UB Schools Bob O’H

@UB Perhaps in has something to do with this?

If this is so, Bob, can you then stand before your intricate diagram of the system’s pathways and properties (with the great formulas of physical law at hand, and with your team’s documented intimate knowledge of every facet and dynamic interaction within the system) and point out where exactly you find the source of that coordination?

First, it's unclear how this observation actually gets to you ID, given that it's impossible to extrapolate observations without first putting them into some kind of explanatory framework to interpret it. What is that explanation? (or, as always, explain how that's possible.) The issue you're referring, which is specific to the current conceptions of physics, is one of the motivations of constructor theory. Any argument based on an inability to "point out where exactly you find the source of that coordination" is parodical, in that it is narrow in scope. From this paper on the Philosophy of Constructor Theory...

Very few such transformations happen spontaneously; that is to say, almost all require a constructor, which I shall define as anything that can cause transformations in physical systems without undergoing any net change in its ability to do so. I shall call those physical systems the constructor’s constructor input state of substrate(s) ------------------> output state of substrate(s) A transformation, regarded as being caused by a constructor, I call a construction. Constructors appear under various names in physics and other fields. For instance, in thermodynamics, a heat engine is a constructor because of the condition that it be capable of ‘operating in a cycle’. IBut they do not currently appear in laws of physics. Indeed, there is no possible role for them in what I shall call the prevailing conception of fundamental physics, which is roughly as follows: everything physical is composed of elementary constituents such as particles, fields and spacetime; there is an initial state of those constituents; and laws of motion determine how the state evolves continuously thereafter. In contrast, a construction (1) is characterised only by its inputs and outputs, and involves subsystems (the constructor and the substrate), playing different roles, and most constructors are themselves composite objects. So, in the prevailing conception, no law of physics could possibly mention them: the whole continuous process of interaction between constructor and substrate is already determined by the universal laws governing their constituents. However, the constructor theory that I shall propose in this paper is not primarily the theory of constructions or constructors, as the prevailing conception would require it to be. It is the theory of which transformations input state of substrates -> output state of substrates can be caused and which cannot, and why.

So, our inability to point to constructors in biology - in the prevailing conception of physics - isn't remotely controversial. Nor is it clear what it has to do with Neo-Darwnism. Rather, it's a reflection of the limits of the prevailing conception of physics. Fortunately, we're not limited to the prevailing conception. IOW, it seems that the theory you're using to interpret the observation (Bob cannot "point out [exactly to] the source of that coordination") that gets you to ID implicitly includes the prevailing conception of physics, it's limitations, and that we cannot make any progress beyond those limits, via constructor theory. However, it seems that you'd still need more than that to get to ID. critical rationalist

@UB Having gone back and forth several times, I’m still not clear what your objection is or how the coordination you’re referring to implies it. Let’s try again, shall we? The constructor theory of life poses the following question: do biological replicators perform replication at such high fidelity that the design of biological replicators had to be present in the laws of physics? Would you agree that, despite not being directly aimed at ID, the answer to that that question would have profound implications for it? critical rationalist

Bob O'H Schools UB. It's true. Mung

, It appears that Bob may have abandoned his argument, and that this thread has run its course. So I will just reiterate that the requirement of coordination discussed in the title post stands, as does the fact that the source of that coordination is not derived from the physical properties of the system. Without simultaneous coordination of the sequences, the system cannot begin to function. Upright BiPed

Bob

I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re trying to say here.

I'm afraid I agree with you. EugeneS

Bob O'H:

I don’t need to assume any intelligence at all.

Because you don't have any, at all. ET

Agents use rules and a communication protocol (if then else statements prescribing what they should do in response to stuff).

You're using teleological language, so it's no surprise that you end up concluding teleology.

The prescriptive context (protocol and rules) should exist before the system starts functioning, otherwise this is just chaos.

Chaos and order aren't absolutes, and systems can evolve from something very simple (look at telecommunications!). So I don't see why this is a necessary conclusion.

However, to argue coherently for a bottom up approach you would need to assume that agents are intelligent enough from the start to work out rules on the fly (as children can do when they play),

No I don't. I don't need to assume any intelligence at all. Feedback plus an advantage to control would, I think, be the main properties that would be needed. I don't see that this needs intelligence (e.g. it seems to have resulted in the stability of natural nuclear reactors, where the 'advantage' is simply continued existence).

The behavior of a living system critically depends on specific constraints achieving rate independence of the system’s description (read/write from/to memory) and semantic closure.

I'm afraid I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Bob O'H

. Sorry for the delay. So, where are we at? Bob claimed that he could replicate the genetic translation system, and all that was needed was the purely material components of the system. I then remined Bob that he’d need to simultaneously coordinate the all descriptions that the genes contain with the specific descriptions of the interpretive constraints within the system (the aaRS), and that failure to do so would render the system inoperable (it could never start to function). He objected to that, throwing out the fact that “we know” that distributive systems work. Unfortunately for Bob, distributive systems have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. So, then he threw out the discipline of systems dynamics; stating that there was vast amounts of evidence having some sort of impact on the issue. Again, it has exactly zero impact on the issue, so I asked him to go into this vast array of evidence and produce just one example of researchers deriving the source of critical coordination from the dynamic properties of the system -- which is something he would be clearly unable to do. And thus, as the ID critic dodges back and forth in front of the issue, I am left having to argue (with an otherwise intelligent being) that if you don’t coordinate the descriptions of the system with the descriptions of the coding constraints, the system will not (and cannot) begin to function. Good grief, the extent that ID critics will go to avoid physical evidence is simply dumbfounding, but there it is for all to see. Over and over again. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bob, none of the papers you cite demonstrates anyone deriving the required coordination from the dynamic properties of the material components in the system. Such calculations do not exist. Upright BiPed

Pw Thanks :) EugeneS

EugeneS @133: Excellent! pw

Bob @132 Good. Agents use rules and a communication protocol (if then else statements prescribing what they should do in response to stuff). The prescriptive context (protocol and rules) should exist before the system starts functioning, otherwise this is just chaos. Top down, not bottom up. Top down is exactly how these things are implemented in technology. And ID maintains that this is how biological systems came about. But that is not an acceptable answer to you. I understand that. However, to argue coherently for a bottom up approach you would need to assume that agents are intelligent enough from the start to work out rules on the fly (as children can do when they play), which, I suppose, defeats your purpose as I understand it. Either way is awkward for you. The bottom up approach is even harder to defend for somebody who supports evolution. It is just a can of worms Darwin was not aware of. It does not stand up to scrutiny. Another point is constraints vs motion distinction. Pattee, Polanyi and others are complementarianists. They maintain that system dynamics alone is not sufficient to explain how living things function and replicate (even less how they came to be). The behavior of a living system critically depends on specific constraints achieving rate independence of the system's description (read/write from/to memory) and semantic closure. EugeneS

EugeneS - Yes, I agree with you that control can be distributed across the system. It's not clear that there would be one agency, though. I suspect that would end up as a semantic argument! Bob O'H

LoL! @ Bob O'H- How do you propose to get enzymatic control without the genetic code and all it requires already in place and operational? ET

Bob OH Up the thread you said this:

There is no controlling agency that ensures...

I objected saying that there can be cases where controlling agency is distributed across the system. In such scenarios, control is still present even though it is distributed. So decentralized control =/= no control. To which objection you responded as follows:

Right. That might be why I didn’t write that.

It is not clear to me from your later comment if you agree with me or contradict yourself. EugeneS

UB @ 125 -

How exactly would gene expression take place without the coordination being discussed?

I've no idea.

No Bob, I am not “simply wrong”. But you are, completely. You cannot provide a single document describing how researchers applied the equations of physics to the dynamic properties of the constituents of gene system, and from that, were able to demonstrate a source of the simultaneous coordination required at the origin of the system.

As I mentioned, it has a long history. here's one old paper from 1981. It cites this paper which is exactly about how control can be distributed in an enzymatic system, using standard tricks of the trade of physics. For a review of more recent work, see here.

The paper I cited above is available on Pattee’s Binghamton University website.

