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Doug Axe vs Keith Fox: Is design in nature undeniable?

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Doug Axe/Keith Fox

Douglas Axe, author of Undeniable, debates theistic evolutionist and biochemist Keith Fox debate the question at Unbelievable (radio). Fox is Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge.

The comments are fascinating insofar as they reveal the obvious superiority of fully naturalist atheism to “theistic evolution.” If we can see no intelligence behind or within nature, that’s not only because there probably isn’t any but because, as the naturalist is happy to point out, we evolved so as not to be able to understand reality anyway. There is no intelligence in us either. There is only power and he, as it happens, exercises it.

Of course, the naturalist succeeds in persuading his pop science media-driven crowd by ignoring vast masses of evidence for design in nature in favour of speculations: dismissing evident fine-tuning in favor of an evidence-free multiverse, for example.

In the conflict for the soul of science, the theistic evolutionist stands haplessly, waving a banner, on the sidelines: “Yes, God did it but no, there is no evidence. You shouldn’t expect any.”

Or, as an iconoclastic rabbi once put it much more succinctly, God is so great that he need not exist.  (Except in our heads – which is precisely the naturalist’s point, right?)

Undeniable at November 28, 2016:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

 

See also: Michael Denton’s Evolution (Still) a Theory in Crisis a Spectator “Best Book” If one looks at evolution without the cokebottle glasses supplied by Darwinism, one learns so more. But that is just the trouble. A smart whelp may soon know more than the Darwinist prof. One must apply the brakes.

