DNA as Digital Technology

_{Barry Arrington
November 19, 2011

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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Which Bible thumping ID nutbag wrote the following:

There is a sense, therefore, in which the three-dimensional coiled shape of a protein is determined by the one-dimensional sequence of code symbols in the DNA…. The whole translation, from strictly sequential DNA ROM [read-only memory] to precisely invariant three-dimensional protein shape, is a remarkable feat of digital information technology.

Comments

Scott you state:
But everyone has been up to speed for the past few hundred years. You don’t need to be related to a minister, go to church, watch early Sunday morning TV, or even believe in God to utilize the scientific method
I wouldn't be so quick, if I were you, to dismiss Christianity as a vital catalyst for science:
Bruce Charlton's Miscellany - October 2011 Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,,The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be - if Christianity was culturally inimical to science? http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/meeting-richard-dawkins-and-his-wife.html
The following video is far more direct in establishing the 'spiritual' link to man's ability to learn new information, in that it shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from the top spot or near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained at the top, or near the top, spot in the world:
The Real Reason American Education Has Slipped – David Barton – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4318930
You can see that dramatic difference, of the SAT scores for private Christian schools compared to public schools, at this following site;
Aliso Viejo Christian School – SAT 10 Comparison Report http://www.alisoviejochristianschool.org/sat_10.html
The following video, which I've listed before, is very suggestive to a 'spiritual' link in man's ability to learn new information in that the video shows that almost every, if not every, founder of each discipline of modern science was a devout Christian:
Christianity Gave Birth To Science - Dr. Henry Fritz Schaefer - video http://vimeo.com/16523153
Moreover:
Christianity and The Birth of Science - Michael Bumbulis, Ph.D Excerpt: Furthermore, many of these founders of science lived at a time when others publicly expressed views quite contrary to Christianity - Hume, Hobbes, Darwin, etc. When Boyle argues against Hobbe's materialism or Kelvin argues against Darwin's assumptions, you don't have a case of "closet atheists." http://ldolphin.org/bumbulis/
bornagain77_{November 23, 2011
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Petrushka,
I find it interesting that you fail to see the incremental steps in the invention of the light bulb when the history is readily available.
All of technology is developed incrementally, one advancement on top of another. But that simply isn't the same thing that you're talking about in biology. They are so starkly different that I'm boggled that you would even make a comparison. What they have in common is that you can use the word "incremental" in sentences describing both, although not in the same sense of the word. Biological evolution and intelligent design could hardly be less similar. Playing semantics with the word "incremental" doesn't change that. GAs are a design tool. Start from a problem - any problem, and see how much innovation you can get from one. People are overweight. Will a GA think up a treadmill, stationary bike, or ThighMaster? Never. Model a treadmill or a stationary bike and tell the GA what metrics would constitute improvement, and it might improve it for you. That's the line, and every example you've provided reinforces it. GAs are designed extensions of intelligent initiative, innovation, and imagination. They do not have their own. They require yours to do or produce anything. If and when that changes, the GA will be a true artificial intelligence, not just a high-horsepower simulator.ScottAndrews2_{November 23, 2011
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Petrushka, you severely mislead again:
There are things not really worth discussing, such as common descent and incremental change. Behe and Axe don’t dispute these, and they are pretty much the top theorists in the ID movement.
And yet directly contradictory to what you say:
Nothing In Molecular Biology Is Gradual - Doug Axe PhD. - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5347797/ "Charles Darwin said (paraphrase), 'If anyone could find anything that could not be had through a number of slight, successive, modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.' Well that condition has been met time and time again. Basically every gene, every protein fold. There is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in a gradualist way. It's a mirage. None of it happens that way. - Doug Axe PhD. A review of The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism The numbers of Plasmodium and HIV in the last 50 years greatly exceeds the total number of mammals since their supposed evolutionary origin (several hundred million years ago), yet little has been achieved by evolution. This suggests that mammals could have “invented” little in their time frame. Behe: ‘Our experience with HIV gives good reason to think that Darwinism doesn’t do much—even with billions of years and all the cells in that world at its disposal’ (p. 155). http://creation.com/review-michael-behe-edge-of-evolution
Thus Petrushka you certainly are misleading people!bornagain77_{November 23, 2011
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There are things not really worth discussing, such as common descent and incremental change. Behe and Axe don't dispute these, and they are pretty much the top theorists in the ID movement. There are some areas of evolution that are sketchy, such as the origin of protein domains. They are either the result of an incremental history that has been erased by time, or they were poofed into existence by magic. It makes no sense to attribute them to a finite designer whose origin would remain unexplained. I have used the term silly because I think the more history you know the more human inventions look incremental. I find it interesting that you fail to see the incremental steps in the invention of the light bulb when the history is readily available. I think it is silly to dismiss the power of GAs when they are taking over the grunt work of invention in the same way that machines took over physical labor. I will certainly grant that programs are designed, but that doesn't mean they can't surpass their designers in many important and useful ways. They can certainly produce new and useful things that were not built into the program.Petrushka_{November 23, 2011
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BA77, What are you implying? (Just kidding.) I get it, but I don't agree. Maybe that mattered thousands of years ago when Christians and Jews were more inclined to believe in an ordered universe than people of other religions. (I'm not asserting that - maybe it's not even true.) But everyone has been up to speed for the past few hundred years. You don't need to be related to a minister, go to church, watch early Sunday morning TV, or even believe in God to utilize the scientific method (except when it comes to origins, then all bets are off.) What about machine guns, H-bombs, and VX nerve gas? That's some pretty good science. Is there a 'Christian connection' there?ScottAndrews2_{November 23, 2011
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Petrushka, This entire forum is primarily dedicated to discussing whether what you are asserting is true, whether it is a sufficient explanation, and whether there is a better one. We already know what you believe to be true. Reasserting it and begging the question is pointless. In another comment you said I was being "silly" for saying that the entire diversity of biological life cannot be attributed to the incremental process of evolution. That's exactly what just about everyone here is discussing. What do you hope to accomplish by declaring victory without responding to specific arguments, just asserting what you believe over and over, and calling anyone who disagrees "silly?" (I'm not thin-skinned. "Silly" is pretty mild and I don't take offense to it.)ScottAndrews2_{November 23, 2011
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There are many reasons for attributing evolution to known processes: 1. They are known 2. They are sufficient. 3. The rate of ongoing change can be observed and is consistent with the genomic differences in cousin species. 4. Cousin species have insertions, such as ERVs, that form a nested hierarchy. 5. They do not require magic or the assumption of entities that have never been observed.Petrushka_{November 23, 2011
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In expanding the meaning of “evolution” to include noticing a spark, inventing a generator, and deciding to bring them together with other components to make a light bulb, you render the term utterly meaningless and useless.
Evolution has a specific meaning in biology and several meanings outside biology. You keep trying to assert that human inventions like the light bulb are not incremental, and you are wrong. Incrementalism is one facet shared by all the various definitions of evolution. Everything builds on what already exists. Recall Newton: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Known biological evolution is incremental, but there is no basis for attributing biological diversity to the observed incremental process.
Now you are really being silly.Petrushka_{November 23, 2011
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Of course I don't think human inventors bang things around without system. They systematically bang things around. Edison tried hundreds of things for filaments, including bamboo. Fro nearly a hundred years before Edison, others had been searching for solutions. Somewhere along the line someone forgot Edison's most famous dictum: Invention is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. You wish to believe that invention has some magical property, but real inventors know they are standing on the shoulders of their predecessors. For legal and patent reasons, this is sometimes not admitted. My point is that inventors seldom know what is going to work, so invention involves building prototypes and testing. In the pharmaceutical industry this is done robotically and can involve millions or billions of prototypes. You resist this obvious point because you don't want to admit that software can now prototype solutions faster and with fewer errors than humans, and can evolve solutions that are better and more elegant than those found by humans. This kind of software is only a few years old and is already dominating invention is several industries. As more and more products are software driven, the percentage of machine aided invention will increase, and software will improve in sophistication.Petrushka_{November 23, 2011
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Well Scott, I was hoping that what I wrote was much more than just a hint. I was trying to clearly state that there is, very much contrary to atheistic thinking, a very deep, enigmatic, Christian connection that repeatedly shows up in the founders of modern science as well as very many of the inventors responsible for major technological breakthroughs. A Few Notes:
Epistemology - Why Should The Human Mind Even Comprehend Reality? - Stephen Meyer http://vimeo.com/32145998 Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf Jerry Coyne on the Scientific Method and Religion - Michael Egnor - June 2011 Excerpt: The scientific method -- the empirical systematic theory-based study of nature -- has nothing to so with some religious inspirations -- Animism, Paganism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Islam, and, well, atheism. The scientific method has everything to do with Christian (and Jewish) inspiration. Judeo-Christian culture is the only culture that has given rise to organized theoretical science. Many cultures (e.g. China) have produced excellent technology and engineering, but only Christian culture has given rise to a conceptual understanding of nature. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/jerry_coyne_on_the_scientific_047431.html Presuppositional Apologetics - easy to use interactive website http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/index.php Random Chaos vs. Uniformity Of Nature - Presuppositional Apologetics - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/6853139 BRUCE GORDON: Hawking's irrational arguments - October 2010 Excerpt: For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the "Boltzmann Brain" problem: In the most "reasonable" models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/
Materialism simply dissolves into absurdity when pushed to extremes and certainly offers no guarantee to us for believing our perceptions and reasoning within science are trustworthy in the first place:
Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? - Joe Carter Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/should-you-trust-the-monkey-mind What is the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism? ('inconsistent identity' of cause leads to failure of absolute truth claims for materialists) (Alvin Plantinga) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yNg4MJgTFw The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth he is giving in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?); Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think - October 2011 Interviewer: You could be deceiving yourself about that.(?) Evolutionary Psychologist: Absolutely. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128335.300-evolutionary-guru-dont-believe-everything-you-think.htmlRelated article; “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...” CS Lewis – Mere Christianity "But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" - Charles Darwin - Letter To William Graham - July 3, 1881 “It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” J. B. S. Haldane ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.
bornagain77_{November 23, 2011
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BA77, It seems like you're hinting at something when you point out that Tesla, the Wright brothers, etc., were sons of Christian ministers. What might that be?ScottAndrews2_{November 23, 2011
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Petrushka, Funny but wrong. Intelligence is amenable to composition. Somebody may be able to build up on someone else's previous work. This is perhaps the fundamental fallacy of all materialist thinking. I have already pointed this out to you earlier. Here it cropped up again. Once again, first comes an idea and then its realisation. This is clear if we are talking about engineering thought, a wonderful example of intelligent agency. I am sure you knew it yourself. Surely, you don't believe that folks like Faraday and Maxwell were just sporadically grabbing things lying around and banging them together to see if something could come out of it! Intelligence is in fact heuristic guidance as opposed to trial and error. And this is why it is able to achieve astonishing results incredibly quickly.Eugene S_{November 23, 2011
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The issue I’m disputing is that inventions are sudden and have no incremental precursors. Every invention is incremental. Including Tesla’s AC generator.
In expanding the meaning of "evolution" to include noticing a spark, inventing a generator, and deciding to bring them together with other components to make a light bulb, you render the term utterly meaningless and useless. If I paint a portrait I use multiple brushstrokes. Now that's evolution. If bake a cake in several steps, that's evolution. If you wish to claim the word to mean whatever you wish it to mean, take it. It can mean whatever you say it does. But you can't turn around and equivocate - having redefined "evolution" to include design, turn around and say that biological evolution includes design. You can have the word. It's yours. I'll stop using "evolution" and start using "neo-darwinism." Evolution (by "evolution" I mean "intelligent design") explains biological diversity. Neo-darwinism explains nothing.ScottAndrews2_{November 23, 2011
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Sure, there may be incremental steps in the design or improvement of anything. There are also sudden leaps and advances as people imagine how different components and processes might be brought together. The simplest example, although tired, is our writing. We don't advance from one functional set of words to another one, gradually improving the expression of our thought. We start with what we want to say and work backwards. Likewise when I write a new program. Even if I reuse certain components, each arrangement is novel. Even if I build it in steps, those steps are leaps, not incremental changes. My observation is concrete. It's undeniable. Yours, that "evolution is a form of intelligence" are based at best on shaky reasoning that repeatedly use examples of directed intelligence and repeatedly begs the question with disputed assertions that all life evolved by darwinian methods. Evolution is not a form of intelligence. We've never seen evolution do what intelligence does. I have examples. You do not. Known biological evolution is incremental, but there is no basis for attributing biological diversity to the observed incremental process.ScottAndrews2_{November 23, 2011
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Step one might have been noticing that a spark of static electricity produces light. Francis Hauksbee produced a bulb in 1710 that used static electricity to produce light. He did not invent sparks, nor did he invent glass bulbs. The invention of commercial electric light took another two hundred years. At least two patents were granted for incandescent lights decades before Edison. I'm not disputing the requirement for intelligence. Evolution is a form of intelligence. The issue I'm disputing is that inventions are sudden and have no incremental precursors. Every invention is incremental. Including Tesla's AC generator. But even if human inventions were occasionally out of thin air, biological evolution is incremental. So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.Petrushka_{November 23, 2011
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"In your scenario which came first- chaperones or the amino-acid chains that needed them?" A substantial percent of prokaryotic proteins fold fine without chaperones. Some bacteria require their chaperones only for survival at elevated temperatures. We routinely chemically or thermally denature and refold a number of proteins in my lab, without chaperones. So if you're trying to make some sort of irreducibly complex argument here, I'd look elsewhere.DrREC_{November 22, 2011
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I don't care who invented the earliest form of light bulb. Yes, it required an innovation, which the diagonal opposite of mere incremental trial and error. Of course people use that method, but even then it's guided by intelligence. Like I said, that's how they narrowed the search for the best filament. They weren't like monkeys, plugging in pencils and feces until something glowed and then dancing around it. Give me two steps before a light bulb. Give me one step, and tell me how they got to it without intelligence. Don't worry, if any of the steps you indicate involve a trace of intent or reason I'll be happy to point that out for you. The light bulb over someone's head, the universal symbol of sudden innovation, wasn't an innovation at all. What a corner you've painted yourself into.ScottAndrews2_{November 22, 2011
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It's not about whether something that is designed can design. That's a different question. The question is whether a given thing was designed or not.
You’ve wandered pretty far from biology, where all that is required for evolution to occur is that a change to a coding string confers a slight benefit.
Yes, and all that evolution gets you is what the GAs get you - variation, some improvement, never true innovation. The pattern repeats from biology to computer science - both display similar capacity and limitations - and yet you seem determined to find something beyond what the evidence indicates. Ironically, I just remembered that I wrote one of those programs myself for playing Mexican Train dominoes. I could input any number of dominoes from the set and it would use trial and error to find the most advantageous arrangement. It was faster than a person and more accurate. I could match it with a dozen dominoes, but not with 30. I never actually used it when playing. But I regarded its every result set as an output of my own intelligence. This was years before taking an interest in this subject. It would never occur to me to separate the result from the effort I put into programming it. Why would I? It could never do what it did unless I caused it to do so, it would never take the initiative to do so on its own. It's no different from building any other machine to do some heavy lifting for us. It all piles up evidence on the side of what intelligent design accomplishes. So far you have placed nothing on the other side of the scales.ScottAndrews2_{November 22, 2011
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Tesla, was truly a very eccentric genius whose many breakthrough ideas came to him in what he described as 'fully formed visions'. Moreover, like the Wright brothers, he was the son of a Christian minister. notes:
The Story of Nikola Tesla Excerpt: (Nikola Tesla was the most influential inventor to ever live on earth), But what you may not know about Nikola Tesla is that he was the son of a Christian minister. http://www.prophecyinthenews.com/the-story-of-nikola-tesla/ The Wright Brothers - An account in Airborne Connections indicates that Wilbur and Orville had both received Jesus Christ as their personal Savior during their youth. As an expression of their Christian convictions, throughout their own lives, they refused to work on Sundays, the Lord’s Day. http://www.examiner.com/christian-spirituality-in-columbus/the-wright-brothers-faith-to-be-the-first-to-fly-1
further notes:
The Christian Founders Of Science - Henry F. Schaefer III http://vimeo.com/16523153 –”Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles. –These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and no where else.” — Rodney Stark 'I feel the presence of God. I feel it in my own life as a spirit that is somehow with me all the time.' - Charles Townes - inventor of maser http://www.adherents.com/people/pt/Charles_Hard_Townes.html Thomas Young - Devout Christian Excerpt: He was the first to do a double-slit experiment in optics, demonstrating that light had the properties of a wave: the two beams interfere like waves, he found, producing a diffraction pattern on a screen. http://crev.info/content/thomas_young1 James Clerk Maxwell and the Christian Proposition Excerpt: The minister who regularly visited him in his last weeks was astonished at his lucidity and the immense power and scope of his memory, but comments more particularly,[20] ... his illness drew out the whole heart and soul and spirit of the man: his firm and undoubting faith in the Incarnation and all its results; in the full sufficiency of the Atonement; in the work of the Holy Spirit. He had gauged and fathomed all the schemes and systems of philosophy, and had found them utterly empty and unsatisfying - "unworkable" was his own word about them - and he turned with simple faith to the Gospel of the Saviour. http://silas.psfc.mit.edu/Maxwell/maxwell.html Maxwell's equations Excerpt: Einstein dismissed the aether as unnecessary and concluded that Maxwell's equations predict the existence of a fixed speed of light, independent of the speed of the observer, and as such he used Maxwell's equations as the starting point for his special theory of relativity (e=mc^2). In doing so, he established the Lorentz transformation as being valid for all matter and not just Maxwell's equations. Maxwell's equations played a key role in Einstein's famous paper on special relativity; for example, in the opening paragraph of the paper, he motivated his theory by noting that a description of a conductor moving with respect to a magnet must generate a consistent set of fields irrespective of whether the force is calculated in the rest frame of the magnet or that of the conductor.[31] General relativity has also had a close relationship with Maxwell's equations. For example, Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein showed in the 1920s that Maxwell's equations can be derived by extending general relativity into five dimensions. This strategy of using higher dimensions to unify different forces remains an active area of research in particle physics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations
In this following video is a description of the work of Bernhard Riemann, the son of a Christian minister, whose work on the math of ‘higher dimensionality’ opened the door for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity;
The Mathematics Of Higher Dimensionality - Gauss & Riemann - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6199520/ Carl Friedrich Gauss was a devout Christian who supported monarchy and opposed Napoleon, whom he saw as an outgrowth of the revolution. Gauss's work on complex numbers, like the square root of negative one, extend the idea of the one-dimensional number line to the two-dimensional complex plane by using the number line for the real part and adding a vertical axis to plot the imaginary part. In this way the complex numbers contain the ordinary real numbers while extending them in order to solve problems that would be impossible with only real numbers. This 'higher dimensional number line', particularly this understanding gained for the 'higher dimensionality' of the square root of negative one (i), is essential for understanding quantum mechanics: Bernhard Riemann Excerpt: For his Habiltationsvortrag Riemann proposed three topics, and against his expectations Gauss chose the one on geometry. Riemann's lecture, "On the hypotheses that lie at the foundation of geometry" was given on June 10, 1854. This extraordinary work introduced (what is now called) an n-dimensional Riemannian manifold and its curvature tensor. It also, prophetically, discussed the relation of this mathematical space to actual space. Riemann's vision was realized by Einstein's general theory of relativity sixty years later. http://www.usna.edu/Users/math/meh/riemann.html
etc.. etc.. etc..bornagain77_{November 22, 2011
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Tesla, was truly a very eccentric genius whose many breakthrough ideas came to him in what he described as 'fully formed visions'. Moreover, like the Wright brothers, he was the son of a Christian minister. notes:
The Story of Nikola Tesla Excerpt: (Nikola Tesla was the most influential inventor to ever live on earth), But what you may not know about Nikola Tesla is that he was the son of a Christian minister. http://www.prophecyinthenews.com/the-story-of-nikola-tesla/ The Wright Brothers - An account in Airborne Connections indicates that Wilbur and Orville had both received Jesus Christ as their personal Savior during their youth. As an expression of their Christian convictions, throughout their own lives, they refused to work on Sundays, the Lord’s Day. http://www.examiner.com/christian-spirituality-in-columbus/the-wright-brothers-faith-to-be-the-first-to-fly-1
further notes:
The Christian Founders Of Science - Henry F. Schaefer III http://vimeo.com/16523153 –”Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles. –These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and no where else.” — Rodney Stark 'I feel the presence of God. I feel it in my own life as a spirit that is somehow with me all the time.' - Charles Townes - inventor of maser http://www.adherents.com/people/pt/Charles_Hard_Townes.html Thomas Young - Devout Christian Excerpt: He was the first to do a double-slit experiment in optics, demonstrating that light had the properties of a wave: the two beams interfere like waves, he found, producing a diffraction pattern on a screen. http://crev.info/content/thomas_young1 James Clerk Maxwell and the Christian Proposition Excerpt: The minister who regularly visited him in his last weeks was astonished at his lucidity and the immense power and scope of his memory, but comments more particularly,[20] ... his illness drew out the whole heart and soul and spirit of the man: his firm and undoubting faith in the Incarnation and all its results; in the full sufficiency of the Atonement; in the work of the Holy Spirit. He had gauged and fathomed all the schemes and systems of philosophy, and had found them utterly empty and unsatisfying - "unworkable" was his own word about them - and he turned with simple faith to the Gospel of the Saviour. http://silas.psfc.mit.edu/Maxwell/maxwell.html Maxwell's equations Excerpt: Einstein dismissed the aether as unnecessary and concluded that Maxwell's equations predict the existence of a fixed speed of light, independent of the speed of the observer, and as such he used Maxwell's equations as the starting point for his special theory of relativity (e=mc^2). In doing so, he established the Lorentz transformation as being valid for all matter and not just Maxwell's equations. Maxwell's equations played a key role in Einstein's famous paper on special relativity; for example, in the opening paragraph of the paper, he motivated his theory by noting that a description of a conductor moving with respect to a magnet must generate a consistent set of fields irrespective of whether the force is calculated in the rest frame of the magnet or that of the conductor.[31] General relativity has also had a close relationship with Maxwell's equations. For example, Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein showed in the 1920s that Maxwell's equations can be derived by extending general relativity into five dimensions. This strategy of using higher dimensions to unify different forces remains an active area of research in particle physics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations
In this following video is a description of the work of Bernhard Riemann, the son of a Christian minister, whose work on the math of ‘higher dimensionality’ opened the door for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity;
The Mathematics Of Higher Dimensionality - Gauss & Riemann - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6199520/ Carl Friedrich Gauss was a devout Christian who supported monarchy and opposed Napoleon, whom he saw as an outgrowth of the revolution. http://www.conservapedia.com/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss Gauss's work on complex numbers, like the square root of negative one, extend the idea of the one-dimensional number line to the two-dimensional complex plane by using the number line for the real part and adding a vertical axis to plot the imaginary part. In this way the complex numbers contain the ordinary real numbers while extending them in order to solve problems that would be impossible with only real numbers. This 'higher dimensional number line', particularly this understanding gained for the 'higher dimensionality' of the square root of negative one (i), is essential for understanding quantum mechanics: Bernhard Riemann Excerpt: For his Habiltationsvortrag Riemann proposed three topics, and against his expectations Gauss chose the one on geometry. Riemann's lecture, "On the hypotheses that lie at the foundation of geometry" was given on June 10, 1854. This extraordinary work introduced (what is now called) an n-dimensional Riemannian manifold and its curvature tensor. It also, prophetically, discussed the relation of this mathematical space to actual space. Riemann's vision was realized by Einstein's general theory of relativity sixty years later. http://www.usna.edu/Users/math/meh/riemann.html
etc.. etc.. etc..bornagain77_{November 22, 2011
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So folks like Faraday and Maxwell are just chopped liver?Petrushka_{November 22, 2011
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The AC generator sprang fully formed from the head of Tesla...Joseph_{November 22, 2011
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And what, blind, undirected chemical processes fore-saw the need for helping amino acid chains "make their shape" and built custom folding chambers? In your scenario which came first- chaperones or the amino-acid chains that needed them?Joseph_{November 22, 2011
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How does a GA invent a light bulb?
Same way a human invents a light bulb. By taking what exists and trying variations. Are you still claiming the modern light bulb sprang fully formed from the head of Edison?Petrushka_{November 22, 2011
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But there is still no trace of genuine innovation. Synthesizing a an amplifier circuit, even an improved one, is not the same conceiving of the need for an amplifier or engineering the very concept of circuitry itself. It’s not even in the ballpark.
So a designed thing cannot design? Are humans designed? If a human designs, isn't he just an automaton carrying out the instructions of his designer? You've wandered pretty far from biology, where all that is required for evolution to occur is that a change to a coding string confers a slight benefit. Take a good look at the sequences of change in vertebrates. The variation from one fossil species to another is less than the difference between one dog breed and another.Petrushka_{November 22, 2011
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Petrushka, I examined your link. I couldn't help but notice people's names all over the referenced pages. Who were they? Did they have anything to do with this? Odd that they would be credited for the work of a GA, since they didn't actually play any role in the process. It must have quite a shock for Mr. Koza to walk into his office and find his computer synthesizing a NAND circuit. Patents? Please. Amazon patented one-click ordering - not the technology, just the concept of placing an order by pressing a single button. You can patent anything. Don't get me wrong. I'm impressed, partially because I am also a programmer, although more on the commercial level. But you haven't shown anything but computers solving problems they were programmed to solve, and doing so well. They initiated nothing and they implemented nothing. They are a credit to their respective programmers. But there is still no trace of genuine innovation. Synthesizing a an amplifier circuit, even an improved one, is not the same conceiving of the need for an amplifier or engineering the very concept of circuitry itself. It's not even in the ballpark. Explain how any process that merely improves upon or rearranges an existing design without its own purpose, without the power to implement what it arranges, and with no need to can go from zero to 60 and invent anything that has never existed before. How does a GA invent a light bulb?ScottAndrews2_{November 22, 2011
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"if a chaperone is involved then the shape is pretty much already determined." Chaperones generally act by the principle you outlined above. They recognize hydrophobic patches, and reversibly bind them, until they are buried in the protein interior.DrREC_{November 22, 2011
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https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/dna-as-digital-technology/comment-page-1/#comment-410157 Somehow my post got moved to 12 below.Petrushka_{November 22, 2011
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http://www.genetic-programming.com/humancompetitive.html
The table below lists 36 human-competitive instances (of which we are aware) where genetic programming has produced human-competitive results. Each entry in the table is accompanied by the criteria that establish the basis for the claim of human-competitiveness. Click here for the 8 criteria defining “human-competitive” Twenty-three of the instances in the table below involve patents (as indicated by an “A” in column 3). Eleven of the automatically created results infringe previously issued patents and 10 duplicate the functionality of previously patented inventions in a non-infringing way. The 29th through 34th entries in the table below relate to patents for analog circuits that were issued after January 1, 2000. Referring to the table, 21 of the results relate to previously patented inventions, thus making genetic programming an automated invention machine.
Petrushka_{November 22, 2011
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Petrushka,
The intelligence involved in GA is simply a matter of trying to copy what occurs in nature and adapt the process for commercial use.
Simply? There's nothing simple about it.
You are asserting something equivalent to saying that because wine and beer and bread making systems are intelligently designed, fermentation is not a natural process.
Where did you go last time you wanted a beer? Hunting in the woods? You credit natural GAs with inventing eyes, muscles, neurons, spiderwebs, and, oh yes, the people who invented GAs. But what is actually the most significant new innovation invented by a GA? What's the most compelling piece of evidence you can offer? A GA produces a better traveling salesman route, and you leap to the the fantastic conclusion that it can also invent the salesman, whatever he's selling, and the car he's driving. You're extrapolating from a molehill to the Himalayas. Did you at least throw a coin in the fountain first?ScottAndrews2_{November 22, 2011
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