Which one? As you point out, there are 50 or 60. Bob O'H

BO'H, please note the just above. KF kairosfocus

UB, Patee is fascinating. Let me clip just one thing for the moment:

Pattee H. H. (1978) Biological systems theory: Descriptive and constructive complementarity. In: Klir G. J. (ed.) Applied general systems research. Plenum, New York: 511–520. . . . . The introduction of this complementarity into systems de­scription has profound epistemological and methodological signif­icance. By recognizing that all living systems depend on internal, rate-independent, linguistic descriptions, we are forced to intro­duce the classical symbol-matter (or subject-object) dualism into the system itself. This is no metaphor or analogy; it is a literal interpretation of what we normally mean by the symbol-matter dis­tinction. The genetic DNA is a linear, discrete set of symbols that is interpreted by the transducing, protein-synthesizing constraints of the cell to construct and control the structure and dynamics of the organism in its environment. This internal description is also responsible for the growth of new degrees of freedom, new parts, and new functions into the systems that are competent to read it. The reading process is relatively rate- independent, but its execution requires rate-dependent control that is accomplished by constructing thousands of enzymes whose dynam­ical description would each require thousands of degrees of free­dom. Of course all these complex dynamical processes could not be described in the cell. The trick of genetic description (Cf. Lofgren [Note 9] ; von Neumann [Note 25] ) is that the description of the constraints that harness the dynamics is relatively simple and abstract (i.e., obey arbitrary syntactic rules), while the dynamics that they constrain are incredibly complex and entirely physical (i.e., obey natural laws).Biologists now know many of the key molecular hardware mechanisms underlying reproduction, development and evolution, although much of the molecular hardware remains to be discovered. The molecular biological descriptions of the gene and its mechanism of expression have been interpreted by some biologists as a total reduction of life to physics, but to others the details of molecular structure have only served to emphasize the basic ambiguity between structure and function. As a consequence, many biologists are now shifting from questions of hardware structure to the questions of the pro­gramming and control of the morphologies and activities of orga­nisms. We are finding that useful explanations of living systems’ behavior require a dualistic description that recognizes the linguistic, proscriptive activity of life as complementary to the dynamical hardware activity. Longuet-Higgins [Note 10] has characterized life as “programmed matter” which succinctly focuses on this essential complementarity. The earlier emphasis in biology on the anatomical and molecular structures is being augmented with the concepts of biological languages and programs

LANGUAGE, manifested in coded algorithms and linked data structures [D/RNA is a string]. LANGUAGE, antecedent to humans, and as a key component of the living cell. LANGUAGE. KF kairosfocus

. Bob, be sure and reciprocate with a paper showing how researchers applied the equations of physics to the dynamic properties of the constituents of the gene system, and from that, were able to demonstrate a source of the simultaneous coordination required at the origin of the system Upright BiPed

. Bob, How exactly would gene expression take place without the coordination being discussed? - - - - - - - - - - - The paper I cited above is available on Pattee’s Binghamton University website. https://binghamton.academia.edu/HowardPattee There is an array of 50-60 titles dealing with the physics of symbol systems and semiotic control. You are welcome to take your pick. Upright BiPed

UB -

You also know that using the laws and equations of physics, this coordination cannot be derived from the dynamic properties of the system.

No, I actually don't know that. Can you provide the references from the scientific literature that show this? I'd like to see more than just an unreferenced citation from one person - there should be some modelling to demonstrate this, to go alongside the modelling of the dynamics of gene expression that has been going on since at least the 70s. Bob O'H

. Bob, as I suggested earlier, have you ever considered what would be all-that-wrong with just acknowledging the physical reality? Upright BiPed

. From Wiki: Howard Hunt Pattee (born October 5, 1926) is an American biologist, Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He graduated at Stanford University in 1948 and completed a Ph.D. there in 1953. Professor Pattee's main research interests are theoretical biology with a focus on origin of life, artificial life, biosemiotics, semiotic control of dynamic systems, and the physics of codes and symbols. His many contributions to the "symbol-matter" problem within the cell have had much influence on theoretical biology, biosemiotics, complex systems and artificial life.

Physical laws and semiotic controls require disjoint, complementary modes of conceptualization and description. Laws are global and inexorable. Controls are local and conditional. Life originated with semiotic controls. Semiotic controls require measurement, memory, and selection, none of which are functionally describable by physical laws that, unlike semiotic systems, are based on energy, time, and rates of change. However, they are structurally describable in the language of physics in terms of non-integrable constraints, energy degenerate states, temporal incoherence, and irreversible dissipative events. --H. H. Pattee, Department of Systems Science, Binghamton, NY

Upright BiPed

.

I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. The reason I wrote ” I’ve no idea what this has to do with whether there’s an immaterial component to the system.” is because I had no idea what this has to do with whether there’s an immaterial component to the system.

No Bob, you’re not sorry and I’m not wrong. You know exactly what is being said to you, and you understand it. You know that there is a critical coordination between multiple discrete sequences in the system that must occur for the system to even begin to function. You also know that using the laws and equations of physics, this coordination cannot be derived from the dynamic properties of the system.

When you write “You also know that using the laws and equations of physics, this coordination cannot be derived from the dynamic properties of the system.”, you’re simply wrong. There is a tonne of work on precisely this – it’s called system dynamics. Basically, because we know how the pieces work we can model how they operate together in coordination.

No Bob, I am not “simply wrong”. But you are, completely. You cannot provide a single document describing how researchers applied the equations of physics to the dynamic properties of the constituents of gene system, and from that, were able to demonstrate a source of the simultaneous coordination required at the origin of the system. As a discipline, even applied to biology, systems dynamics doesn’t begin to address this issue among its proponents, nor is it intended to. I invite anyone reading this to go to the System Dynamics Society and read their proceedings. Upright BiPed

SA @ 115 -

Again, the decision to put the very same material composition upside down came from an immaterial, rational choice to do it. The very same material components cannot work because of the input of an immaterial, logical, decision-process.

It may have or it may not. The reason the car won't work is because it's upside down, which is a very material property. And this is true regardless of whether it was put upside down because someone tipped it over or if it was blown over in the wind. UB @ 116 - I'm sorry, but you're wrong. The reason I wrote " I’ve no idea what this has to do with whether there’s an immaterial component to the system." is because I had no idea what this has to do with whether there’s an immaterial component to the system. When you write "You also know that using the laws and equations of physics, this coordination cannot be derived from the dynamic properties of the system.", you're simply wrong. There is a tonne of work on precisely this - it's called system dynamics. Basically, because we know how the pieces work we can model how they operate together in coordination. EugeneS @ 117 -

Decentralization of control does not equate ‘no control whatsoever’.

Right. That might be why I didn't write that. Bob O'H

Bob just keeps doubling down.

Bob: “UB – but we know that distributed systems work. It’s how the free market operates. There is no controlling agency that ensures that fresh papaya gets delivered to the middle of Norway in the Nordic winter. Not, it is the coordinated actions of individuals in the supply network.” EugeneS: This is actually wrong. Decentralization of control does not equate ‘no control whatsoever’. Distributed decision making agents will have to coordinate their activities. A different heuristic is a heuristic nonetheless. You can’t just get away with it unfortunately.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Bob can get away with anything he wants because Bob doesn’t care about reason, logic, intellectual honesty or the truth. Point out the fallacies in his reasoning, as I have done @ #73, #75 and #90, he just doubles down on it. As an epistemological subjectivist he just moves the goal posts where ever he wants and when confronted with the facts just doubles down on it. In other words, Bob believes what he believes because he believes it. It’s his ”default” position john_a_designer

EugeneS @83, @92, @117: Exactly right. Excellent. pw

Bob O'H @97:

UB – but we know that distributed systems work. It’s how the free market operates. There is no controlling agency that ensures that fresh papaya gets delivered to the middle of Norway in the Nordic winter. Not, it is the coordinated actions of individuals in the supply network.

This is actually wrong. Decentralization of control does not equate 'no control whatsoever'. Distributed decision making agents will have to coordinate their activities. A different heuristic is a heuristic nontheless. You can't just get away with it unfortunately. EugeneS

.

I’ve no idea what this has to do with whether there’s an immaterial component to the system.

Yes you do, Bob. You know that there is a critical coordination between multiple discrete sequences in the system that must occur for the system to even begin to function. You also know that using the laws and equations of physics, this coordination cannot be derived from the dynamic properties of the system. And thus, you know you must merely assume otherwise. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - (psssst Bob ... it has been known for half a century that the genetic translation system requires complimentary physical descriptions; one for its dynamic properties and another for its semantic organization. This is an issue that will not go away, so all the squirming is truly unnecessary. There is, of course, the obvious caveat that you don't actually have to do anything whatsoever, but you could choose to simply acknowledge the documented organizational requirements of the system and walk away with the integrity that comes from not ignoring physical evidence. As a materialist, it simply represents yet another hill that must be climbed in order to establish some empirical legitimacy for your preferred belief system. But it cannot be merely BS'd away as if it doesn't exist in reality. Your head in the sand doesn't really cut it, Bob. As the old adage goes, you don't get your own facts). Upright BiPed

Bob O'H

Nobody said anything about flipping cars. But if you want to go there, I’d hope it’s obvious that in this case it’s unable to be driven because of the very material fact that it’s the wrong way up, so its tires aren’t touching the ground.

Again, the decision to put the very same material composition upside down came from an immaterial, rational choice to do it. The very same material components cannot work because of the input of an immaterial, logical, decision-process. But you are saying that rational decisions from humans are material objects, and that's where we disagree. You' should be able to show that thoughts are material objects. Silver Asiatic

Bob O'H

Are you seriously arguing that my argument is invalid because it requires thought?

