This excerpt addresses some issues raised in a recent UD post and its comments.
Physicist Brian Miller writes:
Other scientists, such as Ilya Prigogine, have attempted to compare the order in cells to the order created by such self-organizing processes as the formation of a funnel cloud in a tornado. These attempts also fall short since such appeals can only explain the order of a repeating or chaotic pattern but not that of specified information.
Yockey pointed out that Prigogine and Nicolis invoked external self-organizational forces to explain the origin of order in living systems. But, as Yockey noted, what needs explaining in biological systems is not order (in the sense of a symmetrical or repeating pattern), but information, the kind of specified digital information found in software, written languages, and DNA. (Signature in the Cell, p. 255)
Others, such as complex-systems researcher Stuart Kauffman, have attempted to generate complex patterns out of self-organizing or autocatalytic systems and then relate them to life. However, all such attempts require that the initial conditions or arrangement of molecules is precisely specified. In other words, specified structures cannot be generated unless information is provided.
Thus, to explain the origin of specified biological complexity at the systems level, Kauffman has to presuppose a highly specific arrangement of those molecules at the molecular level as well as the existence of many highly specific and complex protein and RNA molecules. In short, Kauffman merely transfers the information problem from the molecules into the soup. (Signature in the Cell, p. 264)
All such attempts to explain life by natural processes make a fundamental error. They fail to distinguish between the order created by natural processes, such as water freezing to form a snowflake, and specified complexity. The former results from natural laws directing the arrangement of molecules. However, for a medium to contain information/specified complexity, it must have the freedom to take on numerous possible arrangements of parts. Correspondingly, law-like processes determine outcomes making arrangements that are highly probable, but the presence of information corresponds to patterns that are highly improbable.
Instead, information emerges from within an environment marked by indeterminacy, by the freedom to arrange parts in many different ways. As the MIT philosopher Robert Stalnaker puts it, information content “requires contingency”…the more improbable an event, the more information its occurrence conveys. In the case that a law-like physical or chemical process determines that one kind of event will necessarily and predictably follow another, then no uncertainty will be reduced by the occurrence of such a high-probability event. Thus, no information will be conveyed. (Signature in the Cell, p. 250-251)
This confusion has been pointed out by such experts in the field as Herbert Yockey, who was one of the founders in applying information theory to biology. In particular, he pointed out why order generated from natural processes could not explain the biological encoding of information. Meyer cites him on this:
Thus, as Yockey notes: “Attempts to relate the idea of order…with biological organization or specificity must be regarded as a play on words that cannot stand careful scrutiny. Informational macromolecules can code genetic messages and therefore can carry information because the sequence of bases or residues is affected very little, if at all, by [self-organizing] physicochemical factors.” (Signature in the Cell, p. 257)
The described technical details are important, but the basic challenge is easily understood by anyone via a simple analogy. Physical processes can produce various types of order, such as that seen in a hurricane. But no one has ever run to a lumber yard before a hurricane expectantly waiting for the oncoming winds to arrange the lumber into a new house. Instead, they wait in dread to see how a hurricane might demolish a home into a pile of debris. The same tendency holds true for life. Physical processes tend to break apart complex biological structures into simpler chemicals. None will organize a wide variety of molecules into fantastically improbably configurations that achieve such functional goals as processing energy, building molecular machines, and maintaining homeostasis. Only intelligence can build such complex structures for such purposeful ends.
View entire article at Evolution News.
Of related note:
But who organized the organizer?
Andrew
A couple of more notes from Dr.Miller.
a bit off topic, and 2 years old, but i noticed it just today …
2020:
Tour scores prestigious Centenary Prize
Rice University chemist’s achievements earn top Royal Society of Chemistry honor
The award, given annually to up to three scientists from outside Great Britain, recognizes researchers for their contributions to the chemical sciences industry or education and for successful collaborations. Tour was named for innovations in materials chemistry with applications in medicine and nanotechnology.
https://news.rice.edu/news/2020/tour-scores-prestigious-centenary-prize#:~:text=Rice%20University%20chemist%20James%20Tour,education%20and%20for%20successful%20collaborations.
