How Some Materialists are Blinded by Their Faith Commitments

_{Barry Arrington
March 24, 2018

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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Every once in a while we get one of those “aha moments” when everything comes together. Phillip Johnson helped me to one of those moments over 20 years ago when I read this passage from an article in First Things (when that journal still permitted dissenting voices to be heard):

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. We might more accurately term them “materialists employing science.” And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

Aha! If Darwinism or something like it must be true as a matter of deduction from materialism, then evidence takes a back seat. Dawkins once said he would prefer Darwinism even if there were no evidence to support it. That is hard to understand until one understands Johnson’s point.

I thought about this today when a friend reminded me of this quote from Nobel laureate Jacques Monod:

“We call these [mutations] accidental; we say that they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modifications in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organisms’ hereditary structure, it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis.”

Seriously? No other explanation is even “conceivable”? I can understand how someone could consider the evidence and reject ID. I would believe they are mistaken, but not everyone is going to come to the same conclusion as I do. I get that. But to say that ID is not even “conceivable”? Well, that’s just plain stupid. Why would Monod, obviously not a stupid man, say something so dumb? His faith commitments blinded him and stunted his imagination. A dogmatic commitment to materialist metaphysics makes even very smart people literally blind to alternatives. And it makes them say stupid things.

Another example: Paraphrasing Hawking: Because there is something, the universe can create itself from nothing.

Comments

Yes, that was Seversky's point in 31, but putting "just" in the sentence minimizes the point. All of our knowledge is composed of abstract concepts that we have created/invented. The real world, in all it's finely detailed existence, is vastly bigger, more complicated, and more nuanced than our attempts to compress it into understandable human knowledge.jdk_{March 26, 2018
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LocalMinimum- They don't deny it they just say "it's an abstract construct that we invented"ET_{March 26, 2018
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Information denial is not really an option for an A/Mat who isn't operating on blind faith. For the universe to remain "natural" (as materialists define it), it must consist of that which can be modeled; to allow it to escape our comprehension, to grant that there are mechanics operating in dark reaches beyond the illumination of the lantern of science (beyond the eyes and cognition of "clever apes"), is to make the known "natural" a subset of reality; and to allow its complement with respect to reality, the dreaded "supernatural", to move in next door. An eternal gap, of unknown dimension, for God to reside. Thus, everything must ultimately be definable as a parameterization within some model; which would be information. So a rational, factually rooted materialism would have to demand everything ultimately be reducible to information. Not to say that it would be sufficient; just necessary.LocalMinimum_{March 26, 2018
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Allan Keith:
Then why is it being used as an indication of design? Am I missing something?
Everything, apparently. Information only comes from intelligence, ie a mind. The specific arrangements of information that is required to produce living organisms only comes from intelligence. The specific arrangements of information to produce the laws of physics and chemistry only comes from intelligence. “Information is information, neither matter nor energy. Any materialism which disregards this, will not survive one day.” Norbert WeinerET_{March 26, 2018
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ET,
Yes, Allan. Information is everywhere. This universe wouldn’t exist without it.
Then why is it being used as an indication of design? Am I missing something?Allan Keith_{March 26, 2018
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Yes, Allan. Information is everywhere. This universe wouldn't exist without it.ET_{March 26, 2018
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ET,
So there really isn’t any question that information is a property of living organisms.
By that definition, there is little doubt that information is found in living organisms. But, using the same definition, it is also found in inanimate matter.Allan Keith_{March 26, 2018
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It's not a code. It's not information. It is not IC. OK maybe it is IC but nature did it. What other anti-ID evidence-free declarations are there?ET_{March 26, 2018
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Seversky:
I don’t accept the notion that information, as commonly understood, is a property of the genome or an organism or a piece of rock.
Methinks that you don't understand the word "information". It is in the standard and accepted definitions of "information" that we find: b : the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something (such as nucleotides in DNA or binary digits in a computer program) that produce specific effects And Dr Crick provided: "Information means here the precise determination of sequence, either of bases in the nucleic acid or on amino acid residues in the protein." So there really isn't any question that information is a property of living organisms.ET_{March 26, 2018
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Seversky wrote above,
I don’t accept the notion that information, as commonly understood, is a property of the genome or an organism or a piece of rock. In my view, it is a property of the modeling languages and simulations we use to describe and explain what we observe but to attribute it to what is being observed is to confuse the map with the territory, the model with what is being modeled. It is misleading.
