ID Foundations, 18 (video): Dr Stephen Meyer of Discovery Institute presents the case for Intelligent Design (with particular reference to OoL)

_{kairosfocus

April 21, 2013

Darwinism, Design inference, ID Foundations, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, science education, specified complexity, worldview}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

Here, HT WK:

[youtube NbluTDb1Nfs]

Take an hour and a half to learn what ID is about (yes, what it is really about [and cf. here at UD for correctives to common strawman distortions . . . ]), with particular focus on the origin of cell based life [OoL], through watching a public presentation in the UK from a leading ID thinker, Stephen Meyer.

Notice the distinction he underscores relative to the common demonising rhetorical projection of “Right-wing Fundamentalist theocratic agendas” etc.

I clip from the video:

Let me also draw in the design inference explanatory filter considered on a per aspect basis, as was presented in the very first post in the ID Foundations series:

The per aspect explanatory filter that shows how design may be inferred on empirically tested, reliable sign

(NB: Observe Meyer here, on ID’s scientific bona fides.)

It is probably also helpful to add the following, from a reply by Meyer to a hostile review of his book, Signature in the Cell. (It seems that things have got worse over the past few years, we used to have no-views — hostile pretended “reviews” of books not read — now we have hostile no-views of books not yet published.)

Clipping:

The central argument of my book is that intelligent design—the activity of a conscious and rational deliberative agent—best explains the origin of the information necessary to produce the first living cell. I argue this because of two things that we know from our uniform and repeated experience, which following Charles Darwin I take to be the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past. First, intelligent agents have demonstrated the capacity to produce large amounts of functionally specified information (especially in a digital form). [–> Notice the usage] Second, no undirected chemical process has demonstrated this power. Hence, intelligent design provides the best—most causally adequate—explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life from simpler non-living chemicals. In other words, intelligent design is the only explanation that cites a cause known to have the capacity to produce the key effect in question . . . . In order to [[scientifically refute this inductive conclusion] Falk would need to show that some undirected material cause has [[empirically] demonstrated the power to produce functional biological information apart from the guidance or activity a designing mind. Neither Falk [[the hostile reviewer], nor anyone working in origin-of-life biology, has succeeded in doing this . . .

Food for thought.

Foundational. END

Comments

The Discovery Institute doesn't publish the names of its supposed 'next generation' scholars, i.e. its summer program students. It tells students, on the first night, to intentionally hide their identities, to use pseudonyms, to pretend that they are someone else if they want to be taken seriously. Stephen C. Meyer is part of this planned trickery. PeterJ might have graduated from kindergarten but most likely didn't finish high school if one measures the relevance of his posts. Yet he has the nerve to yell against accredited scholars who reject IDT. Why? Simply because they reject IDT and because PeterJ has gullibly become an IDist. This is one of the most sickening examples at Uncommon Descent - no willingness to deal with arguments and only a demonstrated desire to attack persons. If IDists think that most scholars actually assess themselves according to IDist ideology, they are only fooling themselves. So I'm a 'bad commenter' on the 'scale' of PeterJ. So what? That's like telling me that my orange juice is sour according to someone who's never seen or tasted an orange. Not a credible judge. And that doesn't 'take some doing,' it's just a fact.Gregory_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
12:00 PM
12
12
00
PM
PDT}