PS: on December 6, there will be another Dr. Tour lecture on debunking “professor” Dave Farina “OoL-experts”…
Here is a teaser video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rwPi1miWu4
To elaborate on Dr. Miller’s observation,
The burning question that needs to be answered now becomes, “What exactly does it take for an intelligence to move a system toward lower entropy and higher energy? i.e. toward life?
Well, the short answer is that it takes an immaterial mind infusing immaterial information into a material substrate in order to move a system toward lower entropy and higher energy i.e. toward life.
The longer, empirically backed, answer is that it is now experimentally proven, (via advances in quantum information theory, and the experimental realization of the Maxwell demon thought experiment), immaterial information has a ‘thermodynamic content’, and that an immaterial mind has the capacity to infuse ‘thermodynamically meaningful’ immaterial information into a system in order move a system toward lower entropy and higher energy i.e. toward life.
In the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, “they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information.”
As Christopher Jarzynski, (who was instrumental in formulating the ‘equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information’), stated, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
Moreover, the Maxwell demon thought experiment has now been extended to build ” a tiny machine powered purely by information,”.
In fact, as of 2021, a quote-unquote ‘Information engine’ has now been constructed that achieves “power comparable to molecular machinery in living cells,”
An ‘Information engine’ that achieves “power comparable to molecular machinery in living cells”?
To say Darwinist materialists ‘never saw that coming’ would be an understatement. In the past, Darwinists have taken great pains to deny the significance, and foundational role, that information plays in life, and have even claimed that life is just ‘complicated biochemistry’, and have even gone so far as to claim that they could get along just as well without the ‘metaphor’ of information.
And as if an ‘information engine’ that achieves “power comparable to molecular machinery in living cells” was not already enough to make a committed Darwinian materialist’s head spin around in circles, in quantum information theory it is also now found that entropy is not a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.
As the following article states, “James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
And in the following 2011 paper, researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.
To repeat, “In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.”
That statement is simply completely devastating to the ‘bottom up’ reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists, and is a full empirical vindication of the presuppositions of Intelligent Design, where it is held that only an Intelligent Mind has the capacity within itself to create the ‘non-physical’ information that is needed to ‘thermodynamically’ explain why life can ‘resist the ravages of entropy’.
And although the preceding experimental evidence gets us to an intelligent mind in general, to make our inference to the Mind of God in particular more complete it is necessary to also appeal to advances in quantum biology.
But first it is important to point out that ‘classical’ sequential information, (such as what is encoded on DNA, proteins, computers, etc..), is a subset of quantum information.
And it is also important to point out that the independent, (i.e. separate from matter and energy), ‘physical’ reality of this immaterial quantum information, (quantum information of which classical information is now found to be a subset), is fairly easily demonstrated with quantum teleportation.
Specifically, quantum information can be teleported between photons and/or atoms without the photons and/or atoms ever physically interacting with one another.
For instance, the following article states, “the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,”
And as the following article states. “scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart,,, information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.”
Moreover this quantum information, and/or quantum entanglement, is now found to be ubiquitous within life. i.e. It is found within every important biomolecule of life.
As the following 2015 article entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules”, stated, “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
It is also very interesting to note that the classical information of DNA is now found to be ’embedded’ within quantum information.
In the following video, at the 22:20 minute mark, Dr Rieper shows why the high temperatures of biological systems do not prevent DNA from having quantum entanglement and then at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper goes on to remark that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
What is so devastating to Darwinian presuppositions with the (empirical) finding of pervasive quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement within molecular biology, is that quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement is a non-local, beyond space and time, effect that requires a beyond space and time cause in order to explain its existence. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and especially with the falsification of ‘hidden variables’, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.
Whereas Darwinian materialists have no ‘beyond space and time’ cause that they can appeal to explain quantum non-locality, on the other hand, the Christian Theist readily does have a beyond space and time cause that he can appeal to so as to explain the ‘non-locality’ of quantum entanglement, and/or quantum information, that is now found to be ubiquitous within life. And indeed, Christians have been postulating just such a ‘beyond space and time’ cause for a couple of thousand years now. As Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
It is also important to realize that quantum information, unlike classical information, is physically conserved. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, (beyond space and time), and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created nor destroyed), quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have fairly strong empirical evidence indicating that we do indeed have a transcendent, metaphysical, component to our being, a “soul”, that is, in principle, capable of living beyond the death of our material/temporal bodies.