This is an interesting point. I think it distinguishes those that believe that the world is what it is and our knowledge about it is an abstract overlay on top of it from those that believe that concepts have an independent, and at times primary precedence over physical reality. (That's a messy sentence, but I have no time for thinking very much about any of this today.) The Platonic / non-Platonic dichotomy is, I think, the fundamental philosophical divide between the various viewpoints that get expressed here at UD.jdk_{March 26, 2018
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Seversky:
We observe mutations in the genome which are random with respect to the fitness of the organism, as far as we can tell.
ok, but that's not what Monod wrote. His statement was unqualified. Where does he mention anything to do with being "relative to the fitness of the organism"? He is making a much stronger claim.Mung_{March 26, 2018
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Truth Will Set You Free- Unguided evolution has a chance if and only if the Creation view of origins is correct. Meaning humans have actually devolved since that originsET_{March 26, 2018
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ET @ 47: Good points. A/mats never seem to get that very simple logic.Truth Will Set You Free_{March 26, 2018
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as to: "It also ignores beneficial mutations," Now if there was anything that ever was a 'faith commitment' on the part of atheists, it is the atheist's completely unfounded, yet steadfast, belief that rare beneficial mutations will somehow save the day against the onslaught of the overwhelming rate of detrimental mutations:
Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation George Montañez 1, Robert J. Marks II 2, Jorge Fernandez 3 and John C. Sanford 4 - May 2013 Excerpt: It is almost universally acknowledged that beneficial mutations are rare compared to deleterious mutations [1–10].,, It appears that beneficial mutations may be too rare to actually allow the accurate measurement of how rare they are [11]. 1. Kibota T, Lynch M (1996) Estimate of the genomic mutation rate deleterious to overall fitness in E. coli . Nature 381:694–696. 2. Charlesworth B, Charlesworth D (1998) Some evolutionary consequences of deleterious mutations. Genetica 103: 3–19. 3. Elena S, et al (1998) Distribution of fitness effects caused by random insertion mutations in Escherichia coli. Genetica 102/103: 349–358. 4. Gerrish P, Lenski R N (1998) The fate of competing beneficial mutations in an asexual population. Genetica 102/103:127–144. 5. Crow J (2000) The origins, patterns, and implications of human spontaneous mutation. Nature Reviews 1:40–47. 6. Bataillon T (2000) Estimation of spontaneous genome-wide mutation rate parameters: whither beneficial mutations? Heredity 84:497–501. 7. Imhof M, Schlotterer C (2001) Fitness effects of advantageous mutations in evolving Escherichia coli populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98:1113–1117. 8. Orr H (2003) The distribution of fitness effects among beneficial mutations. Genetics 163: 1519–1526. 9. Keightley P, Lynch M (2003) Toward a realistic model of mutations affecting fitness. Evolution 57:683–685. 10. Barrett R, et al (2006) The distribution of beneficial mutation effects under strong selection. Genetics 174:2071–2079. 11. Bataillon T (2000) Estimation of spontaneous genome-wide mutation rate parameters: whither beneficial mutations? Heredity 84:497–501. http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0006 “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Gloves Off -- Responding to David Levin on the Nonrandom Evolutionary Hypothesis - Lee M. Spetner - Sept. 2016 Excerpt: I wrote in this book (as well in an earlier book) that there is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome, and that statement still stands. The statement is important because evolution is about building up information (Spetner 1964, 1968, 1970). Some have offered what they think are counterexamples of my statement, but they are often not of random mutations at all, or they otherwise fail to be valid counterexamples. Levin finds the statement astonishing, and it may well astonish someone who believes evolutionary theory represents reality. But it happens to be true, and I am not surprised that it astonishes him because it deals a deathblow to evolutionary theory. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/09/gloves_off_--_r103168.html The Human Gene Mutation Database The Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD®) represents an attempt to collate known (published) gene lesions responsible for human inherited disease. Mutation total (as of Feb. 17 , 2018) – 220270 http://www.hgmd.cf.ac.uk/ac/ Critic ignores reality of Genetic Entropy - Dr John Sanford - 7 March 2013 Excerpt: Where are the beneficial mutations in man? It is very well documented that there are thousands of deleterious Mendelian mutations accumulating in the human gene pool, even though there is strong selection against such mutations. Yet such easily recognized deleterious mutations are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of deleterious mutations will not display any clear phenotype at all. There is a very high rate of visible birth defects, all of which appear deleterious. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Why are no beneficial birth anomalies being seen? This is not just a matter of identifying positive changes. If there are so many beneficial mutations happening in the human population, selection should very effectively amplify them. They should be popping up virtually everywhere. They should be much more common than genetic pathologies. Where are they? European adult lactose tolerance appears to be due to a broken lactase promoter [see Can’t drink milk? You’re ‘normal’! Ed.]. African resistance to malaria is due to a broken hemoglobin protein [see Sickle-cell disease. Also, immunity of an estimated 20% of western Europeans to HIV infection is due to a broken chemokine receptor—see CCR5-delta32: a very beneficial mutation. Ed.] Beneficials happen, but generally they are loss-of-function mutations, and even then they are very rare! http://creation.com/genetic-entropy Genetic Entropy – references to several peer reviewed numerical simulations analyzing and falsifying all flavors of Darwinian evolution (neutral theory included),, (via John Sanford and company) http://www.geneticentropy.org/#!properties/ctzx Geneticist Corrects Fisher’s Theorem, but the Correction Turns Natural Selection Upside Down - December 22, 2017 | David F. Coppedge A new paper corrects errors in Fisher’s Theorem, a mathematical “proof” of Darwinism. Rather than supporting evolution, the corrected theorem inverts it. Excerpt: The authors of the new paper describe the fundamental problems with Fisher’s theorem. They then use Fisher’s first principles, and reformulate and correct the theorem. They have named the corrected theorem The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection with Mutations. The correction of the theorem is not a trivial change – it literally flips the theorem on its head. The resulting conclusions are clearly in direct opposition to what Fisher had originally intended to prove.,,, The authors of the new paper realized that one of Fisher’s pivotal assumptions was clearly false, and in fact was falsified many decades ago. In his informal corollary, Fisher essentially assumed that new mutations arose with a nearly normal distribution – with an equal proportion of good and bad mutations (so mutations would have a net fitness effect of zero). We now know that the vast majority of mutations in the functional genome are harmful, and that beneficial mutations are vanishingly rare. The simple fact that Fisher’s premise was wrong, falsifies Fisher’s corollary. Without Fisher’s corollary – Fisher’s Theorem proves only that selection improves a population’s fitness until selection exhausts the initial genetic variation, at which point selective progress ceases. Apart from his corollary, Fisher’s Theorem only shows that within an initial population with variant genetic alleles, there is limited selective progress followed by terminal stasis.,,, The authors observe that the more realistic the parameters, the more likely fitness decline becomes. https://crev.info/2017/12/geneticist-corrects-fishers-theorem/
bornagain77_{March 26, 2018
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Beneficial is relative, Bob. Even a loss of function is beneficial. Loss of eyes and limbs are beneficial. What you don't have is a mechanism capable of producing eyes and limbs in the first place.ET_{March 26, 2018
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@Bob O’H & Seversky, what I mean by close building blocks is that a very small number of bits need to flip to continue hitting new units of functionality. Otherwise, organisms will fail to evolve and rapidly die off. If you want a quantitative demonstration, I wrote a very simple Python simulation of the destructiveness of random mutation. https://repl.it/@EricHolloway/Evolution-Doesnt-Work
Hm, that's not a proof. It also ignores beneficial mutations, so it doesn't show anything about finding new islands of functionality.Bob O'H_{March 26, 2018
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Seversky said:
Need I provide a list of all the medical, scientific and technological advances that we all take for granted but which are founded on a naturalistic model of the world?
