Oxford mathematician John Lennox on whether a scientist can believe in God

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December 15, 2019

Intelligent Design

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From a review of John Lennox’s Can Science Explain Everything?:

He begins by asking the question whether or not a scientist can believe in God? Particularly he considers whether it is legitimate to do so in modern times, but in order to answer this question, he spends some energy considering the history of the great men and women of science. As he does so, he seeks to destroy two myths. The first is that religion depends on faith but science doesn’t (chapter 3). The second is that science depends on reason but Christianity doesn’t (chapter 4).
Dr. Lennox then considers whether the Bible can be taken seriously in a scientific age such as the present (chapter 5) before considering the seeming contradiction between science and miracles (chapter 6). The book then turns a corner in which Christianity is subjected to a proof text and clearly passes the test before the personal elements of Christianity are considered. The reader is then left with some insightful considerations regarding the truthfulness of Christianity as well as an appropriate plea to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Throughout this journey, the reader will be struck by some excellent arguments, illustrations and one-liners by Dr. Lennox. They will also, doubtless, be struck by his own personal life story and journey of faith and science.
Nathan Muse, “Book Review: Can Science Explain Everything? by John Lennox” at Apologetics 315

As noted earlier, the scientist who doesn’t believe in God faces much bigger problems: The fundamental one is whether anything is true in the sense that it needs to be true for science to be possible.

See also: Asked at The Scientist: “Does science describe experience or truth?” As it happens, the loss of theism puts science in an impossible position. A traditional monotheist (and probably most deists) would assume that God creates according to logic and reason and that the scientist can indeed find out the truth by “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” But otherwise, why? Loss of the theistic perspective leads directly to the current demands that science credentials and acknowledgements be apportioned on the basis of fairness as if they were public goods of some kind.

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Comments

Ed George
No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.
Ok, understood. But I hope you will consider the points raised and develop some kind of answer to them, eventually - if not to UB then to someone else who may ask the same questions.Silver Asiatic_{December 18, 2019
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.
8) when I am forced to examine irrefutable evidence against my personal preferences
And just to be sure, Ed you are not getting a confrontation from me merely because we disagree (that is just another example of your self-serving spin on things). You are getting it because you refuse to acknowledge the facts (i.e. famous fulfilled predictions, well-documented experimental results, and recorded history) of the position you've been constantly attacking for the past year. EDIT: I see Ed returned to change his original post, now trying to tie me to ET (apparently the spin never ceases). Ed, judging by the way you and ET have spat at each other, it appears the two of you have a long history together. I am happy to leave the two of you to it.Upright BiPed_{December 17, 2019
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What false accusations have I made? I know that Acartia Eddie has made several against me. Not only that, Acartia Eddie has exhibited a penchant for quote-miningET_{December 17, 2019
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VB
With all due respect this is false .I think you will agree that I have never hurled insults your way and always tried to engage you in a civil manner
Yes, I agree. There are several commenters here who are always (or almost always) civil.
yet there have been numerous times that you never answered questions I posed
There are several reasons why I don’t respond or stop commenting on a thread: 1) when the discussion goes back and forth but there is no new thoughts provided. 2) when someone asks a loaded question. 3) when someone has a history of rude behaviour. 4) when some makes false accusations, as ET does. 5) when I get distracted by real life. 6) when the thread scrolls past what is displayed in the recent comments section. 7) when the comment is too lengthy. Life is too short. But I think that we ultimately agree that none of us are under any obligation to respond to every question directed at them.Ed George_{December 17, 2019
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EG “No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.” With all due respect this is false .I think you will agree that I have never hurled insults your way and always tried to engage you in a civil manner yet there have been numerous times that you never answered questions I posed that would show the deficiencies in your position. In fact your favorite retort when the rubber meets the road so to speak is “thats a loaded question” So no ,even people who engage with you civilly do not get answers when you find the answer to be inconvenient to your world view. UB’s observations have considerable merit. Just saying Vividvividbleau_{December 17, 2019
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.
No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.