As Stuart Hameroff succinctly stated in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Personally, I consider these recent findings from quantum biology to rival all other scientific discoveries over the past century. Surpassing even the discovery of a beginning of the universe, via Big Bang cosmology, in terms of scientific, theological, and even personal, significance.
As Jesus once asked his disciples and a crowd of followers, “Is anything worth more than your soul?”
Verse:
Thus in conclusion, I hold that the inference to the Mind God in order to explain the ‘top down’ infusion of information necessary to explain life is now on strong empirical footing, and, therefore, the inference to the Mind of God is a more than valid inference for Christian Theists to now make from the scientific evidence itself.
Supplemental notes, quotes, and verses:
S.C. Meyer:
“To see the difference between order and complexity consider the difference between the following sequences:
The first sequence, describing the chemical structure of salt crystals, displays what information scientists call “redundancy” or simple “order.” That’s because the two constituents, Na and Cl (sodium and chloride), are highly ordered in the sense of being arranged in a simple, rigidly repetitive way. The sequence on the bottom, by contrast, exhibits complexity. In this randomly generated string of characters, there is no simple repetitive pattern. Whereas the sequence on the top could be generated by a simple rule or computer algorithm, such as “Every time Na arises, attach a Cl to it, and vice versa,” no rule shorter than the sequence itself could generate the second sequence.
The information-rich sequences in DNA, RNA, and proteins, by contrast, are characterized not by either simple order or mere complexity, but instead by “specified complexity.” In such sequences, the irregular and unpredictable arrangement of the characters (or constituents) is critical to the function that the sequence performs. The three sequences below illustrate these distinctions:
What does all this have to do with self-organization? Simply this: the law-like, self-organizing processes that generate the kind of order present in a crystal or a vortex do not also generate complex sequences or structures; still less do they generate specified complexity, the kind of “order” present in a gene or functionally complex organ.
Laws of nature by definition describe repetitive phenomena—order in that sense—that can be described with differential equations or universal “if-then” statements. Consider, for example, these informal expressions of the law of gravity: “All unsupported bodies fall” or “If an elevated body is left unsuspended, then it will fall.” These statements represent reasonably accurate law-like descriptions of natural gravitational phenomena precisely because we have repeated experience of unsupported bodies falling to the earth. In nature, repetition provides grist for lawful description.
The information-bearing sequences in protein-coding DNA and RNA molecules do not exhibit such repetitive “order,” however. As such, these sequences can be neither described nor explained by reference to a natural law or law-like “self-organizational” process. The kind of non-repetitive “order” on display in DNA and RNA—a precise sequential “order” necessary to ensure function—is not the kind that laws of nature or law-like self-organizational processes can—in principle—generate or explain.”
[‘Darwin’s Doubt’, ch. 15]
As a criticism of Kauffman, I think this isn’t quite right. His argument is that autocatalytic sets display a spontaneous emergence of specified functional complexity. What makes an autocatalytic set different from a living organism is that the set is just a self-perpetuating metabolic reaction, but it doesn’t do anything. In life, metabolic processes are put to work in generating (as well as maintaining) an organization distinct from that of the environment.
The really important idea to come out of theoretical biology here is that of self-determining systems that exhibit what’s called “closure”. A system realizes closure if each constraint in the system constrains other constraints. A constraint is any cause that reduces the degrees of freedom in a system. To maintain closure of structure against entropy, a system needs to extract highly structured energy from the environment and dump less structured energy back into the environment. (Some articles: “Biological Organisation as Closure of Constraints“, “What Makes Biological Organisation Teleological?“, and “Organisational Closure in Biological Organisms”
In other words, I think, a complexity theorist would say that we need to think less about information as some definite entity that exists independently of energy and more about structure as a feature of kinds of energy-and-matter configurations. Taking that approach allows us to conceptualize what kind of structure is distinct of biological organisms: the conjunction of organisational closure and thermodynamic openness.