Providing a list that you or others claim to be "founded on a naturalistic model of the world" is not the same as showing how any of those advances are actually founded on that model. Given that no "naturalistic model" can as yet provide for the existence of consciousness, free will and the capacity for truth discernment necessary to even begin to make such an argument and for it to have any value, I suggest you begin there. Then, you can continue by explaining the existence of the force constants and natural laws that undergird every "natural" effect and relationship that provides for such advances.William J Murray_{March 26, 2018
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@Bob O'H & Seversky, what I mean by close building blocks is that a very small number of bits need to flip to continue hitting new units of functionality. Otherwise, organisms will fail to evolve and rapidly die off. If you want a quantitative demonstration, I wrote a very simple Python simulation of the destructiveness of random mutation. https://repl.it/@EricHolloway/Evolution-Doesnt-Work Yes, evolution supposedly took millions of years, but if random mutation is all it takes, then we can replicate evolution easily in silico, and simulation millions, billions or trillions of years in minutes or hours. I completed my MSc under one of the world experts in evolutionary algorithms, and evolutionary algorithms are definitely not that effective. One example he liked his students to do is compare evolutionary algorithms to random search, and notice there wasn't a big difference in performance. If evolution does work, then the only reason it works is not because of random mutation, but because the fitness landscape has an extremely good neighborhood function. In which case, random mutation is besides the point. Pretty much any method of searching the neighborhood would work, as long as it is not purposefully designed to avoid good neighbors. If the fitness landscape is indeed so finely constructed, then this is exactly what ID predicts, and would confirm ID.EricMH_{March 26, 2018
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WJM @ 40: "If the materialists were to find any other kind of highly complex, functional, code-driven mechanism, they would not hesitate to infer that the most likely explanation was some form of intelligent being created it." True indeed. Obvious hypocrisy.Truth Will Set You Free_{March 26, 2018
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Moreover, besides being foundational to physical reality, information, as Intelligent Design advocates have been pointing out to Darwinists for years, is also foundational to biological life. Here are a few references to get that point across:
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 Information is Physical (but not how Rolf Landauer meant) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35I83y5Uro
It is hard to imagine a more convincing scientific proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’ than finding both the universe, and life itself, are both ‘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 unique ability infuse information into material substrates.
Humanity - Chemical Scum or Made in the Image of God? - video https://youtu.be/ElBWAwjPzyM 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.
Perhaps a more convincing evidence that we are made in the image of God and that our lives have meaning and purpose 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 a thing as that?
“Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth — truth about the whole of reality.” - Francis Schaeffer - Copernican Principle, Agent Causality, and Jesus Christ as the “Theory of Everything” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NziDraiPiOw Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words "The Lamb" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ 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. Matthew 28:18 Jesus came to them and said: I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth!
bornagain77_{March 26, 2018
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groovamos, I hope you don't mind if I touch upon this outlandish claim from Seversky:
Seversky: Need I provide a list of all the medical, scientific and technological advances that we all take for granted but which are founded on a naturalistic model of the world?
Yet the fact of the matter is that there is not one medical, scientific or technological advance that Seversky can point to that supports his presupposed 'naturalistic model of the world'. In fact all medical, scientific and technological advances point to Intelligent Design. Moreover, all medical, scientific and technological advances provide fairly compelling evidence that we are indeed made in the 'image of God'. Although the purported evidence for human evolution is far weaker and illusory than most people realize,,,
"Contested Bones" (Part 1 - Prologue and Chapter 1 "Power of the Paradigm") 1-27-2018 by Paul Giem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ZOKj-YaHA&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNU_twNBjopIqyFOwo_bTkXm The Human-Ape Missing Link — Still Missing - July 18, 2017 Excerpt: Here is a long, substantive, and interesting article from the BBC — “We still have not found the missing link between us and apes.” It is interesting for two reasons. - 1. It admits that we haven’t found anything that resembles the last common ancestor (LCA) between humans and apes, what author Colin Barras calls the “missing link.” - 2. It admits that it’s hard to even agree on what the LCA might have looked like. --- What it doesn’t do is admit the even bigger problem: that we don’t even have transitional forms between Australopithecus and Homo. This is a major omission.,,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/07/the-human-ape-missing-link-still-missing/ (March 2018) 1. The DNA similarity (between chimps and humans) is not nearly as close to 99% as Darwinists have falsely portrayed it to be. 2. Even if DNA were as similar as Darwinists have falsely portrayed it to be, the basic ‘form’ that any organism may take is not reducible to DNA, (nor is the basic ‘form’ reducible to any other material particulars in molecular biology, (proteins, RNAs, etc.. etc.. ,,), that Darwinists may wish to invoke. That is to say, ‘you can mutate DNA til the cows come home’ and you will still not achieve a fundamental change in the basic form of an organism. And since the basic ‘form’ of an organism is forever beyond the explanatory power of Darwinian mechanisms, then any belief that Darwinism explains the ‘transformation of forms’ for all of life on earth is purely a pipe dream that has no experimental basis in reality. 3. To further drive this point home, Dolphins and Kangaroos, although being very different morphologically from humans, are found to have very similar DNA sequences. 4. Where differences are greatest between chimps and humans are in alternative splicing patterns. In fact ., due to alternative slicing, “Alternatively spliced isoforms,,, appear to behave as if encoded by distinct genes rather than as minor variants of each other.,,,” and “As many as 100,000 distinct isoform transcripts could be produced from the 20,000 human protein-coding genes (Pan et al., 2008), collectively leading to perhaps over a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification of products of all possible transcript isoforms,,” 5. Although the behavioral differences between man and apes are far greater than many Darwinists are willing to concede, the one difference that most dramatically separates man from apes, i.e. our ability to speak, is the one unique attribute that leading Darwinists themselves admit that they have no clue how it could have possibly evolved, and is also the one attribute that most distinctly indicates that we are indeed ‘made in the image of God’. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/comparing-human-and-chimp-dna-using-a-software-analogy/#comment-654633
Although the purported evidence for human evolution is far weaker and illusory than most people realize, it is interesting to note that leading Darwinists themselves admit that they have no clue how evolution could have produced the particular trait of language 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 by leading Darwinists that he wrote a book entitled 'Kingdom of Speech' on the subject. The following quote provides an overview of Tom Wolfe's main argument in his book:
“Speech is not one of man’s several unique attributes—speech is the attribute of all attributes! 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
In other words, 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,, Here are a couple of articles which clearly get this ‘top-down’ infusion of immaterial information into material substrates point across:
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 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
What is more interesting still, besides the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information and have become 'masters of the planet' 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:
In the following video at the 48:24 mark, Anton 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 who 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–
“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.