Nick @40,
"This passage from Meyer was brought up as a counterargument:"
It was brought up as a counterargument to Falk's claim that his carefully read and reread, annotated, dog-eared, and nearly totally worn-out copy of SITC made no claim that invoking evolutionary processes in order to account for the information content in the first living cell wouldn't be appropriate to the context of the debate. It's something that should be obvious -- one cannot invoke properties of biological systems to account for the origin such a system. You were the one to bring Falk's comments into the discussion. Here's the relevant snippet from Falk's article:
"Since I had read the book very carefully, and have gone over it many times since, I was amazed that I could have missed this stipulation."
It shouldn't have needed stipulation. One must account for the origin of a thing without invoking the thing itself. But it was given anyway in a qualification about the conservation of information. This call for stipulation was pedantry meant to provide a technicality defense of Venema's lack of focus about the central argument of the book: the origin of the information content required for the first living thing.
"But it’s from almost the end of the book!"
I estimate it at 57.3%. However Meyer makes it clear at the beginning of the book exactly what he's arguing.
"[SITC] tells about the mystery that has surrounded the discovery of the digital code in DNA and how that discovery has confounded repeated attempts to explain the origin of the first life on earth. Throughout the book I will call this mystery “the DNA enigma.” ... A brief word about the organization of the book: in Chapters 1 and 2 I define the scientific and philosophical issues at stake in the DNA enigma and give some historical background about the larger origin-of-life debate. In Chapters 3, 4, and 5 I describe the mystery surrounding DNA in more detail in order to establish what it is that any theory of the origin of life must explain. After a short interlude in Chapters 6 and 7 in which I examine what scientists in the past have thought about biological origins and how scientists currently investigate these questions, I examine (in Chapters 8 through 14) the competing explanations for the origin of biological information. Then, in Chapters 15 and 16, I present a positive case for intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life. Finally, in Chapters 17 through 20, I defend the theory of intelligent design against various popular objections to it. In the Epilogue, I show that intelligent design offers a fruitful approach to future scientific research. Not only does it illuminate some very recent and surprising discoveries in genomics, but it also suggests productive new lines of scientific investigation for many subdisciplines of biology. Meyer, Stephen C. (2009-06-06). Signature in the Cell (Kindle Locations 211-221). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. "
The book's thesis is stated up front and without equivocation.
"After hundreds of pages of Meyer arguing that he has a POSITIVE argument for intelligence being the cause of the OOL, namely that intelligence is the unique and only source of information, and that the inference to intelligent design is thus just an application of uniformitarian reasoning, he slips this in late in the game, and then ignores it for the rest of his argument and for basically all of the “Signature in Cell” promotional material, essays, etc., until the critics pointed out the huge exception to the “information only comes from intelligence” and “conservation of information” claims."
It shouldn't even need to be pointed out that invoking the properties of biological systems to account for the origin of biological systems is a logical no-no. It's beyond me why this should need stating in the first place, much less repeating.
"I’m just interested in what Meyer will do with the Cambrian Explosion, where he probably will want to make the same argument — new information can only come from intelligence — but he will have no way at all to avoid dealing with the massive amount of evidence that regular natural processes can and have increased information in genomes. But, avoid it he will, or he will have to give up the “conservation of information” argument, and admit that information, at least sometimes, has nonintelligent sources."
Yes, we're all very eager to read Darwin's Doubt. I'll point out that counting biological systems as "natural processes" is the same sort of question begging that's been advanced as an "argument" against SITC, as pointed out previously.Chance Ratcliff_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
11:54 AM
11
11
54
AM
PDT}

Gregory "PeterJ couldn’t navigate himself out of a kleenex box." :) Gregory "I went to the Discovery Institute’s Summer Program" So you keep telling us, however, you've still to actually prove it? Gregory, out of everyone who has contributed to this site, in the 5 years or so that I have been viewing it, you are probably the worst commenter I have come across. And that takes some doing.PeterJ_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
11:39 AM
11
11
39
AM
PDT}

PeterJ couldn't navigate himself out of a kleenex box. He's a perfect representative of the lack of education of most IDists. Ad hom as if that is a substitute for wisdom. And if not, then he'll appeal to his local evangelical church for moral superiority. Help Stephen C. Meyer! I went to the Discovery Institute's Summer Program, where it claims to be teaching the next generation to become 'IDists' and was highly disappointed. Meyer was there and couldn't answer simple questions from the 'next generation'. Why should young people compromise 'natural science' with IDist ideology? ID leaders are far, far weaker and more insignificant (when you meet them in person and speak to them) than you folks will even consider is possible. That is because many people here *want* to be part of an American movement. Elevate them! PeterJ simply must be a giant warrior, an MMA fighter, a world-renowned engineer, a poet of the highest degree, Nobel winner...why, because anyone who subscribes to 'Intelligent Design Theory' simply becomes that by belief! "Pass the chips, PeterJ" is more realistic. In reality, PeterJ's intellectual naptime dominates him and he, like most IDists, is too afraid to show his true face in public. But he'll blame this on 'Darwinists' and try to escape lack of courage on someone else. Anyone else is guilty but himself. PeterJ, the self-expelled non-scholar of 'Intelligent Design,' a yawning echo of meaninglessness.Gregory_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
10:56 AM
10
10
56
AM
PDT}