Anyone who has been following along on this blog knows (without a doubt) that the real reason you don't engage in earnest on the evidence of design is because you know that you don't have the slightest chance of appearing to hold your own in that engagement. More accurately, your defense of materialism will not suffer well in a fair presentation of physical evidence, and we both know it. You came to this blog just over a year ago under false pretense (openly lying to the people here about your beliefs) in order to tease and taunt and argue with religious design proponents over social and political issues. I did not engage you for the vast majority of those months, simply because those topics are not why I participate here. However, over the course of time you began to challenge the physical evidence of design in biology, which is a subject I will respond to, and that is what the issue is here. You refuse to engage in the evidence for a position that you relentlessly attack. Did you not once say on these very pages: "when we advocate for something we have to address or accept the contradictions that are inherent in our views". If so, then quit whining about being held to your own standards. On a personal level Ed, the issue is about demonstrating a little intellectual integrity -- either address the evidence, stop the attack, leave the field, or continue to demonstrate that you don't have any. If you only intend to do the latter, then don't complain.Upright BiPed_{December 17, 2019
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Acartia Eddie:
But I hope that you understand why I choose not to participate in discussions with people like ET or UB who find it necessary to throw insults or accusations at anyone they disagree with.
That is a lie and you are a liar. I have NEVER thrown insults or accusations at anyone for merely disagreeing. And Acartia Eddie will NEVER be able to show otherwise. Moderators, why is it OK for "Ed George", aka William Spearshake, to lie about me and post false accusations?ET_{December 17, 2019
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Marfin
Ed George – I don`t believe I have ever insulted you...
No, you haven't, and I thank you for that. But I hope that you understand why I choose not to participate in discussions with people like ET or UB who find it necessary to throw insults or accusations at anyone they disagree with.
why do material atheists not admit that their position is a position of faith (belief) every bit as much as christians like me.
I am not strictly an atheist, agnostic better describes what I am. I agree that some atheists base their worldview more on faith than evidence. Personally, I am agnostic simply because I have not seen any compelling evidence to indicate the existence of a God. I wouldn't call this a "faith", but I admit that my conclusions/views, as is the case for everyone, are affected by biases.
Sure an almighty creator seems unbelievable but I have yet to hear a counter position being more believable , I mean an un-caused universe from nothing without design and purpose is just not believable in my eyes, but if you guys want to believe that go ahead but just know it is a position of faith not fact.
I don't know how the universe was formed, or even that it was uncaused. But having a cause doesn't necessarily equate to a supernatural cause. But, it also doesn't rule it out. My conclusion about the cause of the universe isn't based on faith, simply because I have not drawn any conclusion about it.Ed George_{December 17, 2019
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LoL! @ Acartia Eddie- You don't respond because you have nothing to counter what UB posted. The same thing goes for when I expose you are the poseur that you are. We aren't insulting you, Acartia Eddie. We are making astute observations.ET_{December 17, 2019
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Ed George - I don`t believe I have ever insulted you , all I have asked for is some honesty , why do material atheists not admit that their position is a position of faith (belief) every bit as much as christians like me. Sure there is evidence on both sides but ultimately it comes down to what you believe, yes believe based on the most reasonable explanation of said evidence. Sure an almighty creator seems unbelievable but I have yet to hear a counter position being more believable , I mean an un-caused universe from nothing without design and purpose is just not believable in my eyes, but if you guys want to believe that go ahead but just know it is a position of faith not fact.Marfin_{December 17, 2019
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SA
Given his non-response to your #15 that does seem to be about all there is to it.
No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.Ed George_{December 17, 2019
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Well, Marfin, you have to realize who you are talking to. It's like talking with infants- you have to provide the details and the full context or suffer the consequences.ET_{December 17, 2019
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UBP
He simply doesn’t give a damn. That is the strength of his position.
Given his non-response to your #15 that does seem to be about all there is to it.Silver Asiatic_{December 17, 2019
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. #27 In Ed's case, he is only here for the rhetoric. Given that he treats physical evidence as a public nuisance, expecting him to acknowledge any inconsistencies in his views is futile. He simply doesn't give a damn. That is the strength of his position.Upright BiPed_{December 17, 2019
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Good grief , who here did not think I was talking about humans when I said virgin birth and walking on water( unaided). I was just getting to the crux of the matter that the criteria for not believing in virgin births and walking on water unaided can as readily be applied to life from non life but atheist materialist dont make that application , why not?Marfin_{December 16, 2019
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Seversky
On the contrary, knowing what plants or berries or animals are safe to eat, what water is safe to drink, what places are safe to live, which animals are dangerous and which are harmless, knowing that jumping from great heights can injure or kill are just some of the truths that are vital to survival and reproduction.
What an animal eats or drinks, where an animal lives, how it acts - all of these things are determined (in the evolutionary view) by the chemical processes that created the organism. There's no question of truth at all here. Bacteria are attracted to food sources not through a rational decision-making process that separates truth from falsehood, but because evolution causes them to eat certain things and avoid others.