bornagain77_{March 26, 2018
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If the materialists were to find any other kind of highly complex, functional, code-driven mechanism, they would not hesitate to infer that the most likely explanation was some form of intelligent being created it. Materialists consider biological organisms to be pretty much "the same as" any other kind of matter in the world - just collections of various forms of matter. This raises the question: why are materialists so insistent that the highly complex, functional, code-driven mechanisms we find in biological organisms **are not** best explained by an intelligent being creating them? What's so special about biological organisms? To a materialist, they're just machines. Highly complex, functional machines. In every other case, they would think an intelligent designer would be the best explanation and wouldn't even consider the idea that such a machine simply put itself together from scratch. Can you imagine a materialist claiming that a 747 or a battleship put itself together from scratch without the aid of an intelligent designer? It would be enormously ludicrous, foolish beyond belief. Why the complete turnabout when it comes to biological machines, which are far, far more complex and highly functional than any machine humans ever built? What bizarre faith commitment has them treating biological machines so different from any other kind of machine, when to them there is no real difference in principle?William J Murray_{March 26, 2018
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Seversky @31 said:
I don’t accept the notion that information, as commonly understood, is a property of the genome or an organism or a piece of rock. In my view, it is a property of the modeling languages and simulations we use to describe and explain what we observe but to attribute it to what is being observed is to confuse the map with the territory, the model with what is being modeled. It is misleading.
I don't accept that the notion of "random mutation" or "naturalism" as commonly understood, is a property of the genome or an organism or a piece of rock. In my view it is a property of the modeling languages and simulations we use to describe and explain what we observe but to attribute it to what is being observed is to confuse the map with the territory, the model with what is being modeled. It is misleading. You're being hypocritical here, saying that your preferred map (naturalism-based) is the territory, while another (design-based) only represents it.
The existence of random mutations does not disprove ID, it makes evolution possible.
Or, designed systems and controls which account for and use, among other things, random mutations, makes evolution possible. JDK @35 said:
My point in this thread, however, is not to get involved (once again) in discussing these specifics, but to make the point that I think everyone brings some degree of faith-based metaphysical commitments to the table that can’t be proven.
All arguments and systems of evidence begin, ultimately, with faith-based commitments. The question is, where do those axiomatic assumptions lead? Do they lead to good conclusions and good descriptions? Or do they force you to believe and say self-contradictory and unsupportable things and deny the obvious? Do your faith-based assumptions force you to deny your free will, abandon the concept of truth, utter hypocritical statements,and willfully blind yourself to evidence and potential explanations? Do they make you say things like "Even if we found a fully working, mechanized timepiece in existence dating back to the beginning of the universe with no other evidence whatsoever around, we'd have NO EVIDENCE of intelligent design at the beginning of the universe?" To say that "there no evidence of a designer" around at the time of the origin of a highly complex, functional, code-driven mechanism is beyond absurd. You would not say that if we were talking about anything other than biological organisms, I don't think. Would you?William J Murray_{March 26, 2018
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Seversky: We observe mutations in the genome which are random with respect to the fitness of the organism, as far as we can tell. Seversky: Need I provide a list of all the medical, scientific and technological advances that we all take for granted but which are founded on a naturalistic model of the world? --> https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/philosopher-on-what-is-wrong-with-naturalism/ groovamos: Naturalistic science has not demonstrated absolute statistical independence among so-called random mutations which give rise to novel form or function, and likely will never devise a way to do so. The best that science can do here is to presume the ‘null hypothesis’ that such are presumed random until proven otherwise. This relegates Darwinian theory to having hypothetical basis instead of being a profound “advance”. (same link) Seversky: (crickets) groovamos: BTW Seversky I notice that you didn’t want to touch my example of so-called random mutations which have never been proved to have stochastic basis. Seversky: (crickets)groovamos_{March 25, 2018
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jdk at 34 you state:
to BA77 at 32, and others. I am not an “atheist materialistic”, FWIW. I don’t think you folk’s arguments about the flaws of materialism in terms of identity, rationality, choice, etc. are valid, but that’s not my personal position.
