tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post3587619911864104799..comments2024-03-27T14:50:47.345-04:00Comments on <center>Sandwalk</center>: What do Intelligent Design Creationists believe?Larry Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comBlogger192125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-65101386225564479372014-01-13T10:22:12.877-05:002014-01-13T10:22:12.877-05:00"In both cases there is a connectivity of the..."In both cases there is a connectivity of the nodes in the topological network."<br /><br />There is not the same *kind* of connectivity, though. That's the whole point of what I'm saying. There's no 'DNA' in the word 'radix' that somehow unfurls to create 'radical' and 'radish'. <br /><br />"I'd invite him to take the properties that he says are 'present' in 'radix', 'radical' and/or 'radish' and tell me which words will be 'descended' from them in 2000 years time."<br /><br />" Dude, this is exactly the - "<br /><br />[snip the blah blah and not answering this question]<br /><br />"That's not how evolution works."<br /><br />No, but it's how Christians need evolution to work if it is consistent with a divine plan. <br /><br />Please just concede this point. And with it, obviously, the basis of your faith tradition and belief system. <br /><br />"It is quite possible, if genetics reaches the heights achieved by physics, that once we know how a genome might change, we can make some statement about what possible genomes might result from it, but this will be a range of possible genomes and some of them may be non-viable or may express themselves differently in different environments. We are only beginning to understand these things, and the world of biology may be even less like that of physics than the Moderns supposed."<br /><br />OK. <br /><br />We agree on this. The maximal level of knowledge when we look at a given genome is that we can look at a range of *possible* future stages. <br /><br />That, then, is the level of knowledge *God* has, in your story, as he has maximal knowledge. <br /><br />This is inconsistent with other lines from your story, in which God knew the fate of every individual before the universe began. <br /><br />So, *either* your story is true *or* evolution as modern science understands it is true.<br /><br />See?<br /><br />You've already conceded that you think the fault is with modern science for 'taking God out of the equation'. That's fine. But don't pretend that there's some accommodation or compatibility between the two models. *Either* Christianity is true *or* modern scientific understanding of evolution is. <br /><br />"You will find atheists of the deterministic sect who will tell you that once you know all the forces at work on the die, you will indeed be able to predict from the starting position whether the throw will be six, and that to contend otherwise is a load of theistic crap."<br /><br />No. You will find some atheists who say that *theoretically* it ought to be possible. You will not find anyone who says that it's *practically* possible to make that call. <br /><br />The idea that one being could make every such call hits the same paradox the 'why would God use evolution?' does - it requires a very stupid, or at least staggeringly inefficient, God. Any engineer capable of marshalling the resources to do that wouldn't ever do it that way.<br />Jemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10359685574788608040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-37250100826270710272014-01-12T17:06:52.621-05:002014-01-12T17:06:52.621-05:00LouiseG wrote: "All one has to do is ask them...<i>LouiseG wrote: "All one has to do is ask them for evidence for abiogenesis."</i><br />It's in the genomes of extant organisms and can be elucidated using structural phylogenomics. From <a href="http://gca.cropsci.illinois.edu/research.html" rel="nofollow">http://gca.cropsci.illinois.edu/research.html</a>, among others see for example: <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0059300" rel="nofollow">Structural Phylogenomics Reveals Gradual Evolutionary Replacement of Abiotic Chemistries by Protein Enzymes in Purine Metabolism</a>. <br /><br />Notice though, how I didn't claim that we know everything about how life originated. We're still missing many, many pieces. But that doesn't change the fact that there <i>is</i> evidence of the natural emergence of life. Also notice how creationists are all too keen to appeal to ignorance, and to engage in denial of the progress of science. <br /><br />With that out of the way, let's send the question back to LouiseG:<br /><b>Where's the demonstration that instantaneous magical creation of life is possible? </b><br /><br />What progress have IDcreationists been doing proving that divine magic creation by will alone, is a real, independently verifiable, empirical possibility?