Alan:
Did Meyer not write what Nick quotes?
Please do try to think through this. I never said Nick didn't quote Meyer. I said he misrepresented Meyer. Look at Nick's interpretation of what Meyer said. Then read my response to Nick's statement. Also, if you have read Signature in the Cell, you understand that Nick's statement, as well as your "Meyer doesn't have a problem with evolution" silliness, is a misrepresentation of Meyer's position. You don't gain anything by standing with Nick on this one. Nick was either sloppily or purposely misrepresenting. There is no ground to stand on. Of course it is often much easier to misrepresent someone like Meyer rather than address the real issues he raises.Eric Anderson_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
10:45 AM
10
10
45
AM
PDT}

KF, be reasonable, evolution diddit! ????Andre_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
10:33 AM
10
10
33
AM
PDT}

Just a note, that blind chance and mechanical necessity mean what "blind" normally means in that sort of context, not intelligently directed. The "millionth time" rhetoric is over the top nonsense, as I am not doing anything unusual or hard to understand. And no I am not going to be pulled into a silly weeks long debate over what terms mean, as was done with "arbitrary." And, the point is that you start in a pond with what can get in it or the like, and from the chemistry and physics -- known to be based on random chance [cf. Brownian motion, what temperature and heat are about etc] and mechanical forces, you need to plausibly come up with an encapsulated, gated, metabolising automaton with code based self replication. The distractive rhetoric disguises the fact that there is simply no empirically warranted chance and necessity account of such. We do know that FSCO/I which is abundantly manifest in DNA, RNA and proteins etc, as well as the organised nanomachines, is routinely produced by one observed adequate source, design. Like onto it, we know that he search challenge in configuration spaces will be so overwhelming that it is not plausible for the entities to come about by undirected chance and necessity. Design is at the table from OOL as of right, not necessity, and it is the best, empirically warranted explanation for the FSCO/I in life forms. That this is so can be easily seen from how the objections pivot on obfuscations and selectively hyperskeptical objections, appeals to authority etc, rather than simply showing how it happened per empirical warrant on chance and necessity. KFkairosfocus_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
10:17 AM
10
10
17
AM
PDT}

Alan Fox:
Did Meyer not write what Nick quotes?
Nick definitely doesn't understand any of it. So that would be an issue.Joe_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
09:15 AM
9
09
15
AM
PDT}

MrMosis @61 You have just encountered Gregory at his best. Many of his posts are simply meaningless, especially when he harps on about big ID little id. A quick skim of his posts is really all I would recommend. In fact if you click on his name you will be taken to his blog where you will soon find that no one really bothers to dialogue with him there either. Take it as a lesson learned :)PeterJ_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
08:59 AM
8
08
59
AM
PDT}

Nick, re #37:
Me: I would love to see one particle of hard evidence that your so-called “normal processes” have ever produced one genuinely new gene (as opposed to a homolog generated by one or two point mutations), and more to the point, have ever produced a single novel biological body plan, organ, organ system, or process (such as blood clotting, sexual reproduction, or insect metamorphosis). You: Homologs aren’t new genes? You realize, don’t you, that your various systems — blood-clotting, flagellum, immune system, etc., are made up of parts which mostly or entirely consist of homologs to other parts within the system or with other systems of different functions?
Nice try, Nick. The smallest number of protein coding genes necessary for a living cell is currently figured to be approximately 250. The human genome project has calculated that there are approximately 20,000 protein coding genes in our genomes. Are you trying to tell us that those 20,000 human genes are all homologs of the 250 or so that were present in the first life form from which all life is supposed to have evolved by Darwinian processes? And this doesn't even address the thousands of other examples in non-mammalian life forms. Give me a break! You know very well that there are thousands and thousands of unique genes/proteins whose first appearance in living organisms were not homologs of anything. In addition, there have been many examples found of genes in various organisms that are not homologous to any other genes in any other organisms. I repeat, show me one particle of hard evidence that your so-called “normal processes” have ever produced one genuinely new gene. It ain't there, Nick. The whole theory is based on speculation and wishful thinking.Bruce David_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
08:57 AM
8
08
57
AM
PDT}