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Comments
The OP asks this silly question:
Is design in nature undeniable?
design in nature? design? are you joking? what design? Did you lose your minds? There's not such a thing in nature! Are you serious? OK, let's get serious now: This obsession with 'design' that y'all ID folks have is really concerning. Can't you see the real picture? Have you seen a psychologist recently? Y'all may need counseling. Your site has very little -if any at all- references to the real scientific research papers being published by the tons out there. Are you afraid of what they say? Well, if that's the case then your fear is well justified, because those papers show that your silly 'design' ideas are just illusions. There's not such a thing! Do you get it? What will it take to persuade y'all that 'design' is just a figment in your poor imaginations? You folks need to get real, and realize that science is moving on, advancing fast, and making discoveries that pretty soon will make all your 'gods of the gaps' or 'designers' or whatever you call them totally irrelevant and nonsense. Y'all should stop fantasizing and get your feet on the ground. Look at the numerous biology research papers and see that your ideas are getting discredited with every new serious paper being published. Here's an interesting biology research paper that was published exactly a year ago and shows that y'all ID folks are wrong. You keep seeing this "functional specified complex information" nonsense everywhere like ghosts that nobody else sees. You may need to change your prescription glasses? As you can see in the following 1-year-old paper, science got almost all figured out. A few minor issues are being clarified, but mostly everything is pretty much described and understood. Actually, the few remaining questions have been probably answered by now, considering that this paper has been out a whole year. And there's nothing about 'design' in the whole paper. Nothing! OK? Hey, get a live! Chill out! :) Here's a paper that got published exactly a year ago December 1, 2015.
Despite much progress, many questions remain. Elucidating the components and operation of the transcriptional networks continues and, for many tissues, the relative importance of the spatial or temporal component of gradients needs to be determined. How opposing gradients cross-talk and are integrated into networks is poorly understood. […] comparison of patterning in the Drosophila blastoderm and the vertebrate neural tube suggests a unified framework for morphogen-mediated pattern formation and establishes a research agenda that will likely take us through further revisions of this fascinating problem. The Drosophila blastoderm and the vertebrate neural tube are archetypal examples of morphogen-patterned tissues that create precise spatial patterns of different cell types. In both tissues, pattern formation is dependent on molecular gradients that emanate from opposite poles. […] both tissues exhibit striking similarities in the regulatory systems that establish gene expression patterns that foreshadow the arrangement of cell types. These similarities reveal design principles that are likely to be broadly applicable to morphogen-patterned tissues. Further investigations will be necessary to gain a better molecular understanding of the various mechanisms and the contributions that they make in each tissue. […] a cause-and-effect relationship between amounts of bcd RNA and embryo size has not yet been established. […] there are marked differences in the time scale over which patterning takes place in the blastoderm and neural tube. What causes this difference in time scales is unclear. The consideration of signaling dynamics also leads to the idea that cells use the temporal derivative or integral of the signal to pattern a tissue. […] the way cells ‘calculate’ a derivative or integral would probably rely on the downstream transcriptional network. In the case of the neural tube, the transcriptional network could be described as a system that uses the integral of Shh signaling to define gene expression patterns.
Morphogen rules: design principles of gradient-mediated embryo patterning James Briscoe, Stephen Small Development 2015 142: 3996-4009; doi: 10.1242/dev.129452 http://dev.biologists.org/content/142/23/3996.full
:)Dionisio
November 29, 2016
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The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud.
Thank you for finding and posting that!Silver Asiatic
November 29, 2016
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Of related note to Shroud of Turin video:
Astonishing discovery at Christ's tomb supports Turin Shroud - NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. 'However, Enea scientists warn, "it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. https://www.ewtn.co.uk/news/latest/astonishing-discovery-at-christ-s-tomb-supports-turin-shroud
bornagain77
November 29, 2016
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What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information, and have come to dominate the world through the ‘top-down’ infusion of information into material substrates, is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself, are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis. Renowned physicist John Wheeler stated “in short all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe”.
"it from bit” Every “it”— every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has a bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances, an immaterial source and explanation, that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment—evoked responses, in short all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe." – Princeton University physicist John Wheeler (1911–2008) (Wheeler, John A. (1990), “Information, physics, quantum: The search for links”, in W. Zurek, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley))
In the following article, Anton Zeilinger, a leading expert in quantum mechanics, stated that ‘it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows.’
Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word." Anton Zeilinger - a leading expert in quantum mechanics: http://www.metanexus.net/archive/ultimate_reality/zeilinger.pdf