You seem exasperated or amazed, but I believe your view is that thoughts are material objects. My view is that they are immaterial entities. I believe you need to demonstrate that thoughts are material things, and thus far nobody has been able to do that. With no evidence supporting that point of view, the idea that thoughts are immaterial is the best explanation that we have. Silver Asiatic

UB @ 109 - I've no idea what this has to to with whether there's an immaterial component to the system. Bob O'H

PPS: If you want a look at a context in which we can think at the next level, consider here the Smith cybernetic loop with a two tier controller. kairosfocus

PK, nice try at creating a non-existent quote-mine as a distractor and attempted rhetorical gotcha, we can dismiss you. FYI, it has long been known that a shot too much of Uncle Wray's 63% by volume . . . it's been watered down in recent decades . . . (or the ancient equivalent) will befuddle thinking; notice, impairment. That has utterly nil to do with getting to reason that transcends the capabilities of dynamic-stochastic systems such as responsible rational freedom required for reasoned inference and warrant of conclusions. Haldane is very specific: how do we avoid sawing off the branch on which we sit, on materialistic premises? For this, you provide no answer. For impairment, you seem to omit the obvious issue of two-way causal influence leading to system degradation, temporary or permanent. Recall, it is a general point in systems theory that every component affects all components, directly or indirectly. I add, kindly observe Haldane's very careful terms: . . . not WHOLLY conditioned by matter." He has room for multi-directional internal systems influences and interaction with the outside world. The pivotal issue is what transcends what a shot too much of 63% by volume can account for, rational, responsible, clear thinking, prudent intellectual freedom, the foundation of all bodies of sound reasoning and genuine warrant including that for the existence and action of atoms . . . as Haldane also alludes to. KF PS: Reppert builds on C S Lewis, who starts with Haldane's observation, consider this, stage 2:

. . . let us suppose that brain state A [--> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [--> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.

Notice, the categorical difference between the ground-consequent, insightful inference by a self-moved mind acting as a first cause and a dynamic-stochastic blind causal chain on a GIGO-limited computational substrate. I add, if you want to say, you trust your programming, you need to account for it on actually observed, demonstrated causally efficacious process. This has never been done, the blind ideological assertions of evolutionary materialistic scientism stand exposed. kairosfocus

. Would you need to add simultaneous coordination to the sequences, Bob, independent of the actual dynamic properties of the system? In other words, if your team concludes that the system will begin to function properly only when all the sequences in the genes are simultaneously coordinated with those that specifically describe the aaRS, and you decide to deploy a solution based on that reasoning, will that solution be independent of the dynamics of the system? Upright BiPed

. Bob at #106,

As long as the system works without any immaterial input

The system won't work without the simultaneous coordination of sequences within a rate-independent medium. Without the addition of that coordination, a successful replication of the system will not occur. And when looking at the dynamics of your failed system, and being asked why it doesn't work, you'd be left to the astounding and incoherent conclusion that "being able to identify a cause from the dynamics is irrelevant". Where else exactly would you look, if not at the dynamics of the system? Upright BiPed

@96 Bob O'H:

And, quite simply, we don’t yet have the knowledge to know if the mind is material or not.

Meaning: materialism accepts the possibility of im-materiality. Meaning: materialism is not an unshakable truth. Meaning: the materialist worldview is not a settled one, no matter how much the materialist priests claim: "dogma"! Mark this date: February 10, 2020 at 10:28 am Truthfreedom

Bob O'H:

As long as the system works without any immaterial input,...

It doesn't work without immaterial input. ET

UB @ 101 -

You had stated that you could replicate the translation process without having to add anything “non-material” (as you referred to it) to the system. I gave you a scenario where you could produce whatever material products you need to accomplish the replication, and then asked where you get the simultaneous coordination of sequences that must occur in order for the system to function. ...You, of course, are unable to point to a cause from the dynamics of the system, because there is no cause there to point to.

As long as the system works without any immaterial input, being able to identify a cause from the dynamics is irrelevant. The issue is whether the dynamics are purely material or not. You aren't pointing to anything non-material, and until you do the relevance is minimal. Bob O'H

Bob O'H:

no,., humans are lots of controlling agencies.

And? Humans are responsible for a fresh papaya getting delivered to the middle of Norway in the Nordic winter. The human factor is the controlling agency ET

Pater Kimbridge @ 100- How does that added line change what KF said? ET

ET @ 99 - no,., humans are lots of controlling agencies. There is no one single person or body controlling the economy. That's why it's called a free market, not a command economy. Bob O'H

. #97 Bingo Upright BiPed

.

it’s not clear to me how this relates to the original question.

You had stated that you could replicate the translation process without having to add anything “non-material” (as you referred to it) to the system. I gave you a scenario where you could produce whatever material products you need to accomplish the replication, and then asked where you get the simultaneous coordination of sequences that must occur in order for the system to function. That coordination is not established by the dynamics of the system (the medium is, after all, rate-independent), so the question is "how is that simultaneous coordination caused to occur"? You, of course, are unable to point to a cause from the dynamics of the system, because there is no cause there to point to. Given the nature of the issue, I can only assume you'll step over the physics and use irrelevant analogies and copious rhetoric as a means to not acknowledge that non-dynamic coordination must indeed be added. Upright BiPed

@KairosFocus #93 Nice quote mine from Haldane. It is worth noting the very next sentence in that essay: " But as regards my own very finite and imperfect mind, I can see, by studying the effects on it of drugs, alcohol, disease, and so on, that its limitations are largely at least due to my body." Pater Kimbridge

Bob O'H:

There is no controlling agency that ensures that fresh papaya gets delivered to the middle of Norway in the Nordic winter.

Of course there is. Humans are that controlling agency, duh. ET

Bob O'H:

So it has been claimed, but nobody has been able to demonstrate that there is some non-material “information” that makes a difference.

Cars wouldn't exist without immaterial information.

. If (and, yes, it’s a big if) the mind is material, then your argument fails.

Ok. Too bad there isn't any evidence that purely material processes can produce a living organism let alone a mind.

And, quite simply, we don’t yet have the knowledge to know if the mind is material or not.

Of course we do. Your denial is meaningless.

So if you want to show that there is some immaterial information that makes a different, you have to show that there are two objects that are materially the same, but where one has some immaterial property that makes a difference.

You can have material without immaterial information. ET

UB - but we know that distributed systems work. It's how the free market operates. There is no controlling agency that ensures that fresh papaya gets delivered to the middle of Norway in the Nordic winter. Not, it is the coordinated actions of individuals in the supply network. Bob O'H

ET -

Real cars come from immaterial thoughts and concepts, Bob. And real cars require real immaterial information.

So it has been claimed, but nobody has been able to demonstrate that there is some non-material "information" that makes a difference. If (and, yes, it's a big if) the mind is material, then your argument fails. And, quite simply, we don't yet have the knowledge to know if the mind is material or not. So if you want to show that there is some immaterial information that makes a different, you have to show that there are two objects that are materially the same, but where one has some immaterial property that makes a difference. SA has suggested that being driven to the bottom of a lake could be one such thing, having the effect of making a car not work, but I suspect that some very material effects of the lake might also have an effect. Indeed, I'd go so far as to suggest that if a car were to roll into the lake without the aid of any intelligence, then it would also not work. Bob O'H

.

the coordination is in the structure of the system

So Bob’s answer is a punt; he does provide a source for the sequence coordination that must occur in the system in order for it work. I'm sorry Bob, but Mung already beat you to that answer, the only difference is that he was joking. Upright BiPed

Bob O'H:

No, we’re discussing real cars, …

Real cars come from immaterial thoughts and concepts, Bob. And real cars require real immaterial information. That you are either ignorant of that or refuse to grasp it, says quite a bot about your agenda. ET

Folks, J B S Haldane has some food for thought, however those trapped in scientism and linked empiricism will close their minds to ANY argument that goes beyond their circle in which Big-S Science is the only begetter of truth. Mind you, truth is a relation between what actually is and our thoughts and beliefs: saying that what is, is and that which is not, is not. The questions of logic, identity and being implicit in that go far beyond the evolutionary materialistic circle. They beg big questions. Anyway, Haldane:

"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. Cf. here on (and esp here) on the self-refutation by self-falsifying self referential incoherence and on linked amorality.]

KF kairosfocus

Bob O'H: It is all about teleology. No car appears without teleology or, put simply, a plan of actions as well as pertinent decision making to make this plan reality. In your car manufacture analogy, teleology is materially represented as the documentation of the technological process. EugeneS

@89 Bob O'H:

No, we’re discussing real cars, not figments of your imagination(*)

Mmm... who are you referring to with "your imagination"? Silver Asiatic is a *figment* of your imagination (a neural pattern in your brain). Are you a lunatic speaking with yourself?

"...Thus, in knowing, ultimately, only changes inside himself, the materialist is logically forced into an epistemological idealism that contradicts his assumed starting point, the observation of external things". Dr. Dennis Bonnette

https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ Truthfreedom

It appears to me that Bob like most of our naturalist/materialist interlocutors seem to think that their world view (WV) somehow wins by default. But does it really? When have any of them ever been able to prove their WV to be true? (If any of them have, I apparently missed it.) It appears to me that the only argument that they have is a fallacious argument from ignorance: No has proven naturalism to be false, therefore, it must be true. However, the argument from ignorance is a two edged sword which cuts both ways. Here is a textbook example:

Ad ignorantium arguments (appeals to ignorance) have one of the following two forms: It has not been proved that P. [therefore] ~P. It has not been proved that ~P. [therefore] P. Here are two classic examples: SOLVED PROBLEM 8.20 What is wrong with these arguments? No one has ever proved that God exists [Therefore] God does not exist. No one has ever proved that God does not exist. [Therefore] God exists. Solution Both are fallacious appeals to ignorance. Nothing about the existence of God follows from our inability to prove God’s existence or nonexistence (i.e., from our ignorance about the matter).