<br /><br />I predict that I will not recieve a direct answer to this question. Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07670550711237457368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-20737091922265600622014-01-12T16:10:36.296-05:002014-01-12T16:10:36.296-05:00"But it makes little sense to claim that feat..."But it makes little sense to claim that feather and penna were somehow present in the PIE paradigm of the 'feather' word"<br /><br />In the same sense that the Pythagorean Theorem are implied by the basic postulates of Euclidean plane geometry plus the rules of deduction and construction. <br /><br />In the same sense that dogs and bears were both implicit in the amphicyonids (beardogs) of the late Eocene <i>plus</i> the rules of mutation and natural selection. <br /><br />In both cases there is a connectivity of the nodes in the topological network. <br /><br /><i>What we can't say meaningfully, though, is that two thousand years ago 'radical' and 'radish' were 'present' in the Latin word 'radix'. If TOF or someone else thinks I'm wrong, that's fine. I'd invite him to take the properties that he says are 'present' in 'radix', 'radical' and/or 'radish' and tell me which words will be 'descended' from them in 2000 years time.</i><br /><br />Dude, this is exactly the challenge creationists often level at evolutionists. Take the genome 'present' in some current species and tell them which species will be 'descended' from them in umpty-ump years time. <br /><br />That's not how evolution works. The best we can say is that whatever word or species does evolve, it will be "fit for use" to some purpose. Consider the three different kinds of "rodents" that evolved over the eons: tritylodonts, a reptile "rodent," supplanted by multituberculates, a mammalian sort-of rodent, supplanted by modern rodents. All of them were shaped by natural selection to act as gnawers and had the same general tooth arrangement. Similarly, there will always be a need for a word for "head." So if Roman slang starts using "pot" (testa) for "head" (caput), a word like tete will show up in French, while chef becomes "head" in a metaphorical sense. <br /><br />Creationists who make demands like yours do not understand the process; and I am surprised that you are replicating so many of their arguments. <br /><br />It is quite possible, if genetics reaches the heights achieved by physics, that once we know how a genome might change, we can make some statement about what possible genomes might result from it, but this will be a <i>range</i> of possible genomes and some of them may be non-viable or may express themselves differently in different environments. We are only beginning to understand these things, and the world of biology may be even less like that of physics than the Moderns supposed.<br /><br />+++<br /><br />You will find atheists of the deterministic sect who will tell you that once you know all the forces at work on the die, you will indeed be able to predict from the starting position whether the throw will be six, and that to contend otherwise is a load of theistic crap. TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-63605051186068512522014-01-12T07:30:21.582-05:002014-01-12T07:30:21.582-05:00"But it makes little sense to claim that feat..."But it makes little sense to claim that feather and penna were somehow present in the PIE paradigm of the 'feather' word"<br /><br />It's the problem with the teleological view: it literally gets things the wrong way wrong. Yes, we can work backwards from any event and explain 'causes'. What we can't do in most real-world scenarios is look at a situation and project what will happen beyond the very short term. <br /><br />We can note that the word 'radical' and 'radish' both have the same Latin root word (literally the word for 'root', in fact). We can see how if something's radical it's metaphorically 'rooted', we can see that a radish is an edible root. So it's easy to understand why words that meant those two things used the Latin word for 'root'. <br /><br />What we can't say meaningfully, though, is that two thousand years ago 'radical' and 'radish' were 'present' in the Latin word 'radix'. If TOF or someone else thinks I'm wrong, that's fine. I'd invite him to take the properties that he says are 'present' in 'radix', 'radical' and/or 'radish' and tell me which words will be 'descended' from them in 2000 years time. <br /><br />If he can't answer it specifically, answer it generally - what method would he employ to extract that information, which he says is meaningfully 'present', from a word?<br /><br />The answer is 'speculation based on guesswork'. And that's the case with evolution. Dougal Dixon can write some very entertaining books about what animals *might* evolve in the future that are scientifically allowable. Yes, it's possible gigantic penguins will fill the ecological niche whales have now. It's possible spiders will become eusocial, like ants. If it does, there will be perfectly plausible scientific explanations as to why that happened. There is no way, at all, to say that *will* happen. <br /><br />You can see a die that's just been rolled that says 'six' and easily work back and say 'I rolled a die and it came up six'. You can look at a die and say 'It has to come up one to six, it can't come up seven or higher'. You *can't* look at a die and say 'it will come up six'. <br /><br />Modern Christianity has the absurd situation where a being throws a die and knows it will come up six. To reconcile omniscience with randomness - Aristotle didn't believe in omniscient gods, so just accepted that randomness existed - an elaborate knot of teleological philosophy had to be developed. <br /><br />And that's fine, they have plenty of other fairy stories, too. But this one is insidious because it gets in the way of explaining evolution to people. It imposes fictional 'purpose' on the process. Jemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10359685574788608040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-2467241664360435142014-01-11T18:51:17.792-05:002014-01-11T18:51:17.792-05:00Good research Pioter! I learned something new toda...Good research Pioter! I learned something new today :)Newbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12112647387206975751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-71763450807085780942014-01-11T18:26:39.335-05:002014-01-11T18:26:39.335-05:00The comparative method does reconstruct unattested...The comparative method does reconstruct unattested forms, but the reason why we put an asterisk in front of them is to remind the reader that they are just that -- working reconstructions. <i>Something</i> changed into Latin /p/ and (independently) into English /f/ (and was lost in Armenian), and it's quite likely that the actual pronunciation of the ancestral segment was /p/ (that's why we symbolise it as *<b>p</b>), but it isn't the only possibility seriously considered by linguists.<br /><br />But my real point is this: <i>implicit</i> means 'implied, though not directly expressed'. Neither in biology, nor in linguistics are descendants "implicit" in their remote ancestor. Not in the sense that "the oak tree is implicit in the acorn". You can be expect beyond reasonable doubt that an acorn will produce an oak, not a palm or a pine tree. You can't predict macroevolution (of life or language) in this way -- there are too many possible outcomes, and too much contingency. If you already know all the regular correspondences between English and Latin, you know what other matches are plausible: if <i>pēs</i> is related to <i>foot</i>, <i>pater</i> to <i>father</i>, and <i>piscis</i> to <i>fish</i>, it becomes likely that <i>penna</i> may be somehow related to <i>feather</i> despite the differences (and it is, by the way). Then you analyse many such correspondences carefully and <b>infer</b> the hypothetical prehistory of each pair of cognate words. But it makes little sense to claim that <i>feather</i> and <i>penna</i> were somehow present in the PIE paradigm of the 'feather' word (nom.sg. <b>*potr</b>, gen.sg. <b>*petns</b>, etc.). It could have developed into anything humanly pronounceable. It's just a matter of historical accident that the outcome is what it is. You may use the word <i>implicit</i> in a strictly Pickwickian sense, to mean 'historically connected', 'cognate', or 'descended from', but if we have precise terms used by professionals, there's no need to import superfluous jargon. There's no insight to be gained.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-29184601195639624042014-01-11T17:46:06.626-05:002014-01-11T17:46:06.626-05:00Oops. Not from Latin, but from a common ancestor ...Oops. Not <i>from</i> Latin, but from a common ancestor in PIE. Now if Grimm's law does not reflect evolutionary changes, but simply makes comparisons across languages (Latin p- corresponds with Germanic f-, but the p- sound did not actually mutate into the f- sound) you raise an interesting point: can the <i>appearance</i> of descent-with-modification be mimicked by other processes? TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-45367762204925380462014-01-11T17:28:44.666-05:002014-01-11T17:28:44.666-05:00But it remains that English "foot" emerg...<i>But it remains that English "foot" emerged from Latin "ped-" by a process of "descent with modification, "aka "evolution."</i><br /><br />No, it didn't. I don't think you understand Grimm's Law correctly.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-88762937691637513992014-01-11T17:17:42.767-05:002014-01-11T17:17:42.767-05:00Good points, but I'm going to walk back the Py...Good points, but I'm going to walk back the Pythagorean Theorem. It cannot be established by physics, but by mathematical logic. Consider the right triangle whose base and height measure "1". The hypotenuse will by SQRT(2), which is irrational. Any attempt to verify the Pythagorean Theorem through physics on a unit triangle will fail, because the measured hypotenuse will only match SQRT(2) to the limits of the measurement system's precision and discrimination. <br /><br />However, the Pythagorean Theorem IS implicit in the postulates of Euclidean plane geometry. That is, there is a chain of deductions and construction that connect these postulates (and axioms) to the theorem. In a way, they are like a line of descent from ancestral forms.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-41578786737234896202014-01-11T17:01:25.648-05:002014-01-11T17:01:25.648-05:00Sure. The professional terms differ. But it rema...Sure. The professional terms differ. But it remains that English "foot" emerged from Latin "ped-" by a process of "descent with modification, "aka "evolution." The word "foot" is implicit in the earlier term simply because there is a network of possible "mutations" connecting them. There are, of course, many possibilities, and as you note there are many other terms that could emerge from the same ancestral forms. In a similar manner, various proteins are implicit in the genome -- and yes, there are other factors involved in their emergence, as Shapiro points out. It's just that so many folks here seemed utterly confused by this concept of emergence and implicitness. It's why creationists will sometimes crow that dogs do not give birth to cats, as if they had said something important. They do not understand this point, either.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-2834100692221310832014-01-11T16:50:59.803-05:002014-01-11T16:50:59.803-05:00the only difference I see between mouse traps and ...<i>the only difference I see between mouse traps and biological systems are the complexity of their workings.</i> <br /><br />That concedes too much ground to the IDers and leaves evolutionary theory vulnerable to the "irreducible complexity" complaint, when the fact of the matter is that the assembly of otherwise unrelated components into a mousetrap s nothing at all like the morphogenesis of a living being. That is, the metaphor fails on its most basic level. <br /><br /><i>'Living' and 'non living' seems chauvinistic to me. </i><br /><br />Then how can you know that Socrates is dead?<br /><br />The same conclusion is given (albeit without the neologistic use of "chauvanistic") in the recent <i>Scientific American</i> article, and (long before) in N. W. Pirie’s <i>The Meaninglessness of theTerms Life and Living</i> (1937) -- although they made arguments for their conclusion. They thought it was arbitrary because there are cases where it is ambiguous and you cannot prove such negatives as "the sun is not" alive. The Sci Am article preferred "complexity" (evidently at some level of complexity magic happens). But the same ambiguity of definition applies to complexity, as the Maverick Philosopher pointed out. Is the figure-8 complex or not? No one has answered yet, perhaps suspecting some sly topological humor. <br /><br />Part of the problem may be "physics envy." The physicists have had great successes in describing the properties and powers of inanimate objects, and those who seek to imitate their success may suppose that their own objects of study are the same kinds of objects and require the same kinds of methods. The confusion arises because biological systems are <i>also</i> chemical systems and physical systems. But that does not mean that biologists should hang up their spurs and turn everything over to the physicists. <br /><br />Or perhaps conversely, they should try to catch up with the physicists, who abandoned the Cartesian worldview a century ago? <br /><i>"Although an immense over-simplification, the old Newtonian view was nevertheless a fascinating one. The world had the clarity and intelligibility of a machine such as man himself might build. Now there is in fact nothing more known to us, as to what they are, than the things that we ourselves have made by art or craft. True, a good deal of the material that goes into a motor, for example, is known only vaguely. But mere practical knowledge of this mate-rial is enough to get the machine to work. We know that a spark will explode gasoline vapor. With very little more knowledge than this it is easy enough to see why gasoline engines operate as they do. The works of our hands,once made—from hammers and saws, to nuclear bombs and missiles—are well known to us, as to purpose and function, because we ourselves concoct them. Now, if nature were the same kind of thing, if the whole world and each of its parts were just like a machine, we could then truly speak of physical and biological phenomena as accessible to our understanding. But it so happens that even in physics this model theory, though it worked for centuries, has now quite broken down. Some biologists apparently survive still unaware of these developments, serenely confident that living bodies, as Descartes once thought, are just machines."</i><br />-- Charles DeKoninck, "The Lifeless World of Biology"<br />http://www.scribd.com/doc/9775352/DeKoninck-Lifeless-World-of-Biology<br /><br />IOW, we can fail to make an adequate distinction between living and non-living simply because we know our own artifacts first and more clearly and have a tendency to pull the analogy over from artificial to natural and so fall into the trap of Paley, Behe, and some of those here in this commbox. TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-57343864785342565552014-01-11T14:37:11.142-05:002014-01-11T14:37:11.142-05:00It kind of made us, by the way, by attracting gas ...It kind of made us, by the way, by attracting gas into a protoplanetary disk, keeping it in place till the planets formed, and then providing a stable supply of energy over billions of years. We are part of the Sun's outer envelope.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-41677815755412124822014-01-11T14:05:54.757-05:002014-01-11T14:05:54.757-05:00"One could divide artifacts between those whi..."One could divide artifacts between those which involved humans in their construction and those that did not, but this seems like a chauvinistic rather than an important distinction, to me."<br /><br />'Living' and 'non living' seems chauvinistic to me. The Sun was around before we were, it'll be around after we've gone. The processes and forces and scale on which the Sun operate boggle the human mind. I don't think it's 'alive', but that's just an argument for 'life' not being some amazing special category. Jemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10359685574788608040noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-3280355506290645662014-01-11T13:35:43.288-05:002014-01-11T13:35:43.288-05:00After a long morning walk, I have generated enough...After a long morning walk, I have generated enough hubris to feel that I can probe a bit deeper into the ID psyche, to a more fundamental error. I think perhaps what they consider to be magical about human intelligence is that it creates new information.<br /><br />Whereas I think that both the Pythagorean Theorem and the design details of an automobile are implicit in the physics (in the broad sense of that term as alluded to previously by The OFloinn) of this universe. They are like Blackbeard's treasure buried on remote islands. When we dig them up, we are not creating the pieces of eight, but finding them.<br /><br />Under that perspective, it becomes easy to understand that random searches are a feasible, plausible way of finding things. For example, in a "perfect 2D maze" (technical term), keeping your right hand on a side wall will eventually find a way out, but if the maze is not perfect, doing so may lead you around a fixed path inside the maze, whereas making a random guess at each intersection can and eventually will find a way out of any maze that has a way out.<br /><br />The challenge to ID then is prove that human intelligence can produce something which is not implicit in the physics of nature. "Show me the miracle": move a mountain, walk on water (using only your magical power of creation). Until they do, uniformitarianism suggests that information is only found by searching within the physics of nature, and that random searches will succeed in finding complex things over long enough search times.<br /><br />How about a plaster saint weeping tears of blood? No, that is implicit in natural physics when a hypodermic is used to inject blood into the statue's head.<br /><br />How about parting the Red Sea? No, telling tale tales (see Paul Bunyan) is consistent with the physics of this universe.<br /><br />How about faith healing? Fine, if you can substantiate it in statistically-significant results of controlled, double-blind experiments and win Randi's million-dollar prize.