In the following video at the 48:24 mark Zeilinger states that “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” and he goes on to note at the 49:45 mark the Theological significance of “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1
48:24 mark: “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” 49:45 mark: “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1 Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw
Vlatko Vedral, who is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and is also a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics, states,
"The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena." Vlatko Vedral - Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College - a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics.
Moreover, besides being foundational to physical reality, information is also found to be ‘infused’ into biological life.
Information Enigma (Where did the information in life come from?) - - Stephen Meyer - Doug Axe - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-FcnLsF1g Complex grammar of the genomic language – November 9, 2015 Excerpt: The ‘grammar’ of the human genetic code is more complex than that of even the most intricately constructed spoken languages in the world. The findings explain why the human genome is so difficult to decipher –,,, ,,, in their recent study in Nature, the Taipale team examines the binding preferences of pairs of transcription factors, and systematically maps the compound DNA words they bind to. Their analysis reveals that the grammar of the genetic code is much more complex than that of even the most complex human languages. Instead of simply joining two words together by deleting a space, the individual words that are joined together in compound DNA words are altered, leading to a large number of completely new words. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151109140252.htm Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: - Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz' deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm “a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
It is hard to imagine a more convincing proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’, than finding both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and, moreover, have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our ability infuse information into material substrates. Perhaps a more convincing evidence that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, defeated death on a cross, and then rose from the dead to prove that He was indeed God. But who has ever heard of such overwhelming evidence as that?
Shroud of Turin: From discovery of Photographic Negative, to 3D Information, to Quantum Hologram - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-TL4QOCiis&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5&index=5
Verses and Music:
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the Light of men. Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Newsboys - We Believe (Official Music Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjZ01FcK0yk
bornagain77
November 29, 2016
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as to the question in the title of the OP: "Is design in nature undeniable?" Yes, even leading atheists admit that life 'appears' to be designed:
"Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose" Richard Dawkins - "The Blind Watchmaker" - 1986 - page 1 "We may say that a living body or organ is well designed if it has attributes that an intelligent knowledgeable engineer might have built into it in order to achieve some sensible purpose... Any engineer can recognize an object that has been designed... simply by looking at the structure of the object." Richard Dawkins - "The Blind Watchmaker" - 1986 - page 21 “Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.” Richard Dawkins – “The Blind Watchmaker” – 1986 – page 21 quoted from this video – Michael Behe – Life Reeks Of Design – 2010 – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh-YcNYThY living organisms "appear to have been carefully and artfully designed" Lewontin "The appearance of purposefulness is pervasive in nature." George Gaylord Simpson “I remember how frustrated I became when, as a young atheist, I examined specimens under the microscope. I would often walk away and try to convince myself that I was not seeing examples of extraordinary design, but merely the product of some random, unexplained mutations.” -Rick Oliver (‘Designed to Kill in a Fallen World.’) “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit - p. 138 (1990) “Organisms appear as if they had been designed to perform in an astonishingly efficient way, and the human mind therefore finds it hard to accept that there need be no Designer to achieve this” Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit – p. 30
Yet, despite the fact that, according to many leading atheists themselves, life gives the overwhelming ‘appearance’ of having been designed for a purpose, all the purported scientific evidence, that is suppose to demonstrate for the rest of us how this overwhelming appearance of design in life came to be by unguided material processes, turns out, itself, to be ‘illusory’. Franklin M. Harold, whom I believe is also an atheist, calls Darwinian accounts ‘a variety of wishful speculations’. Specifically he states:
“,,,we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” Franklin M. Harold,* 2001. The way of the cell: molecules, organisms and the order of life, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 205. *Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Colorado State University, USA
James Shapiro, main founder of the anti neo-Darwinian group "The Third Way", makes an almost verbatim statement prior to Harold's statement:
“The argument that random variation and Darwinian gradualism may not be adequate to explain complex biological systems is hardly new […} in fact, there are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation for such a vast subject — evolution — with so little rigorous examination of how well its basic theses works in illuminating specific instances of biological adaptation or diversity.” Prof. James Shapiro – “In the Details…What?” National Review, 19 September 1996, pp. 64.
