DNA as Digital Technology

Petrushka,

Nor is there any theory of how a designer would know how predict the outcome or utility of a coding string or a change in a coding string. That is why there is no theory if ID, nor any prospect for a theory.

What do you have against Szostak and others who are explicitly attempting to synthesize new life? Most darwinists take them seriously. They are actually in the process of attempting to intelligently cause life. I don't know how far they will get, but at least they are trying.

It is amusing to watch ID proponents sneer at physicists and string theorists, then with absolutely no sense of irony, assert that at some mystical time in the future, we will be able not only to predict protein folding, but will be able to predict the utility of non-coding regulatory effects and their utility in changing ecosystems.

I'm astonished at your anti-science position that just because technology doesn't exist, it never can and never will. (This is not the same as questioning whether a natural explanation for life will be found, because if the event never occurred then there is no explanation to be found.) We're accused of being anti-science, science-stoppers, arguing from ignorance, etc. I'm perplexed that you base reasoning on the assumption that something can't be figured out because, well, it's just too hard. Thinking like that would have kept us in the dark ages indefinitely. And apparently it still seeks to hold us back. ScottAndrews2

The problem I see is that biological evolution doesn't exhibit goals or purpose. If evolution were able to steer toward functionality, experiments like Lenski's would not have to explore every possible point mutation in order to find a solution to a change in food source. Such a steering has never been observed. Nor is there any evidence for it in the past, since the overwhelming percentage of species have gone extinct rather than adapt. Nor is there any theory of how a designer would know how predict the outcome or utility of a coding string or a change in a coding string. That is why there is no theory if ID, nor any prospect for a theory. It is amusing to watch ID proponents sneer at physicists and string theorists, then with absolutely no sense of irony, assert that at some mystical time in the future, we will be able not only to predict protein folding, but will be able to predict the utility of non-coding regulatory effects and their utility in changing ecosystems. Petrushka

It really makes no difference to evolution whether the origin of the genetic code was a natural occurrence or a miracle. Even Darwin acknowledged that.

Nothing makes any difference - not the origin, the result, or anything in between. Design is just like evolution, except for the process, the method, the increments, the, purpose, and the results. And war is really just another type of peace except for the gunfire, bombs, and death. Lots of people die either way, so both are just methods by which people die. ScottAndrews2

Petrushka @ 2.2.2.1.2.

It really makes no difference to evolution whether the origin of the genetic code was a natural occurrence or a miracle. Even Darwin acknowledged that.

Translation: "The evidence does not matter, I will believe what I wish, with or without it." And by the way, Darwin didn't even know of the genetic code, so stop putting words in his mouth.

What is important to TOE is how populations change over time.

In case you have not been reading the scietific literature over the past decade or so, that "how" is under constant assault by various specialists as their knowledge of the systems increases - even those who have absolutely no, shall we say, religious convictions (ie; Margulis, Shapiro, Koonin, etc) as well as those who have religious convictions which they temper with physical evidence (eg: Behe, Johnson, Axe, etc), as well as those who are ambiguous on any such convictions (eg: Abel, Denton, etc). In other words, physical evidence matters in science, even to the trusty old claims and ideas from the mid 1800's.

What’s important to any theory of ID is whether coding string can be decoded without trying them in living populations. In other words, can a putative designer predict the results of codes without truing them out.

Faced with the unambiguous physical evidence of a semiotic state in protein synthesis, you are simply left to say something in order to have anything at all to say. Your choice has been to repeat this dreadfully anthropocentric attempt to move the goalpost for the design inference. It does not go un-noticed that it has been the ultimate success of the design inference which prompted this respsonse. This paints you as an ideologue who attempts to protect him/herself from physical evidence. These attempts are now on full display.

Until this can be done, there is no theory of design and will not be a theory of design.

In total, your response addresses absolutely nothing of the physical evidence of a semiotic state in protein synthesis. Your self-serving proclamations have therefore grown stale by comparison (ie: physical evidence always trumps hot air). Perhaps you should give it a rest. Upright BiPed

It really makes no difference to evolution whether the origin of the genetic code was a natural occurrence or a miracle. Even Darwin acknowledged that. What is important to TOE is how populations change over time. What's important to any theory of ID is whether coding string can be decoded without trying them in living populations. In other words, can a putative designer predict the results of codes without truing them out. Until this can be done, there is no theory of design and will not be a theory of design. Petrushka

Apologies for not putting this post in its proper place in this thread. Eugene S

Petrushka, Overall, I think what you are saying is akin to alchemy or perpetual motion. As to 1%-99% ratio, absolutely, but how valuable that 1% is! A similar quote from Tchaikovsky: success = 1% of genius and 99% of labour. It just shows the degree of non-linearity of the problem. Intelligent insight is key to science and to all that science has produced to date. Compared to the importance of what you present as examples of automation (which are of course valid by all means), the invention of the possibility to automate it plus the invention of how to make it possible is perhaps even more skewed that 99 to 1. What you keep resisting is the obvious thing that intelligence drives the search for solutions in vast configuration spaces towards regions where solution (solution clusters) are situated. Eugene S

Petrushka, you need to focus. The evidence of a semiotic state is staring you in the face. It has physical entailments. They are observable. These entailments place requirements on any explanation proposed as to how they came about. It is not my job to provide you with examples of anything. The evidence is observable, and the observations are coherent. It is your job to show how material causes can satify those physical requirements. Upright BiPed

Wow, looking back on that thread now, Petrushka, I notice that Larry Moran and Dr Liddle were the only two ID opponents making any comments at all - and one of them bailed on the topic, and the other has yet neglected to respond. So either you were making claims up out of thin air, or you are incredibly mistaken. In case you weren't mistaken, can you please once again tell me who "tried to educate [me], to no avail.". (And yes, I do thank you for bringing that point out into the open). Upright BiPed

Well you could start by giving me an example of how to decode an arbitrary DNA sequence without "running the program" in a living thing. If it's information in the usual sense, you should be able to tell me how to translate a completely novel sequence into its effects on the organism. Petrushka

Petrushka, that was an amazingly lame attempt to skirt the evidence. And who exactly are you talking about? Is it Larry Moran? He decided not to engage the issue at all, and said so straight up. Or are you talking about Dr Liddle, who as of this very moment hasn't responded to a post on her own website (decicated to that specific topic). So who is it, you say? I mean, come on, you do realize these conversations are recorded and dated, right? And what about you Petrushka, what's your excuse for ignoring observable physical evidence? Will you now tell me more about your excuse, or will you finally address the evidence as we actually find it operating in nature? Upright BiPed

Seems to me a number of people on that thread tried to educate you, to no avail. Good of you to remind everyone. Petrushka

Well then, Petrushka, by all means; feel free to address the physical evidence in earnest. Enough of your silly proclamations. Educate me on that which your position simply assumes. earnest: 1) a serious and intent mental state [a proposal made in earnest.] 2) a considerable or impressive degree or amount Upright BiPed

But a GA has a goal- to solve the problem/ meet the specification. JoeG

That position is one that says “because I cannot” anticipate a function, one cannot be anticipated.

As it stands the situation stands as follows: Mainstream evolution has all the necessary processes it needs. They have been observed. They fit the available time frame. There are, of course, gaps in historical knowledge. ID has nothing. Nada. Zip. No designer. No attributes for the designer. No instances of design. No proof of concept that the effects of coding strings can be anticipated. ID's primary spokesmen, Behe and Axe are on record saying there are no shortcuts to anticipating protein folding. Petrushka

I notice that no one has jumped in with an example of anticipating the utility of an arbitrary coding string.