And herein lies the problem jdk. You tell me that you are a real person, and that your personal subjective opinions are valid for me to personally accept without question, but exactly how am I to personally know, with complete absolute 100% certainty, that you are not just a zombie going through the motions of personhood? i.e. How do I know for certain that you are really having a personal subjective experience?,, Prove it to me!
Philosophical Zombies - cartoon http://existentialcomics.com/comic/11 David Chalmers on Consciousness (Descartes, Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo
You see jdk, I know for 100% fact that I really do exist, but, (especially if I personally refuse to ever accept it), there is no way for you ever to prove to me personally that you really exist as a real person and that you are not just a 'philosophical zombie' going through the motions of being a real person! Such as it is with the atheist's refusal to ever accept any evidence for the personhood of God. As Alvin Plantinga pointed out years ago in "God and Other Minds", "the evidence for God is just as good as the evidence for other minds; and conversely, if there isn’t any evidence for God, then there is also no evidence that other minds exist,,,"
Another interesting argument comes from the leading philosopher and Christian, Alvin Plantinga—he asked, what evidence does anyone have for the existence of other people’s minds? He argued cogently that the evidence for God is just as good as the evidence for other minds; and conversely, if there isn’t any evidence for God, then there is also no evidence that other minds exist—see God and Other Minds, Cornell University Press, repr. 1990. http://creation.com/atheism-is-more-rational
So jdk, since you doubt God is a real person, prove to me that you really exist as a real person and that you are not just a zombie pretending to be a person! :) I await your attempt to prove to me personally that you really exist as a real person with popcorn: :) This will be fun! https://media1.tenor.com/images/54451401d52c0dd2fe9ee5752857d53c/tenor.gif?itemid=3579864 Of related note: I don't think Plantinga gets near enough credit for his body of work in Philosophy over his lifetime:
Baylor ISR- Alvin Plantinga Interview: (2 Dozen or So Arguments) - (Nov. 7, 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxtyY2bp78E Table Of Contents for TWO DOZEN (OR SO) ARGUMENTS FOR GOD: THE PLANTINGA PROJECT (Summer 2017) I. Half a Dozen (or so) ontological (or metaphysical) arguments (A) The Argument from Intentionality (or Aboutness) • Lorraine Keller, Niagara University • "Propositions Supernaturalized" (B) The Argument from Collections • Chris Menzel, Texas A&M • "The Argument from Collections" (C) The Argument from (Natural) Numbers • Tyron Goldshmidt, Wake Forest • "The Argument from (Natural) Numbers" (D) The Argument From Counterfactuals • Alex Pruss, Baylor University • "Counterfactuals, Vagueness and God" (E) The Argument from Physical Constants • Robin Collins, Messiah College • "The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability" (F) The Naive Teleological Argument • C. Stephen Evans, Baylor University • "An Argument from Design for Ordinary People" (H) The Ontological Argument • Elizabeth Burns, Heythrop College • "Patching Planting’s Ontological Argument by Making the Murdoch Move" (I) Why is there anything at all? • Josh Rasmussen, Azusa Pacific; and Christopher Gregory Weaver, Rutgers University • "Why is There Anything?" II. Half a dozen Epistemological Arguments (J) The argument from positive epistemic status • Justin Barrett, Fuller Seminary • "Evolutionary Psychology and the Argument from Positive Epistemic Status" (K) The Argument from the confluence of proper function and reliability • Alex Arnold, The John Templeton Foundation • "Is God the Designer of our Cognitive Faculties? Evaluating Plantinga’s Argument" (L) The Argument from Simplicity and (M) The Argument from Induction • Bradly Monton, Independent Scholar • "Atheistic Induction by Boltzmann Brains" (N) The Putnamian Argument (the Argument from the Rejection of Global Skepticism)[also, (O) The Argument from Reference and (K) The Argument from the Confluence of Proper Function and Reliability] • Even Fales, University of Iowa • "Putnam's Semantic Skepticism and the Epistemic Melt-Down of Naturalism: How Defeat of Putnam's Puzzle Provides a Defeater for Plantinga's Self-Defeat Argument Against Naturalism" (N) The Putnamian Argument, (O) The