Thus, since many leading atheists themselves are seeing the 'illusion of design', (seeing this illusion of design with what they claim to be the 'illusion of their mind' I might add :) ), and yet they have no experimental evidence whatsoever that unguided material processes can produce this illusion, then, of course, the design advocate would be well justified in claiming that the design that we are seeing in life is real and is not an illusion. I like the following quote as to just how overwhelming the 'appearance' of design is in life:
It's Really Not Rocket Science - Granville Sewell - November 16, 2015 Excerpt: In a 2005 American Spectator article, Jay Homnick wrote: “It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident... you have essentially "lost your mind."” ,,, Max Planck biologist W.E. Loennig once commented that Darwinism was a sort of "mass psychosis" -- then he asked me, is that the right English word? I knew psychosis was some kind of mental illness, but wasn't sure exactly what it was, so I looked it up in my dictionary when I returned home: "psychosis -- a loss of contact with reality." I wrote him that, yes, that was the right word…. Loennig and Homnick are still right. Once you seriously consider the possibility that all the magnificent species in the living world, and the human body and the human brain, could be entirely the products of unintelligent forces, you have been in academia too long and have lost contact with reality -- you have lost your mind. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/it_really_isnt100911.html
Some people may think that claiming atheists have 'lost their mind' is too strong of a term for Theists to use, yet, atheists themselves agree that they have no mind:
“that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.” Francis Crick – “The Astonishing Hypothesis” 1994 “We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good.” Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor The Confidence of Jerry Coyne – Ross Douthat – January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession (by Coyne) that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. Per NY Times
Thus, given the premises of Atheistic Materialism, people become illusions. Illusion who claim they are seeing merely an illusion of design in life. And why in blue blazes should anyone trust what illusions having illusions have to say about what is real and what is not real? The truth of the matter is that atheists are living in deep denial of the 'appearance of design' that they themselves admit they are seeing.
Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? - October 17, 2012 Excerpt: "Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find." The article describes a test by Boston University's psychology department, in which researchers found that "despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose" ,,, Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_thinking065381.html
Moreover, since seeing design is 'intuitive' for humans, I hold that the design intuition is a reflection of the fact that we are made in the image of God. And although the purported evidence for human evolution is far more illusory than most people realize,,,
Darwinian evolution, since it has no empirical evidence that it is remotely feasible, (M. Behe, D. Axe), is heavily reliant on imaginary just so stories.,,, No where is Darwinian evolution more reliant on imaginary just so stories than it is in its myth of how humans supposedly evolved from apes.,,, (November 2016) https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/todd-wood-the-latest-is-homo-naledi-just-fell-into-the-dinaledi-chamber/#comment-620536
And although the purported evidence for human evolution is far more illusory than most people realize, it is interesting to note exactly where leading Darwinists themselves admit that they have no clue how evolution could have produced a particular trait in humans.
Leading Evolutionary Scientists Admit We Have No Evolutionary Explanation of Human Language - December 19, 2014 Excerpt: Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,, (Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, "The mystery of language evolution," Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 5:401 (May 7, 2014).) Casey Luskin added: “It's difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/leading_evoluti092141.html
Tom Wolfe was so taken aback by this confession of leading Darwinists that he wrote a book on the subject. Wolfe provided a précis of his argument:
"Speech is not one of man's several unique attributes -- speech is the attribute of all attributes!" - Wolfe “Speech is 95 percent plus of what lifts man above animal! Physically, man is a sad case. His teeth, including his incisors, which he calls eyeteeth, are baby-size and can barely penetrate the skin of a too-green apple. His claws can’t do anything but scratch him where he itches. His stringy-ligament body makes him a weakling compared to all the animals his size. Animals his size? In hand-to-paw, hand-to-claw, or hand-to-incisor combat, any animal his size would have him for lunch. Yet man owns or controls them all, every animal that exists, thanks to his superpower: speech.” —Tom Wolfe, in the introduction to his book, The Kingdom of Speech
That humans should master the planet due his unique ability to communicate information is completely contrary to the ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking that undergirds Darwinian thought. i.e. Although humans are fairly defenseless creatures in the wild compared to other creatures, such as lions, bears, and sharks, etc.., nonetheless, humans have, completely contrary to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, managed to become masters of the planet, not by brute force, but simply by our unique ability to communicate information and, more specifically, infuse information into material substrates in order to create, i.e. intelligently design, objects that are extremely useful for our defense, basic survival in procuring food, furtherance of our knowledge, and also for our pleasure. And although the ‘top-down’ infusion of information into material substrates, that allowed humans to become ‘masters of the planet’, was rather crude to begin with, (i.e. spears, arrows, and plows etc..), this top down infusion of information into material substrates has become much more impressive over the last half century or so. Specifically, the ‘top-down’ infusion of mathematical and/or logical information into material substrates lies at the very basis of many, if not all, of man’s most stunning, almost miraculous, technological advances in recent decades. Here are a couple of articles which clearly get this ‘top-down’ infusion of information point across:
Here is one by Peter Tyson Describing Nature With Math By Peter Tyson – Nov. 2011 Excerpt: Mathematics underlies virtually all of our technology today. James Maxwell’s four equations summarizing electromagnetism led directly to radio and all other forms of telecommunication. E = mc2 led directly to nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The equations of quantum mechanics made possible everything from transistors and semiconductors to electron microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging. Indeed, many of the technologies you and I enjoy every day simply would not work without mathematics. When you do a Google search, you’re relying on 19th-century algebra, on which the search engine’s algorithms are based. When you watch a movie, you may well be seeing mountains and other natural features that, while appearing as real as rock, arise entirely from mathematical models. When you play your iPod, you’re hearing a mathematical recreation of music that is stored digitally; your cell phone does the same in real time. “When you listen to a mobile phone, you’re not actually hearing the voice of the person speaking,” Devlin told me. “You’re hearing a mathematical recreation of that voice. That voice is reduced to mathematics.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/describing-nature-math.html
And here is one by George Ellis
Recognising Top-Down Causation – George Ellis Excerpt: page 5: A: Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: The assumption that causation is bottom up only is wrong in biology, in computers, and even in many cases in physics, ,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf
bornagain77
November 29, 2016
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Just curious. If anyone here has the book, could you let us know how many references to “Creation” or “Creationism”, “Theology”, “Bible” and “Christian” or “Christ” or “Jesus” are in the index?
“Creation” 0 times “Creationism” 0 times “Theology” 0 times “Bible” 0 times “Christian” 0 times “Christ” 0 times “Jesus” 0 times However the following words do appear in the index: "creators" 1 time page 250 "theism" 1 time page 7-8 "Genesis" 1 time page 48 "God" 27 times accidents and God -- page 18,93 anthropic principle and God -- page 228-229 atheism and God -- page 6-9 children and God -- page 19, 185, 232, 242, 251 Dawkins-sponsored ads -- page 263-64 design intuition and God -- page 253 as divine thinker -- page 185, 237 evolution and God -- page 233-34 God in scientific literature -- page 265-66 inventions coming from mind of God -- page 184-185 God as knower who made us -- page 185, 235 life and God -- page 232 outside world as expression of creative thought -- page 242 personal God -- page 245, 254-255 God as product of human imagination -- page 6 relation to material world -- page 239 science and God -- page 48, 219 theist belief in God -- page 7 Does this make "Undeniable" a "Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism" book or would it be more accurate to place it in the Judaism > Theology > Creationism since they started it all with Genesis. And also "Islam > Theology > Creationism" since they also believe in Genesis. Or should it rather be in the category of "Politics/Social Sciences > Philosophy" instead of "Religion and Spirituality"? Who decides? And what do they base their decision on? (Thanks, Dionisio @ 4)awstar
November 28, 2016
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BC @ 5: Axe's penicillin experiment is indeed a benchmark for the design argument, as is Behe's irreducible complexity which is brilliantly defended by Stephen Meyer (the great) in the following link: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/11/stephen_meyer_g103317.htmlTruth Will Set You Free
November 28, 2016
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I just listen to the debate and thought Doug did a superb job. I think his penicillin experiment is a benchmark for the design argument.bill cole
November 28, 2016
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awstar @1: See if this link opens for you: https://www.amazon.com/Undeniable-Biology-Confirms-Intuition-Designed/dp/0062349589/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480368293&sr=1-1&keywords=undeniable+how+biology+confirms+our+intuition+that+life+is+designed#reader_0062349589 Then click on 'look inside' on the left side of the page. Next select IndexDionisio
November 28, 2016
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OT: The BBC quietly rehabilitates catastrophism, but doesn't notice the hypocrisy. "Life on Earth has faced a string of accidents, weird situations and outright catastrophes, from sudden ice ages to collisions with asteroids – and it is how life responded to these contingencies that ultimately led to us." http://bbc.in/2gBOF7oScuzzaMan
November 28, 2016
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Interesting - Bill Nye's "Undeniable" is #4 in Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism. Weird coincidence with both having the same title on the list at the same time (and opposite viewpoints).Silver Asiatic
November 28, 2016
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#7 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism
Just curious. If anyone here has the book, could you let us know how many references to "Creation" or "Creationism", "Theology", "Bible" and "Christian" or "Christ" or "Jesus" are in the index?awstar
November 28, 2016
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