Way to fall prey to Matzke’s deceptive misrepresentation of Meyer’s position.
Did Meyer not write what Nick quotes?Alan Fox_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
08:21 AM
8
08
21
AM
PDT}

Thus the obvious question from logic 101 pops out, "How can a random cause give rise to a conscious effect that is greater than the cause?" i.e. "Why in blue blazes should conscious observation put a freeze on entropic decay, unless consciousness was/is more foundational to reality than entropy is?" Moreover, if randomness is the cause of our cognitive faculties, then epistemological failure results. (Plantinga, evolutionary argument against naturalism; Boltzmann's Brain) In fact this undirected entropic randomness of the universe, which is suppose to be the primary source of undirected creativity for Darwinian evolution, is in fact the primary reason why out temporal bodies grow old and die in this universe:
Genetic Entropy and The Mystery Of the Genome – Dr. John Sanford – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwCu4rh7kUk Notes from Dr. John Sanford’s preceding video: *3 new mutations every time a cell divides in your body * Average cell of 15 year old has up to 6000 mutations *Average cell of 60 year old has 40,000 mutations Reproductive cells are ‘designed’ so that, early on in development, they are ‘set aside’ and thus they do not accumulate mutations as the rest of the cells of our bodies do. Regardless of this protective barrier against the accumulation of slightly detrimental mutations still we find that,,, *60-175 mutations are passed on to each new generation.
This following video brings the point personally home to each of and everyone of us about the very destructive effects of entropy on our material bodies as we go through temporal time:
Aging Process – 80 years in 40 seconds – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSdxYmGro_Y
Moreover, as if the preceding were not enough to give a determined atheist a migraine headache to beat all migraine headaches, it is now found that the greatest source of entropy in the universe is found at Blackholes:
Entropy of the Universe – Hugh Ross – May 2010 Excerpt: Egan and Lineweaver found that supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to the observable universe’s entropy. They showed that these supermassive black holes contribute about 30 times more entropy than what the previous research teams estimated. http://www.reasons.org/entropy-universe Roger Penrose – How Special Was The Big Bang? “But why was the big bang so precisely organized, whereas the big crunch (or the singularities in black holes) would be expected to be totally chaotic? It would appear that this question can be phrased in terms of the behaviour of the WEYL part of the space-time curvature at space-time singularities. What we appear to find is that there is a constraint WEYL = 0 (or something very like this) at initial space-time singularities-but not at final singularities-and this seems to be what confines the Creator’s choice to this very tiny region of phase space.”
Moreover,,
Scientists gear up to take a picture of a black hole - January 2012 Excerpt: "Swirling around the black hole like water circling the drain in a bathtub, the matter compresses and the resulting friction turns it into plasma heated to a billion degrees or more, causing it to 'glow' – and radiate energy that we can detect here on Earth." http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-scientists-gear-picture-black-hole.html
But, for those of us who are of spiritual persuasion, who have an eye on our eternal destinies, there is something very disturbing to contemplate about these blackholes which are suppose to be ultimate source of 'random' creativity in the atheistic worldview: i.e. as with the scientifically verified tunnel for any hypothetical observer accelerating to the 'eternal' speed of light in special relativity,,,
Traveling At The Speed Of Light - Optical Effects - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5733303/
,, we also have scientific confirmation of extreme ‘tunnel curvature’, within space-time, for any hypothetical observer falling to an eternal ‘event horizon’ at black holes;
Space-Time of a Black hole http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0VOn9r4dq8
Needless to say, these two very different 'eternalities' found within space time, one being very ordered and the other being very chaotic, should be very disturbing for those of us who hold, like I, that our souls live past the deaths of our temporal bodies. Verse and music:
Revelation 20:1 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. Live - I Alone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNrQOUtXYOo
bornagain77_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
08:03 AM
8
08
03
AM
PDT}

