If naturalism is true, then all our actions and thoughts are consequences of events and laws of nature in the remote past before we were born.
2. We have no control over circumstances that existed in the remote past before we were born, nor do we have any control over the laws of nature.
3. If A causes B, and we have no control over A, and A is sufficient for B, then we have no control over B.
Therefore,
4. If naturalism is true, then we have no control over our own thoughts and actions.
Therefore, assuming that rationality requires control,
5. If naturalism is true, we are not rational.
PyrrhoManiac1/115
On the contrary, I would argue that one takeaway from the Biblical account of Peter’s triple denial of knowing Jesus suggests this is the case. Jesus told Peter specifically that this is what would happen. Peter, not unnaturally, denied vehemently that he would do any such thing and we can assume he meant it at the time. Yet the future unwound as Jesus foretold and there appears to be nothing Peter could have done about it. This suggest that if an omniscient being claims that specified future events will happen then they are facts, they already exist to be known rather than just being speculations or estimates of probability.
If God knows what we will choose before the fact then for Him, that choice already exists to be known and the same must be true for whatever follows from that choice. Otherwise, God’s prescience is not omniscience but only speculation ir, at best, estimates of probability.
I don’t see how this helps. Prior to the choice, it is not a fact but, yes, only once it has been made does it become a fact. But this is only true for beings who exist only at particular points in space and time. Where the choice is made in our future it is not, for us, a fact. But for an omniscient – and by extension omnipresent being – the choice is a fact.
I don’t know what US President James Monroe was doing on this day in 1822 but I assume that his experience of his “present” was just as vivid and real as ours is of our “present”. But while, for him, the two hundred years between us was a mystery, we know much of what happened as facts. The same presumably applies to a person who exists two hundred years in our future. They know – or will know – for a fact what is still a mystery to us. Yet do we have any reason to privilege Monroe’s or ours or the future person’s present over the others? Wouldn’t it be the case that an omniscient being must, by definition, know all facts that exist to be known regardless of whether they happen to be in the future from our parochial, temporal perspective?
119
Just wanted to highlight this:
I don’t recall Sir Giles (or anyone else here) either denying “responsible rational freedom” or saying anything that implies the views of Crick, Provine, or Rosenberg. If anything, I’ve made it perfectly explicit not only that Rosenberg does not speak for me, but also that his view commits a good many errors that are by no means forced upon every proponent of naturalism.
I’ll go ‘on the record’ about this exactly once: Rosenberg’s claim that meaning cannot be naturalized is a bad argument. Here’s his reasoning:
1. linguistic meaning is found in sentences.
2. but the brain does not store information in the form of sentences
3. therefore there is no linguistic meaning in brains
4. but there is nowhere else in the naturalistic worldview that linguistic meaning could exist
5. therefore, meaning must be eliminated in a naturalistic worldview.
Apart from (2), every premise is just question-begging, and in the absence of arguments to support them, there is no reason for even the most committed of naturalists to accept (5). Rosenberg’s eliminativism about meaning is just question-begging, and there’s no reason why anyone (including Rosenberg himself) should accept it.
@123
The first premise is not true. As I believe I have argued numerous times in this thread and several others. Each time my arguments were dismissed as nonsense, as not even worth taking time to refute.
The “brick wall” exists entirely in delusional fantasies of what naturalism is. It is those fantasies that render most here incapable of the basic literacy needed to respond to my arguments with anything more than snark and dismissal.
@124
I believe that this is where theology meets philosophy of physics. If we accept a ‘block universe’, then sure: the universe is a finite but unbounded four-dimensional structure with topological regions that can be designated as “beginning” and “end” relative to the arrow of time. On a ‘growing block‘ theory of the universe, not even God can know future events because they have not yet happened — not even for Him.
KF@119, I only have so many years left before I become worm food and I have no desire to spend it trying to decipher this convoluted mess.
PM1 @
Wiki seems to agree with premise 1, assuming that the ‘natural forces’ they speak of act in a lawful manner.
Here PM1 agrees with premise 1, “nothing can happen that would violate the laws” is just saying that everything acts in accord with the laws.
One also has to factor in the state of events in the universe. On the one hand the laws and the particular state of the universe on the other. The idea is that you have to know both.
I don’t get it, why would there be “genuine unpredictability”? Where does it come from? Why is it that we are predestined to be ignorant of the space of possibilities (or rather ‘outcomes’)? Is your argument that the search space is too big for computers to calculate? If nothing violates the laws, if everything acts in accord with the laws, and, given that we, in principle, can know the state of the universe, then where does “genuine unpredictability” enter the scene?
SG states, “Not having free will does not mean coercion. If god knows that I am going to steal a Snickers bar, I do not have the free will not to steal it.”
You are presupposing that you know God’s thoughts. Save for fulfilled prophecy, (which happens to be a powerful apologetic in its own right), and prophecy yet to be fulfilled, God does not reveal the future to man. God certainly does not coerce anyone to steal snickers bars, an indeed God gives us an intuitive moral conscious that we may intuitively know that it is wrong to take that which does not belong to us. And in fact, a person’s ability to override his intuitive moral conscious, and to take a snickers bar that he intuitively knows he ought not take, is evidence, in and of itself, that man has free will.
Moreover SG, to point out the obvious, you are not defending Atheistic Naturalism, the view that we are ‘meat robots’ that have no free will (J. Coyne), but you are instead making a purely theological argument. A Theological argument about God’s sovereignty trumping our free will, a theological that has been held ,and debated, for centuries by Calvinists.,,, Are you now a Calvinist?
That you would be making a purely theological argument, not a naturalistic argument, is just as well, since, as pointed out in post 52 and 53, empirical evidence itself, from both neuroscience and quantum mechanics, proves that, as far as empirical evidence will allow us to tell, we most certainly do have free will.
Of related note, the free will of God, via the presupposition of ‘contingency, happens to be a essential presupposition that was necessary for the rise of modern science in Medieval Christian Europe,
And indeed, the belief in ‘contingency’, and/or ‘divine will’, played an integral role in Sir Isaac Newton’s founding of modern physics.
And since Newton also held to the orthodox belief that man is made in the image of God, (and since he explicitly rejected the mechanical and/or necessitarian philosophy), then I hold that Newton would be very pleased to see the recent closing of the “freedom of choice” loophole within quantum mechanics. (A Zeilinger – 2018)
What is the lowliest creature we can imagine that is aware of us?
I’ll use a slug but we could probably imagine something lowlier. Is that slug’s understanding of our nature greater than our understanding of the nature of the creator of the universe?
I would guess so. Yet we presume to tell this creator of the universe what it should and shouldn’t do. What it must do or have done to get it better. We rarely try to understand why this universe as it is is here or our purpose in it.
Are we here for the same reason the slug is here? Or are the purpose of our origins different?
Aside: what does the cartoon in this link by George Booth have to do with the creation of intelligent entities. The cartoon is often called consensus.
https://lowres.cartooncollections.com/humans-disagreement-agreeing-agreements-control-business-commerce-CC35522_low.jpg
Paul Davies on the folly of strong emergentism.
Sure, but that is not part of physics 🙂
Some atoms are radioactive and a statistically predictable number of atoms will decay (half-life). Often products of decay are emitted as particles. What determines the path any particular emitted particle takes?