I might also add that Kauffman thinks that the emergence of teleologically structured unified wholes took place prior to the emergence of the genetic code; see Autogen is a Kantian Whole in the Non-Entailed World.
In regards to,,,
To try to get around that ‘little problem’, PMI references Kaufmann’s 1993 book, “The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution” and states, “His (Kaufmann’s) argument is that autocatalytic sets display a spontaneous emergence of specified functional complexity”.
But, as is usual with Atheistic Naturalists, PMI, (and Kaufmann), with their self organization model, have completely left the field of empirical science and are in the fictional realm of ‘just-so story’ telling. i.e. They simply have no empirical evidence whatsoever for the “spontaneous emergence” of the functional information, i.e. “specified functional complexity”, necessary for the formation of autocatalytic sets.
For instance, in regards to autocatalytic sets, wikipedia itself states that, “The first empirical support came from Lincoln and Joyce, who obtained autocatalytic sets in which “two [RNA] enzymes catalyze each other’s synthesis from a total of four component substrates.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_set
Yet, as Dr. Meyer pointed out, in Lincoln and Joyce’s work, “function arises after, not before, the information problem has been solved.”
To call Tracey Lincoln and Gerald Joyce’s supposed empirical evidence for autocatalytic sets ‘overhyped’ would be an understatement. As Douglas Axe humorously noted, Tracey Lincoln and Gerald Joyce’s overhyped claims amount to,,, “advertising this as “self-replication” is a bit like advertising something as “free” when the actual deal is 1 free for every 1,600 purchased. It’s even worse, though, because you need lots of the pre-made precursors in cozy proximity to a finished RNA in order to kick the process off. That makes the real deal more like n free for every 1,600 n purchased, with the caveats that n must be a very large number and that full payment must be made in advance.”
In short, and in conclusion, PMI has no empirical evidence whatsoever for his claim of the “spontaneous emergence of specified functional complexity”. i.e. PMI is, once again, found to be in the realm of fictional ‘just-so story’ telling.
Of related note:
Pm1@10
You have mentioned Kaufman and autocatalysis, and I think you are referring to his book. Are you also adverting to the paper he did with researcher Ms Joana Xavier?
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsta.2021.0244
@10
I was not aware of this paper! Very interesting — thanks!
(BTW, Xavier has a PhD, so I think she’s “Dr. Xavier” — or “Professor Xavier”, since she teaches at University College London, but then we’d confuse her with Patrick Stewart.)
And that paper helps your lack of empirical evidence how exactly?
from the paper, “Several origins of life theories postulate autocatalytic chemical networks preceding the primordial genetic code,”
Small problem with their belief in a ‘primordial genetic code’. The ‘near-optimal’ genetic code we now find in life,,,,
,,,, The ‘near-optimal’ genetic code we now find in life, and codes in general, are “near-immutable”, i.e. ‘non-evolvable’.The reason why the ‘near-optimal’ DNA code, and codes in general, are considered “near-immutable” is fairly easy to understand and is given by none other than Richard Dawkins himself?
And the fact that genetic codes are now found to overlap each other makes the ‘near-immutable’, i.e. non-evolvable, problem exponentially worse for Darwinists,
The cited paper goes on,,,, “yet demonstration with biochemical systems is lacking. Here, small-molecule reflexively autocatalytic food-generated networks (RAFs) ranging in size from 3 to 619 reactions were found in all of 6683 prokaryotic metabolic networks searched.”,,,,
So let’s get this straight, they searched 6683 prokaryotic metabolic networks for evidence that autocatalytic chemical networks might have preceded life???
Ever heard the term ‘assuming your conclusion’?