Argument from Reference, and (P) The Kripke-Wittgenstein Argument from Plus and Quus • Dan Bonevac, University of Texas • "Arguments from Knowledge, Reference, and Content" (Q) The General Argument from Intuition. • Rob Koons, University of Texas at Austin • "The General Argument from Intuition" III. Moral arguments (R) Moral Arguments (actually R1 to Rn) • David Baggett, Liberty University • "An Abductive Moral Argument for God" (R*) The argument from evil. • Hud Hudson, Western Washington University • "Felix Culpa!" IV. Other Arguments (S) The Argument from Colors and Flavors • Richard Swinburne, Oxford University • "The Argument from Consciousness" (T) The Argument from Love and (Y) The Argument from the Meaning of Life • Jerry Walls, Houston Baptist University • "The God of Love and the Meaning of Life" (U) The Mozart Argument and (V) The Argument from Play and Enjoyment • Philip Tallon, Houston Baptist University • "The Theistic Argument from Beauty and Play" (W) Arguments from providence and from miracles • Tim McGrew, Western Michigan University • "Of Miracles: The State of the Art and the Uses of History" (X) C.S. Lewis's Argument from Nostalgia • Todd Buras, Baylor University and Mike Cantrell • "A New Argument from Desire" (Z) The Argument from (A) to (Y) • Ted Poston, University of South Alabama • "The Argument from So Many Arguments" V. "Or so": Three More Arguments The Kalam Cosmological Argument • William Lane Craig, Houston Baptist University • "The Kalam Cosmological Argument" The Argument from Possibility • Brian Leftow, Oxford University • "The Argument from Possibility" The Argument from the Incompleteness of Nature • Bruce Gordon, Houston Baptist University • "The Necessity of Sufficiency: The Argument from the Incompleteness of Nature" https://global.oup.com/academic/product/two-dozen-or-so-arguments-for-god-9780190842215?cc=us&lang=en&
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jdk: I don’t think you folk’s arguments about the flaws of materialism in terms of identity, rationality, choice, etc. are valid.
But you are unable to back up your opinion with reason and support, which is rather pathetic. For the record: I am not impressed.Origenes_{March 25, 2018
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Seversky @ 31: The LTEE only demonstrates loss of function that is locally advantageous but generally disastrous (as KF described @ 14). Larger, more fragile cell membranes allow for more surface area for nutrient absorption, loss of metabolic components for whatever they're not being force fed lead to more efficiency, overwound DNA leading to more mutations (replication failure) to beat the rest of the population to these broken "features" first... The aerobic citrate metabolization is just the breaking or disabling of a switch that disables the citrate metabolization (which already existed in wild E.Coli) in the presence of oxygen. The second part, citrate transport overproduction, is likely wasteful outside of bathing in a free ocean of citrate bestowed from a higher being. Lenski's bacteria are degenerate couch potatoes; "evolving" by losing their legs to better fit on the couch and one arm that would otherwise be permanently pinned to more freely reach the chip bag and controller with the other.LocalMinimum_{March 25, 2018
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to BA77 at 32, and others. I am not an "atheist materialistic", FWIW. I don't think you folk's arguments about the flaws of materialism in terms of identity, rationality, choice, etc. are valid, but that's not my personal position.jdk_{March 25, 2018
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Bornagain77: ... in the atheist’s materialistic world view “I” simply does not exist.
I fully agree. Moreover, the materialist believes that his thoughts and actions are steered by blind particles bumping into each other. Particles that have neither the materialist nor 'his' thoughts nor 'his' actions in mind. Think about it, blind particles 'decide' what one believes, what and how one thinks and how one acts .... It follows, as clear as day, that there is no reason whatsoever for the materialist, or anyone else, to take the materialist, his thoughts and/or his thoughts seriously. In the atheist’s materialistic world view there is no place for rationality.Origenes_{March 25, 2018
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Origenes as to:
jdk: I don’t think you can know that all those assumptions are true.
Exactly how is it ever possible for an atheist to ever establish anything as true? Note the first word in his sentence: "I". Everybody, including atheist, is dependent, ultimately, on the first person subjective experience of "I" in order to ever be able to differentiate whether something is true or not. Yet, in the atheist's materialistic world view "I" simply does not exist.
"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 8.) The argument from personal existence 1. If naturalism is true, I do not exist. 2. I do exist! 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. William Lane Craig - Is Metaphysical Naturalism Viable? - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzS_CQnmoLQ “I’m not arguing that consciousness is a reality beyond science or beyond the brain or that it floats free of the brain at death. I’m not making any spooky claims about its metaphysics. What I am saying, however, is that the self is an illusion. The sense of being an ego, an I, a thinker of thoughts in addition to the thoughts. An experiencer in addition to the experience. The sense that we all have of riding around inside our heads as a kind of a passenger in the vehicle of the body. That’s where most people start when they think about any of these questions. Most people don’t feel identical to their bodies. They feel like they have bodies. They feel like they’re inside the body. And most people feel like they’re inside their heads. Now that sense of being a subject, a locus of consciousness inside the head is an illusion. It makes no neuro-anatomical sense.” Sam Harris: The Self is an Illusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0 Eagleton on Baggini on free will Excerpt: "What you’re doing is simply instantiating a self: the program run by your neurons which you feel is “you.”" Jerry Coyne https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/eagleton-on-baggini-on-free-will/ Nature, as Defined Today, Cannot Be All There Is - Denyse O'Leary - October 17, 2017 Excerpt: Thus, when we hear that evolution bred a sense of reality out of us (NPR), our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions (Quanta), there is no “I” in “me,” (Sam Harris), our experiences of being and having a body are “‘controlled hallucinations’ of a very distinctive kind” (Aeon),,,, Jim Carrey summed it up best in a recent interview: “There is no me, there’s just things happening” ,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/10/nature-as-defined-today-cannot-be-all-there-is/ "There is no self in, around, or as part of anyone’s body. There can’t be. So there really isn’t any enduring self that ever could wake up morning after morning worrying about why it should bother getting out of bed. The self is just another illusion, like the illusion that thought is about stuff or that we carry around plans and purposes that give meaning to what our body does. Every morning’s introspectively fantasized self is a new one, remarkably similar to the one that consciousness ceased fantasizing when we fell sleep sometime the night before. Whatever purpose yesterday’s self thought it contrived to set the alarm last night, today’s newly fictionalized self is not identical to yesterday’s. It’s on its own, having to deal with the whole problem of why to bother getting out of bed all over again.,,, - A.Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, ch.10 At the 23:33 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins agrees with materialistic philosophers who say that: "consciousness is an illusion" A few minutes later Rowan Williams asks Dawkins ”If consciousness is an illusion…what isn’t?”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWN4cfh1Fac&t=22m57s “(Daniel) Dennett concludes, ‘nobody is conscious … we are all zombies’.” J.W. SCHOOLER & C.A. SCHREIBER - Experience, Meta-consciousness, and the Paradox of Introspection - 2004 https://www.scribd.com/document/183053947/Experience-Meta-consciousness-and-the-Paradox-of-Introspection Could Consciousness be an Illusion? June 30, 2014 - Excerpt: "I recently participated in a conference which was unusual for a couple of reasons. Firstly it was held in a sailing boat in the Arctic. Secondly the consensus view of the conference was that consciousness is an illusion. This view, ‘illusionism’, is about as far removed from my own perspective in philosophy of mind as it is possible to get. Me the panpsychist, Martine Nida-Rümelin the substance dualist, and David Chalmers who splits his opinion between these two views, formed the official on board opposition to the hard-core reductionist majority. Somehow we managed to avoid being made to walk the plank.",, Illusionism is even less plausible than solipsism: the view that my conscious mind is the only thing that exists.,,, http://conscienceandconsciousness.com/2014/06/30/could-consciousness-be-an-illusion/
Since the fact that we really do exist as real persons is the most sure thing we can ever know about reality, (in fact as was already pointed out, since everything filters through the first person subjective experience of "I" in order to determine whether something is true or not), then the atheist, in his denial of "I", forsakes his ability to differentiate what is true from what is false. As well as forsaking his ability to ever dictate to other people what is true. As Ross Douthat stated:
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. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_r=0
Perhaps the fact that we really exist as real persons is the most sure thing we can know about reality, and yet atheist deny this most sure thing we can know about reality, is exactly why God responded to Moses as such:
Exodus 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
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