Pregnancy is the mother of all chicken and egg problems, but it comes on the heels of another doozy – the evolution of sex. Because here you need simultaneous evolution of both male and female genitals, the reproduction system, and the software to run it properly. Half a penis seems useless to me. How could you go from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction if it doesn’t work the first time. An intermediate stage where the organism is infertile will not work.
But, believers will be believers. For the Darwin faithful, there is nothing too difficult for evolution. If it exists, it automatically means in their minds that it evolved.
Oh how I wish all their just so stories could be actually tested.
Fortunately for them, they do not need to worry about whether or not their hypotheses work or are accurate. All they have to do is make up stories that they hope might work. This is NOT science. It is story telling.
This one is actually not fully documented, nor is there one generally accepted explanation.
Sex is sharing genomes. Many organisms don’t use a penis for this
Moreover, genetic recombination itself is now known to NOT be a random “shuffling of genes” as was falsely presupposed by Darwinists,
And as if that was not bad enough, the entire bottom-up ‘gene-centric’ view of Darwinists is now also known to be wrong, i.e. It has literally become “systems all the way down.”
ID explains sex how?
SG, a sure sign you realise you do not have it on the merits. The point is simple, to reason one must be free, and yet you are either advocating or taking fellow travellership — i.e. SUPPORTING [attn, PM1] — a view that seeks to reduce mind to in effect GIGO limited computation on a substrate. But computation is precisely not reasoning, it is a programmed cause effect process, sometimes with room for a stochastic element: at most, it can express the canned reasoning of its designers, and the history of bugs tells us a lot on that. You and others are therefore trapped in a self defeating argument loop trying to argue for what undermines argument based on reason. It is sounder to acknowledge reasoning as a first given of our experience and to infer from that to a world in which reasoning is possible. KF
PS, I cite Reppert for those who want a little more background:
PPS, God at polar point of space time reality, simply takes omnipresence and omniscience seriously and illustrates how by moving up a dimension the seemingly impossible becomes intelligible: one point, north of London, Chicago and Tokyo. The fault is our inadequate concepts.
PM1, the basic problem with emergentism as often used is, it is in effect a way to say magic step, as opposed to, say, how a chemical compound has its own properties due to specific intelligible interactions of say Na and Cl ions forming a crystal we call salt. Computing is a dynamic-stochastic process, not a rational one, notoriously so from gigo, garbage in, garbage out. KF
AF: “ID explains sex how?”
Verse:
Supplemental note,,, Genetic expression is found to be very different between men and women
SG,
just now, I went and got a glass of water. I did not have to do so, at least just now but obviously water is a condition of healthy life. BTW, tap water here is literally spring water. Now, I freely chose to get water and come back.
To me
For God at polar point
__________________________
In that set,
In short, the bare assertion that God’s omniscience removes freedom, is rooted in misconceptions and absurdities.
It fails.
KF
PS, similarly, my composing of this comment is a similar act of rational freedom, and were this just a programmed spewing of characters with no freedom to judge warrant, implication, concepts etc, it would have no more credibility than random giberish vjdeyj5dh or a stuck key xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
AF, what is so difficult to understand about designing creatures in two complementary sexes, opening up many possibilities and advantages? And, for human beings, opening up a whole dimension of love, life partnership and family building? Do we find it strange that there are nuts and complementary bolts? KF
Chalmers on strong emergence:
Strong emergence: brand new laws magically spring into being without any explanation whatsoever.
There is only one clear case of strong emergence, according to Chalmers:
– – – – – – –
I realize that I am somewhat off-topic here, but PM1 keeps bringing up strong emergence as if it provides a coherent naturalistic explanation for all things.
Not difficult to imagine, perhaps. But how, when, and by what mechanism? And by whom or what?
ID proponents don’t begin to attempt to answer such questions.
Origenes, some things need to be answered as to what is different from poof, magic, just so stories. KF
@143
I would put it rather as follows: the only version of naturalism that is philosophically and scientifically acceptable would be a version that accommodates something like strong emergence. But I would need to read Chalmers carefully before committing myself to his language.
At present, I’m only willing to say that I am inclined towards the view that life is strongly emergent with regard to inanimate nature.
But I don’t think this is “magic”: I think it follows straightforwardly from the correct view about the nature of causation itself. I’ve addressed that a few times in UD and don’t feel particularly inclined to repeat a point that’s already been ignored more than once.
AF, many questions. The plausible model on the table is a molecular nanotech model and maybe retroviruses as a key tool. The issue as you know is there are strong signs of design in life from OoL up. What we do not yet or even may never know — Godel haunts me — should not block us from what we can and do know or should acknowledge. For sure, design is the only empirically warranted source for FSCO/I. The ideological imposition of patently inadequate mechanisms is now leading to poof magic stories by those who claim they lock out the supernatural. But then, any sufficiently advanced technology . . . KF
PM1, you have no adequate causal mechanism. If you disagree, simply link your argument. KF
@148
here
Emergence = It just does
Not science. Anti-Science.
Andrew
PM1 on strong emergence:
Paul Davies on an out-of-nowhere “emergent demon”:
@151
I don’t see how quoting snippets of Davies is supposed to settle the question. For all I know, Davies could be setting up and knocking down a strawman view of strong emergence in order to defend a better way of thinking about it.
Yes indeed, except for a couple of points:
1) No-one who is an ID proponent can offer a mechanism or agent for the executor of “design”. Nor can anyone tell us how, when, where the “Designer” executes “design”.
2). Nobody can explain what FSCO/I is, let alone quantify it.
Apart from 1 and 2 above, it’s all fine. 😉
Though the Creator of this Universe, working through physical effects, using the niche environment as mechanism, could be the culprit, I guess.
as to: “at no stage is there a need for an extra type of force to act on an individual molecule to make it comply with a ‘convective master plan.’
PM1: “I don’t see how quoting snippets of Davies is supposed to settle the question.”
In other news, PM1 also sees no problem with Baron Munchausen puling himself out of a swamp by his own pigtail
Why do you make up such nonsense?
Explained several times. Is this the best that you can do? Are you here to promote ID by being stupid in your objections to it?
So, god is omniscient and all knowing because he knows that you will, at some time in the future, drink water? By that logic I am as omniscient and all knowing as god.
Jerry asserts:
News to me. Where can I find such an explanation.
PM1’s emergentism
This notion is at odds with …
– – –
Setting aside the matter if “relational difference” is a helpful concept, the question before us is: does PM1’s iron oxide, or any other conglomerate PM1 puts forward, have “emergent” causal powers which cannot be given a satisfactory reductive account, even in principal? IOW is the “whole” (iron oxide) really somehow more than the sum of its parts?
According to Davies, the answer is a resounding: “No.”
This is an incoherent notion. Strong emergence proposes the “emergence” (*poof*) of new laws with downward causation. How can they operate without influencing anything, without making a difference, without violating known laws of nature?
You cannot have your cake and eat it: you cannot have new laws that operate from above without making a difference.
AF, we do not need to reason from agent to design, that is cart before horse reasoning in this context. We reason from reliable sign to design as process then inquire as to candidate. Evidence of arson first before inferring arson then seeking suspects. KF
It is fairly easy to understand why agent causation, i.e. free-will, (and/or consciousness), will NEVER be explained as being an emergent property of particles, (as some atheistic naturalists, apparently, desperately want to believe/imagine).
Specifically, in quantum mechanics it is now shown that material particles themselves do not even exist until ‘observers’ choose, via their free will, what to measure.
As the late Steven Weinberg, (who was an atheist), stated in the following article, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
And as the newly minted Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
In fact, Anton Zeilinger, in 2018, was instrumental, (via using distant quasars), in closing the last remaining, and ‘creepy’, ‘freedom of choice’ loophole,,,
Moreover, via Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment with atoms, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
And via experimental realization of Leggett’s inequality we find, “Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”
The Mind First and/or Theistic implications of quantum experiments such as the preceding are fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, 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!”
So thus in conclusion, since it is now proven that material particles do not even exist until after we choose how we wish to observe and/or measure them, well then so much for your Atheistic desire that agent causation, and/or free will, be explained as some ‘magical’ emergent property of particles. It just ain’t gonna happen that way no matter how much some atheists may wish, and/or imagine, it to happen that way. i.e. Baron Munchausen just ain’t never gonna pull himself out of the swamp by his own pigtail, no matter how much he may try.
also see
Verse:
@158
This is a good question. Reflecting on it, it’s now clear to me that iron oxide would be at best an example of “weak emergence.” It demonstrates the emergence of new causal powers, but (arguably) explainable in terms of the constituents: we can explain why oxygen does what it does to iron in terms of the structure of the electron orbitals in oxygen atoms and iron atoms.
I am somewhat less happy with “reducible even in principle” (or Chalmers’s “deducible in principle”) because “reductive in principle” just seems to me “it’s possible that someone might be able to carry out the reduction, even though no one actually has”. That seems terribly vague to me. In some contexts, “in principle” is just writing a promissory note.
I am often puzzled at the notion of “levels of reality”. (Is reality structured like a layer cake?) I prefer to think of strong emergence as diachronic (happening over time) rather than synchronic (obtaining at the same moment in time). The emergence of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic systems does not violate the laws of thermodynamics, but that doesn’t mean that it is predictable from those laws.
The question is, would knowing the laws of thermodynamics and the molecular properties of water allow one to predict the hexagonal structure of Benard cells? Maybe, but it’s hard for me to see how. Would knowing the laws that govern dissipative systems allow one to predict emergence of teleological systems? Again, maybe, but I don’t see how.
I suspect that Davies is setting up a false dichotomy between either (1) “a satisfactory reductive account, even in principle” or (2) “novel global forces.” I agree with Davies in rejecting (2): emergence does not involve positing new fundamental forces beyond those of physics. But rejecting (2) does not entail (1), which seems to be what you think his view is. But I’ll know more once I’ve read the paper in its entirety.
I’ve started giving this paper a quick glance, and one think that it makes clear is that his concern is whether there’s need for strong emergence within physics. He isn’t addressing the question that I’m interested in, which is whether biology is reducible to physics (even “in principle”) or if biology is strongly emergent with regard to physics.
However, in the same volume that Davies’s paper appeared (The Re-emergence of Emergence), there’s a paper by Terrence Deacon, which does address this issue. Deacon’s article doesn’t appear to be free online, but there’s a decent summary of it here.
Fair enough.
You are completely ignoring the most important step. How did the candidate implement its design (ie, hypotheses)?Where is the forensic evidence for the implementation process (ie, testing and evidence). Where is the refining of the hypotheses following observations and testing? Evolutionary theory demonstrates these in abundance. ID, not so much (ie, not at all).
PM1,
You raised points in a thread I was not monitoring, I clip from your linked and will comment on relevant point, in numbered steps of thought:
PM1, thought thread, 49: >>The root idea of emergence is “the whole is different from the sum of its parts”: specifically, the whole has causal powers that are distinct from the causal powers that belong to each of its parts, taken individually.>>
1: Note, you are speaking here about wholes, parts and ordering or organisation, which are different.
2: Order is often a result of built in forces such as those that form NaCl crystals, by contrast with organisation; which expresses an invisible component, functional, configuring information that on observation traces to design once complexity is above 500 – 1,000 bits with essentially certain reliability.
3: The aspect of the system’s behaviour that comes from interaction arises through the order and/or organisation (and can also come from disordering forces e.g. melting a crystal or breaking down of components deranging function).
4: The whole-parts differences do not arise by poof magic, they come from interaction, order, organisation (and disorganisation).
5: For some systems stochastic behaviour is also material, e.g. how statistical micro behaviour gives rise to macro level thermodynamic properties such as temperature or pressure, or the micro-macro relationships of socio-cultural and economic systems.
6: Going beyond systems, these extend also to networks, now, most famously, the Internet.
7: So, the holistic aspects come from somewhere, and that tends to be in key part, design.
8: For instance, economies are always planned, the issue is the information and control choking of central planning systems vs the relatively superior performance of markets based on households and firms acting at micro level. Economies are particularly prone to disordering shocks.
9: So, your premise fails to escape the Platonic-Mododian triad: mechanical necessity, chance, intelligence acting by art.
10: We may extend to, material causal factors contribute substances and components, actuators are directly effective factors, purposes are targets of designers, and designers are initiating causes. Of course in some cases, we fall short of the full four, e.g. accidents happen. And the butterfly effect causes sharply cumulative divergence in a phase space. I will just mention quantum phenomena, superposition, wave particle duality and entanglement etc. Remember, colour and fire are quantum effects and magnetism a relativistic effect.
11: So, we have not injected a novel, unaccounted for causal capacity, no we are not getting something from nothing, non being.
>>I think that this is not only true, but it is necessarily true given a correct understanding of causality itself. Causation is a relation: a causal power is the realization of a difference between things. (As a trivial example: oxygen causes iron to rust because of the relational difference between the orbitals in the atoms, such that iron tends to become iron oxide in the presence of oxygen.)>>
12: Already accounted for.
>>Once we see that causation is always about a relational difference, then it becomes rather easy to see that different kinds of organization will bring forth different causal powers. These causal powers will include the power to bring forth new kinds of organization.>>
13: Organisation, as the O in FSCO/I reminds, is informational, and you do not get complex functionally specific information from nothing, it is reliably the product of intelligence, once we are beyond 500 – 1,000 bits.
>>What’s needed to naturalize teleology is to combine this generic account of emergence with a specific idea about the levels of complexity that emergence can bring about.>>
13: Question begged, see above on the sources of system behaviour. No, we do not get something from nothing.
>>There are, I think, at least three distinct levels: (1) basic thermodynamic systems, which tend to maximize entropy over time unless additional energy is put into the system; >>
14: A common error, as was noted earlier. Injection of unordered, uncoupled energy naturally INCREASES disorder as more energy is available to feed into random thermal motion, enable going over [or through — tunnelling] potential barriers etc.
15: It is organised, information rich forced ordered motion — work under a plan — that increases organisation once we go beyond a modest threshold of complexity as was noted.
>>(2) self-organized far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic systems, >>
16: Convection cells and the like come about by ordering forces in the structure of a system, e.g. hurricanes come through Coriolis forces in the context of convection over sea surface waters at or above 80 degrees F.
17: Self ordered systems do not show the sort of complex, information rich ordering we find in cells etc, not on our observation. A question is being begged and empirical evidence is being shunted aside.
>>which tend to resist entropy over time if the system is set up with background parameters;>>
18: Ordered systems trace to boundary conditions, circumstances and ordering energy flows, they are nothing like homeostasis in the living cell, which is a metabolising automaton, with protective encapsulation, smart gating and a built in von Neumann kinematic self replicator.
19: In short galloping hypotheses errors.
>> (3) teleological systems, which tend to resist entropy over time by virtue of generating their own parameters.>>
20: Organisation and organised work, information rich.
>>We know that systems of class (2) can emerge from systems of class (1). (Ilya Prigogine got the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry for demonstrating this.)>>
21: He was also very aware of the limitations of his work, much along the lines noted.
>> So the $64,000 question is, can systems of class (3) emerge from systems of class (2)?>>
22: No, the OBSERVATIONAL, EMPIRICAL challenge is to demonstrate this, and frankly that is closely related to the challenge conventional thermodynamicists pose to perpetuum mobile advocates: show us a case.
>> Moreover, it (the emergent phenomenon) cannot violate known laws of nature.>>
23: Precisely.
>>Right, but notice that “cannot violate” is very different from “can be predicted from” or even “are entailed by”.>>
24: See above on what tends to be overlooked about systems.
>> The only constraint that the naturalist would insist upon is that no emergent phenomena (teleology, intentionality, normativity) can violate the laws of fundamental physics — no violation of the laws of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, or general relativity. (Or any successor theory to any or all of those.)>>
25: Organising, configuring work for complex systems, from nothing in effect, is a violation of thermodynamics, posing on order and claiming emergence fails to account for the information and linked work to configure.
>>That’s perfectly consistent with also insisting that the laws of fundamental physics do not allow us to predict the behavior of emergent phenomena.>>
26: Creativity is often surprising and transcends the expected, but comes from intelligence.
>> I would argue that known laws of physics preclude the natural development of the systemic complexity of atoms that we find in even the simplest living organism.>>
27: Because of the information gap to get to the required organisation.
>>If self-organizing far-from-equilibrium systems can emerge spontaneously from equilibrium thermodynamics (and we know that they can), why can’t teleological systems emerge spontaneously from self-organizing far-from-equilibrium systems?>>
28: The information and organising work gaps again.
>>As I see it, here’s the fundamental issue at contention: is the difference between a teleological system and a self-organizing but non-teleological system the same kind of difference as the difference between a self-organizing non-teleological system and a system that tends towards equilibrium?>>
29: Information and organising work gap again.
>>I might be wrong in thinking that the answer to that question is “yes”. If I’m wrong, then that would strengthen the case for ID. But I don’t think it’s irrational to think that the answer is “yes”, which means that naturalism is not an irrational position to hold.>>
30: The key sidestepped issue is, again, the information and organising work gap.
31: That can only be surmounted by empirical, observed demonstration, not imposed ideological speculation coming from a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism and/or its fellow travellers.
KF
SG, we can and often do reliably infer to design on sign when we have noconvincing idea of how they did the job, e.g. building stonehenge or the pyramids of Egypt. As it is you know that after this talk point was raised endlessly, I put up again an elaboration of molecular nanotech lab several generations beyond Venter. Not to say this is how but this is one way it could be done. That such is on the table, backed by what Venter et al have already done but such made no difference to the talking point simply highlights that we see objection for the sake of road blocking rhetoric, not serious engagement. KF
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/at-sci-news-moths-produce-ultrasonic-defensive-sounds-to-fend-off-bat-predators/#comment-762546
There was a long discussion there and you were participating.
Also the silliness of saying there is no mechanism for design is ludicrous. Here is a comment from about 13 years ago.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/complex-specified-information-you-be-the-judge/#comment-305339
You were exposed to the above comment since it was repeated on a thread in response to a comment you made and that you immediately afterwards made a comment. By the way the title of the thread from 2009 was “Complex Specified Information? You Be The Judge.”
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/at-big-think-can-we-predict-evolution/#comment-764277
So let’s stuff the “news to me” nonsense.
PM1, a few comments:
You’d better make up your mind on this matter, because strong emergence is all about the claim that higher-order properties emerge from lower-order interactions (yet cannot be explained by them) and next proceed to ‘reach down’, so to speak, in effect constituting new laws.
Either our thoughts are produced bottom-up by particles in the brain, or by a “person” who is able to reach down, so to speak.
So we have some system and the laws. And all is good, since everything acts in accord with laws. All is predictable and understandable. ….
But. Wait. What??
Suddenly something emerges which is totally unexpected. **POOF** Suddenly all sorts of things occur which are principally unpredictable, principally unexplainable from known laws. And the system starts to behave in a completely unexplainable unexpected way.
And now you tell me that such somehow does not violate the laws?
The whole concept of strong emergence is either nonsense, or we live in an unpredictable unlawful universe.
It is only ludicrous if theee is indeed a mechanism. I don’t see anything close to one on following your link.
I mean, I can if necessary, give an abbreviated explanation for biological evolution. It takes a couple of sentences. Why is everyone so coy about how “Intelligent Design” works?
AF, evolution by design, based on built in capabilities so that creatures with relevant body plans can adapt to current and changing biophysical environments; environments and ecosystems too require design, up to levels involving setting up planets, solar system and onwards to cosmological frameworks; nearby supernovas on a fairly regular basis likely would be lethal. At basic level, Tomcods adapted to otherwise toxic waters, Europeans to drinking milk in adulthood, and we have circumpolar species complexes. Thus, at minimum, a certain degree of front loading. The problem is, adaptation mechanisms have been force fitted to grand macro narratives under ideological straightjackets as Lewontin and others long since exposed. And in case you missed the point on evolution by design, this is related to technological evolution principles as identified by the TRIZ practitioners. All of this has been pointed out here many times for years, just studiously ignored. KF
There is no mechanism due to the laws of physics.
That is what ID is about and you know it. So the tools of science will not explain how it happened. It was essentially a one time construction process. The anti-ID people from 13 years ago were smarter than you and understood it could happen in a laboratory setting. They wouldn’t make the silly comments that you do
They were knowledgeable of synthetic biology and its efforts. So pick one process and assume it worked. Even Richard Dawkins understood that.
The rest of your comment is nonsense including the boast that you could explain Evolution in a couple of sentences. Remember niches don’t get it done so to invoke them are just more non sequitur’s.
Humans are a perfect example of niches not producing any meaningful change where it was needed.
Emergence is certainly present in molecule formation.
The best example is water. Is emergence present in any other process? If so what are they and are they reproducible?
That would be a good start in justifying the process as relevant. Otherwise it is just wishful speculation.
KF @163
Your reply to PM1 is very educational. Key in your response, as I understand it, is that there is one force in the universe that can explain “emergence”, in all the relevant cases, namely (functional specified) information. This ties in nicely with Paul Davis who confronted with the question “what is emergence?”, talks about one thing only, namely information — video.
Surely, information explains why certain systems do what they do, and takes away the need to invoke the incoherent concept of “emergence.” It seems to me that PM1 forgets about the component information when he lists the parts of a system. Note that he does not once mention information.
How does information explain the properties of water which is the best example of emergence I can think of?
@166
Laws of physics are relations between variables that tell us what cannot happen and what must happen, not what will happen. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy cannot decrease in a closed system, general relativity tells us that an object with mass cannot accelerate up to the speed of light (or beyond), etc. We can get determinate solutions to very simple physical problems, but once the problems get beyond very simple, predictions fail us. (We can’t even solve gravitational attraction between more than two moving bodies!)
There’s a big difference between “explainable in light of” and “predictable from”. It’s one thing to say that we can explain X in terms of Y, quite another to say that if you knew nothing about X but knew everything about Y, one could predict X from Y. This is not to say that predictions are useless — they are crucial, of course! — but they aren’t everything.
Maybe I’m just dim, but I don’t see why it’s a problem to say that life exhibits novel causal powers that aren’t predictable from physics alone; see No entailing laws, but enablement in the evolution of the biosphere:
See also A World Beyond Physics.
I don’t deny that I’m on very speculative territory in suggesting that teleology is strongly emergent with regard to inanimate nature, and that this is key to understanding how intentionality coheres with a scientific worldview. Such speculation has often been the indulgence of philosophers, even amateurs like myself. Maybe this could be put on the gold standard of experiment, and maybe it can’t be.
I do think that ID has raised the right issue, about the importance of taking teleology seriously in order to do biology, and has highlighted why evolutionary theory must presuppose teleology and cannot explain it. (There are lots of philosophers of biology who have done this independent of ID, but I’ll give credit where it’s due.)
Water properties are just prerequisites for functionality.
Jerry @173, I meant to say “strong emergence” and “with relevant cases” I attempted to refer in particular to biological systems.
WRT the liquidity of water, I take it that you do not hold that this is a mysterious irreducible and fundamentally unexplainable “emergent” property?
– – – –
As a sort of aside: “The revelation of the quantum nature of physical reality is consistent with the understanding that information may be more fundamental than matter and energy.”
@172
Yes, that’s by design. 🙂
Firstly, it doesn’t make any sense to list information as a component of a system. Information is the organization of the system, how it is put together. It isn’t some separable part of the system.
Secondly, I won’t worry too much about information because there are (so far as I know) basically two kinds. There’s Shannon information, which can be treated interchangeably with thermodynamic concepts. That’s different from “semantic information”, which is how organisms detect signals in their environment as ‘meaning’ the presence or absence of opportunities or threats of relevance to the organism.
In other words, there’s the physicist’s concept of information, and then there’s the biologist’s concept of information. The ID concept of information seems to posit semantic information as pre-existing organisms and as explaining them. I think that’s confused.
Mysterious but not relevant to this discussion.
From what I understand there is no way to predict the properties of water from the atomic structure of hydrogen and oxygen. Thus, it is fundamentally unexplainable. Maybe some day they will understand how different electron levels lead to certain physical properties. Until that day it will be an emergent property of these three molecules (two hydrogen and one oxygen.). Even in chemistry, the properties that seem to emerge may one day be explainable.
HO and H2O2 are completely different molecules from H2O. Why?
This whole discussion is nonsense in the sense there are no examples of emergence outside of chemistry, just imaginative events or some physical events such as tornados which is just particles that somehow gets organized.
———–
I expect this discussion is a lot to about nothing as is a lot of discussions here. If there was anything there, it would have been discussed here long ago with its relevance.
I can make no sense of this. Are you saying ID proponents are prevented from formulating an ID hypothesis by the laws of physics?
Yet you can tell me nothing of how, when and where this one-time event happened other than in your imagination.
No doubt! And they have all moved on because ID has never lived up to its own claims.
It being ID? Are you claiming an ID process can be modelled? Tell me more.
Certainly ID is being ignored by mainstream scientists.
Can’t make much sense of this. Anyone ?
Not a boast, Jerry. The essential idea is quite simple. Given self-sustaining replicators, competition for resources results in differential reproduction and imperfect copying of genes results in variation that is selected that leads to phenotypic change over time.
Baseless assertion.
Humans are supremely successful at niche construction which insulates against biological evolutionary change. Not sure what you are getting at with the word “needed”. Que sera, sera.
PM1 @174
Laws tell us what must happen, not what will happen? What’s the diff? You mean to say that it must be verified by experiment? If so, that is completely beside the point. It is of course the case that laws tell us what will happen. If not, what is their usefulness? How else did we get to the moon?
No, there is precisely zero difference.
No, the latter is implied by the former. If X can be fully explained by Y, and you know everything about Y, then X must necessarily be predictable by Y.
– – – –
edit: To know everything about Y, but not knowing that it can cause X (and how) is contradictory.
It’s hydroxide ions, OH- (can’t do superscript) and hydronium ions, H3O+ that I think you are referring to. H2O2 is hydrogen peroxide, not water.
And a good and safe way to keep nuisance algae at bay in your saltwater reef tank.
JoeG/ET used to recommend drinking it to keep Covid at bay (or was that sodium hypochlorite, household bleach?). So it must be safe. Though, come to think of it, ET hasn’t been seen for a while…
There is a misunderstanding of free will here that needs to be cleared up.
First, God knows everything you will do until the day you die. He does not force you to make choices. But some here believe that God somehow controls their choices. That they should be free to make choices outside of the influence of any higher authority.
The truth is we all make our own decisions and God does not force us. Just because He knows what we will do does not mean He will tell you what that is.
The real problem here is those that reject God claim that they will be influenced by Him – somehow. Christians are also free to choose and to make bad choices. They can pray for God’s help but sometimes they will make wrong choices.
Man has two choices: To choose himself as the sole authority over his life. Or to choose God and to ask for His help and guidance to help eliminate bad choices from our Christian lives.
Free will is real for those who do not believe. But it is wrong to blame God’s knowledge of your future as something bad. He won’t tell you what He knows about your choices. You will still make them on your own.
you just eliminated your self as someone who understands science and the activities of intelligent beings.
You should just ask questions till you get up to speed which doesn’t seem likely given one stupid question after the other.
Both of which show very clear signs of human construction upon a minimal of examination. Tool marks, archaeological evidence of concurrent human habitation, known capabilities of residents of the day, fire pits, quarries, etc. etc. etc. What does ID have with regard to living organisms? Squat.
OK. That’s a start. What evidence do you have of this? What tests have been conducted. What papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals?
Yes, humans have demonstrated that we are very adept at taking existing materials and modifying them to serve a different function. We have been doing this for centuries. How is this proving that what we call evolution required intelligent intervention?
This is also a classic example of ID’s “cake and eat it” rhetoric.
Alpha) A naturalist cause of phenotypic change can be ignored because this has not been demonstrated in the lab.
Beta) Scientists have demonstrated that they can cause phenotypic change, therefore intelligent design.
Ahh, another example of asserting nefarious motives to demonize the despised other.
Do you think there is a chance some ID proponent will come up with answers?
How so? (I don’t expect you can answer this).
I actually think there is a limit to understanding other intelligent beings. I suggest the limit is that no sentient being can understand anything as complex as itself. I see much evidence in these UD threads that this limit exists universally.
Jerry @178
This is not in accord with my understanding, which is that actual physicists do not hold that liquidity is a strong emergent property, but is instead fully reducible. See e.g.:
– – –
There are no examples of strong emergence in chemistry or physics, at least not according to Paul Davies and Chalmers, who I quoted earlier. see e.g. #132, #143
So why are we talking about something that does not exist?
Is this an irrelevant comment?
I’m not trying to be negative here. But isn’t the question of concern about being able to predict that two atoms of Hydrogen and one atom of Oxygen will have certain properties. Namely, molecules that will slide past each other. The above quote says nothing about this only that the subsequent molecule (at certain temperatures) will slide past each other. This phenomenon is what we call liquid.
Then there is the solid and gaseous forms that have their own properties. Are these deduced by the nature of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms? From my understanding there is no such explanation put forward. That is why I brought up the molecules, HO and H2O2. Maybe they are inappropriate examples?
Also there are good chemical discussions on the properties of water to dissolve certain compounds such as salt or sugar but not fats because the resultant molecule is bi polar. That may be predictable from the original atoms. But only if the trait of liquidity is also predicted.
There was a long discussion here on “emergence” almost two years ago.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/emergence-and-the-dormitive-principle/
The only conclusions from that it that emergence is a BS term to mean something happened but we don’t know how but it had to be natural and cannot be by design. Both these conclusions are begging the question fallacies.
Nobody is fooling me.
It has all been done before. What they reveal is their lack of understanding about what they are talking about. They are nearly always 100% incoherent. They are walking proof of ID.
Jerry @
The whole emergence stuff is an attempt by some naturalists to make us believe that things (life, consciousness) can magically emerge *poof* from matter. Usually, they start off with the water example.
Please don’t let them fool you. It’s all fake news. Matter does not give rise to unexplainable properties emerging out of nowhere.
Exactly, liquidity is not some magical “emergent” property that cannot be explained by the constituents of water, H2O molecules. Instead, no magic is involved and liquidity can be explained by the molecules’ properties.
I am no physicist, but my guess is that they are. I could be wrong, but I have never heard that these things are mysterious to physics.
Origenes @192
Agreed. What I find even more amazing though, is that they seem to think that if this were true that it would be an explanation.
Hnorman42:
Very weird indeed. They insist on the idea that these emergent properties are fundamentally unexplainable, and yet they claim that everything is as understandable and explanatory as naturalism has always been.
Come to think of it, they [naturalists] exhibit some very suspicious behavior when it comes to emergence. What’s with the sudden departure from the usual promissory note? Why don’t they say, “currently science is not able to understand how liquidity comes about, but we have little doubt that one day …” What’s with the sudden atypical modesty in “we have forever no clue whatsoever – it is magic and we call it ‘emergence’”?
“Emergence” is a fake idea. Water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. It is what it is. And it has established properties – no mystery involved.
Order does not emerge from disorder – spontaneously. Order emerges from order.
PM1, as you are likely aware, Shannon warned about the special usage of information. He meant something like information carrying capacity. Semantic, of course, is meaningful, or functional. Complex, functionally specific organisation and/or information requires an adequate source, and the only well warranted source is intelligent action. KF
SG, we see repetition yet again of an adequately answered claim: for record, FYI, humans do not exhaust known or potential sources of complex, functionally specific organisation and/or information. And, for both Stonehenge and the Pyramid, we do not have any good explanation at relevant times and places for construction of that magnitude. In the case of the Great Pyramid, we are talking about creation of an artificial mountain with polished limestone facing that may have been visible from Israel. Worse, the cluster at Giza with the Nile, apparently exhibits a close resemblance to Orion’s belt and the Milky Way, complete with effective apparent magnitude. Humans move rocks, even huge ones, but an artificial mountain’s worth, at assembly rates that would be astonishing on a king’s lifetime? With a wider pattern sustained for what must have been generations? KF
PM1, I see Prince Caspian’s remark in 55 that he put up a whole OP in answer to your suggestions. That is, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/from-evolution-news-prigogines-self-organization-vs-specified-biological-complexity/ So, immediately, your comment was NOT ignored; what you claimed above. You commented at 10 there, so you are aware of the answer. KF
Except that it is estimated that they were built over a period of 20 years or so by as few as 20,000 labourers. So much for your hyperbolic rhetoric.
And we are aware of construction techniques used during that time. Just because we don’t know the specifics doesn’t mean that their human construction was ever in question. Especially considering that people have lived there from the beginning of construction until now. So, the idea that we had to use ID’s powerful inference tools to conclude that they were the result of “design” fails in its infancy., and its inanity.
But, since you have brought up the issue of mountains, you have yet to adequately explain how extrapolating from small observed tectonic plate movements to the unobserved formation of mountain ranges is any different from extrapolating the observation of small selection driven phenotypic changes (micro evolution in ID misrepresentation) to explain large unobserved phenotypic changes (macro evolution in ID misrepresentation).
Jerry, water is an ordered structure rooted in deep fine tuned patterns of particles, atoms and our cosmos. That speaks to how we get a cosmos with terrestrial planets in circumstellar habitable zones, being in galactic habitable zones, with water bodies. The properties of H, O and the physics that allows for such locations are all involved. Front loading of a cosmos habitable for C Chem, aqueous medium, cell based life. Within that context we see H and O, with sufficient O to be material, and that they will react to form a significantly asymmetric molecule that then has polar covalent bonding giving a peculiar pattern of London forces. This enables water to form as in effect a semi polymer [that light of a molecule, 18 amu “should” be a gas under typical conditions], with gaps allowing flow, also to be a universal solvent and to form ice crystals less dense than the liquid so ice floats rather than building up at the bottom of bodies of water. And more. So, we see predictable ordering but there is a lot behind a cosmos with water as universal solvent. Information is the invisible, secret sauce ingredient. KF
SG, work out the effort to create a pyramid including the logistics and you will see it is a far more difficult challenge than you try to imagine. Next, micro/macro issues are commonplace and I am as used to seeing denials in econ as anywhere else: once system wide complexities and interactions come in, things tend to become ticklish as dynamics can be very surprising and counterintuitive . . . a fine tuning issue. In biology, micro vs macro, body plan level origin issues are a highly significant issue, your sneering notwithstanding. You are also resorting to repeating already answered objections elsewhere, a sure sign that confirms trollish mentality. You know that I am ten miles away from a mountain that formed, broke, reformed, pointing to energy levels, energy storage and breaking points triggering high power events. You know a typical density of rocks 2.7 g/cc, leading to energy levels available in moving tectonic systems of continental scale, pointing to potential for high force events. But all of this is distractive, you are trying to pretend that there is no observed cause of FSCO/I, no search challenge confronting blind chance and/or mechanical necessity as a claimed cause, and so you are fundamentally running away from the force of Newton’s rule behind a cloud of rhetorical squid ink. Your actually observed case of blind chance and mechanical necessity forming FSCO/I is _______. You cannot fill that blank. You therefore tried to manufacture distractions from the known, observed cause on trillions of cases, intelligently directed configuration. To object, you had to provide another case in point of FSCO/I by design. You are in unacknowledged self referential absurdity. KF
It’s night and day.
Mountains and tectonic changes are due to the four forces of nature, mainly gravity. It is 100% ID compatible. The fact of Evolution has no such corollary. It’s due to a complex code arising in the cells similar to writing.
No explanation for such a phenomenon outside of intelligence. I’m surprised you brought this up. There is zero similarity.
This is well understood and has nothing to do with what I am saying.
You should read Denton to understand all the characteristics of water. But no one can predict the characteristics of water from the atomic structure of hydrogen and oxygen. Similarly no one can predict the characteristics of salt (NaCL) from sodium and chlorine atoms.
Their characteristics emerged. Some characteristics of water are predictable such as it’s solvent powers because of the bi-polar nature of the molecule. But only because it is a liquid with a certain viscosity. So the characteristic of solvent is not said to have emerged.
“Their characteristics emerged.”
You seem desperate to use the word “emerged.”
You can call it moondancing if you like, it still doesn’t explain anything.
Andrew
I didn’t say it did.
If you read all my comments – that there is no explanation is what I have been saying from the start. In fact I say it in the comment you quoted from.
Absolutely no desperation at all.
**POOF** Jerry, you bought into the fake story of emergentism. I’m sorry to inform you that you have been fooled. Do read the Paul Davies quote at #132
Yes, you have defended emergentism from the start, and you are mistaken to do so.
@195
This might feel intuitively certain to you, but the science of self-organizing systems shows that it is not true.
PM1,
The book you link was published in 1993. I’ve never heard of it, so I’m guessing the only impact it’s had in 30 years is in people’s imaginations.
Andrew
@208
It helped catalyze the formation of many scientific research projects at universities and research centers around the world, none of which you know anything about. The fact that you don’t know about them doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
Nonsense.
I have done just the opposite. Why do you claim that I do?
Is there an explanation for why salt, water and some other molecules have the properties that they do based solely on their atomic structure and the atomic structure of their component atoms? No one has suggested that an explanation exists. It may in time come or someone has already done it. But no one has pointed to an explanation.
Interesting question is why did you make such a disparaging remark based on nonsense?
Aside: the Davies quote has zero to do with what I have been saying.
There is a better discussion two years ago on emergence. Maybe you should read it first.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/emergence-and-the-dormitive-principle/
Why don’t you provide some examples?
You cannot just point to a book and say there it is. Be specific. A tried and true way to convince someone is to take an example or two to show your point and that it is relevant. Then the onus is to show it is more wide spread and it must be reproducible.
Until you do that, it is just words and no one will pay attention.
Aside: we have been down this road of self organization before and it led nowhere. There are examples of self organization such as crystals and meteorological events but these have nothing to do with life or Evolution. Maybe there are some relevant ones.
@211
I’m not trying to convince anyone. I’m definitely not trying to educate anyone! (I get paid for that.) I indicated a book that others could read if they were interested in understanding my point of view. If they decide not to read it, or that it’s just not worth their time, that’s their choice.
Jerry @210
Because you argue in favor of emergentism, e.g. here:
That is exactly what emergentists claim. So, you are consistently saying what they are saying. And that’s why I say that you defend emergentism.
When you say that “no one can predict the characteristics of water from the atomic structure of hydrogen and oxygen”, you are saying that water is fundamentally unpredictable from its parts. That is precisely the thesis of emergentism. In effect, you are saying that even an omniscient being with a complete knowledge of the atomic structure of hydrogen and oxygen and a complete knowledge of the laws of physics, and unlimited powers of calculation could not predict what would happen once hydrogen and oxygen are combined. God created oxygen and hydrogen, but he was taken by surprise to find out that they formed water. That is what you are arguing, Jerry.
Everything I say is true.
Incredible that anyone should dispute anything I have said. If anyone can point to how the properties of water and salt are determined by the structure of each atoms structure., be my guess.
At some time in the future one might be able to explain this but I understand no one knows now. When they do, the conclusion will be it was built into the design of the universe. Interesting this has nothing to do with biology but atomic physics.
Again, one should read the discussion from two years ago linked to above.
Nobody said it was easy. But it didn’t take generations and it didn’t take ID’s powerful tools to conclude that they were designed and made by humans.
And it has also been pointed out that significant changes to body plan can be caused by very small genetic changes, your sneering not withstanding.
If repetition in response to opposing arguments is a sign of trollish behaviour, I refer everyone to the thousands of comments and dozens of OPs that you have posted on this site, most of which are just a series of repeating already posted opinions.
I am happy for you, but irrelevant. Continental mountain ranges are not created and eroded by volcanic eruptions.
As there is no observed cause of the formation of mountain ranges. But we have a well accepted theory based on the extrapolation from observations of small events. As is the case for evolution.
Jerry:
I could accept that you believe most of what you say. It is pretty obvious, however, that a goodly proportion of what you write in these comment columns has a tenuous hold on accuracy.
Jerry @
That is good to hear, Jerry. By saying this, you have just removed yourself as a member of the Emergentists Society.
SG, why do you twist what I actually said into pretzels? My reference to generations was to the overall Giza plateau and the nearby Nile echoing Orion and the Milky Way. Several pyramids involving generations. Where, as is admitted there are no records of how this was done, and the logistics of multi ton stone blocks mounted at ever increasing height at a rate of one per three minutes for decades has not been properly explained — see the Wiki confession below. There are still serious questions on that, ponder ramp slope and scale issues as compounding the scale of challenge. You doubled down on a distraction, and distraction it is: you still have no case of observation of FSCO/I coming about by blind chance and mechanical necessity. As for tectonic scale try the energy to say lift a mile thick 39 sq mile block of rock of density 2.7 g/cc six inches. Something like 6.5*10^14 J. Extend that to continental scale processes. The energy to uplift masses of rock into mountain ranges is demonstrably, observationally present, as is the motion. Your attempt to suggest a Newton rule failure, fails. You have no observationally anchored explanation of complex coded information by blind forces, and to make arguments you are still showing how FSCO/I routinely comes about by design. KF
PS, as usual, Wiki confesses:
That’s a whole lot different from, it’s all pretty settled conclusive knowledge; which is what you suggested in attempting to pounce on me as ill informed.
I predict, you will not concede that I had a point in highlighting that we can know the pyramids were designed, on FSCO/I, without knowing just how. And ditto for other cases.
I hope, for your sake, this prediction will be wrong.
Jerry, I suggest, while we cannot naively predict properties of water or NaCl by simple linear extrapolation from those of parent elements, the patterns of chemical and physical interactions involved have been studied through Chemistry and Physics and correspond to the more detailed dynamics thereby exposed. NaCl is a matter of packing of ions to yield an ionic crystalline solid, a salt . . . indeed that term comes in key part from this case. Water has properties tying to polar covalent bonds and the differing agglomerations in the liquid and the solid, hence my semi polymerisation remark. Where also there are several more exotic forms reached under different pressure-temperature conditions. And more. KF
PS, a diagram and discussion https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/346750/phase-diagram-of-water
That has always been my position.
There was no removal required. My statements have all been accurate.
From Michael Egnor.
Our understanding of the characteristics of water and many other molecules (I repeated this over and over) do not flow from our understanding of the atomic properties of the constituent atoms. They may understand why some day but not at present.
That has been a common usage of the term “emergence.”
Jerry ….
Right [setting aside the fact that current science can explain water liquidity bottom-up from the bonding properties of the H2O molecule; as already pointed out in #190, but ignored or perhaps not understood], however those who argue in favor of strong emergentism, which is the main subject at hand here, claim that no one can, in principle, explain water bottom-up; that is from its parts.
Strong emergence insists on magic. Magic **poof** is indeed involved.
And it is arguing in favor of strong emergence when one writes:
“Emerged” …. **POOF**
” No one can” as in “by definition”, as in “never”, as in “not even God”, as in strong emergence.
“Emerged” is a euphemism for we don’t know/we can’t explain, but it will be thrown around like it means something important and it sounds good instead of using POOF.
Andrew
Wasn’t Mike Behe heard using that expression to describe an intervention by the “Designer”?
AF, we know that designers act by intelligently directed configuration, and that they impose configuring, organisational work that creates an architecture and its systemic implementation; which is of course full of the invisible ingredient, information. That is doubtless full of the mysteries of rational, responsible freedom, but it is also a known reality. It is not poof, magic, just so story. And you know I have put on the table as an ID reference model, a molecular nanotech lab some generations beyond Venter and let’s add — in the spirit of Clarke’s HAL, the z9 series [heir of the classic s360 of 58 years ago], using informationally controlled manipulators to effect the key elements of cell based life. I further suggest miniaturisation, say do ribosomes as an early part and using what was already built to carry forward the work. None of that would be a something from the not-being, by poof magic. KF
SG,
while we await your response, more Wiki confessions on the construction of the pyramids:
Generations indeed, to build the complex.
Next, here is their confession regarding a recent theory:
Another recent theory, which has a greater impact:
On ramps:
And more.
This serves to sustain not only my narrower point that we do not know how the pyramids were built and that logistics issues are major, but to sustain my point that we can and readily do infer on tested, reliable signs of design, even when we do not have an understanding of the means by which such were effected.
KF
PS, BTW, a screw thread is in effect a spiral [strictly, helically coiled] ramp wrapped around a shaft. Think here of the principle of the screw jack.
The Emergence of Emergentism: A Play for Two Actors.
Two desperate naturalists in a room.
A: “I feel completely desperate. There is no way we will ever be able to explain life and consciousness.”
B: “I feel the exact same way. The main issue is that we have nothing to work with. All we have is mindless particles in the void obeying mindless regularities. Starting from that, how can we possibly explain life, not to mention personhood, freedom, and rationality? There is simply no way forward.”
A: “Exactly right. Sometimes I feel like such a loser. The other day I heard that current science cannot even explain liquidity.”
B: “What did you just say?”
**POOF**
But they can.
So this should not be part of this play because if they were naturalist, they would know what does. Nearly all molecules have the three stages of matter, solid, liquid and gas. For water a lot of the specific temperatures is due to the 104.5 degree angle of the hydrogen covalent bonds.
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-nature-of-matter-understanding-the-physical-world
The question becomes why does water have two hydrogen bonds of 104.5 degrees. And how is this angle predictable from the nature of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms? Maybe it is by the nature of the number of electrons and the orbits they are in and the mass of the two elements.
Aside: why ice floats is due to the nature of the hydrogen bonds. They spread out in the solid phase causing a less dense over all material. A couple elements also exhibit this property though it is rare. Water is the only common compound that has this property.
Jerry, more precisely, the boiling point is the point where saturated vapour pressure . . . a liquid exists in dynamic equilibrium with the atmosphere . . . equals atmospheric pressure allowing bubbles of vapour to form and escape, i.e. boiling. As for bonding angle, Wikipedia confesses:
In short, complex and not fully understood Q-mech [a familiar condition], thus going back to cosmological foundations of the universe.
KF
Origenes, 226. Really good bit of wit there. I think I am going to headline it as a guest original post. Thumbs up! KF
PS, done: https://uncommondescent.com/ud-guest-posts/origenes-the-emergence-of-emergentism-a-play-for-two-actors/
Thank you KF.
This is the first play I’ve ever written and I’m very happy with it. It came to me out of nowhere, I must say. I cannot explain it. All I did was putting various elements of the discussion together, and next, unexpectedly, the play, somehow “emerged”, for lack of a better word. And you are absolutely right about the setting: starting with darkness, somber music and then the dramatic rising of light …. it completes it.
A new talent . . . emerges.
KF repeats:
KF can’t fill in his own blank. FSCO/I is his own personal acronym, for a concept that he is unable to define coherently, let alone quantify. I’ll let KF have the last words, incoherent and repetitive as they will be.
AF,
why do you insist on repeating corrected error? After a certain point, that is outright lying on your part.
First, as was shown to you repeatedly, the DESCRIPTION, functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information is a label for a readily observable commonplace. The text of your comment is a case in point as is the PC, tablet or phone you composed it on. So is the complex organisation of cells in your body, as is the built in von Neumann kinematic self replicator in those cells, the foundation for reproduction of biological life. So is a watch (or a gear in it, or a screw or a nut and bolt), so is an Abu 6500 CT fishing reel. So would be Paley’s self replicating, time keeping watch discussed in his Ch 2 right after the Ch 1 that too many Darwinists set up and knock over as a strawman.
Basic fact, an observable reality cannot be self contradictory or incoherent. As, realities must all be so together.
Next, you are willfully speaking in disregard to truth to try to attribute the description to me. As I have taken pains to acknowledge and point out, the matter was put in the literature in the 1970’s by Orgel [1973] and Wicken [1979]. All I have done is to provide an acrostic abbreviation, also noting that as organisation is reducible to information in a description language [such as AutoCAD] organisation deserves to be recognised too.
So, we see here an elaborate rhetorical ruse, a deception intended to set up ad hominem attacks.
All too typical of the sort of advocates for darwinism, atheism and fellow traveller ideologies that are a penny a gross in the era of new atheists.
Stop willfully misrepresenting, AF.
On pain of being identified as willfully obtuse and outright irresponsible before evident, readily accessible and observable truth and facts. Repeat, just to object, you have yet again produced a case of FSCO/I and exemplified its cause, design.
That sort of self referential self defeat SHOULD give pause to you and others who resort to tactics such as I am here answering for record. Kindly, see L&FP 55, for reference with illustrations https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/lfp-55-defining-clarifying-intelligent-design-as-inference-as-theory-as-a-movement/ (This also addresses the issues of design inference, theory and movement.)
Then, actually deal seriously with the observable realities of complex function based on effective orientation, arrangement and coupling — configuration — of many parts in accord with Wicken wiring diagrams (such as the exploded view of an Abu 6500 CT reel you were too busy mocking to pause, rethink cynical dismissiveness and consider that this is empirical demonstration). Where, once such FSCO/I goes beyond 500 – 1,000 bits of descriptive length in a compact language [and yes, I allude to Kolmogorov, Chaitin et al], blind search is maximally implausible as a key cause of configuration. On trillions of actually OBSERVED — notice, again, OBSERVED — cases, the source of such FSCO/I is, reliably, design.
This is only repetitive to the extent that a correct and well founded summary has had to again be made in the teeth of stubborn, hostile, accusatory, closed minded objection.
AF, you have exposed yourself, letting cats out of the bag, utterly discrediting your rhetorical tactics.
KF