In short, per the cited 2022 paper, Darwinists still have no evidence, as pointed out in post 11, that “autocatalytic sets display a “spontaneous emergence of specified functional complexity”
In fact, there is a 10 million dollar prize being offered for the first person who can empirically demonstrate the origin of a ‘primordial’ genetic code by unguided processes,,, whether it be by autocatalytic sets, or otherwise,
Verse:
A few days ago, i suggested, that Darwinists still believe in spontaneous generation of life (like in 19th century)
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/every-cell-comes-from-a-preexistent-cell/#comments
Seversky reacted as follows:
In this case, Seversky, look here,
look what a 31-year-old MIT Physicist Jeremy England thinks …
(This can’t be true … There is something very very wrong with Darwinists …)
Is this normal ???
Seversky, if this is not a spontaneous generation then what is it ? :)))))))
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIt9mPuezY-wIVM4FQBh2sEQKhEAAYASAAEgJ45fD_BwE
Re: PM1 @ 10,
From a review of Kauffman’s book:
“the idea at the heart of the book is truly important: even in vastly complicated interactive networks, a few simple rules can easily–if amazingly–lead to order and self-organised patterns and processes. This represents a major advance in understanding how the living world works.” –Robert M. May, The Observer”
Please understand that if “a few simple rules” “lead to order”, then it is a type of order that is prevalent in nature – namely crystallization built of a repeated sub-pattern, and such order is entirely irrelevant to the complex, specified arrangements found in the biomolecules of the cell. Consider the difference, if you will, between the crystalline order of Lot’s wife once she became a pillar of salt, and the living being she was before this descriptive event.
Self-organized patterns, such as hexagonal-shaped convection cells in a system experiencing a throughput of thermal energy, are low-information patterns and have no relation to the complex, specified, interdependent arrangements characteristic of the bio-molecules of the cell.
It is commendable that you seek to exhaust possible naturalistic avenues from non-life to life before admitting divine intervention. But it seems that what we already know about the possible workings of nature preclude any conceivable natural mechanism from achieving the task of abiogenesis.
Auto-catalysis, when applied to origin of life,is little more than the self-organization dream with a wig.
Evolution origin theory maintains that the earliest known forms of life are too extraordinarily complex to have materialized suddenly unless there exist principles, or laws, of atomic and molecular self-organization which propel matter onward and upward to a living cell. Those principles, to be successful, need be combined with reaction enhancing catalysts, otherwise the life of the universe is not long enough.
The difficulty is that pre-biotic catalysts are rare and inadequate, hence the auto-catalysis hypothesis. But auto-catalysis, where a product of catalysis can act as a catalyzing agent itself, hits the barrier that actual reproduction is still inconceivable. So autocatalysis is given a new theoretical power – a primitive form of natural selection!!! One would think imagination could go no further.
One would be wrong. Harvard on its current origin of life claims that it is “wondrous” that, “On a large scale, self-organizing behavior’s powerful effects are seen when small gusts of wind join together to form a tornado that can wreak havoc on infrastructure and natural resources in its path.
And on a much smaller scale, this same principle is seen when two strands of DNA zip up to form the double helix that encodes our genome. Or, when cells self assemble into embryonic tissues that further develop into fully formed humans and animals.”
But what is even more “wondrous” is that the promoters of this deceptive fiddle, Harvard, thought they could get away with crediting self-organization as just another form of self-assembly.
Self-assembling in a cell has nothing in common with self-organizing into simple patterns.
Harvard might just as well have written,
“And on a much smaller scale, this same principle is seen when cans of Coke roll down a street, propelled by strong winds, hit rocks and are propelled by the wind up onto the footpath, thence through an open door of a shop where erratic winds blowing through gather them into a pyramid.”
@16
The comparison between crystals and cells misses the point of what Kaufman and other complex systems theorists are talking about. Crystals are not dissipative structures. They don’t tend to maintain themselves at far-from-equilibrium with respect to their environments.
Benard cells (unlike crystals) are dissipative structures, but they aren’t autocatalytic reactions. For an example of the latter, consider the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction (video).
My position is not, of course, that cellular metabolism is exactly like autocatalytic reactions: there are real and profound differences. The most salient difference, I think, is that metabolism maintains organizational closure.