(Schaum’s Outlines of Logic, 2nd Ed., p. 203) https://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Logic-Second-Outlines/dp/0071755462 Ironically, some atheistic naturalists try to discredit theism by fallaciously accusing theist’s of the so-called God-of-the-gaps argument. Yes, some theist’s and ID’ist do make fallacious arguments but not every appeal to God or a designer is fallacious or God of the gaps. Indeed, nat/mats are, more often than not, guilty of making a Nature or a Darwin of the gaps argument which is just as fallacious. This raises some pertinent questions: (1) Is there any way to prove that your world view is true? Or, (2) when it comes to competing world views A and B (such as theism and naturalism) how do we decide between them? john_a_designer

ET answered this already, but the design of those cars came from thoughts which are immaterial.

No, we're discussing real cars, not figments of your imagination(*)

Additionally, you require that I make them as close as possible — and that requires me using the immaterial concept of “as close as possible” and comparing it to the cars.

Oh, come on, is that the best you can do? Are you seriously arguing that my argument is invalid because it requires thought?

Beyond that, one car cannot be driven because it has been flipped upside down.

OK, wow. Nobody said anything about flipping cars. But if you want to go there, I'd hope it's obvious that in this case it's unable to be driven because of the very material fact that it's the wrong way up, so its tires aren't touching the ground. (*) yes, yes, OK, this is a thought experiment. :-) Bob O'H

Bob O'H

if the cars are not identical, you can make them as close to it as possible.

ET answered this already, but the design of those cars came from thoughts which are immaterial. Additionally, you require that I make them as close as possible -- and that requires me using the immaterial concept of "as close as possible" and comparing it to the cars. Beyond that, one car cannot be driven because it has been flipped upside down. The material components are the same, but one has an additional immaterial component which is its deliberate, conscious placement in space - added by thoughts from an immaterial human mind. (if we don't like that particular placement, an immaterial intelligence can put the replica car at the bottom of a lake - and it won't drive). Silver Asiatic

@ Bob O'H Why Materialism is a Dead End

"Materialism —the view that nature is fundamentally constituted by matter outside and independent of mind— is a metaphysics, in that it makes statements about what nature essentially is. As such, it is also a theoretical inference: we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived."

https://iai.tv/articles/why-materialism-is-a-dead-end-bernardo-kastrup-auid-1271 Truthfreedom

Only if purely material processes produced cars can Bob's "argument" have any merit. And we already know that purely material processes did not produce any cars, ever. ET

Bob O'H:

And then goes on to describe a situation where a research group replicates the process using purely material means,

Actually, Bob, they didn't. YOU need to complete the process by answering the questions, which you can't. As for cars, the immaterial stuff that makes them work are the thoughts and ideas that went into making them. The immaterial information that Bob keeps ignoring and if his ignorance is an argument. ET

@79 Bob O'H:

I tend to spend weekends in the real world

What "real" world, Bob O'H? Please tell us how do you gain "knowledge" about it. https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/

Shopping for parrot food...

Parrots, those animals that repeat without thinking? They are very interesting creatures. Truthfreedom

but neither have I seen a case which points irresistibly towards it

A blatantly obvious case of The true Scotsman fallacy. The give-away word here is "irresistably" for they will resist the evidence to the end. EugeneS

Silver Asiatic - if the cars are not identical, you can make them as close to it as possible. Just get 2 cars of the same make from the factory - that should be close enough. Bob O'H

Bob O'H

If there is some immaterial component to a working car, then it should be possible to have two cars that are materially identical, but where one can be driven, and the other not.

To conduct this experiment, you'd need to provide two cars that are materially identical. Under a materialist paradigm, that should be possible. But because of the immaterial Law of Identity and the divine structure of the cosmos it is not. Silver Asiatic

TF, indeed, it is a matter of worldview first plausibles, i.e. a point of faith. That is why worldviews analysis on comparative difficulties (as I have linked) is pivotal, and at that level there are no defaults. Each live option alternative must address global factual adequacy, coherence [logical and dynamical] and balanced explanatory power [neither simplistic nor an ad hoc patchwork]. Evolutionary materialistic scientism first tries to lock out worldviews analysis, through scientism; that fails. Stripped of its lab coat, it is just another worldview and one that is intellectually incoherent [it undermines the credibility of mind so undercuts itself], morally bankrupt and explanatorily simplistic . Those can be backed up. KF kairosfocus

My apologies for being away for a few days - I tend to spend weekends in the real world (putting up lights, shopping for parrot food etc.). In the original post, UB asked:

we can replicate the process without having to resort to adding anything immaterial”

And then goes on to describe a situation where a research group replicates the process using purely material means, and asks

If this is so, Bob, can you then stand before your intricate diagram of the system’s pathways and properties (with the great formulas of physical law at hand, and with your team’s documented intimate knowledge of every facet and dynamic interaction within the system) and point out where exactly you find the source of that coordination?

First, it's not clear to me how this relates to the original question. Second the coordination is in the structure of the system. Just like a car is coordinated, and also entirely material: there is no non-material essence that makes it work. If one changes the pieces of the car are put together, it won't work. The car's layout is entirely material, so there is no immaterial component to getting it to work. If there is some immaterial component to a working car, then it should be possible to have two cars that are materially identical, but where one can be driven, and the other not. Bob O'H

@ Bob O'H:

But a default position doesn’t need to be proven – the very description of it as a default implies that it might be wrong, but that in the absence of reasons for it to be wrong, it’s a reasonable position to take. Using Occam’s razor to decide on what default positions to take makes pragmatic sense, because you eliminate factors that aren’t necessary to the position.

- So you are using Occam's Razor to 'justify' your default position (materialism). The one that, according to you, does not need to be justified. Quite a contradiction. - What "absence of reasons"? You assume an external world and via methodological naturalism conclude it is all inside your head. Something quite does not add up here. Logical contradictions are alarms ringing. Failed epistemology. https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ Oh, evolutionist materialism is so funny. Not one day without darwinist mental contortions. - So you are trying to prove that your assumption (materialism) is not a position of faith, but of reason. And, in the end, you are saying that: "no matter the proofs, materialism is true because it is what I want to believe". That has a name: "faith". And you materialists are the most ardent believers on Earth. Anything for your pagan goddess. Truthfreedom

. Hey Mung. Your answer is only 7 words long, and its longer than Bob's, : ) Upright BiPed

. Sev at 71,

UB: I have said absolutely nothing about purpose or function, Sev. Sev: Really? Then just what are we talking about? I’m sure you could explain it if you try.

I have explained it to you, and you have clearly understood what has been explained. You already understand the question being asked, and you already know the honest answer.

Sev: Yes, I’m aware of it. So what?

You betray yourself here, Sev. You use disingenuous comments (such as faking the need for another explanation) as rhetoric to skirt and avoid physical evidence. It is a real weakness in your position, even if it doesn’t bother you to do it over and over again.

So again, do the sequences in the genome have to be simultaneously coordinated with the those that describe the aaRS, Sev? Yes or no. To do what exactly? Oh, I forget, this is not about function or purpose, is it?

Good grief Sev, can you not drop the rhetoric even for a moment? There is a side conversation on this thread about objects having intrinsic purpose. That conversation is entirely irrelevant to the issues expressed in the title post, and you know it. It has nothing to do with the simultaneous coordination of multiple sequences at the origin of the gene system. But here, once again, you cannot even speak the words. You have shown quite convincingly that you are unable to respond to strong evidence of design in biology. You are unable to respond to the fulfilled predictions, or to the literature, or even the documented history of discovery itself. Take some advice Sev: If you are going to remain transparently incapable of responding to documented facts, then perhaps you shouldn’t be carelessly disparaging the motivations of those who present those documented facts. After all, that’s where this exchange began. If you don’t think that kind of advice makes any sense for you, then I'll ask once again: At the point in time that the first ever aaRS constraint was synthesized from memory, how many of the other constraints had to be in place? Upright BiPed

ID’ists do not reject the idea of natural causation a priori. Indeed, much of what we perceive in the natural world can be (indeed should be) explained “naturally.” What we do reject is that natural causes are the only kind of causes that must be used to explain the origin and evolution of life. For example, in his book Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe asks,

“Might there be an as yet undiscovered natural process that would explain biochemical complexity? No one would be foolish enough to categorically deny the possibility. Nonetheless we can say that if there is such a process, no one has a clue how it would work. Further it would go against all human experience, like postulating that a natural process might explain computers… In the face of the massive evidence we do have for biochemical design, ignoring the evidence in the name of a phantom process would be to play the role of detective who ignore the elephant.” (p. 203-204)

Basically Behe is asking, if biochemical complexity (irreducible complexity) evolved by some natural process x, how did it evolve? That is a perfectly legitimate scientific question. Notice that even though in DBB Behe was criticizing Neo-Darwinism he is not ruling out a priori some other mindless natural evolutionary process, “x”, might be able to explain IC. Behe is simply claiming that at the present there is no known natural process that can explain how irreducibly complex mechanisms and processes originated. If he and other ID’ist are categorically wrong then our critics need to provide the step-by-step-by-step empirical explanation of how they originated, not just speculation and wishful thinking. Unfortunately our regular interlocutors seem to only be able to provide the latter not the former. Behe made another point which is worth keeping in mind.

“In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes.”

In other words, a strongly held metaphysical belief is not a scientific explanation. john_a_designer

@73 John_a_designer:

Can anyone identify the logical fallacy that Bob is guilty of?