Mr. Matzke and Mr. Fox, The presupposition of the atheistic/materialistic worldview, which you guys fanatically defend as if your life depended on it, is that we live in a 'naturalistic' world but, much contrary to this atheistic presupposition of yours, the best of our cutting edge modern science shows that we actually do live in a Theistic universe.
The 'Top Down' Theistic Structure Of The Universe and Of The Human Body https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NhA4hiQnYiyCTiqG5GelcSJjy69e1DT3OHpqlx6rACs/edit "It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality" - Eugene Wigner - (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 - received Nobel Prize in 1963 for 'Quantum Symmetries' Four intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness precedes material reality (Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries, Wheeler’s Delayed Choice, Leggett’s Inequalities, Quantum Zeno effect): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G_Fi50ljF5w_XyJHfmSIZsOcPFhgoAZ3PRc_ktY8cFo/edit The Galileo Affair and "life' as the true "Center of the Universe" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BHAcvrc913SgnPcDohwkPnN4kMJ9EDX-JJSkjc4AXmA/edit
Thus the question of whether or not 'natural' processes generated life on earth is already undercut by out best understanding of reality from physics!
"Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting." -- Ernest Rutherford
Now the only question that remains, since the foundation of reality is shown to be Theistic, is did God create life gradually, in a 'bottom up' fashion, or did God create life in more or less an abrupt fashion, i.e. 'after their kinds'. Finding out whether it was in a bottom up or top down fashion hinges on whether or not the random variable postulate you guys appeal to in your materialistic worldview can create functional information. But when one traces out the source for randomness in the universe one finds out some very interesting things. For instance, if one wants to build a better random number generator for a computer program then a better source of entropy is required to be found to drive the increased randomness:
Cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator Excerpt: From an information theoretic point of view, the amount of randomness, the entropy that can be generated is equal to the entropy provided by the system. But sometimes, in practical situations, more random numbers are needed than there is entropy available. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographically_secure_pseudorandom_number_generator Thermodynamics – 3.1 Entropy Excerpt: Entropy – A measure of the amount of randomness or disorder in a system. http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/chem30_05/1_energy/energy3_1.htm
Yet entropy is known to always be destructive to information:
“Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more.” Gilbert Newton Lewis – Eminent Chemist
In fact so tight is the relationship between entropy and information that,,
“Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology.” Charles J. Smith – Biosystems, Vol.1, p259. “Is there a real connection between entropy in physics and the entropy of information? ….The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental…” Siegfried, Dallas Morning News, 5/14/90, [Quotes Robert W. Lucky, Ex. Director of Research, AT&T, Bell Laboratories & John A. Wheeler, of Princeton & Univ. of TX, Austin]
And this relationship has finally been demonstrated empirically,,
Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
Thus, apparently in the complete loss of reason that accompanies atheism, we have atheists appealing to randomness as a designer substitute when in fact randomness is now shown to be the very antithesis, i.e. consistently destructive, of information generation! As a sidelight to this, it is interesting to note Planck's puzzlement over Boltzmann's lack of a proposal to measure the constant for randomness in the universe:
The Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann first linked entropy and probability in 1877. However, the equation as shown, involving a specific constant, was first written down by Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics in 1900. In his 1918 Nobel Prize lecture, Planck said: "This constant is often referred to as Boltzmann's constant, although, to my knowledge, Boltzmann himself never introduced it – a peculiar state of affairs, which can be explained by the fact that Boltzmann, as appears from his occasional utterances, never gave thought to the possibility of carrying out an exact measurement of the constant. Nothing can better illustrate the positive and hectic pace of progress which the art of experimenters has made over the past twenty years, than the fact that since that time, not only one, but a great number of methods have been discovered for measuring the mass of a molecule with practically the same accuracy as that attained for a planet. http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/B/Boltzmann_equation.html
The reason Boltzmann "never gave thought to the possibility of carrying out an exact measurement of the constant" is because it turns out that Boltzmann was an atheist and thus, for him, he thought he had already arrived at the ultimate mathematical description of reality because in an atheistic worldview how can randomness possibly be bounded by a constant? Only in a theistic worldview, which Planck possessed, is it presupposed that randomness would be bounded by a constant.
“Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.” John C. Lennox
Moreover, Entropy is, by a wide margin, the most finely tuned of initial conditions of the Big Bang:
The Physics of the Small and Large: What is the Bridge Between Them? Roger Penrose Excerpt: “The time-asymmetry is fundamentally connected to with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: indeed, the extraordinarily special nature (to a greater precision than about 1 in 10^10^123, in terms of phase-space volume) can be identified as the “source” of the Second Law (Entropy).” How special was the big bang? – Roger Penrose Excerpt: This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123. (from the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pp 339-345 – 1989)
Moreover, as if the preceding was not bad enough for atheists, it is now found that conscious observation can freeze 'random' entropic decay:
Quantum Zeno effect Excerpt: The quantum Zeno effect is,,, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect
bornagain77_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
08:02 AM
8
08
02
AM
PDT}