I certainly know how you feel. I notice that you haven't jumped in to explain how the semiotic basis of that string came into existence in the first place. And your claim that the function of a string "cannot be anticipated" (and therefore cannot be designed) comes from a fairly weak (and terribly anthropic) position. That position is one that says "because I cannot" anticipate a function, one cannot be anticipated. Not only does this come off as 'swinging at anything', I am not sure the reasoning itself will fly (if ya know what I mean).

It would seem that not only is the ID movement without a designer, it is also lacking a conceptual framework that would make design possible

If you already know everything that must be known on the subject, then by all means, say whatever you wish about what "makes design possible." But as for what we actually know to be true: the framework which makes design implementable was discovered at various points in the 50's, 60's and early 70's. (Francis Crick, James Watson, Marshall Nirenberg, Heinreich Matthaei, Mahlon Hogland, Paul Zamecnik, etc). It is the input of information in a system operating under formal conditions. If you'd like to offer the material origin of formal systems, then please be my guest. I'm all ears.

Is that the best you can do?

I am not sure what you meant here, but what has been told to you (by me and others) is enough to demonstrate that your entire position rest upon an unsupported assumption. You blatantly assume what it is to be explained, and you do so with an interesting tone of certainty.

Poof?

That is an interesting comment coming from someone who's entire explanation based on poof. Upright BiPed

It's true that GAs are not as smart as biological evolution. Nor "imaginative." But evolution isn't imaginative either. It has no foresight and no goals, so in that sense a GA is analogous. Petrushka

While I agree with a criticism, from a Christian, that was leveled against the preceding Shroud of Turin video, that God indeed needed no help from the universe in the resurrection event of Christ, since all 'logical' things are possible with God, I am none-the-less very happy to see that what is considered the number one problem of Physicists and Mathematicians in physics today (indeed perhaps all of science), of a ‘unification into a theory of everything’ for what is in essence the finite world of General Relativity and the infinite world of Quantum Mechanics, does in fact seem to find a successful resolution for ‘unification’ within the resurrection event of Jesus Christ Himself. It seems almost overwhelmingly apparent to me from the ‘scientific evidence’ we now have in hand that Christ literally ripped a hole in the finite entropic space-time of this universe to reunite infinite God with finite man. That modern science would even offer such a almost tangible glimpse into the mechanics of what happened in the tomb of Christ should be a source of great wonder and comfort for the Christian heart.

Psalms 16:10 because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and upon earth.” Brooke Fraser - Hillsong: “Lord Of Lords” (HQ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB4Tc5zJMUc

further note: It should also be pointed out that Special and General Relativity reveal two very, very, different ‘eternalities of time’ within space-time. The ‘entropic eternality of time’ revealed for black holes is rather disturbing for those of us of a spiritual persuasion:

On The Mystery, and Plasticity, of Space-Time: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FFKL3FeyebpNNyal1DQ64y20zlplVrjkaLXrM0P5ES4/edit?hl=en_US

further notes:

Falsification Of Neo-Darwinism by Quantum Entanglement/Information https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p8AQgqFqiRQwyaF8t1_CKTPQ9duN8FHU9-pV4oBDOVs/edit?hl=en_US Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff - video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/29895068

bornagain77

The expansion of every 3D point in the universe, and the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe to each point of conscious observation in the universe, is obviously a very interesting congruence in science between the very large (relativity) and the very small (quantum mechanics). A congruence that Physicists, and Mathematicians, seem to be having a extremely difficult time ‘unifying’ into a ‘theory of everything’.(Einstein, Penrose). The conflict of reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics appears to arise from the inability of either theory to successfully deal with the Zero/Infinity problem that crops up in different places of each theory:

THE MYSTERIOUS ZERO/INFINITY Excerpt: The biggest challenge to today’s physicists is how to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. However, these two pillars of modern science were bound to be incompatible. “The universe of general relativity is a smooth rubber sheet. It is continuous and flowing, never sharp, never pointy. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, describes a jerky and discontinuous universe. What the two theories have in common – and what they clash over – is zero.”,, “The infinite zero of a black hole — mass crammed into zero space, curving space infinitely — punches a hole in the smooth rubber sheet. The equations of general relativity cannot deal with the sharpness of zero. In a black hole, space and time are meaningless.”,, “Quantum mechanics has a similar problem, a problem related to the zero-point energy. The laws of quantum mechanics treat particles such as the electron as points; that is, they take up no space at all. The electron is a zero-dimensional object,,, According to the rules of quantum mechanics, the zero-dimensional electron has infinite mass and infinite charge. http://www.fmbr.org/editoral/edit01_02/edit6_mar02.htm Quantum Mechanics and Relativity – The Collapse Of Physics? – video – with notes as to plausible reconciliation that is missed by materialists (Please note; the ‘infinity problem’ is focused primarily in black holes) http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6597379/

Yet, the unification, into a ‘theory of everything’, between what is in essence the ‘infinite Theistic world of Quantum Mechanics’ and the ‘finite Materialistic world of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity’ seems to be directly related to what Jesus apparently joined together with His resurrection, i.e. related to the unification of infinite God with finite man. Dr. William Dembski in this following comment, though not directly addressing the Zero/Infinity conflict in General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, offers insight into this ‘unification’ of the infinite and the finite:

The End Of Christianity – Finding a Good God in an Evil World – Pg.31 - William Dembski PhD. in Mathematics and Theology Excerpt: “In mathematics there are two ways to go to infinity. One is to grow large without measure. The other is to form a fraction in which the denominator goes to zero. The Cross is a path of humility in which the infinite God becomes finite and then contracts to zero, only to resurrect and thereby unite a finite humanity within a newfound infinity.” http://www.designinference.com/documents/2009.05.end_of_xty.pdf

,,,Also of related interest to this ‘Zero/Infinity conflict of reconciliation’, between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, is the fact that a ‘uncollapsed’ photon, in its quantum wave state, is mathematically defined as ‘infinite’ information,,,

Wave function - wikipedia Excerpt “wave functions form an abstract vector space”,,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function. Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia Excerpt: Theoretically, a single (photon) qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/#2.1

It is important to note that the following experiment actually encoded information into a photon while it was in its quantum wave state, thus destroying the notion, held by many, that the wave function was not 'physically real' but was merely 'abstract'. i.e. How can information possibly be encoded into something that is not physically real but merely abstract?

Ultra-Dense Optical Storage - on One Photon Excerpt: Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image's worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact. http://www.physorg.com/news88439430.html

The following mathematically corroborated the preceding experiment:

Quantum Theory's 'Wavefunction' Found to Be Real Physical Entity: Scientific American - November 2011 Excerpt: David Wallace, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford, UK, says that the theorem is the most important result in the foundations of quantum mechanics that he has seen in his 15-year professional career. "This strips away obscurity and shows you can't have an interpretation of a quantum state as probabilistic," he says. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=quantum-theorys-wavefunction

,,Moreover there is actual physical evidence that lends strong support to the position that the ‘Zero/Infinity conflict’, that we find between the infinite density of black hole gravity, of General Relativity, and the 'infinite dimensional' realm of Quantum Mechanics, was successfully dealt with by Christ,,,