Could I use a compass to characterize it? Truthfreedom

On Feb. 4 on the thread that spawned this one I put forth the following argument:

Premise #1: If the universe is all that exists there is no ultimate purpose and meaning to human existence. Premise #2: The universe is all that exists. Conclusion: There is no ultimate purpose and meaning to human existence. The argument of course fails because we have no way to prove premise #2 is true and if premise #2 is not true, the conclusion does not follow. Nevertheless, there are at least a couple of implications that we can derive from this so-called argument. First, even though there is no way to prove that Premise #2, “The universe is all that exists,” is true, it’s still possibly true, the same way that the claim that “pink unicorns exist” could be true, though it’s not self-evidently true. So those who claim that it is true have the burden of proof to prove it’s true. In other words, it cannot be claimed as some kind of “default position.”

https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jerry-coyne-and-the-contradictions-of-darwinian-morality/#comment-692159 However, Bob O’H responded by making the following assertion:

Without evidence to support the existence of a non-material world, there seems little reason to invoke it. Thus it is a reasonable default position, but no it doesn’t settle the issue. If you want to argue that materialists have subjective opinions, then my only response is “well, duh”. Materialists are human too.

https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jerry-coyne-and-the-contradictions-of-darwinian-morality/#comment-692211 I countered @ #51:

However, it is not self-evidently true “that the universe is all that exists” therefore atheists have no way to prove their argument. So it must be accepted on faith. Claiming that your position is the default position is logically fallacious because that’s something else that hasn’t been proven. Just believing that the universe is all that exists or simply claiming the evidence favors your position or that there is no evidence supporting the logical alternative doesn’t prove anything. It’s just your opinion.

https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jerry-coyne-and-the-contradictions-of-darwinian-morality/#comment-692270 Bob however, decided to double down #64:

But a default position doesn’t need to be proven – the very description of it as a default implies that it might be wrong, but that in the absence of reasons for it to be wrong, it’s a reasonable position to take. using Occam’s razor to decide on what default positions to take makes pragmatic sense, because you eliminate factors that aren’t necessary to the position.

https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jerry-coyne-and-the-contradictions-of-darwinian-morality/#comment-692297 Can anyone identify the logical fallacy that Bob is guilty of? Based on the reasoning of some of our other interlocutors here I think understanding the underlying fallacy is very relevant to the present discussion. john_a_designer

... and point out where exactly you find the source of that coordination?

I can. It's right there in front of you. Mung

Upright BiPed @ 50

I have said absolutely nothing about purpose or function, Sev.

Really? The just what are we talking about? I'm sure you could explain it if you try.

Are you actually suggesting here that after a dozen years of listening to discussions about biology and OoL, you’ve never heard (even from the scientists on your side of the argument) that changes to the genetic code would result in catastrophic failure of the system?

Yes, I'm aware of it. So what?

So again, do the sequences in the genome have to be simultaneously coordinated with the those that describe the aaRS, Sev? Yes or no.

To do what exactly? Oh, I forget, this is not about function or purpose, is it? Seversky

Not recognising a plausible appearance of conscious design could be due to narcolepsy, catatonia or plain, old sleep. Or it might be that there is simply no object there, whether designed or not, and the appearance of design inevitably would also necessarily be imaginary. Recognising an appearance of plausible design seems a good starting-point for consciousness to come into play, doesn't it ? Especially, in the absence of any evidence that that appearance of design is a chimera. Axel

John_a_designer, ET, Truthfreedom: Please, do not distract Seversky or Pater Kimbridge until they're done with their homework assignment @61. :) pw

Notice that our interlocutors are not really making any kind of valid argument. Rather they are simply dismissing the logical possibility that life could be designed because that is what they believe a priori. If they don’t believe that it is possible that life could be designed then they need to logically refute that claim. In other words, they need to prove that it’s logically impossible for life to be designed. Personal incredulity and group think proves nothing. Notice all the following quotes are from men who believe that evolution is a mindless and purposeless process. (HT: BA77)

“This appearance of purposefulness is pervasive in nature…. Accounting for this apparent purposefulness is a basic problem for any system of philosophy or of science.” George Gaylord Simpson – “The Problem of Plan and Purpose in Nature” – 1947 “living organisms “appear to have been carefully and artfully designed” Richard C. Lewontin – Adaptation,” Scientific American, and Scientific American book ‘Evolution’ (September 1978) “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit – p. 138 (1990) “Organisms appear as if they had been designed to perform in an astonishingly efficient way, and the human mind therefore finds it hard to accept that there need be no Designer to achieve this” Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit – p. 30 “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Richard Dawkins – The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.1

If something appears to be designed isn’t it logically possible it really could be designed? The main argument for the design then can be stated very simply:

1. If it appears to be designed, it really could be designed. 2. Even the simplest self-replicating life forms, like Mycoplasma genitalium, appear to be designed. 3. Therefore, it really could be designed.

In other words, if it’s logically possible that something could be designed then it’s not illegitimate to consider the possibility it really might be designed. Indeed, it would be intellectually dishonest not to do so. It certainly requires more than disbelief to undermine the argument for design. From the design perspective we at UD have cited a number of things about living systems which cannot presently be explained “naturally” and are characteristic at least by analogy of design. john_a_designer

PK, materialism is just one of a significant number of significant worldview alternatives. In such a case of W_a = {w1, w2, w3, . . . wn}, ~w1 enfolds a range of possibilities, P = W_a - w1. So, there will be no one simple term. In this case, evolutionary materialistic scientism faces decisive defeaters. It cannot account for a world, for a fine tuned world, for life with language embedded in DNA, for mind that has credibility beyond a blind computing device, for moral government. Never mind the lab coat, the wounds are mortal. KF kairosfocus

Pater K:

So, what’s a good word for the opposite of materialist?

Realist ET

@64 Pater Kimbridge

So, what’s a good word for the opposite of materialist?

I kind of like "people who love to think for themselves and who understand that what can NOT be, can not be, because violating logic equals intellectual suicide". Or "people who hate the sheep like mentality". Truthfreedom

@Truthfreedom So, what's a good word for the opposite of materialist? I kind of like "mystic" myself. Pater Kimbridge

@58 correction: “ As far as it’s empirically known so far, the only way is purposeful design.” Can you point to an alternative that can be coherently explained? pw

@57 KF

...an evolutionary materialistic ideology that is now long past discard by date.

Ideology, not science. And a failed one. "Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next." -William Ralph Inge. Truthfreedom

Homework for Seversky: 58 Homework for Pater Kimbridge: 60 :) pw

Pater Kimbridge, Did you respond to EugeneS @29? BTW, is @22 your best response to @19? Also, did you miss my question(s) @23? You may use the information @24 too. I provided it as a courtesy, so that you don’t have to spend time searching for it. pw

EugeneS @29: Excellent! Thanks. pw

Seversky @44: Not so fast, buddy. Those main functions are relatively well documented in scientific literature, at least to certain level. The question is how is the functionality achieved in each of those listed cases? That’s relatively well documented too, at least up to certain level of detail. In most cases we’re dealing with complex functionality, which is relatively well documented up to certain depth. Now the next question is what does it take to build such functional complexity? As far as it’s empirically known so far, the only wake is purposeful design. Can you offer an alternative that you can coherently explain? Please, point to it. Show it. Thanks. pw

PS: Sir Fred Hoyle:

>>[Sir Fred Hoyle, In a talk at Caltech c 1981 (nb. this longstanding UD post):] From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? . . . I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has "monkeyed" with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. [F. Hoyle, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982): 16.]>> . . . also, in the same talk at Caltech: >>The big problem in biology, as I see it, is to understand the origin of the information carried by the explicit structures of biomolecules. The issue isn't so much the rather crude fact that a protein consists of a chain of amino acids linked together in a certain way, but that the explicit ordering of the amino acids endows the chain with remarkable properties, which other orderings wouldn't give. The case of the enzymes is well known . . . If amino acids were linked at random, there would be a vast number of arrange-ments that would be useless in serving the pur-poses of a living cell. When you consider that a typical enzyme has a chain of perhaps 200 links and that there are 20 possibilities for each link,it's easy to see that the number of useless arrangements is enormous, more than the number of atoms in all the galaxies visible in the largest telescopes. [ --> 20^200 = 1.6 * 10^260] This is for one enzyme, and there are upwards of 2000 of them, mainly serving very different purposes. So how did the situation get to where we find it to be? This is, as I see it, the biological problem - the information problem . . . . I was constantly plagued by the thought that the number of ways in which even a single enzyme could be wrongly constructed was greater than the number of all the atoms in the universe. So try as I would, I couldn't convince myself that even the whole universe would be sufficient to find life by random processes - by what are called the blind forces of nature . . . . By far the simplest way to arrive at the correct sequences of amino acids in the enzymes would be by thought, not by random processes . . . . Now imagine yourself as a superintellect working through possibilities in polymer chemistry. Would you not be astonished that polymers based on the carbon atom turned out in your calculations to have the remarkable properties of the enzymes and other biomolecules? Would you not be bowled over in surprise to find that a living cell was a feasible construct? Would you not say to yourself, in whatever language supercalculating intellects use: Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule. Of course you would, and if you were a sensible superintellect you would conclude that the carbon atom is a fix. >> . . . and again: >> I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the [--> nuclear synthesis] consequences they produce within stars. ["The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, November, 1981. pp. 8–12]>>

kairosfocus

Sev, You need to face some facts, starting with your own assumptions. Monod's 1971 admission is telling. Yes, the admission headlined several times recently, from a 1971 interview that builds on his 1970 Chance and Necessity:

[T]he scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity—that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. Now, this is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product—predictable if not indispensable—of the evolution of the universe.— Jacques Monod [Quoted in John C. Hess, ‘French Nobel Biologist Says World Based On Chance’, New York Times (15 Mar 1971), p. 6. Cited in Herbert Marcuse, Counter-Revolution and Revolt (1972), p. 66.