Gregory @49 I just read your entire post and all I got out of it was the realization that there is nothing to get out of it. On what philosophical grounds are you enabled to be critical of someone else's philosophical approach? Or is your post about mere politics and your personal preferences within its domain?MrMosis_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
07:33 AM
7
07
33
AM
PDT}

Alan Fox @57:
So Meyer is no longer disputing evolutionary theory but directing his arguments solely at the origin of life on Earth. I guess we may as well all go home!
Way to fall prey to Matzke's deceptive misrepresentation of Meyer's position. You should know by now that if you take Nick's statements as gospel you will, more often than not, be misled. And if you've read Meyer's book yourself, then you are but joining in the misrepresentation. Congratulations.Eric Anderson_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
07:31 AM
7
07
31
AM
PDT}

Nick:
. . . blood-clotting, flagellum, immune system, etc., are made up of parts which mostly or entirely consist of homologs to other parts within the system or with other systems of different functions?
First of all, many of your so-called homologs are not as similar as often claimed (we looked at your assertions regarding the flagellum homologs at one point). Second, you know that similarity does not necessarily indicate provenance. Third, you have not provided any reason to believe that a new system could be built from homolog genes in the timeframes available. Fourth, getting the right protein product from a gene is only the first part. It doesn't matter if you have a whole suite of identical genes (never mind homologs), they don't just come together automatically to form something like a flagellum. There is a whole higher-order layer of information that uses the protein products to build a functional system. There is zero evidence that all this can be produced by purely natural processes. Nick @40: You are misrepresenting Meyer's position. All he has said is that he was focusing on OOL and not on subsequent infusions of information. He has never said that he thinks all sorts of complex specified information can arise through purely natural processes once a simple self-replicator comes along. So you are -- purposely I fear -- misrepresenting his position. In addition,
. . . but [Meyer] will have no way at all to avoid dealing with the massive amount of evidence that regular natural processes can and have increased information in genomes.
That is just nonsense and you know it. Most of the time you at least throw in a literature bluff to act as smoke and mirrors for a while, but in this case you don't even offer a literature bluff. C'mon, can't you at least do a quick PubMed search for "genome" and "information" and throw a couple of totally irrelevant papers our way? :) Contrary to your bald assertion, there is not a massive amount of evidence that regular natural processes can and have increased information in genomes in any meaningful way. Beyond a couple of point mutations here and there at Behe's edge of evolution, there is zero credible evidence that huge amounts of information can be created through natural processes. Your assertion is simply so far out of line with the empirical evidence that it is slipping very close to the line of a lie.Eric Anderson_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
07:27 AM
7
07
27
AM
PDT}