This concept, taken from theoretical biologists Maël Montévil, Matteo Mossio, and Alvaro Moreno, is the idea that living things have a specific kind of organizational structure: one in which each constraint constrains all other constraints. A constraint is a causal influence that reduces the degrees of freedom of a system. So what makes something alive is that it is structured in ways that tend to maintain the system in a precarious relationship with its environment. It is this constantly maintained, continually renewed precariousness that distinguishes living systems from other complex dynamical systems. (The biophilosopher Hans Jonas calls this “the needful freedom” of the organism: to be an organism is to be at once distinct from the environment and dependent upon it.)
So putting these ideas together, we get the following question: what is needed to get from autocatalytic networks to organizationally closed (but thermodynamically open) systems? Do we have good reasons for positing some intervening intelligent agent, possibly but not necessarily supernatural, in order to explain this transition?
My view is that if an autocatalytic network were to become contained within a semi-permeable membrane, with the construction and maintenance of that membrane itself a product of autocatalytic reactions, one would have the necessary conditions for an organizationally closed (but thermodynamically open) system. This puts me in the metabolism-first camp of abiogenesis: I think we need to get metabolism off the ground first, then a distinct sub-group of chemicals develop for stabilizing and controlling metabolic reactions. And that’s all that “genetic information” is, because of what genes can’t do.
I started reading Deacon’s very intriguing “How Molecules Became Signs.
This should be of some interest to ID folks because Deacon tackles head-on the question that ID people claim that naturalists always avoid: the origins of genetic information itself. He takes up the question as “what is necessary for a system that can take a molecule (e.g. a nucleotide sequence) as a sign (e.g. ‘build this protein’)?” Deacon uses semiotics — the theory of signs developed by the American polymath Charles S. Peirce — to really think very carefully about what we’re talking about when we talk about “information”.
Abstract:
When I suggest that it’s theories of self-organizing systems, not evolutionary theory, that pose the real alternative to intelligent design, this is what I have in mind.
Here’s the conclusion of Deacon’s analysis
Is this a real phenomenon or just someone’s speculation?
Jerry at 20,
More nonsense.
‘It provides a “proof of principle” of a sort, showing step-by-chemically-realistic-step how a molecule like RNA or DNA could acquire the property of recording and instructing the dynamical molecular relationships that constitute and maintain the molecular system of which it is a part. In short, it explains how a molecule can become about other molecules.’
This explanation is not an explanation. If it was, a scientist could replicate it.
“Is this a real phenomenon or just someone’s speculation?”
I believe the term is Mumbo-Jumbo.
Andrew
@20
I think Deacon is quite clear about this: it is proof-of-concept. It shows that there is a step-by-step chemically realistic pathway for the emergence of genetic information by naturalistic means.
If Deacon is right, it would mean that KF is wrong to insist on a sharp distinction between “order” and “organization” (as he does here).
If Deacon is right, it means that Josh Anderson is wrong to say that “a system of established correlations between stuff out here and information instantiated in a domain of symbols” cannot come into existence through some “intelligence-free material processes” (see here).
It would mean that Caspian is wrong to say “the information content of the simplest self-replicating machine . . . cannot be explained by any natural process.”
I am underscoring the cannot here: on Caspian’s view, and this seems to be the ID ‘party line’, it is not possible for material processes to give rise to the kind of complex functionally specified information that we observe in life. That is precisely what Deacon is doing here: showing exactly how, in a chemically realistic step-by-step process, material processes can give rise to complex functionally specified information.
Does he show that this is how life actually came to exist, billions of years ago? No.
Does he provide a detailed recipe that some chemist could follow in a lab and produce life? No.
But he does show that the basic premise of ID is wrong, because we can produce a chemically realistic step-by-step process whereby natural processes give rise to complex functional information, and that is exactly what ID insists is simply not possible.
So in order for ID to be correct, one would need to show where Deacon has made a mistake in his reasoning.
“But he does show that the basic premise of ID is wrong, because we can produce a chemically realistic step-by-step process whereby natural processes give rise to complex functional information, and that is exactly what ID insists is simply not possible.”
Baloney.
Relatd: Baloney.
Why is it baloney? What part of Deacon’s argument is incorrect?
This explanation is not an explanation. If it was, a scientist could replicate it.