THE EVENT HORIZON (Space-Time Singularity) OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN. – Isabel Piczek – Particle Physicist Excerpt: We have stated before that the images on the Shroud firmly indicate the total absence of Gravity. Yet they also firmly indicate the presence of the Event Horizon. These two seemingly contradict each other and they necessitate the past presence of something more powerful than Gravity that had the capacity to solve the above paradox. http://shroud3d.com/findings/isabel-piczek-image-formation The Center Of The Universe Is Life – General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy and The Shroud Of Turin – video http://www.metacafe.com/w/5070355 Turin Shroud Enters 3D Age – Holographic Pictures, Articles and Videos https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1gDY4CJkoFedewMG94gdUk1Z1jexestdy5fh87RwWAfg “Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known to us of nature.” St. Augustine

bornagain77

Scott, you may find the following very interesting as to establishing Christ's dominion over all of reality, including all of science: Centrality of Each Observer In The Universe and Christ’s Very Plausible Reconciliation Of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics A ‘Christian’ interpretation offers a very plausible, empirically backed, reconciliation of General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics: First a little background on 'the problem': ,,, First I noticed that the earth demonstrates centrality in the universe in this video Dr. Dembski posted a while back;

The Known Universe – Dec. 2009 – a very cool video (please note the centrality of the earth in the universe) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

,,, for a while I tried to see if the expansion of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity was sufficient to explain centrality we witness for the earth in the universe,,,

Where is the centre of the universe?: Excerpt: The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/centre.html

,,,Thus from a 3-dimensional (3D) perspective, any particular 3D spot in the universe is to be considered just as ‘center of the universe’ as any other particular spot in the universe is to be considered ‘center of the universe’. This centrality found for any 3D place in the universe is because the universe is a 4D expanding hypersphere, analogous in 3D to the surface of an expanding balloon. All points on the surface are moving away from each other, and every point is central, if that’s where you live.,,,

4-Dimensional Space-Time Of General Relativity – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3991873/

,,,yet I kept running into the same problem for establishing the sufficiency of General Relativity to explain our centrality in this universe, in that every time I would perform a ‘thought experiment’ of trying radically different points of observation in the universe, General Relativity would fail to maintain centrality for the radically different point of observation in the universe. The primary reason for this failure of General Relativity to maintain centrality, for different points of observation in the universe, is due to the fact that there are limited (10^80) material particles to work with. Though this failure of General Relativity was obvious to me, I needed more proof so as to establish it more rigorously, so I dug around a bit and found this,,,

The Cauchy Problem In General Relativity – Igor Rodnianski Excerpt: 2.2 Large Data Problem In General Relativity – While the result of Choquet-Bruhat and its subsequent refinements guarantee the existence and uniqueness of a (maximal) Cauchy development, they provide no information about its geodesic completeness and thus, in the language of partial differential equations, constitutes a local existence. ,,, More generally, there are a number of conditions that will guarantee the space-time will be geodesically incomplete.,,, In the language of partial differential equations this means an impossibility of a large data global existence result for all initial data in General Relativity. http://www.icm2006.org/proceedings/Vol_III/contents/ICM_Vol_3_22.pdf

,,,and also ‘serendipitously’ found this,,,

THE GOD OF THE MATHEMATICIANS – DAVID P. GOLDMAN – August 2010 Excerpt: Gödel’s personal God is under no obligation to behave in a predictable orderly fashion, and Gödel produced what may be the most damaging critique of general relativity. In a Festschrift, (a book honoring Einstein), for Einstein’s seventieth birthday in 1949, Gödel demonstrated the possibility of a special case in which, as Palle Yourgrau described the result, “the large-scale geometry of the world is so warped that there exist space-time curves that bend back on themselves so far that they close; that is, they return to their starting point.” This means that “a highly accelerated spaceship journey along such a closed path, or world line, could only be described as time travel.” In fact, “Gödel worked out the length and time for the journey, as well as the exact speed and fuel requirements.” Gödel, of course, did not actually believe in time travel, but he understood his paper to undermine the Einsteinian worldview from within. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/07/the-god-of-the-mathematicians

,,,But if General Relativity is insufficient to explain the centrality we witness for ourselves in the universe, what else is? Universal Quantum wave collapse to each unique point of observation is! To prove this point I dug around a bit and found this experiment,,,

This following experiment extended the double slit experiment to show that the ‘spooky actions’, for instantaneous quantum wave collapse, happen regardless of any considerations for time or distance i.e. The following experiment shows that quantum actions are ‘universal and instantaneous’ for each observer: Wheeler’s Classic Delayed Choice Experiment: Excerpt: Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments. We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles “have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy,” so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory. http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/basic_delayed_choice.htm Genesis, Quantum Physics and Reality Excerpt: Simply put, an experiment on Earth can be made in such a way that it determines if one photon comes along either on the right or the left side or if it comes (as a wave) along both sides of the gravitational lens (of the galaxy) at the same time. However, how could the photons have known billions of years ago that someday there would be an earth with inhabitants on it, making just this experiment? ,,, This is big trouble for the multi-universe theory and for the “hidden-variables” approach. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3-00Zoeller-Greer.html.ori

,,,Shoot, there is even a experiment that shows the preceding quantum experiments will never be overturned by another ‘future’ theory with more predictive power,,,

An experimental test of all theories with predictive power beyond quantum theory – May 2011 Excerpt: Hence, we can immediately refute any already considered or yet-to-be-proposed alternative model with more predictive power than this (quantum theory). http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0133

,, and to make universal Quantum Wave collapse that much more ‘personal’ I found this,,,

“It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) from his collection of essays “Symmetries and Reflections – Scientific Essays”; Eugene Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.

,,,Here is the key experiment that led Wigner to his Nobel Prize winning work on quantum symmetries,,,

Eugene Wigner Excerpt: To express this basic experience in a more direct way: the world does not have a privileged center, there is no absolute rest, preferred direction, unique origin of calendar time, even left and right seem to be rather symmetric. The interference of electrons, photons, neutrons has indicated that the state of a particle can be described by a vector possessing a certain number of components. As the observer is replaced by another observer (working elsewhere, looking at a different direction, using another clock, perhaps being left-handed), the state of the very same particle is described by another vector, obtained from the previous vector by multiplying it with a matrix. This matrix transfers from one observer to another. http://www.reak.bme.hu/Wigner_Course/WignerBio/wb1.htm

i.e. In the experiment the ‘world’ (i.e. the universe) does not have a ‘privileged center’. Yet strangely, the conscious observer does exhibit a ‘privileged center’. This is since the ‘matrix’, which determines which vector will be used to describe the particle in the experiment, is ‘observer-centric’ in its origination! Thus explaining Wigner’s dramatic statement, “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” I find it extremely interesting, and strange, that quantum mechanics tells us that instantaneous quantum wave collapse to its ‘uncertain’ 3-D state is centered on each individual observer in the universe, whereas, 4-D space-time cosmology (General Relativity) tells us each 3-D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. These findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by a omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time. These findings certainly seem to go to the very heart of the age old question asked of many parents by their children, “How can God hear everybody’s prayers at the same time?”,,, i.e. Why should the expansion of the universe, or the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe, even care that you or I, or anyone else, should exist? Only Theism offers a rational explanation as to why you or I, or anyone else, should have such undeserved significance in such a vast universe:

Psalm 33:13-15 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.

bornagain77

Petrushka: The “information” determines the production of proteins, but chemistry determines the utility of a given protein...

The information of how to build a wing will determine whether or not your plane will fly, but it is the flow of air which will keep it off the ground. Quite obviously - and there can be no doubt about this - the flow of air is therefore the source of the plane. Aircraft are an emergent property of air. ID has been falsified.

...and utility is what cannot be anticipated.

The airplane is a result of blind trial and error. It cannot be the result of intelligent causation for the stunningly obvious reason that its usefulness cannot be anticipated. ID has been falsified yet again. Upright BiPed

Scott, Jesus is alive right now and possesses all authority in heaven and earth:

Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and upon earth."

bornagain77

BA77,

...I’m fairly certain that makes Him the greatest living master science teacher of all reality.