Alan Fox:
So Meyer is no longer disputing evolutionary theory but directing his arguments solely at the origin of life on Earth.
1- There isn't any "evolutionary theory" 2- The origin of life on Earth directly reflects its evolution. Life = design then evolution occurs BY DESIGN. Again this has been pointed out to you many times. Your continued ignorance is very telling.Joe_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
05:10 AM
5
05
10
AM
PDT}

Nick Matske quoting Stephen Meyer
My statement of the law does not say anything about whether undirected natural processes could produce an increase in specified information starting with preexisting forms of life.
(Meyer, Signature, p. 293) So Meyer is no longer disputing evolutionary theory but directing his arguments solely at the origin of life on Earth. I guess we may as well all go home! :)Alan Fox_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:51 AM
4
04
51
AM
PDT}

Gregory:
Darwin didn’t refute ‘the design argument.’
True, but he did try to refute "the design argument". And perhaps it is mainstream science that is at issue as mainstream scientists seems to think that darwinism is a scientific theory.Joe_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:33 AM
4
04
33
AM
PDT}

And cubist is still clueless:
Real scientists can and do detect design. The standard methodology involves forming a hypothesis of how the maybe-Designed thingie was Manufactured, and then testing that hypothesis of Manufacture.
Reference please as your "say-so" means nothing. Ya see we have not tested Stonehenge's manufacture. We have not tested the Pyramids manufacture. Yet we have determined both were designed. Ya see cubist, REALITY dicates that we determine the "how" AFTER we have determined design.
ID (as she is spoke by Behe/Dembski/etc), contrariwise, directly and explicitly ignores the question of Manufacture.
No, IDists just realize that to get to the "how" we have to first determine design and then study it. IOW cubist is ignorant and proud of it.Joe_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:21 AM
4
04
21
AM
PDT}

timothya asks kairosfocus:
For the millionth time . . . what is it in random mutation and natural selection that he thinks requires a “blind search” of cosmological proportions?
It needs something other than just blindly stumbling around luckily hitting upon successes. And without what KF said, that is all you have. So perhaps you should stuff a sock in it and pipe down as your position doesn't have anything- no methodology and no supporting evidence.Joe_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:17 AM
4
04
17
AM
PDT}

Mr. Matzke, how does adding Natural Selection to the mix help? Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction ever be consistently ‘selected’ for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, color, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would, sooner or later, slow down successful reproduction. Any other attribute that Darwinists try to credit to selection, besides successful reproduction, is nothing more than pipe dreams masquerading as science. Dreams that have absolutely nothing at all to do with explaining the creation of any non-trivial functional information! https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/logical-inconsistency-of-darwinism/#comment-448416bornagain77_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:12 AM
4
04
12
AM
PDT}

Nick you claim:
but he will have no way at all to avoid dealing with the massive amount of evidence that regular natural processes can and have increased information in genomes.
And once again I ask you Nick, where is this massive amount of evidence? https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/id-foundations-18-video-dr-stephen-meyer-of-discovery-institute-presents-the-case-for-intelligent-design/#comment-452652bornagain77_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:06 AM
4
04
06
AM
PDT}

Nick Matzke:
I’m just interested in what Meyer will do with the Cambrian Explosion, where he probably will want to make the same argument — new information can only come from intelligence — but he will have no way at all to avoid dealing with the massive amount of evidence that regular natural processes can and have increased information in genomes.
Nick, you are being an ass. You have no idea if blind and undirected processes can increase information in genomes. You have no methodology for making any dtermination as to whether or not evolution proceeds via blind and undirected processes. Does it make you feel big to equivocate?Joe_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:04 AM
4
04
04
AM
PDT}

Nick Matzke:
Homologs aren’t new genes?
How do you know that they are homologs?
You realize, don’t you, that your various systems — blood-clotting, flagellum, immune system, etc., are made up of parts which mostly or entirely consist of homologs to other parts within the system or with other systems of different functions?
Again, how do you know that they are homologs? Does it make you feel good to just baldly declare that they are homologs? Also do the existence of homologs speak to a mechanism? IOW are blind and undirected chemical processes the only way a homolog can arise? If not then why are you even bringing it up?Joe_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
04:01 AM
4
04
01
AM
PDT}

