Quanrtum fuzziness explains why you believe you exist.
In “Are you totally improbable or totally inevitable?” (National Public Radio, November 21, 2011), Robert Krulwich offers,
Author and blogger Dr. Ali Binazir did the calculations last spring and decided that the chances of anyone existing are one in 102,685,000. In other words, as this infographic figures it, you are totally improbable:
Actually, there is no reason each position can’t be partially true. One might have been intended by a power beyond the universe, yet be unique at the same time.
Even earthly powers are not required to make more than one of any work of art. (Indeed, they are generally discouraged from doing so.)
We now await the professor who looks at these odds, shakes his head, clears his throat, and says that the graphic merely demonstrates his thesis that you do not really exist.
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Image location:
http://visually.visually.netdn.....343634.png
Of course the atheist’s retort to probability arguments, such as here and in the fine-tuning of the universe argument, is always something to the effect, ‘Well, we exist so the probability of us existing is 1’. Which of course totally (deliberately?) misses the point. Dr. Sheldon has a excellent article refuting that entire line of thought, against fine-tuning, here:
As well, the OP reminds me of this:
Further notes:
The preceding start date, used in the prophecy calculation, is confirmed by the archaeological record:
In regards to Intelligent Design, it’s a bit misleading. The odds that a specific sequence of human DNA will come into being through sexual reproduction are indeed very remote. But Intelligent Design theory does not posit that the offspring produced sexual reproduction (human or otherwise) is a result of design and not chance. On the contrary, only those offspring who exhibit a new, complex, functionally specific feature requiring at least 500 bits of information “cannot reasonably be attributed to chance.” So while it may be incredibly unlikely that any specific person should come into being, none the less the best scientific explanation is a physical process determined by chance.
“We now await the professor who looks at these odds, shakes his head, clears his throat, and says that the graphic merely demonstrates his thesis that you do not really exist.”
Isn’t that YOUR line? This is the same lottery fallacy that ID people make with protein sequences all the time. A protein of 100 amino acid is one of 20^100, so the odds are astronomically against it, right?
Like the odds of producing a particular human in the poster, the odds of producing a particular protein are low. But of producing some human? Or producing some protein with some beneficial function? More and more probable.
Since we don’t need to invoke a designer when a human produces a human (despite one way of calculating odds), what is the observation that warrants a design inference again?
DrREC:
The probability, or even feasibilty, of your claim depends solely on the question begged-> “from what?”
Does your scenario require existing proteins, ie things that need an explanation in the first place?
Well, seeing that humans are designers, it goes to show that only designers beget designers- that is if we lean on our observations.
“Well, seeing that humans are designers, it goes to show that only designers beget designers- that is if we lean on our observations.”
Mating is now a design process? Maybe my engineer friends will incorporate it in their proposals.
Engineers, making little engineers through mating.
But anyway- Peering into Darwin’s Black Box:
The cell divsion processes required for bacterial life
Oh my goodness, I accidentally mated… what the ???!?!
DrREC, the difference between the two seems as clear as day to me and I would like to try and explain why. I don’t claim to be any kind of expert, so I hope you’ll forgive my layman’s ways and put me right if I’m wrong.
Let’s say I play host to you here in Istanbul, and take you to the Grand Bazaar where there are quite literally millions of trinkets and oddities up for sale. Of your own accord you suddenly decide to buy one as a souvenir. On our way home I muse to you, “Isn’t it interesting how out of the millions of things you could have bought, you chose to buy that particular trinket.” You might find this observation of passing interest, but not worthy of any real investigation.
But now what if I tell you that before you came here to Istanbul, I went to one of the stalls in the bazaar, picked out one of the trinkets, wrote your name in an inconspicuous spot, and put it back. We get out the trinket you bought to check and, lo and behold, there is your name! What a coincidence!
I’m sure you would immediately start to suspect that I’d written your name into the trinket after you’d bought it while you weren’t looking, or somehow maneuvered you into buying it, or you would look for some other explanation. Either way, I’m quite sure you wouldn’t believe it was a coincidence.
OK my parents brought me into existence instead of countless others that might have been genetically possible. What a happy coincidence. But the human gene pool eventually producing me is a result of a series of unrelated coincidences, and are therefore just that, coincidences. As I understand it the point of irreducible complexity is that we keep finding sets of coincidences that all have to happen at the same time. Where does coincidence end and suspicion begin? Enter the universal probability bound…
Strictly speaking, is it impossible that you just happened to buy the trinket I wrote your name in, by pure coincidence? No, of course not. So now we have to ask, which is the more reasonable conclusion? If I insist it was a coincidence, you’ll just say I’m being unreasonable. Then I’ll say you’re imagining things. Then you’ll say “But what are the odds?”, and I’ll say “But where’s your proof?”, and so on and so forth. Basically there is no scientifically airtight, undeniable way of defining “reasonable”, or any that I know of, which I suppose is why we’re all still here.
“Ya see officer I took Viagra before I went shopping, she bent over to pick something up and badda-bing, badda-boom, an accidental mating.”
“As I understand it the point of irreducible complexity is that we keep finding sets of coincidences that all have to happen at the same time. Where does coincidence end and suspicion begin? Enter the universal probability bound…”
Exactly. Design beyond the universal probability bound has never been observed, merely assumed.
Snark aside, not every human or bunny or bug that procreates is designing a genome from scratch, or adding information exceeding the universal probability bound.
The bottom of the visualization says:
To which I would like to impress, a few more lines of evidence that each of us is ‘miraculous’:
The following is far more visual in impressing the miraculous aspect of each of us:
music
Humans beget humans and bunnies beget bunnies- how does that help your positon?
Computers, cars, Stonehenge,-> all beyond the UPB, all designed, all observed.
All human. Funny you can’t find an example in nature-of design exceeding the UPB arising at once.
I suspect you know what I meant.
One more line of evidence that impresses the ‘miraculous’ aspect is this;
quote from preceding article:
Music:
Sorry, a bit confused here.
Surely that’s the whole point of ID: the act of design/creation cannot be observed, therefore at best we can only talk about design inference. Are you saying there are no circumstances under which such an inference could be justified?
“the act of design/creation cannot be observed”
Why not? In the thousands of sequenced genomes, with ability to infer phylogenetic relationships, no one can seem to point to a single emergence of fsci (not that anyone can or has actually calculated it). Instead, we observe the accumulation or loss of small amounts on information below the universal probability bound.
So everyone here talks about first life and first genes, assumes they know something about that and its complexity, and infers a process never observed in nature occurred, rather than inferring the process we actually observe in the present occurred in the past.
As JoeG about Newton’s first law and which is more logical.
Not exactly. Certainly we can’t observe events that happened in the past, and that’s where inference comes in to play. However, as we see with many human-designed examples, often the artifact in question bears some evidence as to how it was manufactured. Furthermore, if non-human design was detected in the present, then it’s certainly possible that the mechanism(s) would be observable.
See ID Does Not Posit Supernatural Causes
Umm cars, computers and Stonehenge all exist in nature.
And your strawman is still meaningless.
One more time-
The only process we observe constructing new, useful and functional multi-part systems is intentional design. Living organisms are full of functional multi-part systems. Therefor in accordance with uniformitarianism design is the inference- and it also follows Newton’s first rule.
Thank you DrREC and rhampton7 for honouring me with your responses
DrREC,
You nailed it!
DrREC,
Not at once, and not in gradual steps.
But your demarcation between biology and other mediums is arbitrary and question-begging. It amounts to a proclamation that you’ll won’t believe something because you haven’t seen it, so you’re going to believe in the other thing you’ve never seen.
The problem is not ignorantly disregarding evidence. Rather, you’ve composed your own arbitrary, inconsistently applied rule of logic that insulates you from even having to consider the evidence. Arguing that you’ve never seen such a thing designed doesn’t magically stop it from being a vast network of self-replicating molecular machines that use sophisticated protocols to communicate both within themselves and between the specialized units they comprise.
In the face of such evidence and so much more, that we’ve never seen one designed is paltry argument. It doesn’t tip the scales to make design any less than the best available explanation.
“and not in gradual steps”
I’ve provided a few examples of gradual formation of de novo genes, or gradual formation of new activities by gene duplication and divergence. No one can seem to calculate the change in fsci accurately for me. Pity. I’m beginning to think it is a made up, hand-waving metric. Maybe someone can prove me wrong?
“But your demarcation between biology and other mediums is arbitrary and question-begging.”
Yeah, totally arbitrary to say the theory we apply to biology should be observed in biology!
“It amounts to a proclamation that you’ll won’t believe something because you haven’t seen it”
Umm….??? Or at least proof of it. Evidence for it. Something. Anything. Bueller?
“so you’re going to believe in the other thing you’ve never seen.”
I’ve observed evolution in action, the power of selection acting on a random pool to create new information.
“In the face of such evidence and so much more, that we’ve never seen one designed is paltry argument. It doesn’t tip the scales to make design any less than the best available explanation.”
Non-empirical science. This is new to me! What BS.
DrREC, are you with the unsubstantiated sequence comparison studies again??? For you state:
Please do tell. Seems the last time I saw this type of bluff was by Nick Matzke. And lo and behold,,,
Further notes on the deceptive tactics of atheistic neo-Darwinists for claiming new genes and proteins:
Funny DrREC, when push comes to shove you atheists are always full of hot air as far as putting any actual empirical evidence on the table!,,, I can’t seem to find a single new gene are protein in Dr. Behe’s survey of literature:
“DrREC, are you with the unsubstantiated sequence comparison studies again???”
They are well substantiated, with excellent statistics and tests of multiple hypotheses to fit the data. The data is publicly available, and if you have a counter hypothesis that better fits the data, you are welcome to present it and the metrics backing it here.
“Please do tell. Seems the last time I saw this type of bluff was by Nick Matzke.”
I think we’ve always provided references. I’ve posted this one maybe a dozen times here. No one has calculated the fsci for me yet. Wonder why.
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/ar.....bi.1000734
or these:
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/26/9935.full
http://www.nature.com/nrg/jour.....g2482.html
Luskin’s articles could be the weakest I’ve ever seen. He presents really nice data, I mean fine fine examples of novel gene formation or diversification after duplication. Again and again, he just handwaves that despite the observation, saying the finding is against the odds. What odds? Calculated how? Hey Joe, doesn’t Newton’s first rule tell us not to pile bs onto a natural explanation? Those interested can follow the links. Luskin does a nice job summarizing the data–but note the same weak attempt to explain the data away attached to each.
As for Behe, why didn’t you include the functional-gain of information examples from his review? Oh right, that isn’t supposed to happen! OOPS.
DrREC:
I can’t see your point. That novel genes appear in species is a well known fact. Why should that support the neo darwinian model?
And it is obvious that many of those novel genes will have high levels of dFSCI. Most proteins have.
But take the paper about the human de novo gene, for instance. I belive I have already discussed it. In no way it supports a neo darwinian model. The gene, if it is really a gene, emerged form non coding DNSA, recent non coding DNA, and only in the end of its natural histopry itr became an ORF, so that it could be transcribed and translated. Therefore, NS cannot be invoked in the formation of the gene.
It could have arisen by chance alone. But that is scarcely credible, because the protein is ling enough to have, almost certainly, huge amounts of dFSCI.
You ask for a computation of dFSCI for that protein. I have already answered, some time ago. Being a new protein, we cannot apply the Durston method. And the protein, if it is confirmed, is really new: I have blasted the sequence, and it really seems to have absolutely no homologues.
But that does not mean that we cannot make an attempt at computing, even if by approximation, its dFSCI. The other way to define the functional space of a protein os by means of studies about its sequence-structure-function relationship. That can be done, although it is much more difficult than the Durston method.
Unfortunately, in this particular case, the protein has not been confirmed, its structure is unknown, its biochemical function is unknown. So, for the moment, neither you nor I can discuss any more about it. But maybe we will know more in some time.
For the moment, I an very much reassured that a protein of almost 200 AAs, if it is really a new protein with a new fold and a new function, will certainly be shown to have a very high level of dFSCI (certainly more than the 150 bits I ususally consider a reasonable threshold for a biological system). If that is confirmed, an explanation based on pure chance will be untenable, and this will be a very good model of design detection.
Poof fits the data nicely.
The game gpuccio plays is an updated version of no transitional fossils.
DrREC, well you, as usual, are the one who is bluffing instead of presenting hard empirical evidence, for your atheistic position, that ACTUALLY DEMONSTRATES that purely unguided material processes can generate novel genes or proteins:
Your first study (bluff) is a sequence comparison:
Geez DrREC, I was hoping after you were put on the spot to actually demonstrate the gain of a gene or protein, by purely material processes, you would come out swinging and ACTUALLY DEMONSTRATE, scientifically, for all to see, the almighty power of evolution in action and show the actual origination of a novel gene or protein, by purely material processes, instead of just pointing to a sequence comparison that assumes its conclusion in the premise of its study. Oh well, let’s see if you do any better on your second bluff (i mean study):
I can’t seem to find random mutation or random variation specifically mentioned anywhere in that study of fruit flies and only secondarily alluded to in the duplicattion/divergence mechanism. (Isn’t ‘random mutation/variation’ suppose to be the primary mechanism you are suppose to be trying to prove?), Moreover, Dr. Shapiro has pointed out this fact about the primary mechanisms your study does have listed:
Moreover DrREC if we look specifically for Darwinian processes in Drosophila (fruit flies), we find once again that you are full of hot air:
Your third gene duplication study gets a little closer to not being a bluff, but when we look closer at the last sentence in the abstract we find this peculiar statement:
And when we look at another study we find this:
Thus once again we find your atheistic case for neo-Darwinism severely wanting DrREC. You then go on to cite Dr. Behe’s study. In fact you state:
But once again when we look at the details we find you are bluffing: Here are 3 ‘gain of function’ mutations that you contend make your case for atheistic neo-Darwinism
Thus once again we find you to be extremely wanting for substantiating evidence. For you to cite as conclusive evidence, for neo-Darwinian evolution, a process that used the inherent programming of the cell to calculate ‘compensatory mutations’, which was arrived at after artificially induced deletion events and/or a manipulation by the investigators, is to be severely misleading, and maybe even downright deceptive if you have known these details I pointed out in advance! Here is a short video that briefly mentions the limits of ‘compensatory mutations’ in producing evidence for neo-Darwinism:
Perhaps you think all this bluster you put forth is all fine and well DrREC, but despite what you may think, neo-darwinism does not HAVE TO BE true as far as the scientific method is concerned. The scientific method could care less whether neo-Darwinism is true or not and only cares about what you can ACTUALLY DEMONSTRATE to be true. Thus no matter how much you claim to the contrary, you have missed the mark of rigorous science by a huge margin, and have in fact revealed your severe philosophical bias of atheism. (And that is a observed fact!)
gpuccio, as to you mentioning ORFs in his human-chimp sequence comparison study, I guess it would be helpful to reveal just how deceptively biased neo-Darwinists can be in these types of sequence comparison studies by listing this study that you helped me with a while back:
This following article shows that over 1000 ‘ORFan’ genes, that are completely unique to humans and not found in any other species, and that very well may directly code for proteins, were stripped from the 20,500 gene count of humans simply because the evolutionary scientists could not find any corresponding genes in primates. In other words evolution, of humans from primates, was assumed to be true in the first place and then the genetic evidence was directly molded to fit in accord with their unproven assumption. It would be hard to find a more biased and unfair example of practicing science!
The sheer, and blatant, shoddiness of the science of the preceding study should give everyone who reads it severe pause whenever, in the future, someone tells them that genetic studies have proven evolution to be true.
If the authors of the preceding study were to have actually tried to see if the over 1000 unique ORFan genes of humans may actually encode for proteins, instead of just written them off because they were not found in other supposedly related species, they would have found that there is ample reason to believe that they may very well encode for biologically important proteins:
In fact it turns out that the authors of the ‘kick the ORFans out in the street’ paper actually did know that there was unbiased evidence strongly indicating the ORFan genes encoded proteins but chose to ignore it in favor of their preconceived evolutionary bias: Here is a analysis by gpuccio:
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-358547
Moreover the ‘anomaly’ of unique ORFan genes is found in every new genome sequenced:
As alluded to above, and completely contrary to evolutionary thought, these ‘new’ ORFan genes are found to be just as essential as ‘old’ genes for maintaining life:
This following study, in which the functional role of ORFan genes was analyzed, the (Darwinian) researchers were ‘very shocked’ and ‘taken aback’ by what they found;
I would like to point out that evolutionists cannot account for the origination of even one unique gene or protein, much less the over one thousand completely unique ORFan genes thus far found distinctly imbedded within the 20,000 genes of the human genome:
BA:
Exactly!
Petrushka:
For once, you are right. It’s NoMolecularFossils 1.0. Pure fun! 🙂
@News
The link is broken — just remove the . at the end of the link you supplied.
Although I am fairly confident that the over 1000 ORFan genes, that were removed from the human gene count in the one study, is a fairly heavy underestimation for total number of unique ORFan genes in the human genome,,,
,,, even using the 1000 unique ORFan genes we can get a fairly rough outline of just how difficult it would be for neo-Darwiniam processes to account for the difference between chimps and humans.,,, In origin of life research we find that the ‘hypothetical’ first life requires somewhere around ‘only’ 250 different and unique proteins:
Yet the one in 10 to the 41,000th power ‘problem’ of originating ‘just’ those 250 unique proteins, by purely material processes for the first life, caused Lynn Margulis to quip:
as well it caused Robert Shapiro to quip:
Thus, contrary to what Margulis and Shapiro originally thought of the bridge from bacteria to man being much shorter than the bridge from non-life to life, I would hold that this finding of 1000 completely unique orphan genes in the human genome (being four times larger than the 250 proteins required for the origin of life itself) is AT LEAST as much of a problem, for purely material neo-Darwinian processes to explain the origination of, as it is for the purely material neo-Darwinian processes to explain the origin of life itself!
Further notes on the ‘tosh’ fossil record of supposed human evolution:
etc.. etc.. etc..
Music and verse:
Although I am fairly confident that the over 1000 ORFan genes, that were removed from the human gene count in the one study, is a fairly heavy underestimation for total number of unique ORFan genes in the human genome,,,
,,, even using the 1000 unique ORFan genes we can get a fairly rough outline of just how difficult it would be for neo-Darwiniam processes to account for the difference between chimps and humans.,,, In origin of life research we find that the ‘hypothetical’ first life requires somewhere around ‘only’ 250 different and unique proteins:
Yet the one in 10 to the 41,000th power ‘problem’ of originating ‘just’ those 250 unique proteins, by purely material processes for the first life, caused Lynn Margulis to quip:
as well it caused Robert Shapiro to quip:
Thus, contrary to what Margulis and Shapiro originally thought of the bridge from bacteria to man being much shorter than the bridge from non-life to life, I would hold that this finding of 1000 completely unique orphan genes in the human genome (being four times larger than the 250 proteins required for the origin of life itself) is AT LEAST as much of a problem, for purely material neo-Darwinian processes to explain the origination of, as it is for the purely material neo-Darwinian processes to explain the origin of life itself!
Further notes on the ‘tosh’ fossil record of supposed human evolution:
etc.. etc.. etc..
Music and verse: