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Evolution’s Brute Spontaneity

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As Michael Ruse and others have pointed out the language evolutionists use can be telling, but what is not discussed is that the language evolutionists do not use is also telling. Anyone familiar with the evolution genre cannot help but notice the curious use of design language. Teleology abounds as natural selection is described as “solving” this or that “problem.” As Ernst Mayr pointed out in Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, “The use of terms like purposive or goal-directed seemed to imply the transfer of human qualities, such as intent, purpose, planning, deliberation, or consciousness, to organic structures and to subhuman forms of life.” Of course for Ruse, Mayr and the evolutionists these are merely interesting asides. The persistence of teleological language in the literature is nothing more than a commentary on how we think and do science. Perhaps it reveals a certain laziness of thought, or perhaps it is a useful way of problem solving, but either way it is nothing more than a fiction. Sure the world looks designed, but we all know that such primitive teleological thinking has long since been exposed and rejected. After all, evolution is a fact.  Read more

Comments
Yah, Darwinism is anthropomorphic. Nature has no power of judgment and does not “select” anything. To say it does is to project human qualities upon it. The notion of the survival of the fittest had nothing to do with nature per se and everything to do with Darwin and the existential anxieties of His Kind in the face of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the dreaded middle class. That’s why both Marx and Nietzsche loved him.allanius
March 5, 2012
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What the evolutionists are in fact saying is that inanimate matter DEVELOPED into human beings, evidently by miraculous means, the laws of nature, in this one regard, being suspended sine die. Exceptionalism, akin to Western geopolitics. 'Evolution' is only a synonym for 'development' in the passive mood. Bizarrely, the evolutionists have chosen to vest the meaning of the word with a gallimaufrey of riotous flights of fancy, dressing it up in the Emperor's own most opulent and stylish tuxedo. Does it not sound a little gratuitous, when expressed simply as development? A process undergone by inanimate matter is not, ipso facto, its own author. On what grounds can they claim evolution is so? Back to 'random is as random does'. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, though a silk purse can end up looking like a sow's ear. It's that durned entropy agin! And the beauty is, it's not like a traditional, architectural folly. It's open-ended. In a tight corner, the word itself will always to come to the rescue. Infinitely front-loaded; those stem-cell mutations, you see.Axel
March 4, 2012
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continued Scott Aaronson: 'Quantum computing has challenged that vision by showing that if “the universe is a computer,” then even at a hard-nosed theoretical level, it’s a vastly more powerful kind of computer than any yet constructed by humankind. Indeed, the only ways to evade that conclusion seem even crazier than quantum computing itself: One would have to overturn quantum mechanics, or else find a fast way to simulate quantum mechanics using today’s computers.'bornagain77
March 4, 2012
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Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Just Supermachines - Scott Aaronson - December 2011 And yet, even though useful quantum computers might still be decades away, many of their payoffs are already arriving. For example, the mere possibility of quantum computers has all but overthrown a conception of the universe that scientists like Stephen Wolfram have championed. That conception holds that, as in the “Matrix” movies, the universe itself is basically a giant computer, twiddling an array of 1’s and 0’s in essentially the same way any desktop PC does. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/scott-aaronson-quantum-computing-promises-new-insights.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=sciencebornagain77
March 4, 2012
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Correction! ‘dnoces wal of scimanydomreht.'Axel
March 4, 2012
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"This “something random” looks every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle. It is the central miracle in a gospel of meaninglessness, a “Randomness of the gaps,” demanding an extraordinarily blind faith. At the very least, we have a right to ask, “Can you be a little more explicit here?” Random is as random does, bornagain. As a scientist you should know that. As every evolutionist does. It's all down to the 'dnoces wal of yportne'. An interesting question, it seems to me, is, "If God DID make the universe, is it possible that he did so, and similarly sustains it, in a random manner, perhaps on the basis of some kind of divine, autonomic non-intelligence?Axel
March 4, 2012
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Good point Dr. Hunter, For instance, spontaneous action (Randomness) may operate in the bounds of the Boltzmann equation, but spontaneous action (randomness) cannot account for the origination and unrelenting stability of the equation in the first place. A unrelenting stability since the universe's inception which provides the 'context' for the spontaneity that the equation describes; The following is a very interesting quote on the Boltzmann equation of statistical mechanics that connects entropy (S) with molecular disorder (W). This constant is often referred to as Boltzmann's constant, although, to my knowledge, Boltzmann himself never introduced it – a peculiar state of affairs, which can be explained by the fact that Boltzmann, as appears from his occasional utterances, never gave thought to the possibility of carrying out an exact measurement of the constant. Nothing can better illustrate the positive and hectic pace of progress which the art of experimenters has made over the past twenty years, than the fact that since that time, not only one, but a great number of methods have been discovered for measuring the mass of a molecule with practically the same accuracy as that attained for a planet. Max Planck - In his 1918 Nobel Prize lecture Notes: The Five Foundational Equations of the Universe: https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYmaSrBPNEmGZGM4ejY3d3pfNDdnc3E4bmhkZg The Underlying Mathematical Foundation Of The Universe -Walter Bradley - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4491491 Jake: Math prodigy proud of his autism - 60 Minutes - CBS News - video http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7395214n&tag=re1.channel Quote of note at the 12:00 minute mark of the preceding video; 'The whole randomness thing, that's like completely against all of physics' Jake Barnett - Child Prodigy of Math Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness - Talbott - Fall 2011 Excerpt: The situation calls to mind a widely circulated cartoon by Sidney Harris, which shows two scientists in front of a blackboard on which a body of theory has been traced out with the usual tangle of symbols, arrows, equations, and so on. But there’s a gap in the reasoning at one point, filled by the words, “Then a miracle occurs.” And the one scientist is saying to the other, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.” In the case of evolution, I picture Dennett and Dawkins filling the blackboard with their vivid descriptions of living, highly regulated, coordinated, integrated, and intensely meaningful biological processes, and then inserting a small, mysterious gap in the middle, along with the words, “Here something random occurs.” This “something random” looks every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle. It is the central miracle in a gospel of meaninglessness, a “Randomness of the gaps,” demanding an extraordinarily blind faith. At the very least, we have a right to ask, “Can you be a little more explicit here?” http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/evolution-and-the-illusion-of-randomnessbornagain77
March 3, 2012
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