Further, we are all quite familiar with a decisive case, DNA. Here we have something central to life and which manifests coded algorithmic information used to create proteins. Using tRNA as position arm devices, with a standard CCA tool tip that can couple to any relevant AA. Anticodons match codons and that is how coded information controls stepwise assembly of protein chains. But that code and that algorithm are immediately language and goal directed stepwise halting process. In short, purpose is baked in and language using design is here antecedent to the origin of life. We are not done. You have been present over years when we pointed out here at UD that from the very book that launched modern design theory near on 40 years ago now, it was freely acknowledged that design of life does NOT imply designer beyond the cosmos. You have been here when I have pointed out that given Venter et al, within 100 years we likely will be able to create such a design. Already, two more codes have been added and with them other AA's. So, I reasonably expect you to cease from the strawman caricature above and explain why you resorted to such. However, we are not done. There is another level of evident design, a cosmos fine tuned for C Chem, aqueous medium cell based life. Cosmos design and building is at a whole different level, as Sir Fred Hoyle long ago acknowledged forthrightly. And, it further points to a purpose to build a world with such life in it. Not, as religious dogma, but as reasonable inference on empirical evidence. Which also exposes your already corrected attempt to conflate Biblical Creationism and Design Theory, in a misguided attempt to taint and dismiss both. Of course, you may be tempted to trot out standard dismissive fallacies such as appeal to analogy as less than demonstrative to get rid of the points. Analogy is a key part of induction, turning on inference to in common archetypes [on more or less good grounds as the case may be]. Do you really want to burn down inductive reasoning? That carries science down with it. Moreover, we are not making an analogy from DNA to digital code, we are recognising its presence as a form of machine code used to control an algorithmic process in the ribosome. That some resort to attempted dismissal on this matter simply shows that they are desperate to shore up an evolutionary materialistic ideology that is now long past discard by date. KF kairosfocus

Alexa internet traffic ranks for related websites: EN:.......224,252 TO:.......574,147 UD:.......635,802 PT:........2,507,759 SW:......4,014,984 TSZ:....6,170,294 jawa

. Picking up from my comment at #50

First, I would ask others here if they would like to re-state your case in a simpler, summary form.

Rhetoric.

Second, I have read the extensive discussions from several years ago of your case, both here and on The Skeptical Zone, and I would recommend anyone else who’s interested to do the same.

More rhetoric, and illogical, and lazy.

Third, in answer to your question, I don’t know if they are true or false. I doubt if we know enough yet to make a determination one way or the other. What it reduces to, however, is another variant of the ‘It’s so complex, I can’t conceive of any way it could come about through natural processes, therefore design’. Which may be true. I can’t rule out design as a possibility but neither have I seen a case which points irresistibly towards it.

This is settled science, Sev. The descriptions of the aaRS establish the genetic code from memory. How the codons are to be interpreted effects all the genes that are thus encoded. Logic 101. This has been known for decades upon decades. The remainder of your comment is simply more rhetoric. It seems like, to me, that a self-imposed need for rhetoric would get old after a while.

If it is actually the case that there are no natural processes which can account for what we observe – something which are not yet in a position to say with certainty – then design is the most reasonable alternative.

It is actually the case that there are no known natural (unguided) processes that can account for what we observe, Sev. That’s the whole point. You simply refuse to acknowledge it in earnest, regardless of the predictions, experimental evidence, and documented scientific history that surrounds the fact. Your gig is to avoid and ignore it all. You merely assume something in leau of actually knowing something, then assert that assumption ahead of what we actually do know to be true. Your position is a concrete display of the ideological motivation that you constantly accuse your opponents of.

But if there is no compelling evidence for the existence of a designer then natural processes become the most reasonable explanation.

Sev, does the existence of a terrestrial fire provide evidence of a fuel, the presence of an oxidizing agent, and the proximity of a heat source? If so, is it because you have independent evidence of those things at the source of the fire, or is it because of our universal experience that those specific things are required for the rapid oxidation of a fuel source – a fire? DNA is part of a multi-referent symbol system that uses spatial-orientation to distinguish one referent from another. It is physically established as a medium by a system of discontinuous association, using a set of non-integrable constraints. The whole package requires complimentary descriptions for its operation to be measured and documented -- and on that point -- the whole system has indeed been carefully documented using the language of physics (i.e. the rate-independence of the medium, the reading of the medium without reducing degrees of freedom, the discontinuous association between medium and referent, and so on). That description has been specifically noted in the literature to match just one other phenomenon known to science, and that one other phenomenon is the use of language. So, not only was this system famously predicted as fundamental to open-ended self-replication, it was then experimentally confirmed as such, and subsequently described in the literature as the only other known instance of a language structure outside of human artifacts. And as you well know, the use of language is a universal correlate of intelligence. So you cannot legitimately say that there is no compelling evidence of intelligent action in the origin of biology – to do so is an illogical and sweeping denial of whole swaths of scientific documentation and reasoning. Moreover, to then suggest that decades of scientific documentation should be disregarded, based solely on the preference of an unsupported assumption, is completely ludicrous, not to mention non-falsifiable and therefore non-scientific. This is why I give you a hard time for your dull rhetoric, Sev. You are too smart to not know what you are doing. Now, returning to my previous question: Do the sequences in the genome have to be simultaneously coordinated with those that describe the set of aaRS? And if so, then Bob can tell us the source of that simultaneous coordination. After you answer that question, you can answer another question you’ve previously ignored: The set of aaRS are the physical constraints that establish the gene code from memory. They did not always exist. On the first day that an aaRS was successfully synthesized from memory, how many of the other constraints had to be in place? Upright BiPed

@52 Pater Kimbridge

You are trying REALLY hard to construct a reality that requires your god to exist.

Do I detect a hint of bitterness? It is your epistemology the one that fails-miserably. Materialism is false. Catastrophic epistemological failure. You stomping your foot WON'T change the fact. Logic is a very demanding mistress. From your post @40:

This is why I bring up such matters of basic reasoning. It seems that some people are lacking in that area.

Sure. And you are the perfect example. https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ Truthfreedom

@Truthfreedom #51 You are trying REALLY hard to construct a reality that requires your god to exist. Pater Kimbridge

@49 Pater Kimbridge:

I do not subscribe to your “endpoint #2”

Not "mine". You don't accept the findings of natural sciences (neurophysiology?) Truthfreedom

.

Sev: Which, of course, is why ID/Creationists prefer it because it smuggles in their Designer/God. UB: This is gratuitous rhetoric, Sev. It is not a legitimate response to anything. Sev: No, it’s not a response, it’s a perfectly legitimate comment on what I believe is the purpose in the minds of those insisting on the notion of purpose over function.

I have said absolutely nothing about purpose or function, Sev. You’ve avoided the question yet again. The descriptions of the aaRS are what establishes the genetic code inside the cell, Seversky, this is settled science no matter who you are. Thus, those descriptions effect all the remaining descriptions contained in the genome. Changing one, alters all the others. Period. There is nothing that is the slightest bit hard to understand about this. Are you actually suggesting here that after a dozen years of listening to discussions about biology and OoL, you’ve never heard (even from the scientists on your side of the argument) that changes to the genetic code would result in catastrophic failure of the system? Does the logic of that reality somehow escape you? No, of course not, you are simply playing another round of “avoid the evidence”. So again, do the sequences in the genome have to be simultaneously coordinated with the those that describe the aaRS, Sev? Yes or no. Give yourself a pep talk. Try to actually confront the evidence for a change of pace. And also (to pick up from my previous comment at #30): If these things are true, then why do you insist that acknowledging them is motivated by anything other than the fact that they are true? If they are thru, then they are true, right? Upright BiPed

@Truthfreedom #48 I do not subscribe to your "endpoint #2" What have I said to make you think that I had? Pater Kimbridge

@47 Pater Kimbridge

Yeah, I read that. And, like I said in #40, that’s all presuppositionalism.

No, it is not. It is that philosophical materialism is trapped in an Epistemological Nightmare. Your starting point: 1. "There is an external world." And your ending point: 2. "All I know are changes (neural patterns) inside myself". Logically contradict each other. https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ Sorry, but logic is a very demanding mistress. Materialism is a failed philosophy. Catastrophic epistemological failure. Truthfreedom

@Truthfreedom #41 Yeah, I read that. And, like I said in #40, that's all presuppositionalism. Look it up if you are not familiar with it. It has been around for a long time. When the presuppositionalist applies his own logic to his own argument, it disappears in a puff of smoke. Pater Kimbridge

seversky:

If it is actually the case that there are no natural processes which can account for what we observe

It is actually the case. You and yours have nothing beyond denial.

But if there is no compelling evidence for the existence of a designer...

There is overwhelming evidence for the existence of an Intelligent Designer. All you can do is deny it. ET

Upright BiPed @ 30

Which, of course, is why ID/Creationists prefer it because it smuggles in their Designer/God.

This is gratuitous rhetoric, Sev. It is not a legitimate response to anything.

No, it's not a response, it's a perfectly legitimate comment on what I believe is the purpose in the minds of those insisting on the notion of purpose over function. It's also far less gratuitous then some of the comments I have read from others on these threads.

Do you think the observations I made in my post are true, or are they false?

First, I would ask others here if they would like to re-state your case in a simpler, summary form. Second, I have read the extensive discussions from several years ago of your case, both here and on The Skeptical Zone, and I would recommend anyone else who's interested to do the same. Third, in answer to your question, I don't know if they are true or false. I doubt if we know enough yet to make a determination one way or the other. What it reduces to, however, is another variant of the 'It's so complex, I can't conceive of any way it could come about through natural processes, therefore design'. Which may be true. I can't rule out design as a possibility but neither have I seen a case which points irresistibly towards it. If it is actually the case that there are no natural processes which can account for what we observe - something which are not yet in a position to say with certainty - then design is the most reasonable alternative. But if there is no compelling evidence for the existence of a designer then natural processes become the most reasonable explanation. Seversky

Pw @ 17

What’s a known function of the genetic code? What’s a known function of the epigenome? What’s a known function of the ribosome? What’s a known function of every known aaRS? What’s a known function of every cellular organelle? What’s a known function of the nuclear membrane?

If you don't know what their functions are you can easily look them up on the Internet. The point we have been trying to make is that the function is simply what they do. Their function would only be a purpose if we knew of an intelligent designer who had designed them to do that. If there is no designer then all we see happening is function. Seversky

Pater K:

It IS an illusion.

Perhaps to you and yours. But then again the illusion is thinking your side has any evidentiary support

That’s why it is a fallacy to attribute “purpose” to an object.

It is to you and yours. But then again your entire position is a fallacy. ET

@40 Pater Kimbridge

This is why I bring up such matters of basic reasoning.

Huh? Materialism is the sworn enemy of reasoning. You ground logic in some random chemical reactions and neuronal firings that you *magically* believe can become *rational*. Truthfreedom

@40 Pater Kimbridge

And… why would you assume all materialists are solipsists?

I would assume that, when I post a link, DOZENS OF TIMES, people would like to click on it, read the related content and then, come back to have a fruitful discussion. https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ Truthfreedom

@Truthfreedom # 39 Neither Seversky nor Ed George are claiming that transportation is an intrinsic property of a canal. They instead are saying that transportation was the purpose in the minds of the designers when they designed the canal. Which is verifiable by talking to the designers or finding the documentation. And... why would you assume all materialists are solipsists? This is why I bring up such matters of basic reasoning. It seems that some people are lacking in that area. And when you confront them about it, they retreat into the rubber-and-glue world of presuppositionalism. Pater Kimbridge

@38 Pater Kimbridge

The reason you don’t project “dirt moving” as a purpose onto an apple is that you don’t have that pattern in your mind.

Or it is because I am an intelligent person that understands using apples to move dirt is ridiculous and leads only to frustration and failure (are "frustration and failure" real or "illusions", Pater?)

Believing the shovel has purpose is an illusion, because the purpose only exists in your mind, it is not a property of the shovel. It is only a pattern in your mind. It is cultural experience."

Believing *mutations* are *random*, is an illusion, because *randomness* only exists in *the mind of evolutionists*, it is not a property of the *living matter*. It is only a pattern in *their* minds. It is cultural experience.

It is important to distinquish things that happen in the external world from things that only happen IN YOUR MIND.

Says the subjective idealist/ solipsist that can not be sure he has a brain. Sure. https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/ You are saying Seversky and Ed George are wrong. From Seversky:

The canal was designed and built by human engineers for a specific purpose.

From Ed George:

But only for the canal can we say that it’s purpose is transportation.

Both Seversky and Ed George are under an "illusion" that you are kindly "dispelling". Truthfreedom

@Truthfreedom #25 you said : "Under materialism, you can NOT project your mind onto anything. It is an (and again we have here the inane word) “illusion”." That's correct. It IS an illusion. That's why it is a fallacy to attribute "purpose" to an object. Mind-projection is not the idea that your mind somehow inhabits an object, it is instead the idea that people attribute a property to an object that it does not have, simply because their minds associate the object with some function or purpose. Believing the shovel has purpose is an illusion, because the purpose only exists in your mind, it is not a property of the shovel. It is only a pattern in your mind. It is cultural experience. The reason you don't project "dirt moving" as a purpose onto an apple is that you don't have that pattern in your mind. You don't have experience of people moving dirt with an apple. It is important to distinquish things that happen in the external world from things that only happen IN YOUR MIND. Pater Kimbridge

Let me follow up with what I said @ #4:

Don’t expect much from Bob. Because of his a priori philosophical assumptions he is never going to concede that DNA or RNA functions as a code. However, the problem then for him, or any other committed materialist, is what is the purpose of DNA or RNA? For me the question is very easy to settle. I just apply the so-called duck test. If DNA or RNA looks like a code, functions like a code or can be used as a code (by humans for instance) it is a code. But that’s because I am being intellectually honest. That’s also one of the reasons I believe that materialism is false. Bob, of course, will continue to believe what he believes because he believes it.

Like the duck test I listed three reasons why it is reasonable to believe that DNA and RNA are really codes: (1) they look like codes, (2) they function like codes and (3) they can be used like a codes (by an intelligent agent, humans for instance.) Here is an example of reason #3:

For the first time, a primitive movie has been encoded in — and then played back from — DNA in living cells. Scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health say it is a major step toward a “molecular recorder” that may someday make it possible to get read-outs, for example, of the changing internal states of neurons as they develop.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/scientists-replay-movie-encoded-dna john_a_designer

@34 Ed George

Both a river and a canal can function as a means of transportation. But only for the canal can we say that it’s purpose is transportation.

This line of reasoning implies that the human mind has *intrinsic* purpose or "goal-orientedness". But because materialists can NOT reconcile this reality with an impersonal "nature", they are forced to try the eliminativist route : "purpose is an (yeeees, you guessed it!) "illusion". The problem is that reality is real and eliminativism does not work. But materialism is dogmatic and they prefer to make fools of themselves instead of accepting that it is a failed philosophy. Truthfreedom

Both a river and a canal can function as a means of transportation. But only for the canal can we say that it’s purpose is transportation.

Cuz you say so, really? It could easily be said that the purpose of rivers is to transport water, minerals and people from one place to another. It's part of the intelligent design of the planet. ET

Both a river and a canal can function as a means of transportation. But only for the canal can we say that it’s purpose is transportation. Ed George

@15 Seversky

The canal was designed and built by human engineers for a specific purpose. The river is water moving from higher to lower levels, under the force of gravity, following a course that is shaped by the topography of the land over which it flows.

"Shaped" by the topography in a certain way, due to the involved materials *intrinsic* properties (or "tendencies"). Water --> certain properties. Rocks --> certain properties. Gravity --> certain properties. The sum of the 3 above = river (and not i.e. an apple). Truthfreedom

EugeneS @27: “Oh, boy.” I couldn’t have stated it better. That’s it. Simple, brief, but it says it all: Oh, boy. I second it. pw

@29 EugeneS:

you should take a test tube and join the army of abiogenesis alchemists trying to produce life in a lab.

They'll move the goalposts. NaCl is now"alive", so yes, they can sintesize "life" in a lab. Or the classical materialist desperate tactic: life is an "illusion". (Or "social construct"). Lazy thinking because they can not accept reality. They have not grown up. Truthfreedom

.

Which, of course, is why ID/Creationists prefer it because it smuggles in their Designer/God.

This is gratuitous rhetoric, Sev. It is not a legitimate response to anything. Do you think the observations I made in my post are true, or are they false? Upright BiPed

PK @22 Your analogy is flawed. What is missing is that for this consequent it would be NECESSARY to have observations that only wood floats. Since this is of course not the case your analogy to ID is flawed. The gist of abductive reasoning is as follows: The surprising fact, C, is observed; But if A were true, C would be a matter of course, Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. The gist of ID: - we want to hypothesise about how life could have plausibly come about - we have complex human artifacts that are isomorphic to life (where the context of isomorphism is clearly defined) - we have absolutely no observations of not only life but anything isomorphic to complex human artifacts arising without intelligent guidance/interference/de novo creation - Consequently, we have reason to suspect that life, too, might have come about with intelligence. In other words, ID stands as a valid abductive hypothesis until such time as someone comes up with observations of life arising without intelligence (i.e. by way of naturalistic causation with specific initial conditions). So your only legitimate hope to disprove ID is abiogenesis. So I suggest that, instead of condescendingly joking using flawed logic, you should take a test tube and join the army of abiogenesis alchemists trying to produce life in a lab. But before you do so, I have bad news for you: - you are allowed only to manipulate the initial conditions of the putative non-intelligent abiogenetic synthesis of life, for as soon as you smuggle in (c) control of the synthesis, you immediately invalidate your entire experiment - every new discovery of biochemical details of how life is organised pushes abiogenesis further away from you before you even start. EugeneS

Just because seversky, et al., are forced to smuggle in a blind watchmaker doesn't mean that IDists have to smuggle in an Intelligent Designer. There isn't any other viable scientific explanation for a heart pumping blood than ID. Just like there isn't any other viable scientific explanation for the genetic code than ID. And we all know how much that bothers all of the anti-ID and anti-science evos. ET

Which, of course, is why ID/Creationists prefer it because it smuggles in their Designer/God.

Oh, boy. EugeneS

H'mm: On Enigma:

History Enigma was invented by the German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I.[2] The German firm Scherbius & Ritter, co-founded by Arthur Scherbius, patented ideas for a cipher machine in 1918 and began marketing the finished product under the brand name Enigma in 1923, initially targeted at commercial markets.[3] Early models were used commercially from the early 1920s, and adopted by military and government services of several countries, most notably Nazi Germany before and during World War II.[4] Several different Enigma models were produced, but the German military models, having a plugboard, were the most complex. Japanese and Italian models were also in use. With its adoption (in slightly modified form) by the German Navy in 1926 and the German Army and Air Force soon after, the name Enigma became widely known in military circles. Pre-war German military planning emphasized fast, mobile forces and tactics, later known as blitzkrieg, which depend on radio communication for command and coordination. Since adversaries would likely intercept radio signals, messages would have to be protected with secure encoding. Compact and easily portable, the Enigma machine filled that need.

Wiki, as a handy point of departure. KF kairosfocus

@11 Pater Kimbridge:

If I have a shovel in my garage, and it is just leaning up against the wall, at that moment, it has no function. If I pick it up and move dirt with it, at that moment it has the function of moving dirt.

In potency, yes, it has. The moment you start moving dirt with it, you are actualizing it. Some things --> certain outcomes. You can not move dirt i.e. with an apple.

To believe otherwise is a mind-projection fallacy.

Pater Kimbridge, you are not reading well your materialist priests. Under materialism, you can NOT project your mind onto anything. It is an (and again we have here the inane word) "illusion". Good to know you imply materialism is false. Truthfreedom

@23: Here’s a list of related papers that you may consult. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3293468/citedby/ pw

Pater Kimbridge @22: What’s the scientific explanation to the existence of the genetic code? Do you know the answer to that question? Please, avoid any explanation that sounds like CM. Thanks. Here’s one: https://iubmb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/iub.146 pw

@Pw "The Nazis designed the Enigma code ...." Gee.... Wood floats, and witches float.... so.... witches must be made of wood!!!! Pater Kimbridge

. Bob? Upright BiPed

The heart is a kind of pump. It pushes blood around the body. That is its function. It would only have that as a purpose if there was a designer capable of conceiving such a purpose.

That doesn't follow. But it is a given that it did require an intelligent designer.

The Black Death that killed a third of the population of Europe at that time, that was done on purpose?

Possibly. But how does that relate to function? Are you suggesting the function was that of a population thinner?

The extreme vulcanism topped off with a giant meteorite strike which finished off the dinosaurs 65 mya, that was done on purpose?

Possibly. But how does that relate to function? Or are you saying the function was to prepare the earth for us? ET

Pater Kimbridge @18 The genetic code is a code, that represents very specific functional information, therefore it must have been designed. We know that empirically. It’s an undisputed fact. The Nazis designed the Enigma code which was used to convert certain text to messages carrying important information. A group of Polish and British specialists figured it out. Scientists have figured out the genetic code. BTW, do you know the answers to the questions @17? pw

@Pw #17 "The genetic code has at least one known function: to be used by the cell in order to synthesize proteins. " That's an observation. "That’s the purpose it was designed for." That's a non-sequiter leap. At least you have separated function and purpose into the distinct concepts that I am recommending. If you don't do this, you run the risk of doing what Seversky warns against - the smuggling of purpose in where there is only function. Pater Kimbridge

What’s a known function of the genetic code? What’s a known function of the epigenome? What’s a known function of the ribosome? What’s a known function of every known aaRS? What’s a known function of every cellular organelle? What’s a known function of the nuclear membrane? pw

Intrinsic: “belonging to the essential nature or constitution of a thing” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intrinsic Purpose: “something set up as an object or end to be attained” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purpose pw

John_a_designer @ 13

But what purpose is a function without a purpose? Can Pater give us an example of a functioning organ which has no purpose?

Pick an organ, any organ. The heart is a kind of pump. It pushes blood around the body. That is its function. It would only have that as a purpose if there was a designer capable of conceiving such a purpose. The notion of 'purpose' entails a 'purposer'. Which, of course, is why ID/Creationists prefer it because it smuggles in their Designer/God. Which in turn raises the question, if there can be no function without purpose, is there any function anywhere in the universe that is not purposed? The Black Death that killed a third of the population of Europe at that time, that was done on purpose? The extreme vulcanism topped off with a giant meteorite strike which finished off the dinosaurs 65 mya, that was done on purpose? Or try a different approach, a river and a canal both have the same function, in simple terms, they channel water from one place to another. The canal was designed and built by human engineers for a specific purpose. The river is water moving from higher to lower levels, under the force of gravity, following a course that is shaped by the topography of the land over which it flows. You're telling us that there is no difference, that if something does something, no matter what, that is its purpose as well as its function? Seversky

Pater K:

The “purpose” is not, and only exists in someones mind.

In everyone's mind, because it is intrinsic. ET

Pater @ 8,

I think it is important, to avoid confusion, to realize that function and purpose are two different things.

But what purpose is a function without a purpose? Can Pater give us an example of a functioning organ which has no purpose? Sure there are so-called vestigial organs but those organs even if they have lost there their original function had an original purpose. I don’t see what the point is here. It seems to me to be totally irrational. john_a_designer

@ET #10 The composition and structure are intrinsic. The "purpose" is not, and only exists in someones mind. Pater Kimbridge

@Truthfreedom #9 The things you list are what I would call function, not purpose. When you see a heart pumping blood, you are observing a function. If you saw a heart for the first time, not pumping blood, you would not be observing a function. It has no function, at the moment when it is not doing anything. If I have a shovel in my garage, and it is just leaning up against the wall, at that moment it has no function. If I pick it up and move dirt with it, at that moment it has the function of moving dirt. When it is not being used, it has form and substance, but no function. The designer of the shovel may have had a purpose in mind when he designed it, and I may have had a function in mind when I bought it, and those ideas may have influenced it's form and substance, but those ideas do not exist in the shovel. To believe otherwise is a mind-projection fallacy. Pater Kimbridge

The purpose of a car is for transportation. The composition and structure of the material make it so. It seems like an intrinsic property. Using a car for something other than transportation would be an extrinsic property ET

@6 PaterKimbridge

Do you believe that purpose is an intrinsic property of a thing or entity?

See Barry Arrington @7 please. I do not "believe" it. It is what we observe in Nature. "Purpose" in the sense of "tendency" --> "going towards". 1. Hearts --> pumping blood. 2. Adaptation --> survival. 3. Studying --> gaining knowledge. 4. Amoral behavior --> problems/ suffering. There is an order in Nature. We are creatures discovering and understanding it. Some correlations can not happen. For example: hearts --> digesting food. Minds can discern those relations and we call them their "purpose". Truthfreedom

But is the purpose a property of the physical thing, or does purpose only exist in the mind of the designer or the user of the thing? I think it is important, to avoid confusion, to realize that function and purpose are two different things. Purpose is what a designer or user has in mind when designing or using something. It is not an intrinsic property of a thing. Function is what a thing is doing at a given moment. It is also not an intrinsic property. Pater Kimbridge

Pater Kimbridge, Physical things often have a purpose, in the sense of a telos, an end or function toward which they go. The heart is for pumping blood. Another way to say that is that the purpose of the heart is to pump blood. This is so obviously true as to be trivial. I wonder that you should ask about it. Barry Arrington

@Truthfreedom #5 Do you believe that purpose is an intrinsic property of a thing or entity? In other words, is purpose something that it carries around with it? Pater Kimbridge

@ PeterA

... what is the purpose of...

"Purpose" is a word that materialists say has no meaning (pun intended). In their world, "stuff happens". We can not adulterate the fact with fantasies of "purposefulness" or "directedness". That is silly and not realistic. Strictly speaking, "molecules collide". Billions of collisions. End of the story. Their philosophy, not mine :) Truthfreedom

Don’t expect much from Bob. Because of his a priori philosophical assumptions he is never going to concede that DNA or RNA functions as a code. However, the problem then for him, or any other committed materialist, is what is the purpose of DNA or RNA? For me the question is very easy to settle. I just apply the so-called duck test. If DNA or RNA looks like a code, functions like a code or can be used as a code (by humans for instance) it is a code. But that’s because I am being intellectually honest. That’s also one of the reasons I believe that materialism is false. Bob, of course, will continue to believe what he believes because he believes it. john_a_designer

Bob O’H, Perhaps now it’s easier for you to answer this question: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/suzan-mazur-on-how-the-college-board-skews-students-toward-darwinism/#comment-692155 than the hard problem UB has presented to you? :) PeterA

Game over. PeterA

Ouch!!! PeterA