<br /><br />However, as a creationist informed me, that will never happen because the Bible says anyone unfaithful enough to demand a test from God will never, as a deliberate policy on God's part, receive a positive result. By stating this policy, God has made himself unfalsifiable. Well, I never said he wasn't clever.JimVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10198704789965278981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-47302379405824123332014-01-11T13:34:14.201-05:002014-01-11T13:34:14.201-05:00For an anology: "foot" is inherent in &q...<i>For an anology: "foot" is inherent in "ped" through the process of Grimm's Laws (p→f, d→t)</i><br /><br />In less highfalutin English, there is a historical connection between, say, the Latin stem <i>ped-</i> and English <i>foot</i>. By comparing them systematically (with each other and with many other 'foot' words in other Indo-European languages), we can reconstruct the <b>hypothetical</b> Proto-Indo-European ancestor of <i>foot</i>. You could just as well (or perhaps with more reason) say that the reconstruction <b>*pod-/*ped-</b> is "implicit" in the documented languages, because we (I mean "we" -- I'm a historical linguist) use <i>them</i> to formulate hypotheses about ancestral forms. Given enough time, language change has no limit, and the same recionstructed "protoform" is ancestral to many very different attested forms (Armenian <i>otn</i> also comes from the same source), so we prefer to say that words are <b>related</b> (via a common ancestor that may or may not be directly attested), not that they are "implicit" in one another.Piotr Gąsiorowskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06339278493073512102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-70844008370424573102014-01-11T12:58:12.961-05:002014-01-11T12:58:12.961-05:00Our sun, as I understand it will in the course of ...Our sun, as I understand it will in the course of its stellar evolution expand to a radius which encompasses the Earth's orbit. This change, or kinesis, will be due to internal mechanics, not to external forces.<br /><br />In a general sense, everything we or the sun does is implicit in the physics of this universe (I claim, since I have seen no convincing evidence of miracles). In that very broad sense, the only difference I see between mouse traps and biological systems are the complexity of their workings. One could divide artifacts between those which involved humans in their construction and those that did not, but this seems like a chauvinistic rather than an important distinction, to me. JimVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10198704789965278981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-55227915216196765522014-01-11T11:58:48.785-05:002014-01-11T11:58:48.785-05:00TOF, s'all right. I've myself made similar...TOF, s'all right. I've myself made similar errors. I rant at everyone at one time or another, so don't take it personally. I hope you continue to contribute to Sandwalk.<br /><br />I apologize for calling you "blithering TOF", which I thought was a Shakespearean reference, alas not Shakespearean.<br />Diogeneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15551943619872944637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-77271261210026186732014-01-10T22:58:50.400-05:002014-01-10T22:58:50.400-05:00A cat cannot "move itself" unless it pus...<i>A cat cannot "move itself" unless it pushes or pulls on another object in exactly the same way that the sun pushes or pulls on other bodies. The cat moves itself by pushing on a carpet, the sun moves itself by pulling on other bodies.</i> <br /><br />I submit that you are speaking only about the mechanics of <i>how</i> the cat moves, not the fact that it does move. If the principle of the cat's motion walking toward the sunlight by the window were in the carpet, then any cat placed on that carpet should move toward the window.<br /><br />On what bodies does the sun "push"? As I recollect, the existence of mass introduces a distortion into the field of Ricci tensors, creating geodesic lines down which bodies run. The sun doesn't <i>pull</i> the earth; the earth runs along the slope induced by the sun in space-time. <br /><br /><i>Every time a particle is acted upon, it also acts upon another, by the same criterion. This is true of all particles and all bodies.</i><br /><br />Yes. And? <br /><br /><i>Living things "initiate", dead things don't "initiate." Such ad hoc equivocation is used to maintain your artificial and subjective distinction between active living things with "souls" and passive "inanimate" things with no souls.</i> <br /><br />Okay, "Dr. Behe." But "living things with 'souls'" is a tautology: <i>"res animae habent animas"</i> It's like "ruddy things with redness." <i>Anima</i> simply means "alive." The distinction between "<b>anima</b>te"and "in<b>anima</b>te" is not subjective -- or else Biology would have no distinctive body of knowledge -- even if the boundary is fuzzy. Does it not trouble you the extremes to which you are driven to deny plain facts?<br /><br /><i>A fertilized egg cannot grow unless it absorbs matter from outside; it both acts upon the matter it absorbs, and it is acted upon by the matter outside it. Sodium chloride in water that evaporates will crystallize "by itself" also.</i><br /><br />Indeed. Metabolism and homeostasis are among the powers possessed by animate forms. (Details found here: http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02004.htm#1) But note that if the fertilized egg is not living in the first place, it would not absorb the matter in the second place. <br /><br />The sodium chloride does not initiate the evaporation that causes the crystallization. It is the evaporation that causes the sodium chloride to crystallize. (That it does so and forms cubic crystals is a telos of the sodium chloride, inherent in its form (molecular structure) in a way <i>analogous</i> to the tiger and her motions being inherent in the form of the tiger genome.) <br /><br /><i>The genetic code by itself cannot tell you the sequence of the protein molecules it codes for</i><br /><br />Of course not. The genome is too small for a complete set of descriptive blueprints. It's probably more along the lines of a fractal system: a minimal set of rules that lead to unfolding complex behaviors/actions. Hence, "inherent." Some people like to have everything spelled out in detailed procedures, but for example while evolution cannot tell you the sequence of evolving forms that will unfold in the future, those descendent species are inherent in the genome of the ancestor by the application of a set of possible mutations. For an anology: "foot" is inherent in "ped" through the process of Grimm's Laws (p→f, d→t). You seem to confuse "inherent" with "explicit." Rock climbing is inherently dangerous, but you cannot point to any particular piece of equipment or procedure and say "that is the danger."TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-11271318481142859342014-01-10T20:00:17.329-05:002014-01-10T20:00:17.329-05:00All one has to do is ask them for evidence for abi...<i>All one has to do is ask them for evidence for abiogenesis</i> <br /><br />The various theories of evolution explain different ways in which some portion of an existing species is transformed into something humans call a different species. There is plenty of evidence that evolutions take place. Those are facts. There is good evidence that natural selection is at least one of the mechanisms by which evolutions take place. <br /><br />But abiogenesis is more the realm of chemistry and physics. That is the transformation of non-living to living. (Granted, some folks even at Scientific American have been driven to deny that there is a distinction.) Evolution does not even address the matter. The two strokes of the Darwinian engine (reproduction to the utmost followed by the struggle for existence) do not apply to things that do not reproduce or struggle.<br /><br />TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-62634329828316288562014-01-10T19:48:39.696-05:002014-01-10T19:48:39.696-05:00There is a recent post at The Panda's Thumb wh...There is a recent post at The Panda's Thumb which is relevant to the topic here:<br /><br />"Robert Asher on Stephen Meyer’s 'uniformitarianism' argument in Darwin’s Doubt"<br />By Nick Matzke on January 9, 2014:<br /><br />... "Meyer basically claims that inferring intelligent design is an application of uniformitarianism, because in everyday human experience the only known explanation of “information” is intelligence, therefore we should infer ID when new information arises billions of years ago in the origin of life, or hundreds of millions of years ago in the Cambrian Explosion." ...<br /><br />I realize the question Dr. Moran has posed here would be best answered by ID proponents, but I think we can infer what at least some of them believe based their statements as summarized by Dr. Matze above.<br /><br />I think the underlying assumption of ID which is implied by the quoted statement is that intelligence is somehow magical/supernatural. Note that if you think, as I do, that design is a (high-speed) process of evolution and that intelligence itself uses the evolutionary algorithm to find its solutions (as I have discussed too many times to get into again unless prompted), then uniformitarianism gives the opposite conclusion to that of ID. That is, I claim we have no valid evidence of supernatural creation, only of evolution: biology, design, intelligence - evolution, evolution, evolution (picturing Elaine of "Seinfeld" in her "fake, fake, fake" bit).<br /><br />We have computer programs (which I presume most would characterize as non-living and lacking animas) which can beat human grand masters at "Jeopardy" and chess - two activities which I presume most would consider as requiring high intelligence. These and many other observations give me high confidence that every complex "artifact" (including ourselves) was produced by a process of evolution - a natural process that happens to work well in this universe.<br /><br />"Life" may always be a fuzzy term, evolving as it did from vitalism, but if I had to make a definition on the spur of this moment I would attempt to from this starting point: life as we know it are those artifacts which arose from naturally-occurring chemicals via a process of natural evolution.JimVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10198704789965278981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-62347013781071466322014-01-10T18:17:04.883-05:002014-01-10T18:17:04.883-05:00Diogenes:TOF @Jan 9, 6:46pm :And according to my c...<i><b>Diogenes:</b>TOF @Jan 9, 6:46pm :And according to my cosmologist friend when he talked to Alex Flippenko, the connection between dark energy and quantum vacuum is hot.<br /><br />TOF @Jan 9, three hours later:1. I said nothing about dark energy.<br /><br />Just shoot me in the goddman head right now. Do you pay attention to what comes out of your own mouth?</i> <br /><br />Evidently not. My profound apologies. I had meant to write "dark matter" and did not scroll back to check.<br />TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-81282261933075464852014-01-10T14:57:31.226-05:002014-01-10T14:57:31.226-05:00Re LouiseG
When is LouiseG going to realize that ...Re LouiseG<br /><br />When is LouiseG going to realize that abiogenesis and evolution are two separate issues. This type of comment is as moronic as stating that the Theory of Evolution doesn't explain the origin of the universe.colnago80https://www.blogger.com/profile/02640567775340860582noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-5306420385578101462014-01-10T14:05:43.371-05:002014-01-10T14:05:43.371-05:00Personally, find that people like Larry, Jerry Coy...Personally, find that people like Larry, Jerry Coyne and others on this blog use name calling and intimidation to make up for the total lack of evidence when they are trying to persuade creationists and others to their beliefs. All one has to do is ask them for evidence for abiogenesis Newbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12112647387206975751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-85929646549698399612014-01-10T12:38:04.467-05:002014-01-10T12:38:04.467-05:00Who would have guessed that the fastest way to a r...<i>Who would have guessed that the fastest way to a rational society was through "name calling" ... </i><br /><br />I can't take credit for discovering this. It's been known for a very long time that mockery is a very effective form of argument. The creationists, for example, have been doing it quite successfully for almost a century. <br /><br /><i>Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired...</i>Jonathan Swift (1720) "Letter to a Young Clergyman"Larry Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-27745528061837870042014-01-10T11:12:12.424-05:002014-01-10T11:12:12.424-05:00"Most Late Moderns shy away from telos becaus..."Most Late Moderns shy away from telos because of a dread fear that You-Know-Who lurks at the end of it."<br /><br />The quickest way to put this idea to the sword: imagine a scientist working in the lab examining genes discovered the 'encoded divine plan' in there. He checks his work, repeats it ... so on and so on. Eventually, it's agreed (let's not sweat the details of how): he's genuinely discovered the divine plan, encoded in DNA. <br /><br />What do you think he would do? He's just discovered, using science, the existence of God. Would he:<br /><br />(a) 'Shy away from it in dead fear' - the TOF suggestion.<br />(b) Happily embrace the title of greatest scientist-philosopher the world has ever known, accept all the Nobel Prizes, bling and fellatio that the world would queue up to offer him and eventually die confident that for the entire subsequent history of the human race, his name would be sung and praised. <br /><br />I contend that Richard Dawkins himself would choose (b). And furthermore, this is the absolute killer thing, I think Dawkins would *happily* concede the point even if it wasn't him that made the discovery. <br /><br />Which is why casually going 'the divine plan is encoded in DNA' is so fucking preposterous. Science isn't 'scared' of God, it's far, far worse if you're religious: God's just not relevant, it's just not a thing if you want to describe the hows and whys of the universe. Jemhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10359685574788608040noreply@blogger.com