I'm sure he would be if he taught any science. Are you saying that he 'defeated the death of his human body' through science? I thought he was dead and God resurrected him. ScottAndrews2

Just how human was Jesus? Wasn't He suppose to be omniscient? - William Lane Craig - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d105FgGQgI

bornagain77

Well Scott,, since science is basically a 'spiritual endeavor' on the part of man, using reasoning, logic, and 'directed experimentation' to master, and understand, the material world around him, and since Christ, through 'spiritual endeavor', defeated the material death of his human body, and was given 'all power in heaven and earth' as a result, as all Christians hold as true, I'm fairly certain that makes Him the greatest living master science teacher of all reality. bornagain77

Petrushka, Could I refer you to Chaitin on the explainable because (a) your reasoning about this seems somewhat naive and (b) you are definitely not taking our word for it. Chances are life will never be explained because it is not reducible to physics and/or chemistry (as was hypothesised decades ago by Niels Bohr). Chaitin looks into the theory of algorithmic information and is a co-founder of this entire field of mathematics (together with Kolmogorov). He has shown that there are an infinite number of mathematical truths that cannot be proved. As he put it, the renowned Goedel's theorem is just the tip of an iceberg. The bottom line is, not everything is capable of being explained. Reality is infinitely richer that our understanding of it can ever get. Eugene S

2. They are sufficient.

Petrushka, evolution as we know it to exist and operate is dependent upon recorded genetic information. One is wholly dependent on the other, not vise versa. This recorded information exists in a semiotic state. This state has physical entailments which are entirely observable and coherently understood. For you to suggest that the process of evolution is sufficient to explain these observations is patently false. By 'patently false' - I mean there is absolutely no scientific (empirical, clinically observable) evidence that the process of evolution can cause these required (observed) physical entailments to come into existence. This observation stands without a single demonstrable exception of any kind whatsoever. If you think this to be false, then by all means, please demonstrate the process by which evolution causes matter to become discretely arranged in order to cause a specific effect within a dedicated system, and where a second arrangement of matter becomes coordinated in a way to establish the (immaterial, yet) physical relationship between the representational arrangement and the resulting effect - without physically interacting with either, as they themselves remain discrete. If you cannot do this (without assumption or equivocation), then you alternately demonstrate that such a process is as unknown to you as it is to everyone else on the surface of the planet. (In other words, there are no scientific findings whatsoever to support your claims). At which time, you will be left to the dynamic physical evidence as it actually exists - which I suggest is probably a good thing. But in any case, to get to that point, you'll be required to actually address the physical evidence as it is found in nature. If you can do so, then do so. Upright BiPed

BA77,

Scott, once again, if I were you, I would not be so quick to dismiss Christianity as a vital catalyst in science. Especially since Christ REALLY DID, from the best evidence I can gather, rise from the dead.

I am a Christian. For the life of me, I cannot see the connection between these two sentences. ScottAndrews2

Scott, once again, if I were you, I would not be so quick to dismiss Christianity as a vital catalyst in science. Especially since Christ REALLY DID, from the best evidence I can gather, rise from the dead. (That IS NOT a trivial thing Scott!) If you question the studies I listed and think they are jerry rigged, I suggest you do your own research, but when I do this I always find, surprisingly, that time after time, the evidence comes down in favor of Christianity! bornagain77

BA77, The question of origins alone is where I see a difference. If a Christian is more likely that an atheist to have designed the microcells in my plasma TV, it's only because there are more Christians than atheists. To compare SAT scores between Christian private schools and public schools is blatantly loaded. Who are they kidding? Of course private school students score higher than public school students. Where's the comparison of Christian private schools to non-specifically-Christian private schools? How ironic that they would publish a statistic that appears to value education while simultaneously underestimating my intelligence. ScottAndrews2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

So folks like Faraday and Maxwell are just chopped liver? Petrushka

The AC generator sprang fully formed from the head of Tesla... Joseph

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

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

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

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

"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

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/dna-as-digital-technology/comment-page-1/#comment-410157 Somehow my post got moved to 12 below. Petrushka

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

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

The intelligence involved in GA is simply a matter of trying to copy what occurs in nature and adapt the process for commercial use. 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. That's just silly. Or because roads are intelligently designed, tar and concrete cannot occur naturally. Evolution is the inspiration for GAs, but nature is still better at it. Microbes are still developing drug resistance faster than we can engineer drugs. Petrushka

Petrushka, You are using something known to be intelligently designed as evidence of what can be accomplished without intelligent design. The very best examples of unintelligent design you can find required teams of programmers and fifty years of accumulated computer science plus the design and manufacture of the computers themselves. You're case would be a tiny bit more compelling if you found an example with just a little less intelligent design in it. ScottAndrews2

Your fallacy is that you repeatedly limit the capacity of intelligence to the capacity of ‘computational resources’ when it is observed and known beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are vastly superior.

I would be glad to see the computational metaphor dead and buried. The 500 bits of dFSCI has never been anything but a canard. But your claim of the superiority of "intelligence" is silly. Any process that requires systematic application of physical principles has been handed over to computers. Engineering programs routinely handle material strength and balance utility and cost. Programs have long ago surpassed humans in the ability to balance multiple design dimensions. Shipping companies routinely use genetic algorithms to plan routes. the power grid is balance using genetic algorithms. There are scores of industries solving multi-dimensioned problems with genetic algorithms. The simple empirical question to be answered is not how many bits are in current genomes, but how they got there and whether they got there incrementally. More interesting is how they keep changing, even in the brief span of human history. Petrushka

Petrushka,

My argument can be boiled down to the assertion that utility of coding strings cannot be computed with ordinary finite resources.

Name one worthwhile designed thing that can be computed with ordinary finite resources. Not a sentence I type could ever be "computed," because no unintelligent resource could ever possess a thought or the desire to express it with language. When you take design problems and recast them as computational problems, of course they become impossible. That's why we use intelligence, set goals, form intentions, and plan rather than attempting to compute everything. Your fallacy is that you repeatedly limit the capacity of intelligence to the capacity of 'computational resources' when it is observed and known beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are vastly superior. Even in cases where computational resources are effective, it is only by the design of and at the service of intelligence. ScottAndrews2

But you should know that most of their properties can very well be computed. Folding can be computed. It’s just, as you yourself say, “due to limitations of computational speed”.

My argument can be boiled down to the assertion that utility of coding strings cannot be computed with ordinary finite resources. It's an empirical claim. It's a claim that could be addressed by ID research. It seems like ID proponents would want to confront head-on the problem of design rather than pretend it doesn't exist. In the real world, the problem of functionality and utility are addressed through directed evolution. Like most industrial processes, a natural process has been stripped down to essentials and put to work. In one sense, directed evolution is the oldest industrial process, since plant and animal breeding are among the oldest of human technologies. Petrushka

Petrushka: Molecules have properties that cannot be computed from the properties of the constituent atoms. Maybe. Sometimes. I really don't want to be a reductionist. But you should know that most of their properties can very well be computed. Folding can be computed. It's just, as you yourself say, "due to limitations of computational speed". I am really tired of hearing the concept of "emergent properties" used to defend the view thta anything can happen. Emergent properties have become a new form of belief in magics. The properties of molecules are due to specific laws og chemistry. Those laws can be understood. It's not that we add hydrogen and oxygen and water comes out as an emergent property. There are specific reasons of physics and chemistry that explain why those two elements combine, and why the resulting molecule has the properties it has. All that can be understood and explained. And, as you know, if we have a good scientific explanation, we can usually make good predictions. Certainly, we don't understand everything. I will easily support that for any scientic knowledge. But that does not mean that things cannot be understood. Design is based on understanding. You are suggesting that the chemical properties of molecules cannot be understood. I don't know from which strange ideology you derive that concept, but it's simply not true. gpuccio

Petrushka, Intelligence doesn't "compute." That's what makes it so intelligent, and that's why it solves problems unattainable through searches. A search finds something. But truly functional solutions are never found. Intelligence processes the end goal and imagines components working in order, examining the big picture and all the small ones simultaneously. Intelligence can go from zero to 90 in a moment, from a blank slate to a light bulb over your head. Without begging the question of biological design, I have everything you've ever used or imagined or heard of in your whole life on my side. You've got some GA modifying an antenna after someone imagined and designed a radio and conceived of the need for an antenna and then imagined and designed a computer and then imagined and implemented a programming language and used to to implement a GA to look for a better antenna, entered the inputs, and tuned it to get the correct output and went on to design and implement a means for manufacturing the antenna. Everything is on my side. Your examples are on my side. I've got reality, all of it, and you've got abstract concepts that fill a thousand papers but never connect the dots from selection and variation and drift to any concrete examples or implementations more exciting than cichlid fish in different colors. All your bases are belong to us. ScottAndrews2

When I was in high school I read that it was impossible for computer graphics to render a real-time landscape of three-dimensional shapes...

That was never true. It may have been impossible due to limitations of computational speed, but there's a difference between problems that are hard because they require a lot of computation, and problems that are hard because emergent properties cannot be computed at all. at least with the resources available in the physical universe. Molecules have properties that cannot be computed from the properties of the constituent atoms. It's amusing to watch ID advocates argue for reductionism. Petrushka

If no one can even string a few of those together, then it’s not even hypothetical. It’s conceptual. Like when I imagine the flying car of the future without knowing how to build one.

A few have been strung together. Petrushka

Petrushka:

the problem is that there is no shortcut to knowing what the effect of a coding string will be.

Well when looked at from a totally physio-chemical point of view, you would just have to consider the charges + / - and then the type of amino acids- hydrophobic or hydrophyllic- to see what shape would be formed. However if a chaperone is involved then the shape is pretty much already determined. Joseph

"Why do you suppose problems like the traveling salesman problem are best solved with genetic algorithms?"

The TSP is not "solved" by genetic algorithms, in the sense that optimality is achieved; however a good (suboptimal) tour can be improved by them at the cost of computing time. So "best" here is subjective to purpose. Even GAs incorporate specific, designed target searches. A GA in this regard is an example of using a highly directed search, where the optimal solution cannot reasonably be known (in the case of TSP, because it takes n! iterations to discover an exact solution). Populations are not generated at random, but rather with fast heuristics known to ballpark optimization problems. For example, minimum spanning trees can be used to generate solutions, often within 20% of optimal, in as little as O(n logn) time. This means you could generate a tour of 512 cities in as little as 512*9=4608 computations. That is an estimated minimum -- some variations run in O(n^2) which would result in around 512^2=262144 computations. This is entirely non-random. A GA might start with a population of tours which have already been optimized by highly efficient heuristics, then combine or selectively mutate tour edges and test for improvements over the parent optimum. Iterative, selective, specific processes for generating variation might also be employed to improve effectiveness. It's likely that a properly designed GA, left to run for hours or days, might find a solution very close to the exact solution, depending on the number of points being considered. However it will undoubtedly rely on existing heuristic methods in order to be successful, by culling out bad solutions and starting with good ones. It is a tightly directed search, where populations begin near the target solution; and so the mechanism is not blind with respect to outcome, but rather has a target in mind -- and begins its search in the neighborhood of the target. For a sufficiently large set of edges, a successful GA will likely need to begin with reasonably "good" solutions, then perform selective optimizations (as mutations), all while steering toward a target goal of shortest route. With regard to fitness, initial population, and mutation or recombination, it is all very specific. The less specificity a GA has with respect to producing populations and variations, the less successful it will be in approaching an optimal solution. In any case, it must know what neighborhood it's target resides in. For most applications that would benefit from a good solution to the TSP, especially where efficiency is an issue, best to avoid GAs, IMO. To sum up, an effective GA for solving the TSP is not an alternative to other highly specific methods, but rather incorporates at least some of them. material.infantacy

P: have you ever written a computer program?

http://itatsi.com I think you are agreeing with me that the resources of the universe are insufficient to store the possible coding strings and their attributes and levels of utility. And emergence means that there is no formulaic way of knowing or predicting the utility of a coding sequence. Petrushka

P: have you ever written a computer program? This is linguistic and it is prescriptive information predicated on changing switches. FYI, the genetic codon table does allow prediction of results of changes in the bases. Indeed, there is a discussion of this just now on how experiments with this show an optimality in the code. The implication is you have to understand the language and the related controlled dynamics under the control of the language [the usual game for a control situation], i.e. a major challenge to intelligence. It is quite obvious that the complexity involved is vastly beyond the atomic resources of the cosmos, to arrive at the required proteins for first cell based metabolising life, which is again the same point. KF kairosfocus

Petrushka, And you maintain, without a trace of evidence, that evolution can solve a problem that so far no one else has (while oddly asserting that because no one has, no on can.) The genetic algorithms that solve the traveling salesman problems are designed up and down, back and forth. They are one more of the countless examples that support my argument, not yours.

There are at least three scenarios that would make design possible. (Emphasis mine.)

You left out the one where someone else is just smarter than us and knows how to do something we can't, sort of like us compared to 100-years-ago us or 100-years-from-now us compared to us. To assert that an unsolved problem is unsolvable flies in the face of history and science. It's like an argument from ignorance with credit for future and eternal ignorance. Going "poof!" sounds more intellectual when you call it an 'emergent property,' but it's no less magical when you just tack it on as a post-hoc explanation without explaining a single detail of said emergence or the existence of the framework required for it to emerge. Poof! It emerged! ScottAndrews2

Too tired is a rather lame excuse. The fact is you have no response. If you had a way of anticipating utility you would win a Nobel prize. And be wealthy. Petrushka

But now we have the “it’s too complicated to be designed

Let's be clear. What makes design difficult or impossible is not simply "complication." the problem is that there is no shortcut to knowing what the effect of a coding string will be. You can imagine the is a shortcut, but lots of bright people have looked. And suppose you found a formula for coding proteins. You would still have the problem of sieving for utility. Simply having a protein doesn't make it useful. And having a useful protein doesn't tell you what its relative utility will be in an ecosystem. Why do you suppose it's so difficult to invent safe and effective drugs? Petrushka

Petrushka: More probably, we are just tired to answer your repetitive non arguments. gpuccio

Too complicated to have been designed without using evolution. Why do you suppose problems like the traveling salesman problem are best solved with genetic algorithms? There are at least three scenarios that would make design possible. One would be some way to anticipate emergent properties. That's not visible on the horizon. I do note the wishful thinking of some ID advocates. Too bad their own most capable supporters -- people like Douglas Axe -- don't buy it. Another scenario is that functional space is sufficiently connected to allow traversal by small changes. Another scenario is that the designer is omniscient and poofs things into existence. Petrushka

I notice that no one has jumped in with an example of anticipating the utility of an arbitrary coding string. It would seem that not only is the ID movement without a designer, it is also lacking a conceptual framework that would make design possible. Is that the best you can do? Poof? The check's in the mail? Petrushka

Petrushka,

utility is what cannot be anticipated.

I'm flabbergasted. For years folks have been criticized for the "it's too complicated to happen by itself, it must have been designed" argument. We've even been brainwashed into thinking it's a bad argument, when it's actually quite logical and rational. But now we have the "it's too complicated to be designed, it must have happened by itself" argument. Unlike the above statement, which is derived from the totality of human experience, this is derived circularly from itself. Its only evidence is that assumption that life was not designed, which in turn is defended with this assertion. It's too complicated to have been designed, it must have happened by itself. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. ScottAndrews2

I don't have it backwards at all. The "information" determines the production of proteins, but chemistry determines the utility of a given protein, and utility is what cannot be anticipated. Petrushka

Petrushka: "Nor can one derive the properties and phenomena of chemistry from the abstraction commonly referred to as information theory." What?! This doesn't even make sense in the context of DNA. You've got it exactly backwards. What you should have said is that the chemical properties of the molecules in DNA do not produce the information life is based on. Rather, it is the information that is imposed on the medium that results in the particular chemical configuration. Eric Anderson

You are an example to people like me who say too little with too many words. ScottAndrews2

Joseph, Yes, I suspected that ) Petrushka, I remember you asking if I meant something like vitalism when I said that life was not reducible to chemistry/physics. I will answer by quoting. Here is what Chaitin says about irreducibility (in his "The limits of reason", SciAm, 2006). "In a way, saying something is irreducible is giving up, saying that it cannot ever be proved." There are definite signs of intelligence out there. Further than that we can't come (due to limitations of science which Chaitin talks about in that article about the Omega, the probability of halting of a random program). We can't rigorously prove that with respect to life (although we can well prove that e.g. in forensics or medicine). However what we can say is more than nothing. We can say design explains life better than chance and/or necessity on their own. And that is scientific enough to me. Eugene S

Petrushka's entire diatribe simply assumes the existence of recorded information. He hasn't even gotten to first base. Hell will freeze over first. Upright BiPed

Petrushka:

My point remains that design requires anticipation of utility, and the “language” of DNA does not allow anticipation of utility.

Maybe not to us, right now. But that does not mean the designer(s) of living organisms could not anticipate the utility of DNA. Joseph

Petrushka, When I was in high school I read that it was impossible for computer graphics to render a real-time landscape of three-dimensional shapes composed of polygons in such a way that the areas facing the viewer were visible while the back sides were hidden. (They were usually rendered as wireframes with all the lines visible.) By 1995 every frame of every video game was full of thousands of them with varying textures applied to different facets. Since then it's replaced hand-drawn animation in cartoons. To rule out design because it's just too hard doesn't fly at all. Is there even a name for that fallacy? Argument from we-don't-know-how-to-do-that-yet? Argument from if-Douglas-Axe-says-it-can't-be-done-so-be-it? But the mind-blower is to take an apparent product of forethought and planning, declare it too difficult for intelligence, and attribute it to some vague concept of emergence from random variations instead. ScottAndrews2

My point remains that design requires anticipation of utility, and the "language" of DNA does not allow anticipation of utility. If you don't believe me, ask Douglas Axe. Petrushka

Eugene, I believe Petrushka was just playing. It's like when someone asks if you heard them and even though you did you say "what?"- and they repeat what they said. Joseph

Petrushka, I guess what Joseph means is all new information must be explainable in the existing language to maintain communication. That is perfectly true. And in fact it is what routinely happens e.g. when a child is learning. Sensible parents/teachers explain things so that children can understand. So first meaning -> then a common alphabet and a common language -> then information transfer & processing. As was pointed out a number of times on this blog, the remarkable thing about information transfer and processing in a living cell is that between the sender and the receiver there may be no a priori physical/chemical contact. IMHO, this fact alone is telling of life's irreducibility to chemistry/physics. Eugene S

Petrushka, A hypothesis regarding a transition might sound like this: X variation occurred. It conferred Y benefit, and was selected. Q variation occurred. It was neutral, but then combined through drift with R variation, which conferred Z benefit, which was selected. If no one can even string a few of those together, then it's not even hypothetical. It's conceptual. Like when I imagine the flying car of the future without knowing how to build one. That's what I mean when I say that no one has ever described a significant evolutionary change in specific evolutionary terms. It's reasonable to allow that there are constraints (time) on what we're able to observe. But if no one can even hypothesize one or even part of one then it's still at square one, the "Gee, what if?" step. That there are thousands of papers and not a single concrete example or even established possibility says as much as no papers at all. First it's an "umbrella" theory supported by lots of hypotheses. But then the most important hypothesis - the one that establishes the core principle of how organisms evolve to adapt over time - isn't even incorrect, it's missing entirely. ScottAndrews2

Petrushka: <blockquoteIf you can anticipate the utility of coding sequences or new molecules, you can make a fortune in pharmaceuticals. If that is what you want. However I say there are already existing remedies for most ills- nature-made remedies, meaning we do not need pharaceuticals. Joseph

By the way, you have posted a quotation in such a way that it looks like I am the author. I disputed the characterization of pathways as smooth. Petrushka

The landscape metaphor was invented sixty or seventy years ago. Thousands of papers have been published on the concepts of ridges and networks. It's an active field of research. I can't even imagine what you mean by claiming there is no hypothesis. It's the single most important hypothesis in biology. Everything in evolution depends on species having diverged as a result of known types of genetic change. Not all known changes are small. there are whole genome duplications, gene duplications, transpositions, horizontal gene transfer and such, but they are known, observable and widely studied. Petrushka

Petrushka,

We have very good reasons for hypothesizing a smooth incremental path.

My point is that no one has hypothesized one. How does this get a pass from idea to cornerstone of biology without even a hypothesis? ScottAndrews2

Not true. If somone hears something for the first time it is a safe bet they would have to have it explained to them.

You'll have to explain that to me. I've not heard that statement before. If you can anticipate the utility of coding sequences or new molecules, you can make a fortune in pharmaceuticals. The industry is currently spending upwards of a billion dollars to develop a single molecule using directed evolution. Petrushka

One of the characteristics of human language is that new statements can be understood.

Not true. If somone hears something for the first time it is a safe bet they would have to have it explained to them.

One of the characteristics of DNA is that the meaning of new sequences cannot be anticipated.

How do you know that? One of the characteristics of all anti-IDists is to just say anything. Joseph

One of the characteristics of human language is that new statements can be understood. One of the characteristics of DNA is that the meaning of new sequences cannot be anticipated. Petrushka

Petrushka:

Of course common descent is compatible with common design. Direct creation is compatible with design. What could possibly be incompatible?

If there weren't any similarities that would count against a common design. And if living organisms were reducible to matter and energy that would count against design, ie be incompatible with design. Geez this has only been common knowledge for decades- where have you been? Joseph

Petrushka:

What does matter is observed mechanisms of change.

True, yet there isn't anything we can extrapolate from those observed mechanisms that supports universal common descent. Why doesn't that count against the theory of evolution?

Fecundity and selection are an agency.

The ONLY "selection" is ARTIFICIAL selection. Natural selection is an oxymoron as nature does NOT select. IOW your alleged "agency" require that which needs explaining in the first place and not only that has never been observed to construct new, useful multi-part systems. Joseph

My point is that a system of controls, the function of which cannot be predicted, is not a language in the ordinary sense of the therm, nor can it support design, except through fecundity and selection. Petrushka

P: Again, you are putting up a strawman. ES is pointing our the significance of meaningfulness of code, and its context of things that put it to work in communication systems. And the reason why small changes in a code context can make for big differences in outcome is because there is a system of meaning that takes the switch as prescriptive information for a train of pre-loaded actions. THAT overall system is what has to be explained, not the small shift. As well, the basic fact that relatively small but big enough random changes --i.e. they jump far enough on a Hamming distance space metric -- typically cause chaos, i.e. destroy function, shows the presence of islands of function as a typical behaviour of information-rich functional systems. A simple example of this is how fairly small injections of random changes reduce text to chaos. KF kairosfocus

Hold on a minute. What equivocation are you talking about? I see no valid methodological reason to disallow design as a possible explanation. Unless we commits to materialism a priori, we should agree that it is a valid assumption. In the case of life as best explained by design we are talking about design which is, for want of a better word, outperforms human or animal design capabilities. In what I said there was no restriction. I was only using analogies from what we know. Spontaneous self-organisation of systems (not to be confused with self-ordering such as crystallisation) that involves hierarchical formally describable relationships between components (such as those that exist in a living cell) has never been observed. Not to see that is not to see the woods for the trees. Eugene S

Petruska: you know that in current discourse, the incrementalism in view is that of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which still dominates the field, whatever supplements may be admitted. And you know full well -- having been repeatedly told [and given links] -- that the entire design theory project would collapse if just one clear and credible case of 500 - 1,000 or more bits of functionally specific complex information would be shown to have occurred by chance plus mechanical necessity without intelligent intervention. Your attempt to imply "unfalsifiable" is a willfully distorted strawman put up in the face of abundant and accessible evidence, and so plainly points to an attitude problem. Please, do better than that. KF kairosfocus

You are engaging in equivocation. You start by asserting that the DNA code is a language, then attempt to restrict DNA to what human languages can do. The problem is that one cannot read it for meaning because one cannot know in advance the consequences of small changes. There is no meaning independent of the consequences. The consequences may be deterministic, but that does not make them predictable. Design requires that materials have predictable attributes (consider engineering concepts of strength, cost, weight, etc.) There are multi-billion dollar industries that would be quite different if one could predict the utility of small changes in molecules. Pharmaceutical makers would not have to make millions of molecules and sieve them for function, then sieve them again for safety. Petrushka

If there was common ancestry, the actual evidence does not support Darwin’s incrementalism.

Darwin's view of incrementalism is irrelevant, because he had no knowledge of genetic mechanisms. What does matter is observed mechanisms of change. Of course common descent is compatible with common design. Direct creation is compatible with design. What could possibly be incompatible? Petrushka

BTW, I agree with Chaitin regarding the possibility of small program differences leading to large output differences (whereby a "delta" in genotype is amplified at the phenotype level). So body plans being different may not always be a consequence of direct intelligent input. It all depends and we need quantitative assessments to distinguish one from the other in practice. Eugene S

Thinking aloud... Meaning should come first. DNA is what it is not because it has this particular sequence of molecules but because this sequence has a meaning. Imagine for a moment that such claims as those by Yockey turn out to be true. Do you really think that a monkey typing something from Shakespeare by chance means it? A language is a means of communication between entities that are either intelligent agents themselves (human or aminal languages) or those designed by intelligence (computer languages). If intelligence is reducible to chemistry & physics, then you get an infinite regress. So we either say 'yes' to an infinite regress or suppose that intelligence is not reducible to them (i.e. it may or may not be embodied). Eugene S

F/N: Further to all this, "fecundity" plus "selection" are precisely NOT intelligent agents, they are proposed as blind processes -- the opposite of agency. Why do you insist on a confusion of language? kairosfocus

PS: And if you wish to test this, simply produce a case where blind chance plus mechanical necessity acting without intelligent control or guidance, produce 500+ bits of functionally specific complex info. The infinite monkeys article observes, on random document generation:

One computer program run by Dan Oliver of Scottsdale, Arizona, according to an article in The New Yorker, came up with a result on August 4, 2004: After the group had worked for 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey-years, one of the "monkeys" typed, “VALENTINE. Cease toIdor:eFLP0FRjWK78aXzVOwm)-‘;8.t" The first 19 letters of this sequence can be found in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". Other teams have reproduced 18 characters from "Timon of Athens", 17 from "Troilus and Cressida", and 16 from "Richard II".[21] A website entitled The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator, launched on July 1, 2003, contained a Java applet that simulates a large population of monkeys typing randomly, with the stated intention of seeing how long it takes the virtual monkeys to produce a complete Shakespearean play from beginning to end. For example, it produced this partial line from Henry IV, Part 2, reporting that it took "2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years" to reach 24 matching characters: RUMOUR. Open your ears; 9r"5j5&?OWTY Z0d...

kairosfocus

P:

What could be done to test the hypothesis that an unspecified agent having unspecified abilities did unspecified things at unspecified times [there are empircally tested, well warranted signs that point reliably to design as causal factor]

See the strawman caricature, insistently repeated in the teeth of corrections over and over again? What does that tell us about your underlying attitude? I suggest, to start afresh on a sounder footing, you work your way through the discussions here, here and here, for starters. Let me clip the introduction section for the first, from NWE:

Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection" [1] Intelligent design cannot be inferred from complexity alone, since complex patterns often happen by chance. ID focuses on just those sorts of complex patterns that in human experience are produced by a mind that conceives and executes a plan. According to adherents, intelligent design can be detected in the natural laws and structure of the cosmos; it also can be detected in at least some features of living things. Greater clarity on the topic may be gained from a discussion of what ID is not considered to be by its leading theorists. Intelligent design generally is not defined the same as creationism, with proponents maintaining that ID relies on scientific evidence rather than on Scripture or religious doctrines. ID makes no claims about biblical chronology, and technically a person does not have to believe in God to infer intelligent design in nature. As a theory, ID also does not specify the identity or nature of the designer, so it is not the same as natural theology, which reasons from nature to the existence and attributes of God. ID does not claim that all species of living things were created in their present forms, and it does not claim to provide a complete account of the history of the universe or of living things. ID also is not considered by its theorists to be an "argument from ignorance"; that is, intelligent design is not to be inferred simply on the basis that the cause of something is unknown (any more than a person accused of willful intent can be convicted without evidence). According to various adherents, ID does not claim that design must be optimal; something may be intelligently designed even if it is flawed (as are many objects made by humans). ID may be considered to consist only of the minimal assertion that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent agent. It conflicts with views claiming that there is no real design in the cosmos (e.g., materialistic philosophy) or in living things (e.g., Darwinian evolution) or that design, though real, is undetectable (e.g., some forms of theistic evolution).

In short, design theory is that scientific discipline that studies empirical signs of design, and in applying the findings to certain features of the natural world finds in these, tested and reliable signs that point to cause by a process of design. In addition, analyses like the infinite monkeys analysis point out that the other source of high contingency in our observed world, chance, is maximally implausible as a credible source of the relevant features, such as digital code in DNA, for first cell based life and for novel main body plans, and other features up to and including the evident fine tuning of the cosmos we inhabit. So we have direct empirical basis on warrant by inference to best, empirically tested explanation, and we have analytical warrant on the search capacity of the observed solar system and cosmos. (And FYI, in the expression Chance variation + differential reproductive success and culling out --> descent with modification, the culling out SUBTRACTS info, it does not ad it, it is only the chance variation that is the source for any possibility of novelty.) That that empirical evidence warrants such an inference is an achievement by itself, whatever else we may wish to know about the source of such design. That which we may not know for now, does not warrant rejection or dismissal of what we can know on reasonable warrant comparable to that which is a commonplace in scientific studies of the past. So, kindly cease and desist from erecting strawmen and knocking them over. After this, if you resort to the same strawman caricature, you will plainly be willfully persisting in misrepresentation in the teeth of relevant correction. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

P:

but common descent requires the transitions to be incremental

See the "it MUST have been like that" rather than, on evidence this is what was the case? One assertion to substantiate another, do you not see the circle of argument? There is but one definite fact about the world of the deep past, however deep is was: fossil life is the only directly evident life from the time beyond prehistory. The evidence, as Gould et al have admitted and as the Cambrian fossils plainly say [cf the Meyer PBSW paper . . . which passed proper peer review by renowned scientists], is, sudden appearance of diverse forms [top down at that], stasis of body plans, disappearance or continuity into the modern era. If there was common ancestry, the actual evidence does not support Darwin's incrementalism. And, common descent is compatible with common design, e.g. by frontloading or even episodic engineering [try using viri as vehicles for directed mutations], etc. The issue is that the dominant mechanism proposed cuts clean across the actual directly relevant evidence. And if we go for more indirect evidence, the protein domains also fit in with islands of function. As does the very nature of complex digital code. But, some will insist, this is the way it MUST have been . . . Darwinian a priorism . . . GEM of TKI kairosfocus

I don't think anyone thinks the landscape is smooth, but common descent requires the transitions to be incremental. That's why there's always been the debate over missing links. Petrushka

We have very good reasons for hypothesizing a smooth incremental path.

The trouble is that you can't hypothesize that as a general concept. Someone has to actually hypothesize a smooth incremental path. Why hasn't anyone? ScottAndrews2

And, there is no good reason to accept that a smooth incremental path exists from first life through the body plans, starting with the major characteristics of both protein fold domains and the fossil record. KF

We have very good reasons for hypothesizing a smooth incremental path. We have the fossil record, and now we are developing genomic data that supports a nested hierarchy. I won't assert it's a done deal, but it's the way to bet. Just about everything done in evolutionary biology is done to test this hypothesis. What could be done to test the hypothesis that an unspecified agent having unspecified abilities did unspecified things at unspecified times? Petrushka

It reminds me of an old bumper sticker - "I'm fat, you're ugly. I can lose weight." There's nothing logically wrong with ID. There's just unanswered questions. The combined fantasy of abiogenesis followed by darwinian evolution is fallacious at face value. No one should take it seriously. Unanswered questions can be answered. Reason-defying logical absurdities stay in the pseudo-academic spin cycle of crazy stories and vague speculation forever. ScottAndrews2

Petrushka,

Simply asserting that an invisible agent having no attributes did some unspecified something at unspecified times and places

First, you're embellishing because your sentence didn't have enough unknowns in it. So take out the unspecified time and place. They aren't specified, but we have a ballpark idea. Second, ID doesn't mention invisible. Take that out. Third, how could it not have attributes? Again, you're just being colorful to make it sound more absurd. What about microwaves as a candidate? Or fermentation? Obviously you're not limiting your candidates known to produce macroevolutionary diversification, or else you wouldn't have included variation, selection, and drift. I get it, you're begging the question again. You'll just re-assert it in every post. There is no more reason to attribute biological diversity to variation, selection, and drift than to microwaves or fermentation. If there were, biology books wouldn't be full of finch beaks and bacterial loss of function. If variation and selection are like throwing the pieces of a blender in box and shaking it, drift is like taking the pieces of lots of blenders and putting them in a bigger box and shaking it. What it shares in common with RM+NS is that there is no significant transformation which can be specifically described in terms of it. This is where you typically point to phylogenetic trees and fossil transitions which cannot and do not provide evidence of diversification by selection or drift. There is no observed mechanism to compare design against. We propose someone did it, we just don't know how. You propose it happened all by itself, you just don't know how. The first leaves unanswered questions, which is fine because that's what science is for. The second is a vacuous non-explanation, because it posits absolutely anything that anyone can think of was long as it wasn't intelligent. Monkeys on rafts. ScottAndrews2

P, The problem -- as has been pointed out repeatedly -- is we do not have the resources of ATOMS and TIME in the observed cosmos to do the calculation for novel body plans. And, there is no good reason to accept that a smooth incremental path exists from first life through the body plans, starting with the major characteristics of both protein fold domains and the fossil record. KF kairosfocus

Fecundity and selection are an agency. You can easily demonstrate with software that this is an intelligent agency capable of computing any possible string. This is not just my opinion. It comes from Hubert Yockey. The difference between selection and the Designer is that selection can be studied through selective breeding, through directed evolution and through modelling in software; the Designer is imaginary. Worse than imaginary, because it has no identity, no attributes, no capabilities or limitations, no observed instances of action. It is not a candidate for the source of variation in living things because it doesn't even have any imagined existence. Petrushka

A candidate would be an observed agent or phenomenon. So far the only observed phenomenon is variation and selection (including drift).

What do you mean by observed agent? Why not just an agent? Besides, agency is the only observed source of functional digital code. That's how it should have looked. M. Holcumbrink

A candidate would be an observed agent or phenomenon. So far the only observed phenomenon is variation and selection (including drift). What do you mean by observed agent? Why not just an agent? Besides, agency is the only observed source of functional digital code.

M. Holcumbrink

those who are willing to consider all of the possibilities and those who place the ideological assumption first even if it means excluding possible answers

There's a difference between possibilities and candidates. It's possible that the designer is an invisible pink unicorn. A candidate would be an observed agent or phenomenon. So far the only observed phenomenon is variation and selection (including drift). Simply asserting that an invisible agent having no attributes did some unspecified something at unspecified times and places is not a very compelling possibility. Petrushka

I guess those who are interested in perusing the way this mechanism came about are divided into those who are willing to consider all of the possibilities and those who place the ideological assumption first even if it means excluding possible answers. It reminds of "based on real life" movie I saw once called Citizen X. A Russian detective spent a decade hunting a serial killer. Early in the investigation he detained the killer as a suspect, but was forced to release him because the killer couldn't possibly be a member of the Communist Party. Frustrated and having arbitrarily excluded the correct answer for ideological reasons, years passed and more people died as he was forced to narrow his search to the permissible pool of possible suspects. Eventually two things happened: more bodies piled up and the evidence pointed back to the original suspect. In this case no one is dying, and plenty of people are making a good living off the research. There's little reason to expand the search for the keys from beneath the streetlight. ScottAndrews2

I can see Dawkins trying to weasel out of that statement by calling attention to his opening phrase "There is a sense, therefore..." I bet he'd say that there is a sense in which you can, for pedagogical purposes, view an atom as a planetary system, with the nucleus being the sun and the orbiting electrons being the planets. Isn't it amazing how close Darwinists can come to the truth without realizing it? Daniel King

I guess the world is divided into those who are interested in or perusing the way this mechanism came about, and those for whom the answer is obvious. At any rate, biochemistry has the property of emergence, and one cannot derive the properties of molecules from the properties of atoms. Nor can one derive the properties and phenomena of chemistry from the abstraction commonly referred to as information theory. To find out what is possible, one must do the chemistry. Petrushka

Is that p. 120? kairosfocus

H'mm: No responses overnight. So, let me do a fill in the blanks exercise:

That Bible-thumping fundy, professor Clinton R____d D ____kins of course! (And he got his D. Phil from that worthless fundy degree mill B________l College of O_ford.) Worse, he was writing in that 1986 Creationist screed T__ Blind W______ maker! Shocking! Shameless! Ignorant! Stupid! Insane! (Or, maybe Wicked!). . .

So, let's see if we can now deal with the issue on substance instead of the silly burn- the- ad- hominem- soaked- strawman tactics that seem to have become a habitual and uncivil resort of too many objectors to design thought. GEM of TKI kairosfocus