We can demonstrate certain processes exist which must be there for evolution to happen at all, for example, antibiotic resistance, bacteria which can digest the by-products of nylon manufacture, moths in which the dominant coloration changes as a result of industrial pollution
A significant group of people, including some credentialed scientists, do not think these examples give strong-enough support for the wide-reaching claims of evolutionary theory.
Have you also read criticisms of his book from evolutionary biologists? Has he won fellow scientists over with his arguments or are they being rejected on various grounds?
Behe is looking for the limits of what evolution can do. I have read criticisms of his book from scientists who said that he was wrong about where he set the limit. However, I have never read one criticism that stated where the correct limit to evolution should be placed. In all the cases I've read, the critics were happy to simply ignore the problem. This does not say much for their criticism and it tells me that they are afraid of the project that Behe undertook. I did communicate with one Behe-critic who claimed that "there is no edge to evolution". As absurd as that is, he claimed basically, that "evolution can do anything". Again, that just tells me that Behe was correct.
Are you saying that the only sense of purpose worth having is what is assigned to you by some other being?
Well, you cannot explain your own existence without reference to at least two other beings. To understand your purpose, you would have to understand your own origin. Since you are a contingent being, that received existence from somewhere else, the answer to your purpose cannot lie within yourself. You did not create your own life - you received it.
Put your self in God’s place. What is His purpose? Can the only worthwhile purpose for God come from the mind of an even greater God?
' No, it can't work that way. We are contingent beings - a mixture of potentiality and actuality. We are empowered with certain aspects of being. That power does not come from ourselves. We have potential that is unrealized. Potential can only be actualized by that which is actual. So God is a being that is purely actual - no potential. There can only be one such being. There cannot be a greater being. There cannot be two beings that are purely actual, since if there would be two, then there would be a difference in the two, and that difference would be a defect, or some potential being unactualized. So, there can only be one purely actual being, with no potential to actualize - so there can only be one God, and there could not be a "greater God".Silver Asiatic_{December 16, 2019
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And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
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
In the following 2011 paper, researchers have shown that classical sequential information (such as what is on DNA) is a subset of 'quantum positional information' by the following method ,,, Specifically they show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer.
Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy - June 1, 2011 Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, The new study revisits Landauer's principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm
And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/
Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, That statement is stunning! To continue on, quantum information and/or quantum entanglement is found to be ubiquitous within life: In the following more recent 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552
This follow up article goes even further and states, "There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,"
Quantum Critical Proteins – Stuart Lindsay – Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Arizona State University – 2018 Excerpt: The difficulty with this proposal lies in its improbability. Only an infinitesimal density of random states exists near the critical point.,, Gábor Vattay et al. recently examined a number of proteins and conducting and insulating polymers.14 The distribution for the insulators and conductors were as expected, but the functional proteins all fell on the quantum-critical distribution. Such a result cannot be a consequence of chance.,,, WHAT OF quantum criticality? Vattay et al. carried out electronic structure calculations for the very large protein used in our work. They found that the distribution of energy-level spacings fell on exactly the quantum-critical distribution, implying that this protein is also quantum critical. There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,, http://inference-review.com/article/quantum-critical-proteins Gábor Vattay et al., “Quantum Criticality at the Origin of Life,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 626 (2015); Gábor Vattay, Stuart Kauffman, and Samuli Niiranen, “Quantum Biology on the Edge of Quantum Chaos,” PLOS One 9, no. 3 (2014)
Moreover, it is also important to point out that quantum entanglement and/or quantum information requires a non-local, beyond space and time, cause to explain its effect. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, ““Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php
These experiments completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (presuppositions about information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water. In other words, contrary to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, information, particularly this ‘thermodynamic positional information’, is now experimentally shown, via quantum information theory, to be its own distinct physical entity that, although it can interact with matter and energy, is its own independent, ‘non-local’ beyond space and time, entity that is separate from matter and energy. On top of all that, this ‘thermodynamic positional information’ is found, via quantum information theory, to be “a property of an observer who describes a system.” In other words, Intelligent Design, and a direct inference to God as the 'observer who describes the system' of life has, for all intents and purposes, finally achieved experimental confirmation. Of course, since this entire line of reasoning is based on just 'following the evidence where it leads', don't expect Atheists to accept it anytime soon. Verse:
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
bornagain77_{December 16, 2019
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Are miracles possible? “In his essay, Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature.”
“In his essay, Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature.” Dr. Timothy McGrew – Do miracles break the laws of nature, as David Hume claimed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPf6jsmeU4E
It is obvious with his claim that a miracle would violate the laws of nature, that David Hume would have been a very vocal advocate for what is now termed to be ‘methodological naturalism’. One can almost here Lewontin echoing Hume when he states, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door,,, to appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”
“Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.” – Richard Lewontin
Methodological Naturalism is defined as such
Methodological naturalism Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific “dead ends” and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism
The Achilles’ heel with the atheist’s a-priori assumption of methodological naturalism is that agent causality is ruled out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, As Paul Nelson explains,
Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let’s Dump Methodological Naturalism Paul Nelson – September 24, 2014 Excerpt: Assessing the Damage MN Does to Freedom of Inquiry Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism. If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds. MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact. “That’s crazy,” you reply, “I certainly did write my email.” Okay, then — to what does the pronoun “I” in that sentence refer? Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,, You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse — i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss — we haven’t the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world — such as your email, a real pattern — we must refer to you as a unique agent. https://evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set/
And since agent causality is ruled out of bounds in science by the artificial restriction of methodological naturalism, and since we are in fact causal agents ourselves, then demonstrating a miracle becomes as easy as falling off a log. Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college university, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
The Intersection of Science and Religion – Craig Hazen, PhD – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xVByFjV0qlE#t=746s
Moreover, as William Dembski and others have shown, the universal limit for the creation of new information, via all the probabilistic resources in the entire universe, is 500 bits, To clarify how the 500 bit universal limit is found for the creation of ‘structured, functional information’:
Dembski’s original value for the universal probability bound is 1 in 10^150, 10^80, the number of elementary particles in the observable universe. 10^45, the maximum rate per second at which transitions in physical states can occur. 10^25, a billion times longer than the typical estimated age of the universe in seconds. Thus, 10^150 = 10^80 × 10^45 × 10^25. Hence, this value corresponds to an upper limit on the number of physical events that could possibly have occurred since the big bang. How many bits would that be: Pu = 10-150, so, -log2 Pu = 498.29 bits Call it 500 bits (The 500 bits is further specified as a specific type of information. It is specified as Complex Specified Information by Dembski or as Functional Information by Abel to separate it from merely Ordered Sequence Complexity or Random Sequence Complexity; See Three subsets of sequence complexity) Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information – Abel, Trevors http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29
This short sentence, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is calculated by Winston Ewert, in this following video at the 10 minute mark, to contain 1000 bits of algorithmic specified complexity, (i.e. functional information), and thus to exceed the Universal Probability Bound (UPB) of 500 bits set by Dr. Dembski
Proposed Information Metric: Conditional Kolmogorov Complexity – Winston Ewert – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm3mm3ofAYU
Thus every sentence ever created by man that contains over 500 bits of information, such as “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is proof of a miracle in that man has exercised the free will of his immaterial mind and created immaterial information over and above what the material universe, via the laws of nature, is ever capable of explaining. To go a bit further into the 'miracle' of the origin of life. Dr James Tour, (who is regarded as one of the top ten synthetic chemists in the world), states the insurmountable problem for the Origin of Life (OOL) as such:
“We have no idea how to put this structure (a simple cell) together.,, So, not only do we not know how to make the basic components, we do not know how to build the structure even if we were given the basic components. So the gedanken (thought) experiment is this. Even if I gave you all the components. Even if I gave you all the amino acids. All the protein structures from those amino acids that you wanted. All the lipids in the purity that you wanted. The DNA. The RNA. Even in the sequence you wanted. I’ve even given you the code. And all the nucleic acids. So now I say, “Can you now assemble a cell, not in a prebiotic cesspool but in your nice laboratory?”. And the answer is a resounding NO! And if anybody claims otherwise they do not know this area (of research).” – James Tour: The Origin of Life Has Not Been Explained – 4:20 minute mark https://youtu.be/r4sP1E1Jd_Y?t=255
What Dr. Tour briefly touched upon in that preceding comment is the fact that having the correct sequential information encoded in DNA is not nearly enough in order to explain life. Besides the sequential information in DNA there is also a vast amount of ‘positional information’ that must be accounted for as well. The amount of positional information that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be on the order 10 to the 12 bits,,, which is several orders of magnitude more information than the amount of sequential information that is encoded on the DNA of a ‘simple’ bacterium.
Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm
10^12 bits is the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. i.e. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong – The Creation-evolution Controversy ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
And again, in comparison, the sequential information encoded on DNA of ‘simple’ bacterial life is merely around 10^6 bits. Thus that is a huge, ‘orders of magnitude’, disparity between the positional information and sequential information in a ‘simple’ cell. And remember, this vast amount of positional information contained within a ‘simple’ bacterium was derived from purely thermodynamic considerations. In regards to this vast amount of ‘thermodynamic’ positional information that must somehow be accounted for in order to explain the Origin of Life, in the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.
Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html
bornagain77_{December 16, 2019
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I was just clarifying Acartia Eddie's answer for Marfin. I get the feeling that Marfin was referring to humans but failed to clarify that. Acartia Eddie saw the loophole- gigantic opening- and walked through. Bravo (golf clap)ET_{December 16, 2019
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ET
Marfin- Parthenogenesis has been observed in many different species. Walking on water has been observed in different species. Life arising from non-life has never been observed.
It's a Christmas miracle. ET and I have agreed on something. I'm going out to buy a lottery ticket.Ed George_{December 16, 2019
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Marfin- Parthenogenesis has been observed in many different species. Walking on water has been observed in different species. Life arising from non-life has never been observed.ET_{December 16, 2019
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Marfin
Ed George , whats the difference if any between a virgin birth, walking on water, and life arising from non life.
Two are common occurrences and one has never been observed.Ed George_{December 16, 2019
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seversky:
Have you also read criticisms of his book from evolutionary biologists?
I have. They amount to nothing but whining. Not one critic of Behe's has offered up any science nor evidence that refutes him.
Are you saying that the only sense of purpose worth having is what is assigned to you by some other being?
LoL! It isn't assigned to us, duh. It just is. If we were intelligently designed their is a higher purpose to our existenceET_{December 16, 2019
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Silver Asiatic @ 14
Science is impossible without an adherence to and search for the truth of things. From the materialist viewpoint, the truth really cannot exist, since it is an abstract, immaterial object.
I would agree but it seems to me that there are two meanings of "truth" in play here. The first means the actual nature of the objective reality we assume to be out there. The second - the correspondence theory - refers to how closely our descriptions or explanations of what we can observe of that reality correspond to it. How true they are depends on how closely they fit. It may be that we can never know the full truth. All we can hope for is an ever closer approximation of the truth in our models.
In evolutionary terms, the truth is unnecessary. Survival and reproduction do not require truth of anything. Eating and leaving offspring can occur with lies and falsehoods as well as truths.
On the contrary, knowing what plants or berries or animals are safe to eat, what water is safe to drink, what places are safe to live, which animals are dangerous and which are harmless, knowing that jumping from great heights can injure or kill are just some of the truths that are vital to survival and reproduction. It is true that some false beliefs can be advantageous, the obvious examples being religions. Most, if not all, must be false, yet their prevalence suggests they have survival value, most probably in terms binding a society together and make it more resilient in the face of serious challenges to its existence.
But science is the search for the truth of things, obviously. Does an albino squirrel live in that environment? Yes or No? It’s true or false
If you propose that an albino squirrel lives in a certain environment, that is a claim about one aspect of the nature of reality. You can test that claim by observing that environment to see if there any albino squirrels there. if you observe albino squirrels then the claim is found to be true. Does the albino coloration have any bearing on why the squirrels are observed in that environment is a different question requiring a different tentative explanation which is capable of being tested against what is observed.
We challenge Darwinism to show us the truth about what evolution can produce.
We answer that what evolution can produce is all around you in the natural world. We can show that living things change over time, descent with modification. We can demonstrate certain processes exist which must be there for evolution to happen at all, for example, antibiotic resistance, bacteria which can digest the by-products of nylon manufacture, moths in which the dominant coloration changes as a result of industrial pollution
Michael Behe has revealed what the Edge of Evolution really is and how limited its power is. That’s a truth that we learn from science.
Behe offers a thesis not gospel. Have you also read criticisms of his book from evolutionary biologists? Has he won fellow scientists over with his arguments or are they being rejected on various grounds?
Even statistical analysis relies on truth statements, and scientific papers give the truth of what they find (unless the papers are fraudulent)
Scientific papers offer arguments and data which they claim support those arguments. The authors may believe that they have discovered some truth but their work needs to be replicated by others before we can be reasonably sure. If the original researchers have actually hit on some truth it should be true for anyone else who tries it.
But if science is not a search for truth, then anything can be given a subjective “spin”. Lies are just as good as truths in that case. And that’s the point here.
While there will always be a few black sheep, for most scientists their reputation for integrity is one of their most valuable assets. Once lost, it can never be recovered and their scientific career is effectively at an end. Trying to brush aside results that you don't like for some reason as scientific fraud is mostly just another way of resorting to a conspiracy theory.
If there is no God and we’re all merely chemical compounds determined by natural/material processes, then the question of a search for truth is irrelevant and actually meaningless
Are you saying that the only sense of purpose worth having is what is assigned to you by some other being? You can't work out one for yourself? Put your self in God's place. What is His purpose? Can the only worthwhile purpose for God come from the mind of an even greater God? And we're back to that infinite regress again.Seversky_{December 16, 2019
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seversky:
I lean towards abiogenesis as an explanation for the existence of life because such hypotheses and evidence as we have is marginally more compelling …
It is non-existent. And guess what? Abiogenesis posits life arising from non-life. And you said:
If you want to persuade me that any of them actually happened, you would need to provide at least a coherent model of how they might have happened and, ideally, a demonstration that the model works in practice.
Your side can't even produce biologically relevant molecular replicators. There isn't anything compelling with the concept of codes produced by nature.ET_{December 16, 2019
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Marfin @ 13
Ed George , whats the difference if any between a virgin birth, walking on water, and life arising from non life.
Personally, I would say none. If you want to persuade me that any of them actually happened, you would need to provide at least a coherent model of how they might have happened and, ideally, a demonstration that the model works in practice. I lean towards abiogenesis as an explanation for the existence of life because such hypotheses and evidence as we have is marginally more compelling than postulating some sort of creator, although I cannot rule out the possibility.Seversky_{December 16, 2019
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.
With regard to the origin of life I think all we can say is that we don’t have anything that approaches a good (let alone best) explanation for it.
Question 1: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the historical fact that a symbol system and a multi-referent language structure were predicted to be the core material requirements of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator? Question 2: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the historical fact that a symbol system and a multi-referent language structure were indeed discovered in the gene system, and have been carefully and thoroughly described as such in the scientific literature? Question 3: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the demonstration (through experiment) that the cell uses a system of discontinuous association in order to specify the organization of living things, using quiesent encoded memory to circumvent (side-step, escape, overcome) the invariable constraints of physical law? Question 4: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the fact that not one single soul on the surface of this planet (particularly those at the very forefront of materialistic abiogenesis research) can produce even a conceptually-viable pathway from dynamics to semantic closure? Question 5: On what grounds are we expected to turn our heads away from the culmination of 100% universal physical and logical evidence against a purely-dynamic origin of life -- and simply ignore the cognitive dissonance that naturally arises from doing so? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Saying "we don't have anything" is an insult to science, reason, and well-recorded history. For all your nauseating bluster, it appears that you merely want curious people to shut up about science and reason on these matters, and leave you to your personal preferences. Let there be no mistake, it is you who is avoiding the physical evidence and documentation, not those to whom you lecture.Upright BiPed_{December 16, 2019
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Science is impossible without an adherence to and search for the truth of things. From the materialist viewpoint, the truth really cannot exist, since it is an abstract, immaterial object. In evolutionary terms, the truth is unnecessary. Survival and reproduction do not require truth of anything. Eating and leaving offspring can occur with lies and falsehoods as well as truths. But science is the search for the truth of things, obviously. Does an albino squirrel live in that environment? Yes or No? It's true or false. We challenge Darwinism to show us the truth about what evolution can produce. Michael Behe has revealed what the Edge of Evolution really is and how limited its power is. That's a truth that we learn from science. Even statistical analysis relies on truth statements, and scientific papers give the truth of what they find (unless the papers are fraudulent). But if science is not a search for truth, then anything can be given a subjective "spin". Lies are just as good as truths in that case. And that's the point here. If there is no God and we're all merely chemical compounds determined by natural/material processes, then the question of a search for truth is irrelevant and actually meaningless. Does science really want to sign-on to that kind of project?Silver Asiatic_{December 16, 2019
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Ed George , whats the difference if any between a virgin birth, walking on water, and life arising from non life.Marfin_{December 16, 2019
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Acartia Eddie conflates artificial with supernatural. And clearly science is all about the truth, which is contrary to what Acartia Eddie saidET_{December 16, 2019
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