Darwin didn't refute 'the design argument.' But that 'design argument' is worldview / theological apologetics, it is not 'natural science.' Most theists (certainly the vast majority of Abrahamic believers) accept one or another variety of 'the design argument.' But that is something very different from gulping down (all rights reserved) 'Intelligent Design Theory' as Meyer promotes it in the bowels of Seattle's politically-aligned Discovery Institute - Director as he is of the CSC. KF seems to think he's sipping champagne (e.g. Dembski - 'the Newton of information theory'), while serious philosophers of science realise that ID theory is more like rubbing alcohol made to soothe certain peoples' nerves after the 'creationism vs. evolutionism' debates of the 20th c. The next step beyond ID theory will be much more important than anything 'innovated' within the DI's group-managed 'scientific pseudo-revolution.' The most accurate term to describe KF's position is bitism - the exaggeration of 'bits' of information binding on the supposed ID demarcation of 'science,' with a cute 500-1000 bits 'theory' of 'Intelligence.' Everything can be reduced to 'bits'!! It's an itty-bitty theory :P Meyer sadly continues to labour under the illusion that 'Darwinism' is a scientific theory, as he says in the video. Dembski does too. Therefore they try in vain to refute a 'scientific theory' that is actually an ideology. When will they learn? Stephen C. Meyer is almost totally unprepared to deal with ideology. That's why many IDists have capitulated to 'naturalism' and likewise promote technological evolutionism, as a supposedly acceptable ideology of technological change-over-time. Dembski obviously, but Sewell, Gilder and many other IDist leaders display this unfortunate ideological bent. That is why most people understand that ID theory's OoL ideology is simply an attempt at neo-theologism, scientific theology or theistic science, which distorts what most people mean by 'natural science' and its necessary limitations. Thankfully most learned scholars in science, philosophy and theology/worldview discourse have seen through the DI's strategy.Gregory_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
03:56 AM
3
03
56
AM
PDT}

KF; I have not even started on functionally specific, we are just dealing with the basics in the hope that Nick might grasp it.Andre_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
01:21 AM
1
01
21
AM
PDT}

Andre: The pivotal thing is not just functional but functionally specific and complex, where 500 - 1,000 bits is a good threshold for "complex enough." Hence the attempt to pretend that this summary is radioactive. Sure, like green kryptonite. KF PS: Notice, chirping crickets on the direct challenge to provide actual, observational evidence regarding OOL and OO body plans. The morrow marks seven months of the unanswered free- kick- at- goal Darwinism evidential support essay challenge.kairosfocus_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
12:54 AM
12
12
54
AM
PDT}

I can't shut up now forgive me but this is important. So DNA has the following; 1. Functional Information 2. Encoder 3. Error correction 3. Decoder Nick can you please show me in a step by step fashion how such a system could randomly without any intelligence, and totally unguided build itself? Where did the functional information come from? What was first the encoder? The decoder? Error correction? Functional information? This is an irreducibly complex system any part removed and the system fails to function. Can you prove otherwise Nick?Andre_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
12:48 AM
12
12
48
AM
PDT}

Nick, Last one In case you still don't get it and I have to simplify it more for you; The specific arrangement of the information is the evidence that it comes from a mind. Example; Nick Matzke believes that information can magically poof into existence. The information in the example above has been arranged in a very specific way; I have encoded it using my mind and you can decode it and grasp it's meaning in a functional way! This Nick is functional information! NbtiMk ews Beas gredw TtreIfda ltndser cdgmalf jhiocre pg gfkhyt egfdsab. Now what we have above Nick is also information but I have to ask you is it functional? The information was encoded randomly can it be decoded? How will any decoder deal with random information? Can a system find a use or function for random encoded information if it’s not in its dictionary, library, or search space?Andre_{April 22, 2013
April
04
Apr
22
22
2013
12:22 AM
12
12
22
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply