The origin of life problem is forever on the verge of being solved

Actually, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity unifies space and time into space-time. So, time and space went through at least one massive inflationary stage at the beginning of the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang there was no space and no time. They weren't infinite, they didn't exist.

And as succinctly stated by Querius. “Actually, the Big Bang apparently violates everything.”

Thanks, Bornagain77. I think I can go step further . . . The Big Bang was the transition from Nothing to Everything--in other words, Existence came out of and was somehow caused by Nonexistence. Now, there are a lot of things that we know have Nonexistence, for example the Easter Bunny! Thus, we recognize that the logical equivalent of asserting Everything that exists spontaneously was formed from Nothing is that Everything that exists was formed spontaneously from the Easter Bunny! Woohoo! Oh and probabilities and quantum fluctuations also need space-time. -Q Querius

Saying that there was a point 14 billion years ago when "time was created" is a nonsensical statement. Nothing can "create time" in any ordinary understanding of that phrase; it necessarily requires there be a "before" the thing existed and an "after," thus "created." There was no "before" time itself existed, so it cannot have been created. If there was no "before" it existed, then it has always existed. William J Murray

Moreover, the photon, prior to quantum wave collapse, also takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly.

Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (quantum) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1) http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/faculty/duwell/DuwellPSA2K.pdf Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the superposition of the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/#2.1 WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Infinity – Max Tegmark Excerpt: real numbers with their infinitely many decimals have infested almost every nook and cranny of physics, from the strengths of electromagnetic fields to the wave functions of quantum mechanics: we describe even a single bit of quantum information (a qubit) using two real numbers involving infinitely many decimals. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25344

Seversky, via his atheistic metaphysics, simply has no clue why a photon, prior to quantum wave collapse, should exist in an infinite dimension, infinite information, state. Whereas I, as a Christian Theist who holds that God sustains this universe in its continual existence, would pretty presuppose exactly that a photon should exist in an infinite dimension, infinite information, state prior to quantum wave collapse. Simply put, saying something is in an infinite dimensional state to me, as a Christian Theist, certainly sounds very much like the theistic attribute of omnipresence to me. And saying something takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly certainly sounds very much like the Theistic attribute of Omniscience to me as a Christian. And being able to collapse a infinite dimensional, infinite information, quantum wave to a finite state certainly sounds very much like the Theistic attribute of omnipotence to me as a Christian Theist, Again, Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence are some of the primary defining attributes of God,

Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence Omnipotence means all-powerful. Monotheistic theologians regard God as having supreme power. This means God can do what he wants. It means he is not subject to physical limitations like man is. Being omnipotent, God has power over wind, water, gravity, physics, etc. God's power is infinite, or limitless. Omniscience means all-knowing. God is all all-knowing in the sense that he is aware of the past, present, and future. Nothing takes him by surprise. His knowledge is total. He knows all that there is to know and all that can be known. Omnipresence means all-present. This term means that God is capable of being everywhere at the same time. It means his divine presence encompasses the whole of the universe. There is no location where he does not inhabit. This should not be confused with pantheism, which suggests that God is synonymous with the universe itself; instead, omnipresence indicates that God is distinct from the universe, but inhabits the entirety of it. He is everywhere at once. https://study.com/academy/lesson/omnipotent-omniscient-and-omnipresent-god-definition-lesson-quiz.html

So in conclusion, not only does General Relativity, via an absolute beginning of the universe, present Seversky, and his atheistic metaphysics, with an irresolvable problem, but Quantum Mechanics adds insult to injury and exponentially compounds the irresolvable problem for Seversky, and his atheistic metaphysics, in showing us that Seversky, via his atheistic metaphysics, can't even explain why the universe should continually exist. Whereas I, as a Christian Theist, have no problem whatsoever explaining why the universe began to exist, or why it continues to exist. Indeed, thousands of years before General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics were even known about, Christianity predicted that the universe was created, and continually sustained in its existence, by God.

Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

bornagain77

To make the irresolvable problem for Seversky, and his atheistic metaphysics, even worse, not only does Seversky, via his atheistic metaphysics, not have a explanation for the beginning of the universe, as is required by General Relativity, but Seversky, and his atheistic metaphysics, also have no explanation, via quantum mechanics, for why the universe should even continue to exist. As Scott Aaronson put the irresolvable dilemma that quantum mechanics presents for atheists, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”

Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables – Scott Aaronson Excerpt: “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec11.html

And indeed, Wheeler's Delayed Choice experiment and Leggett's inequality have both recently shown that, "the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” Via Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment with atoms we find that, ““It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”

New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: Some particles, such as photons or electrons, can behave both as particles and as waves. Here comes a question of what exactly makes a photon or an electron act either as a particle or a wave. This is what Wheeler’s experiment asks: at what point does an object ‘decide’? The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html

And via Leggett’s inequality we find that, “Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell’s inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell’s inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.” http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

Moreover, to make the problem for Seversky, and his atheistic metaphysics, even worse, we find that, prior to quantum wave collapse, the photon is mathematically defined as being in an infinite dimensional state,,,

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: We now have, in physics, two theories of great power and interest: the theory of quantum phenomena and the theory of relativity.,,, The two theories operate with different mathematical concepts: the four dimensional Riemann space and the infinite dimensional Hilbert space, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html Wave function Excerpt "wave functions form an abstract vector space",,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function#Wave_functions_as_an_abstract_vector_space Why do we need infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces in physics? You need an infinite dimensional Hilbert space to represent a wavefunction of any continuous observable (like position for example). https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/149786/why-do-we-need-infinite-dimensional-hilbert-spaces-in-physics

bornagain77

To go over what Seversky stated in a little more detail. Seversky stated that,

"We don’t know that the Big Bang violates anything. My understanding is that physics is able to describe what happened seconds after the BB but, at present, we have no way of knowing what happened before that, what conditions were like in the primordial singularity and what, if anything, came before. All we can infer is that, if it’s true that energy and information can be neither created or destroyed, then they must have existed pre-BB and for all time."

And as succinctly stated by Querius. "Actually, the Big Bang apparently violates everything." All the scientific evidence we now have tells us that matter-energy, space-time, were created at the beginning of the universe. And since the laws of physics are merely mathematical descriptions of how matter and energy behave in this universe, then it necessarily follows that the laws of physics must also have originated when matter and energy were created. (Indeed, atheists, in their desperate appeal to the multiverse, imagine wildly varying laws of physics. So obviously, even in atheistic metaphysics, there is apparently nothing sacrosanct about having unvarying laws of physics that preexisted the Big Bang). A Belgium priest, George Lemaitre, via working out the implications of Einstein's General Relativity, first proposed a beginning for the universe with what he termed to be a 'primordial atom' and/or a 'primordial egg'. Einstein initially resisted the idea of a beginning for the universe and, in fact, told Lemaitre, “Your calculations are correct, but your grasp of physics is abominable.” Moreover, Einstein himself had added an ad hoc cosmological constant to his equation that would keep the universe stable instead of the universe requiring a beginning. When astronomer Edwin Hubble later showed that the universe was indeed expanding, Einstein admitted that he was wrong, and even later in his life Einstein ended up calling his ad hoc addition of the cosmological constant to his equation “my biggest blunder.” Eddington also resisted the idea of the beginning of the universe and, philosophically not scientifically, found the idea to be 'repugnant'. Hoyle also resisted the idea of the universe having a beginning and coined the term 'Big Bang' as a point of derision for those who thought the universe had a beginning. Which is very unfortunate thing for Hoyle to do since the creation of the universe was nothing like an explosion, as is implied with the term 'Big Bang', but was instead a very orderly event.

WHY THE BIG BANG IS NOT AN EXPLOSION - By Sten Odenwald - May 14, 1997 Excerpt: the event that created the universe and everything in it was a very different kind of phenomenon than most people -- or, at least, most nonphysicists -- imagine. Even the name "Big Bang" originally was a putdown cooked up by a scientist who didn't like the concept when it was first put forth. He favored the idea that the universe had always existed in a much more dignified and fundamentally unchanging, steady state. But the name stuck, and with it has come the completely wrong impression that the event was like an explosion. That image leads many of us to imagine that the universe is expanding because the objects in it are being flung apart like fragments of a detonated bomb. That isn't true.,,, So, how should we think about the Big Bang? Our "fireworks" image of the phenomenon depends on five basic requirements: 1) A preexisting sky or space into which the fragments from the explosion are injected; 2) A preexisting time we can use to mark when the explosion happened; 3) Individual projectiles moving through space from a common center; 4) A definite moment when the explosion occurred; and 5) Something that started the Big Bang. All of these requirements in our visualization of the Big Bang are false or unnecessary, according to GR. Preexisting Space? There was no preexisting space. The mathematics of GR state unambiguously that three-dimensional space was created at the Big Bang itself, at "Time Zero," along with everything else. At that beginning, there were no separations between particles anywhere. This is another way of saying there was no three-dimensional space,,, space is not a passive stage across which objects dance but a full-fledged member of the cast. GR treats galaxies and "space-time" together, giving a very different picture of what happens than if they were treated separately, as most of us tend to do.,,, Perhaps the strangest truth to emerge from general relativity is the expansion of space. Like spots glued to the surface of a swelling balloon at eternally fixed latitude and longitude points, the galaxies remain where they are while space dilates between them as time passes.,,, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/1997/05/14/why-the-big-bang-is-not-an-explosion/7164578f-5b06-407b-b69a-e97377145ac5/ "The Big Bang represents an immensely powerful, yet carefully planned and controlled release of matter, energy, space and time. All this is accomplished within the strict confines of very carefully fine-tuned physical constants and laws. The power and care this explosion reveals exceeds human mental capacity by multiple orders of magnitude." Prof. Henry F. Schaefer - closing statement of the following video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=901f7oC_Pik&feature=player_detailpage#t=360s “An explosion you think of as kind of a messy event. And this is the point about entropy. The explosion in which our universe began was not a messy event. And if you talk about how messy it could have been, this is what the Penrose calculation is all about essentially. It looks at the observed statistical entropy in our universe. The entropy per baryon. And he calculates that out and he arrives at a certain figure. And then he calculates using the Bekenstein-Hawking formula for Black-Hole entropy what the,,, (what sort of entropy could have been associated with,,, the singularity that would have constituted the beginning of the universe). So you've got the numerator, the observed entropy, and the denominator, how big it (the entropy) could have been. And that fraction turns out to be,, 1 over 10 to the 10 to the 123rd power. Let me just emphasize how big that denominator is so you can gain a real appreciation for how small that probability is. So there are 10^80th baryons in the universe. Protons and neutrons. No suppose we put a zero on every one of those. OK, how many zeros is that? That is 10^80th zeros. This number has 10^123rd zeros. OK, so you would need a hundred million, trillion, trillion, trillion, universes our size, with zero on every proton and neutron in all of those universes just to write out this number. That is how fine tuned the initial entropy of our universe is. And if there were a pre-Big Bang state and you had some bounces, then that fine tuning (for entropy) gets even finer as you go backwards if you can even imagine such a thing. ” Dr Bruce Gordon - Contemporary Physics and God Part 2 - video – 1:50 minute mark - video https://youtu.be/ff_sNyGNSko?t=110

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, and George Ellis were instrumental in refining General Relativity yet again to a point to reveal that not only did mass-energy have a absolute (singular) beginning in the Big Bang, but that space-time also itself had an absolute (singular) beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy.:

Big Bang Theory - An Overview of the main evidence Excerpt: Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."3 Steven W. Hawking, George F.R. Ellis, "The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in our Universe," Astrophysical Journal, 152, (1968) pp. 25-36. Steven W. Hawking, Roger Penrose, "The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, 314 (1970) pp. 529-548. http://www.big-bang-theory.com/ "Every solution to the equations of general relativity guarantees the existence of a singular boundary for space and time in the past." (Hawking, Penrose, Ellis) - 1970 http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html

i.e. Hawking, Ellis, and Penrose proved that space and time did not even exist at the beginning of the universe! Which is a truly astonishing thing to realize. As Stephen Meyer pointed out, "How much matter and energy can you put into zero space?, The answer is, obviously, that you can put zero matter and energy into zero space. Thus even Lemaitre's idea of a 'primordial atom' was falsified since, (via Hawking, Ellis, and Penrose refinement of General Relativity to show that space and time were created), matter and energy themselves were shown to have required an absolute beginning. So regardless of Seversky claiming that the Big Bang did not violate the first law of thermodynamics, and regardless of him saying that "the First Law that must always have existed so no need for a Creator then", regardless of that claim by Seversky, (and according to what our best science from General Relativity can now tell us), the first law of thermodynamics was indeed violated in the most spectacular way possible in that the science itself tells us that all the energy of the universe was necessarily created at the beginning of the universe. Seversky likes to repeatedly claim that he is being 'scientific' in following his Naturalistic and/or Materialistic metaphysics, Yet, despite what Seversky might claim to the contrary, he certainly is NOT following the science where it leads but is instead letting his a priori materialistic, even atheistic, biases dictate what scientific evidence he willing to accept and which scientific evidence he is willing to, resolutely, ignore. In short, Seversky is being VERY unscientific! Verse

Genesis 1: 1-3 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

bornagain77

Seversky,

We don’t know that the Big Bang violates anything.

Actually, the Big Bang apparently violates everything. That's why the multiverse idea was proposed in the first place. One has to explain how Nothing created Everything: how quantum fluctuations and probabilities existed even before space and time; how entropy started at such a low level, how everything in the universe existed as a point; where all the mass-energy came from; why there was any inflation; and many, many more questions using only the existing physics in nature, which also came into existence with the Big Bang. So, what are your arguments against what Paul Davies says here? https://youtu.be/a-4N0Mclb6o -Q Querius

Seversky, Not that I have any hope that it will help you understand information, given your dogmatic commitment to atheism where facts simply don't matter, but the 'physics' of information has come a long way over the last decade or so, to show that information is a real and tangible thing, and is not just some abstraction as materialists hold it to be. For example, as the following article states,,, "information, entropy, and energy should be treated on equal footings."

Information: From Maxwell’s demon to Landauer's eraser - Lutz and Ciliberto - Oct. 25, 2015 - Physics Today Excerpt: The above examples of gedanken-turned-real experiments provide a firm empirical foundation for the physics of information and tangible evidence of the intimate connection between information and energy. They have been followed by additional experiments and simulations along similar lines.12 (See, for example, Physics Today, August 2014, page 60.) Collectively, that body of experimental work further demonstrates the equivalence of information and thermodynamic entropies at thermal equilibrium.,,, (2008) Sagawa and Ueda’s (theoretical) result extends the second law to explicitly incorporate information; it shows that information, entropy, and energy should be treated on equal footings. http://www.johnboccio.com/research/quantum/notes/Information.pdf J. Parrondo, J. Horowitz, and T. Sagawa. Thermodynamics of information. Nature Physics, 11:131-139, 2015.

bornagain77

Seversky lives in a atheistic dream world where facts simply don't matter, Sev states (with a straight face I imagine), "We don’t know that the Big Bang violates anything." Save for violating the entire Atheistic notion that the universe has always existed.

“My argument,” Dr. Penzias concluded, “is that the best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” - Dr. Arno Penzias, Nobel Laureate in Physics – co-discoverer Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation – as stated to the New York Times on March 12, 1978 “Certainly there was something that set it all off,,, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match Genesis” - Robert Wilson – Nobel laureate – co-discoverer Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - Fred Heeren, Show Me God (Wheeling, Ill.: Daystar, 2000), "The question of 'the beginning' is as inescapable for cosmologists as it is for theologians...there is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing" - George Smoot and Keay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time, 1993, p.189. - George Smoot is a Nobel laureate in 2006 for his work on COBE "Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." - Robert Jastrow – Founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute – ‘God and the Astronomers’ - Pg.15 - 2000? "The Bible is frequently dismissed as being anti-scientific because it makes no predictions. Oh no, that is incorrect. It makes a brilliant prediction. For centuries it has been saying there was a beginning. And if scientists had taken that a bit more seriously they might have discovered evidence for a beginning a lot earlier than they did.” - John Lennox ,,, 'And if you're curious about how Genesis 1, in particular, fairs. Hey, we look at the Days in Genesis as being long time periods, which is what they must be if you read the Bible consistently, and the Bible scores 4 for 4 in Initial Conditions and 10 for 10 on the Creation Events' - Hugh Ross - Latest Scientific Evidence for God's Existence

bornagain77

The irony meter just exploded. seversky's entire position is nothing but speculation.

And by the First Law that must always have existed so no need for a Creator then.

That doesn't follow. ET

Bornagain77/32

The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Yet the Big Bang violates the first law of thermodynamics in the most spectacular way possible in that all the energy of the universe was instantly brought into being at the creation of the universe approx. 14 billion years ago. (As well space-time itself was brought into being at the creation of the universe)

We don't know that the Big Bang violates anything. My understanding is that physics is able to describe what happened seconds after the BB but, at present, we have no way of knowing what happened before that, what conditions were like in the primordial singularity and what, if anything, came before. All we can infer is that, if it's true that energy and information can be neither created or destroyed, then they must have existed pre-BB and for all time.

i.e. God, being transcendent of, and the foundation of, all the space-time matter-energy of the universe, can impart as much quantum information into the universe as he see fits, when He sees fit.

Pure speculation.

To repeat part of post 8, “the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.”

And by the First Law that must always have existed so no need for a Creator then. Seversky

Is the information in the ink someone uses to write a scientific paper? Is it in the paper?

“Information is information, neither matter nor energy. Any materialism which disregards this, will not survive one day.” Norbert Weiner

DNA codes for RNA sequences. The code is neither the DNA nor the RNA. And the DNA does not determine biological form. No one knows where that information is but no one has been able to link it to anything physical. ET

Bornagain77/31

And as the last line in this following video (which was referenced in the preceding article) stated, ‘it (information) is the thing that converts the random chaos of gas in a box into something useful. Kinda like how the information in DNA is the thing that makes a bunch of random molecules into a squirrel. Information,, can bring order out of chaos. If it (information) is not real then neither are we’

So this video is arguing that "information" is the same as the chemical and physical properties of matter, including what we call the laws which regulate how they behave.? Isn't that different from the information you and I and everyone else here are exchanging?

In short, immaterial information is now shown to be a ‘physical thing’ in that it it is now shown to bring about real, tangible, i.e. thermodynamic, effects on matter and energy, (i.e. bringing order out of chaos).

If information is now shown to be a "physical thing" then calling it "immaterial" is contradictory. It can't be both. Seversky

Martin, Their confidence comes from years of equivocations, lies, misconceptions and misrepresentations. There are those who actually believe it is a successful research paradigm all the while unable to say what successes were brought on by the concept of evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. So they equivocate, lie and bluff. They will go to their graves living in denial about all that. Pathetic, actually ET

The next lecture by Dr. Tour just happened Episode 6/13: The Building Blocks of Building Blocks // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCf-OfFpS_k bornagain77

Martin_r,

what i don’t understand is, where all the Darwinian self-confidence comes from…

Ideological poisoning. Their worldview doesn't allow them to consider any alternatives despite the mounting evidence that Darwinism has not been a successful theory in explaining the diversity of life on earth nor the origin of the massive complexity in cells and organisms. -Q Querius

Querius, what i don't understand is, where all the Darwinian self-confidence comes from... Not only in regards to OOL-research, but in general. Every new Darwinian scientific paper on evolution starts with a statement that it is "other than thought, earlier than thought, more complex than thought and so on ... ". Recently, the University of Oregon article: "... long-used approaches for reconstructing evolutionary paths are deeply flawed.", and "...our finding casts serious doubts over literally thousands of studies that use phylogenetic trees of extant data to reconstruct the diversification history of taxa ..." I really don't understand where all the Darwinian self-confidence comes from ... martin_r

Martin_r, Yes, researchers are actually farther in that they are "barking up the wrong tree." They synthesize some things from artificial ingredients in artificial environments in with artificial processes and then claim that all this proves that it coulda happened this way somehow and therefore in absence of any other naturalistic method, it thus musta happened this way. They claim they're just missing a few intermediate steps that will inevitably be found. Note that this is similar to all the missing fossils, missing in-between evolutionary steps, and missing processes that can realistically explain the overwhelming complexity of all the chemistry of interlocking chemical cycles and a credible path to get there. No, they're not even close to being close, plus they're heading in the wrong direction. -Q Querius

also, another take-home-lesson from Dr. Tour lecture on OOL-research is, that all these Darwinian OOL-researchers using PURCHASED! chemicals to do their experiments... these guys don't create it from scratch!!! What is even more ridiculous, these purchased chemicals come from living organisms !!!!! The suppliers extract/isolate these chemicals from nature, from cells!!!, and then sell it to who ever it needs, e.g. a Darwinian OOL-researcher :))) So even these purchased products have not been developed from scratch !!!!!!!!!!! This is insane !!!! How could an Darwinian OOL-researcher look in the mirror.... the whole Darwinian OOL-research is a bluff, a delusion, a deception ... martin_r

i just watched Dr. Tour's 5/13 lecture on Carbohydrates. After this lecture, i see, that the problem with DNA-carbohydrates is gigantic, especially the part how carbohydrates are hooked together (there are many options how carbohydrates can be hooked together) ... i did not realize that before .... . who understands this topic, and still claims that all that happened just so, the right way, not once, but over and over again, such a person must be insane ... martin_r

Querius @24 OOL-researchers: "we’re closer than ever" Actually, the exact opposite is true, as Dr. Tour stated several times, the OOL-researchers are FARTHER AWAY THAN EVER !!! The whole OOL-research is a fiasco... A Darwinian layman has no idea how desperate this research is ... Since the MULLER-UREY experiment (70 years ago), NO PROGRESS IN THIS FIELD, and Darwinian laymen think that OOL-question have been solved - it is like in some mental hospital .... martin_r

Seversky also states "if (quantum) information can be neither created nor destroyed, then all information must be eternal, must it not? This means that, Big Bang Theory notwithstanding, this universe – or the information that describes it – must always have existed and will continue to exist forever." Well I can see why Seversky, (who foolishly defends atheism day in and day out), would put the caveat of "Big Bang Theory notwithstanding" in his statement. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Yet the Big Bang violates the first law of thermodynamics in the most spectacular way possible in that all the energy of the universe was instantly brought into being at the creation of the universe approx. 14 billion years ago. (As well space-time itself was brought into being at the creation of the universe) Thus clearly the first law was spectacularly 'violated' at the beginning of the universe by something, or SOMEONE, who is beyond all the space-time matter-energy of the universe. Likewise, the conservation of quantum information holds ONLY for the universe itself and does not hold for SOMEONE who exists outside the confines of this physical universe. i.e. God, being transcendent of, and the foundation of, all the space-time matter-energy of the universe, can impart as much quantum information into the universe as he see fits, when He sees fit. And indeed HE does see fit to impart (quantum) information into the universe every time HE created life, created a new species, or currently imparts quantum information into developing embryos. To repeat part of post 8, "the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000."

In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) – November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/

Verses:

Psalm 139:13-14 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 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

Seversky states,

This is incoherent. In one sentence, you contradict yourself by describing information as both “immaterial” and “physical”. It can’t be both, so which is it?

In so far as it is incoherent it is incoherent in that it is 'counterintuitive' to what we would presuppose. And it is especially counterintuitive for Darwinists who presuppose that reductive materialism is true. i.e. who hold that immaterial information is merely emergent from some material basis. Yet immaterial information, contrary to the presuppositions of reductive materialists, is now shown, via the experimental realization of the Maxwell demon thought experiment, to be its own independent entity that is separate from matter and energy. A independent entity that has a quote unquote 'thermodynamic content' that enables immaterial information to interact with matter and energy. Indeed, as I have referenced in this thread, it is the imparting of 'positional information' into matter and energy, by an Intelligence', that allows life to operate in a state that is far from thermodynamic equilibrium. And since immaterial information, via the experimental realization of the Maxwell demon thought experiment, is now experimentally shown to have thermodynamic, i.e. 'physical', effects on matter and energy, then it is indeed 'physical' in the sense that it does indeed have detectable physical effects. This 'thermodynamic' effect on matter and energy simply would not be possible if immaterial information were not 'physical' in some real and meaningful sense. And indeed, the following researcher stated, ""Landauer said that information is physical because it takes energy to erase it. We are saying that the reason it (information) is physical has a broader context than that."

Scientists show how to erase information without using energy - January 2011 Excerpt: "Landauer said that information is physical because it takes energy to erase it. We are saying that the reason it (information) is physical has a broader context than that.", Vaccaro explained. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-scientists-erase-energy.html

And as the subtitle of the following article further explained, "Running a brain-twisting thought experiment for real shows that information is a physical thing,,,"

Matter, energy… knowledge: How to harness physics' demonic power Running a brain-twisting thought experiment for real shows that information is a physical thing – so can we now harness the most elusive entity in the cosmos? - 11 May 2016 Excerpt: WE LIVE in the age of information. We are surrounded by it, and more of it year by year. It is the currency of human understanding, our indispensable guide to navigating a complex world. But what, actually, is information? As we have wrestled with the question over the years, we have slowly begun to realise it is more than an abstraction, the intangible concept embodying anything that can be expressed in strings of 1s and 0s. Information is a real, physical thing that seems to play a part in everything from how machines work to how living creatures function. Recently came the most startling demonstration yet: a tiny machine powered purely by information, which chilled metal through the power of its knowledge. This seemingly magical device could put us on the road to new, more efficient nanoscale machines, a better understanding of the workings of life, and a more complete picture of perhaps our most fundamental theory of the physical world. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030730-200-demon-no-more-physics-most-elusive-entity-gives-up-its-secret/

And as the last line in this following video (which was referenced in the preceding article) stated, 'it (information) is the thing that converts the random chaos of gas in a box into something useful. Kinda like how the information in DNA is the thing that makes a bunch of random molecules into a squirrel. Information,, can bring order out of chaos. If it (information) is not real then neither are we'

'it (information) is the thing that converts the random chaos of gas in a box into something useful. Kinda like how the information in DNA is the thing that makes a bunch of random molecules into a squirrel. Information,, can bring order out of chaos. If it (information) is not real then neither are we' - What is information? https://youtu.be/2AvIOzVJMCM?t=135

In short, immaterial information is now shown to be a 'physical thing' in that it it is now shown to bring about real, tangible, i.e. thermodynamic, effects on matter and energy, (i.e. bringing order out of chaos). Again, this thermodynamic 'physical effect' that immaterial information has on matter and energy simply would not be possible if immaterial information were not 'physical' is some real and meaningful sense. bornagain77

Bornagain77/21

Another way to clearly, and perhaps more easily, demonstrate that immaterial information is its own distinctive physical entity that, although being immaterial, can still physically interact in a top-down manner with material substrates is with quantum teleportation:

This is incoherent. In one sentence, you contradict yourself by describing information as both "immaterial" and "physical". It can't be both, so which is it? Also, as has been pointed out many times before, you haven't defined what you - or the researchers you are quoting - mean by "information". To be fair, you're not alone in this. We all talk about it as if it's an monolithic concept that we all have in common. But is it? Remember that William Dembski quoted a researcher - who's name, I'm sorry to say, I can't remember - who had compiled a list of around 40 different usages of "information" and "complexity". Some of those may be duplicates but that's still a lot of opportunities for equivocation. Is the information a dendrochronologist infers from tree-rings about the history of the tree the same the same as the information we are exchanging now or the information that appears to move instantaneously from one point to another in quantum teleportation or the information that makes up WJM's information universe? Another question, if information can be neither created nor destroyed, then all information must be eternal, must it not? This means that, Big Bang Theory notwithstanding, this universe - or the information that describes it - must always have existed and will continue to exist forever. And if something - be it a universe or information or a deity - exists forever, can it be said to have a point or purpose? A purpose implies something that can be achieved and that achievement is the end-point. So, while there may be an infinite number of smaller purposes that can be fulfilled can there be any ultimate purpose to it all? Seversky

WJM, While I partly agree with some of your assertions about QM, the fact that wavefunctions have shape, location, and movement, and that they can interact with each other, that particles can become entangled, and so on, doesn't obviate that there are observable physical effects, that wavefunctions can collapse, and that there effects transcend the conscious observational/measurement choices of any single individual. I think what Bornagain77 is trying to communicate to you is that quantum realities manifest themselves as physical realities as well. Here's my analogy. The fact that atoms and molecules exist doesn't mean that the objects built from those atoms and molecules don't exist. This bits recorded on my hard drive and observed by no one else, will certainly be accessible after I'm dead. How is this possible in your scheme of things? -Q Querius

WJM since immaterial information is shown to have real and tangible effects on what we regard as being the material world, i.e. matter and energy, then I hold it to be a physically real entity. The distinction I am making in calling immaterial information 'physical' is fully intended so as to specifically convey that 'counterintuitive' fact.. I know you want everything to be mental. I am sympathetic but not as enamored as you are with your 'everything is mental' model. IMHO, Something is getting 'lost in translation' with your mental model. bornagain77

Let's explore this line of thougt further. What does it mean to say that information and observation is the "substrate" of material reality? Is it analogous to a painting, where the canvas is immaterial observation interacting with immaterial information, and the paint on the canvas is analogous to "material reality?" What then is the paint made of? Is the paint made of "matter?" No, the paint is also made of immaterial information directed by, or interacting with, immaterial intent and observation. Calling the immaterial information and observation a "substrate" obfuscates the fact that it's "information and observation" all the way up and down. There's literally nothing else to work with, in, or on. Semi-materialist views like this needlessly add a hypothetical extra domain that adds absolutely nothing of value. Why insist a material reality exists when it is (1) utterly unnecessary, (2) cannot ever be evidenced, even in principle, and (2) inserts an unsolvable domain interaction problem into the mix? The only way mind and "matter" interaction can be explained is via the immaterial information/observation substrate at the quantum level. It supposedly "collapses" the immaterial quantum state into a particular, real, "matter" state. Unfortunately, further quantum experimentation has show this perspective to be false. The particular states of matter are not being collapsed "out there" into a particular physical state in some objective, extra-mental world because two factually contradictory states of the same thing have been shown to simultaneously exist in the experience of two different observers. This clearly shows that "factual" states of what we call "matter" only exist per observer. One observer does not collapse the system into a particular state for all observers. So, what then is "material reality" is it is not even universal for all observers? William J Murray

BA77, I think you are unnecessarily conflating "physical" with "real." Information is real. It is immaterial. It is not physical. It affects what we call "the physical world." Now tell me: how can physical matter be affected by immaterial information? William J Murray

Querius said:

If this is an appeal to QM, then information is encoded in the patterns of wavefunctions.

Encoded by what?

What physicists working in the field have concluded is that information and conscious observation is a substrate to material reality. It doesn’t mean that material reality doesn’t exist or that information cannot be encoded in it.

Does "material reality" exist without information or observation? William J Murray

It's scheduled for tomorrow night, Bornagain77. So far, Dr. Tour's commentary and critiques have been amazing! As a participant said in the aftershow, it's wonderful that Dr. Tour took the time to thoroughly analyze one of the referenced papers and one of its references to expose the missing information and then exposed the deceit. People who write such papers should not conceal extremely low yields and claim to have solved one step in abiogenesis. It's unethical to claim that "we're closer than ever" to solving abiogenesis when one has debatably made an inch of progress toward a goal 100 miles away. That's hype at best and deception at worst. It's really tempting to write a satirical paper on how a modern computer was able to "evolve" by a succession of natural steps, including photos of a sandy beach as a source of silicon and geological formations that musta acted as molds for naturally synthesized plastic and so on . . . and then claim that we're closer than ever to a solution. A living cell is thousands, perhaps millions of times more complex than a modern PC. Incidentally, the older term for abiogenesis was spontaneous generation, but that was dropped apparently because it can no longer be claimed that life still emerges continuously and spontaneously everywhere. -Q Querius

LIVE AFTERSHOW | Professor Dave Gets Annihilated On Abiogenesis - Open Mic https://youtu.be/J98Edtq5ePk?t=148 Next lecture tonight is on Carbohydrates Episode 5/13: Carbohydrates // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdqd_EvpsZM bornagain77

Bornagain77, Good quotes, but I'm afraid it doesn't make a dent to Darwinian fundamentalists. Take the quote:

The idea that information is “encoded” in a material system has been disproved by the evidence: there is no “matter” upon or within which information can be “encoded.”

Here's yet another completely clueless assertion without any references. Gosh, and to think that I'm relying on information encoded magnetically as "bits" on my hard drive. And my body is grown, maintained, and repaired by information encoded as base pairs in my DNA, not to mention the overlapping codes present as epigenetic data. All this has supposedly been "disproven." Really? By whom and when? If this is an appeal to QM, then information is encoded in the patterns of wavefunctions. What physicists working in the field have concluded is that information and conscious observation is a substrate to material reality. It doesn't mean that material reality doesn't exist or that information cannot be encoded in it. -Q Querius

Well WJM what I wrote means pretty much exactly what I intended for it to mean. Counterintuitive to what we would presuppose, and although information is immaterial, it is, none-the-less, shown to be 'physical', i.e. to be 'real', in the sense that it is shown to have 'top-down' casual effects upon material substrates. In my post, I cited the recent experimental work that confirmed the Maxwell demon thought experiment down to the atomic/quantum level. Work that has now shown that immaterial information has a quote unquote 'thermodynamic content',,, but, in order to get my point about the immaterial, yet physical, nature of information across more easily, I could have just as easily cited George Ellis's paper recognizing the 'top-down causation' of software, i.e. immaterial information, on the computer hardware, i.e. on the material substrates.

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 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/ 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 Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: Causation: The nature of causation is highly contested territory, and I will take a pragmatic view:? Definition 1: Causal Effect If making a change in a quantity X results in a reliable demonstrable change in a quantity Y in a given context, then X has a causal effect on Y. Example: I press the key labelled “A” on my computer keyboard; the letter “A” appears on my computer screen.,,, Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter). This is clearly a sensible and testable criterion; in the example above, it leads to the conclusion that both the data and the relevant software exist. If we do not adopt this definition, we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,, Excerpt: page 5: A: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts.,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf ?

Another way to clearly, and perhaps more easily, demonstrate that immaterial information is its own distinctive physical entity that, although being immaterial, can still physically interact in a top-down manner with material substrates is with quantum teleportation: As the following article states, ",,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another."

Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World - September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,, This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,, ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/09/19/quantum-teleportation-enters-real-world/#.V-HqWNEoDtR

And as the following article states. “,,, information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.”

First Teleportation Between Distant Atoms – 2009 Excerpt: For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing. Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances. Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance https://jqi.umd.edu/news/first-teleportation-between-distant-atoms

Thus WJM, what I wrote means pretty much exactly what I intended for it to mean. "immaterial information, particularly ‘positional quantum information’, is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is a product of an ‘observer who describes the system’." i.e. Immaterial information, although being immaterial, is, none-the-less, now experimentally shown, (all the way down to the atomic/quantum level), to be physically real in that it now shown to have 'top-down' causal effects upon material substrates. To repeat George Ellis's definitions of 'causal effect' and 'existence'

Definition 1: Causal Effect If making a change in a quantity X results in a reliable demonstrable change in a quantity Y in a given context, then X has a causal effect on Y. Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter). This is clearly a sensible and testable criterion; in the example above, it leads to the conclusion that both the data and the relevant software exist. If we do not adopt this definition, we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,,

bornagain77

The idea that information is "encoded" in a material system has been disproved by the evidence: there is no "matter" upon or within which information can be "encoded." Physical objects can only be experiential representations of arrangements of information which can only be experienced by an observer. Depending on the observer, the available information in what we call the physical representation can (and has been) experienced not only differently from observer to observe, but as a contradictory experience between observers. Not only is entropy determined by the observer, that is also where the principle of non-contradiction ultimately lies: in the experience of the individual observer. The origin of life is not different from the existence of life, at least not in terms of a biological framework. AS IF the "origin" of biological life is somehow more a significant or mysterious event than the fact that our biological bodies maintain "life" at any moment. Where is that information coming from? What is directing it? DNA is not nearly enough, not by a long shot. The processing power and informational reserves to maintain a moment of what we call biological life is, for all intents and purposes, unimaginable. It takes enormous energy and computing power just to generate a CGI facsimile of a living creature; imagine what it takes to actually compute and process an entire 3D living being with tens of trillions of cells each with virtually countless highly organized, functioning, interdependent parts? Each of those sub-cellular parts are themselves, at the quantum level, organized representations of information being processed into an experience by the observer - even at the entropic level. Even at the "physical law" or "chemical interaction" level. We now know these are all observer-collapsed representations of information. How can the necessary information for a thing be encoded in the thing itself if the thing doesn't even exist as such until an observer looks at it? What is the observer "looking at?" If matter doesn't exist outside of an observational experience, what are we "encoding" when we put music on a CD? The only rational and scientific answer is: we are encoding our own experiences in mind. That is the only place information can exist. That is the only place "encoding" can occur, which is the process of using one set of information to structure another set of information. That is the only place that experiences of such information can occur. William J Murray

BA77 said:

In other words, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, immaterial information, particularly ‘positional quantum information’, is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is a product of an ‘observer who describes the system’.

Perhaps reword this? What does it mean for something immaterial to be it's own distinct physical entity? William J Murray

Thanks, Martin. At least some scientists are interested in facts and science.

It has come to our attention that THE THIRD WAY web site is wrongly being referenced by proponents of Intelligent Design and creationist ideas as support for their arguments. We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else.

Intelligent Design doesn't require the supernatural. ID just requires TELIC processes. ET

ET @11 you have mention natural selection. I assume, you have heard of the movement of mainstream scientists called 'The third way of evolution'. Look what they say about natural selection (from their official website): "... Moreover, some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis." :)))) funny, to hear something like that from mainstream scientists... they have a disclaimer on their index page: "We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else. " Here it is source of the quote (in the red text area): https://thethirdwayofevolution.com/ martin_r

Chuck,

#14 I have no idea what you are talking about.

I assume this comment was directed to me. You asked (from a design perspective) “what happened” at the origin of life. I answered your question. The abbreviated description I gave was originally predicted from logic, and ultimately confirmed by experimental result. The key observations involved are fundamental to the origin of any open-ended self-replicator (i.e. life/evolution). Consequently, they are all well-documented in the literature, and are not even controversial. The details are both accessible and coherent. However, if these things make no immediate sense to you, then perhaps you should stay silent until you can get a handle on the matter. If you would like, I can give you a brief rundown on the scientists, dates, and discoveries involved. Upright BiPed

Living cells can overcome the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics because they exist in an open system where outside energy is available. This outside energy is a "necessary condition" for life. However this only works if there also is a mechanism that can capture and harness the outside energy. As an analogy, a manufacturing plant can reduce local entropy using electricity to power machinery to produce finished products. The machinery is a mechanism to harness and use energy. If a large bomb is detonated in the manufacturing plant, it will increase entropy (disorder) because there is no mechanism to capture and harness that energy. Therefore although outside energy is a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition. Which leads to a quandary: before the advent of life, how did the quite complex mechanisms to capture and harness energy come into existence in contradiction to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? Ralph Dave Westfall

Dr Tour's next lecture tonight is on Homochirality, which is certainly NOT a small problem for naturalistic OOL scenarios Episode 4/13: Homochirality // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqbpd3CmBgE bornagain77

Bornagain77, Thanks for the references in 8 and 9. I didn't know about "quantum cooling" and "quantum no-hiding" being experimentally confirmed. Also, it looks like I'll need to back off any statements about if our bodies were democratic, we'd be considered a bacteria colony that evolved our bodies as a sort of exoskeleton. ;-) CD, Have you even looked into how much shielding hemoglobin provides against background radiation? The idea is absurd to anyone who was taken any classes in radiation safety. Plus, the bones themselves are radioactive. The presence of significant amounts of C-14 also indicates that the dinosaur tissue is much younger than previously imagined: https://www.newgeology.us/presentation48.html

Researchers have found a reason for the puzzling survival of soft tissue and DNA fragments in dinosaur bones - the bones are younger than anyone ever guessed. Carbon-14 (C-14) dating of multiple samples of bone from 8 dinosaurs found in Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana revealed that they are only 22,000 to 39,000 years old. Members of the Paleochronology group presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).

But I guess, you're not interested in "following the science" or are you? -Q Querius

CD claims: "that there is a remarkable continuity in the fossil record “that seem[s] to be leading” us to a deeper understanding of natural selection." HUH???? Forget scientifically correct, is that even grammatically correct? bornagain77

Natural selection is just a process of elimination. It is impotent with respect to universal common descent. In over 150 years since Darwin wrote his trope no one has been able to validate his claims. A deeper understanding of natural selection says it is nothing more than contingent serendipity. Continuity in the fossil record? Are you daft? The vast majority, >95%, of all fossils are of marine invertebrates. Yet in that vast majority there isn't any evidence for universal common descent. ET

#10 Whatever... #14 I have no idea what you are talking about.... #11 It's all about "telling" us what happened, i.e. is a hypothesis (a prediction about the world) supported or not supported by the data, be it relativity, natural selection, planetary formation, geotropism, etc. Or in some cases, like Dr. Schweitzer, something new and unexpected comes from the data which requires a re-thinking, rejection or modification of our hypotheses. Are paleontologists and evolutionary biologist all running to now claim that dinosaurs co-existed with man because some preserved collagen was found in a dinosaur femur (as some interpret Schweitzer's findings)? No, they are rethinking the preservation qualities of the site where the femur was found, i.e., that the environmental conditions where the bone was found is a more robust preservative than encountered before. This has happened before in findings of intact mammoths and other megafauna. And, analysis of the collagen shows (ala natural selection) that dinosaur bone anatomy and physiology is remarkably similar to that found in current fauna, particularly reptilian anatomy and physiology, exactly as one would hypothesize. The data "tells" us, if we care to listen, that there is a remarkable continuity in the fossil record "that seem[s] to be leading" us to a deeper understanding of natural selection. chuckdarwin

And at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Jonathan Wells, (who specializes in embryology), using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, ‘positional information’ must somehow be coming into the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into their multiple different states during embryological development.

Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484

As well, the preceding finding that information must be coming into a developing embryo for the ‘outside’, fits, hand in glove, with William Dembski’s and Robert Marks’ previous work establishing the principle of ‘conservation of information’

“Information does not magically materialize. It can be created by intelligence or it can be shunted around by natural forces. But natural forces, and Darwinian processes in particular, do not create information.” – William Dembski

In order to establish that the Intelligent Designer who creates, and sustains, life must be God, it is first necessary to point out that “quantum information” is now found to be ubiquitous within life:

“What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.” Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 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 Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg

What is interesting about finding quantum information to be ubiquitous within life (and finding sequential information to be a subset of quantum information), is that quantum correlations are a ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, affair that requires a beyond space and time cause in order 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

As well, it is also important to realize that quantum information, unlike classical sequential information, is ‘physically’ conserved. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.

Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time – 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html

The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”

Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe – Oct. 19, 2017 – Spiritual Excerpt: “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” – Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark) https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/10/life-after-death-soul-science-morgan-freeman/

I have a question for ‘Professor Dave’ and other atheists,

Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?

It is also very interesting to note how all of the preceding evidence fits, hand and glove, with John 1:1-4 in the New Testament:

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.

That John 1:1-4 should fit, hand and glove, with what was only recently discovered via our most advanced science, (i.e. via our advances in quantum information theory and quantum biology), is nothing short of completely amazing. To further drive the point home I offer this following quote,

“The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.” Vlatko Vedral – Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College – a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics.

In a world where Christianity would be given a fair hearing from most scientists, (since Christianity did indeed give us modern science in the first place), this ‘prediction’ of John 1:1-4 about ‘information’ being foundational to life should count as a rather dramatic ‘scientific’ confirmation for the truth of Christianity. Namely, all of this evidence further drives the point home that Jesus, as demonstrated by His resurrection from the dead by God the Father, truly has life, (and more particularly for us personally, has the gift of ‘eternal life’), contained within Himself.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Supplemental note:

January 2021 Whereas atheists have no observational evidence that the Multiverses that they postulated to ‘explain. away’ the fine tuning of the universe are real, (nor do Atheists have any evidence that the ‘parallel universes’ that they postulated to ‘explain away’ quantum wave collapse are real), Christians, on the other hand, can appeal directly to Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, (i.e. our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science), to support their belief that God really does uphold this universe in its continual existence, as well as to support their belief in the reality of a heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension.” https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/closer-to-truth-are-there-really-extra-dimensions/#comment-722947

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Moreover, classical sequential information, (such as is encoded on DNA), is shown to be a subset of quantum, (i.e. positional), information by the following method. In the following 2011 paper, “researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.”

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.,,, No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm

As well, 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/

These experiments go to the heart of the Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design debate and completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, (presuppositions about immaterial information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water. In other words, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, immaterial information, particularly ‘positional quantum information’, is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is a product of an ‘observer who describes the system’. And although it can interact with matter and energy, (interact in a ‘top-down’ manner; see George Ellis ‘Recognizing Top Down Causation’), it is still shown to be its own independent entity that is separate from matter and energy and, moreover, this immaterial information has a quote unquote ‘thermodynamic content’ that can be physically measured. In other words, Intelligent Design, and a semi-direct inference to Intelligence that is necessary in order to explain why life is so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium, has, for all intents and purposes, achieved experimental confirmation via these recent experimental realizations of the Maxwell demon thought experiment. And just how much information is required to be imparted into ‘nature’, via an Intelligence, in order to explain why a living cell is so far our of thermodynamic equilibrium, is touched upon in the following article. The information content that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be around 10 to the 12 bits,,,

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

,,, Which is the equivalent of about 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘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

Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.

Size Comparisons of Bacteria, Amoeba, Animal & Plant Cells Excerpt: Bacterial cells are very small – about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells. https://education.seattlepi.com/size-comparisons-bacteria-amoeba-animal-plant-cells-4966.html

And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells within the average human body,

Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body – 2016 Abstract: Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg “reference man” to be 3.8·10^13. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (?90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·10^13 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533

Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within all the books contained in all the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of immaterial information that is present within our physical bodies. As the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.

In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) – November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/

As should be obvious to even the most metaphysically blinded Darwinist, it is impossible for the sequential information on DNA to account for this massive amount of ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into a developing embryo and building ‘a human infant, atom by atom’. As Doug Axe states in the following video, “there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.”

“There is also a presumption, typically when we talk about our genome, (that the genome) is a blueprint for making us. And that is actually not a proven fact in biology. That is an assumption. And (one) that I question because I don’t think that 4 billion bases, which would be 8 billion bits of information, that you would actually have enough information to specify a human being. If you consider for example that there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.” Doug Axe – Intelligent Design 3.0 – Stephen C. Meyer – video (1 hour 16 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvwBaD8-00w&t=4575s

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JVL cites Dr. Tour's article on Intelligent Design in which Dr. Tour states,

I have been labeled as an Intelligent Design (sometimes called “ID”) proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to the arguments and I find some of them intriguing, but I prefer to be free of that intelligent design label. As a modern-day scientist, I do not know how to prove intelligent design using my most sophisticated analytical tools— the canonical tools are, by their own admission, inadequate to answer the intelligent design question. I cannot lay the issue at the doorstep of a benevolent creator or even an impersonal intelligent designer. All I can presently say is that my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design.

I suppose that by 'canonical tools' Dr. Tour is referring to scripture. And while I would disagree with Dr. Tour, (and others who are of the Theistic Evolution stripe), that the scriptures are ambiguous in this area, I would, instead of debating scripture, like to focus in on the science at hand. To repeat what Dr. Tour stated, "All I can presently say is that my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design." And indeed Dr. Tour's focus is strictly on the chemistry at hand. And rightly so. That is his field of expertise by the way, where he is regarded as one of the top ten synthetic chemists in the world. And in regards to chemistry and the OOL, Dr. Tour is not nearly so cautious as he was to his overall scientific inference to Intelligent Design . In regards to the current state of OOL chemistry, Dr. Tour has stated,

“We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled into the proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say “Oh, this is well worked out,” they know nothing, nothing about chemical synthesis – Nothing! Further cluelessness – From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks let alone their assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I’ve asked all of my colleagues – National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners -I sit with them in offices; nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody else; they don’t know what they’re talking about.” James Tour – one of the top ten leading chemists in the world The Origin of Life: An Inside Story - March 2016 Lecture with James Tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zQXgJ-dXM4

Needless to say, that is certainly NOT antagonistic to the overall scientific inference to Intelligent Design. But, as Dr. Tour points out, chemistry can only get you so far as to the inference to Intelligent Design, i.e. "my chemical tools do not permit my assessment of intelligent design." But I hold that our science, in areas other than chemistry, (such as in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics), does allow a much stronger inference to Intelligent Design than Dr. Tour is willing to make from chemistry alone. As Dr. Tour himself stated, "I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might." And indeed, in Dr. Tour's preliminary video to the current lecture series he is doing, Dr. Tour mentioned all the topics that he would be discussing in his lecture series.

0 - Reasons for this Series: 1 - Introduction to Abiogenesis: 2 - Primordial Soup: 3 - Hype: 4 - Homochirality: 5 - Carbohydrates: 6 - Building Blocks of Building Blocks: 7 - Peptides: 8 - Nucleotides: 9 - Intermediate Summary & a Call to Colleagues: 10 - Lipids: 11 - Chiral-induced Spin Selectivity: 12 - Cell Construction & The Assembly Problem: 13 - Summary & Projections:

The one topic that Dr. Tour said he would NOT be discussing in his present lecture series was thermodynamics. For that topic he referenced his interview with Dr. Brian Miller, who has a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University.

Link to interview with Dr. Brian Miller: https://youtu.be/RJeUH7IhQHo?

In the preliminary video to the lecture series, Dr. Brian Miller also offered this critique of 'Professor Dave's' current take on thermodynamics and the OOL,

“‘Professor Dave’ argues that the origin of life does not face thermodynamic hurdles. He states that natural systems often spontaneously increase in order, such as water freezing or soap molecules forming micelles (e.g., spheres or bilayers), He is making the very common mistake that he fails to recognize that the formation of the cell represents both a dramatic decrease in entropy and an equally dramatic increase in energy. In contrast, water freezing represents both a decrease in entropy but also a decrease in energy. More specifically, the process of freezing releases heat that increases the entropy of the surrounding environment by an amount greater than the entropy decrease of the water molecule forming the rigid structure. Likewise, soap molecules coalescing into micelles represents a net increase of entropy since the surrounding water molecules significantly increase in their number of degrees of freedom. No system without assistance ever moves both toward lower entropy and higher energy which is required for the formation of a cell.” – Brian Miller, Ph. D. – MIT – Episode 0/13: Reasons // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour https://youtu.be/71dqAFUb-v0?t=1434

And, from the thermodynamics perspective, (not from the chemical perspective), and as Dr. Miller states in this fairly recent article, "The only plausible explanation for the origin of life is intelligent agency."

Thermodynamic Challenges to the Origin of Life - Brian Miller - March 27, 2020 Excerpt: The thermodynamic barriers to the origin of life have become decidedly more well defined since this book’s first publication. The initial challenges described in the original edition still stand. Namely, spontaneous natural processes always tend toward states of greater entropy, lower energy, or both. The change of entropy and energy are often combined into the change of free energy, and all spontaneous processes move toward lower free energy. However, the generation of a minimally functional cell on the ancient Earth required a local system of molecules to transition into a state of both lower entropy and higher energy. Therefore, it must move toward dramatically higher free energy. The chance of a system accomplishing this feat near equilibrium is astronomically small.,,, The only plausible explanation for the origin of life is intelligent agency. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/03/thermodynamic-challenges-to-the-origin-of-life/

But to make Dr. Miller's inference to Intelligent Design even stronger. To repeat what Dr. Miller stated in response to "Professor Dave", "No system without assistance ever moves both toward lower entropy and higher energy which is required for the formation of a cell.” So exactly how does ‘nature’, all by its lonesome, move toward lower entropy and higher energy in order to form a cell? Well it doesn't! It would clearly be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics if it ever did. And if you think the second law can be violated by nature, well, to put it mildly, you might as well believe in perpetual motion machines. it is only by an Intelligence imparting (positional) information into ‘nature’ that we are able to move toward lower entropy and higher energy at the same time in order to move towards what it would take to form a cell. As the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment demonstrated, it is knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position that 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

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 short, it is immaterial information that is imparted by an Intelligence into nature that allows life to be in a state that is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, i.e. that allows life to be in a state of "lower entropy and higher energy” at the same time. As Andy McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds, stated, “Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it (the polymers of life) to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions,”

Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems – Andy C. McIntosh – 2013 Excerpt: ,,, information is in fact non-material and that the coded information systems (such as, but not restricted to the coding of DNA in all living systems) is not defined at all by the biochemistry or physics of the molecules used to store the data. Rather than matter and energy defining the information sitting on the polymers of life, this approach posits that the reverse is in fact the case. Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions, which despite the efforts from alternative paradigms has not given a satisfactory explanation of the way information in systems operates.,,, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814508728_0008 Andrew McIntosh (also known as Andy McIntosh) is professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds.

bornagain77

As to: "How could you be sure it was him?" Well, according to scripture, there will be no doubt,

Matthew 24:26-27 So if they tell you, ‘There He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

bornagain77

Martin_r: Lets imagine, that Jesus Christ returned to Earth. How could you be sure it was him? JVL

physicist Lawrence Krauss promised “We’re coming very close” to explaining the origin of life via chemical evolutionary models.

Promises, promises. I wouldn't accept a check as payment from that dude. Concealed Citizen

Querius @15 indeed, 3/13 Episode was brilliant! I liked the following part explaining how Darwinian OOL-researchers imagine prebiotic chemical synthesis: "...and the resultant solution degassed for 15 mins", Dr. Tour 's sarcastic reaction: "... how you going to degass on an early Earth ? To do degassing you need a vacuum pump ........ No vacuum pumps on early Earth" :))))) PS: this example perfectly illustrates how Darwinians oversimplifying things... they have been doing it for 150 years.... but every lie sounds convincing when you are an uneducated Darwinian layman :))) martin_r

Re: Dr. Tour's presentation, Episode 3: Absolutely brilliant! -Q Querius

Chuck at #9 I have no association with the Discovery folks, but I can read the relevant material. The literature clearly suggests that a set of constraints was organized to establish a medium, and that medium was used to describe both the set of constraints and the processes required to have them persist over time — otherwise, we would not be here to ask the question. Upright BiPed