Jump to content
Science Forums

The Digital Demise Of Darwinism


clinkernace

Recommended Posts

greylorn is there any chance you can refute what i said with anything but derision? I can support what i said.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071119123929.htm

 

 

Now either refute that with something other than "I can't understand it so it must be false" or apologize for being so condescending... btw that pic you seem to be obsessing on is 40 years old, my grandfather is dead and I am a white headed old man... go figure huh?

 

A white headed old man LOL, very interesting. It just shows to go ya how you really never know who you converse with in these forums. This should also serve to show no one should assume anything about a person.

 

greylorn-You seem to be fairly intelligent with some good concepts to offer, but the unprovoked insults bring your personal standing down whenever you feel the need to resort to them. Stating Moontanman has "limited wisdom" is false, immature, and only serves to reduce your integrity. Beyond that it does nothing to move the conversation forward.

 

I know others have brought this to your attention. At some point one must ask, is it more likely that everyone else is wrong except me? All that said I have a rhetorical question for you. When is the last time you truely admitted to being wrong about anything? Think about it.

Edited by Deepwater6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If that's all you got out of my essay and the following discussion, then I humbly suggest you read it again a bit more carefully.

 

 

I have done so, actually i have looked at your assertion quite closely and I stand by my assertion, you are doing nothing but constructing an elaborate version of the information argument. It fails on the primary level of DNA being information, DNA is not information, we assign it the status of information to allow us to codify it and study it but it is not information and your basic premise of the DNA being a code created by a mind is only true if you concede that the mind is the mind of man and the information is an arbitrary designation created by man. you cannot successfully show your assertion to be a true representation of reality unless you show that DNA is information apart from the designation humans give it...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome back to hypography, Paul! Sorry I missed welcoming you in your 2009 introduction thread, as your history – math student turned computer professional – seems much like mine.

 

 

Thanks for the welcome, CraigD. I look forward to conversing with all of you.

 

Rather than focusing on more abstract ideas such digital vs. analog and symbolic representation, I think you’d do better to directly consider to what I gather is the key material assertion of your essay: that self-replicating molecules, such as RNA, could not have evolved in a pre-biological world, without artifice.

 

 

Thanks for the advice, Craig, but I doubt that I would "do better" by re-focusing my attention onto a subject I am not interested in. The only reason I focused on the abstract ideas was to establish a terminology which would allow me to communicate with the forum. I learned that I chose a confusing terminology so I attempted to correct that by being very careful and specific with Buffy about the definitions I meant. I hope that is now behind me.

 

But you are mistaken in what I consider to be the key material assertion of my essay. It is definitely not self-replication, nor abiogenesis. Instead my key assertion is that the origination of the genetic "codebook", as I called it, which is the set of DNA sequences which produce the 60-odd species of tRNA molecules, presents a (IMHO) very difficult problem for Darwinism to explain, while at the same time it presents (what Bishop Paley would love to have found on the beach instead of a watch) a prima facie case for the involvement of a mind.

 

...there’s no single compelling theory of abiogenesis, but rather a collection of very different alternative ones...

 

Most true. And I applaud the efforts of researchers who investigate these many alternatives. I only wish that they would not categorically exclude the possibility of an intelligent agent. It is unfortunate that grant money is at risk for people who might open their minds in this way.

 

I am happy that you read my essay, Doubts about Evolution, and thanks for your help with the link. In that essay I tried to point out that the explanations for life include not only the "hardware" aspects, but also the "software". Your discussion of approaches to self-replication and abiogenesis mechanisms fall (IMHO) into the category of "hardware". The parallel I drew in that essay was that of how a CD might have evolved strictly using Darwinian processes (being the "hardware") might plausibly be explained by one or more abiogenesis theories. But the origin of the bit pattern for an operating system stored on the CD (being the "software") would be very much harder to explain.

 

The genetic "codebook", as I have defined it, is an example of some of the "software", and I think it presents a particularly hard problem for Darwinism to explain.

 

 

... the “God of the gaps” will continue to be driven into ever smaller gaps in our scientific knowledge....

 

 

 

Interesting you should mention that. I was recently in a discussion where we attempted to get a measure on the "gap". I pointed out that at the end of the 19th century, the gap was believed to be nearly closed. There were only two unanswered questions in physics and most physicists were confident that they would be solved in short order. Confidence was high. The "gap" was seen as small.

 

But now, since the end of the 20th century, if you asked a physicist about the size of the gap, you would find that we understand about 4% of the matter and energy we believe is "out there", the remaining 96% being dark matter and dark energy, about which we know virtually nothing.

 

Even in biology, Watson and Crick were so confident that they had opened the door to explaining all the mechanisms of life that they dubbed the protein synthesis process, the "Central Dogma of Molecular Biology". It was later realized that the "gap" was much bigger; genes for protein synthesis make up only a tiny fraction of the genome. It was a nice try, though, by biologists to name this "gap" "junk DNA" rather than admit that it constituted a huge gap in our knowledge.

 

So far, this is looking at the gap limited to the playing field defined by science, that is the observable or accessible universe. But even most scientists will acknowledge that there is a sizable "gap" in our knowledge of what might be outside of our light cone. I don't think any, or many, of them would deny that something exists out there, but it is clear that we have no access to it and scientists have been reluctant (until recently, I might add) to even speculate on what might be outside our light cone.

 

But right here in our light cone, we have the phenomenon of consciousness, which science systematically ignored right up until the past few decades. In my opinion, consciousness presents us with "hard problems" that science should take seriously. If they did, it would significantly increase the size of the "gap".

 

And then there is my favorite "gap", which deserves its own thread but I'll mention it briefly here anyway, and that is the space-time in higher dimensions. I believe that one is huge in comparison with all the others.

 

So depending on what you acknowledge as fair and interesting unanswered questions, I suspect the "gap" is growing, not shrinking.

 

And, of course, I think we should leave our minds open for the possibility that some kind of mind is involved in all these gaps. While I'm thinking about it, I would highly recommend Gregory Bateson's "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity" to help persuade you to open your mind to that possibility.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Qdogsman, do you seriously think that gaps in our knowledge point to an unknown creator? How does the concept of "god did it" or an unknowable "unknown did it" contribute to to the sum total of human knowledge? Our entire first world civilization is based on the scientific method, the idea that something is mysterious and therefore somehow the mystery is an answer has never advanced human knowledge in any way.

 

I am not surprised the gap as you call it is bigger, we know quite a bit more about the universe now than we did and as knowledge increases so to does the unknown because an answer always brings to light new questions.

 

If we had just accepted Newtons theory of gravity and assumed anything else was an unknowable mystery we would never had the questions came about after Einsteins theory of relativity. all big answers open up new areas of questioning.

 

You apparent need to ridicule science by stating it doesn't know the answers to everything is troubling.

 

Science doesn't know everything... Of course it doesn't if it did it would stop B)

Edited by Moontanman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Paul,

I appreciate that one problem you will face here is that different members wil try to move the discussion in particular directions. If it makes sense at some point to separate out a particular line to a separate thread please ask.

 

 

Thanks Eclogite, but do I have to get permission? I thought I was at liberty to start new threads on my own. And if I do need permission, how do I "ask"?

 

 

Now I am concerned that you are conflating Darwinism - or, as I prefer, the Modern Synthesis, with abiogenesis. You remarked in an early post that the failure to account for the origin of life was a weakness of Darwinism. It isn't. You seem to repeat this belief in directing Buffy to think about the origin of the genetic code. We are not interested in the origin of the genetic code when discussing evolution. The origin of the genetic code is more or less equivalent to the origin of life, a related, but distinctly different topic. Is there any possibility you could come to agree on this point?

 

 

Certainly. I have no problem agreeing on that point. As I have said, the Darwinian mechanism, or the Modern Synthesis (a new term to me) is a reasonable explanation for many of the changes we see species undergo. I have no problem with any scheme to categorize questions and subject matter. I just want to make sure it does not turn out to be a shell game in which some of the more interesting questions get shoved aside (like consciousness was during the Skinner heyday).

 

If you want to say that the question of origins is not covered by the Modern Synthesis, fine, but then I will not accept the claim that Modern Synthesis is the foundation for all biology. Biology contains interesting and unanswered questions relating to origins and to consciousness, among others, which I am intending to address. How these questions get categorized doesn't matter too much to me.

 

The question addressed by my essay was the question of the origin of a particular biological structure and whether or not a mind was a necessary component of this origin. You seem to confirm my claim that Darwinism, or Modern Synthesis, does not answer this question. But simply pushing it out of the domain of Darwinism doesn't answer it either.

 

 

We are not interested in the origin of the genetic code when discussing evolution.

 

 

Does that mean that you are not interested in the origin of the genetic code? Or does it mean that my thread is misplaced into the wrong category? If you want to move it, that's fine. But I am interested in the origin of the genetic code and I would like to discuss it in this forum.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Um... no... you don't get to claim that with out demonstrating why, I "could" just as easily claim it does but I want to hear why you claim it does not...

Well, it's because I never mentioned Bible Codes in anything I have ever written, and from what little I know about them, none of the mechanisms considered and discussed in my essay or responses resembles those Bible Codes in any way. They simply don't apply.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, it's because I never mentioned Bible Codes in anything I have ever written, and from what little I know about them, none of the mechanisms considered and discussed in my essay or responses resembles those Bible Codes in any way. They simply don't apply.

 

 

ok, thank you for answering, now i have to ask, if you don't know much about them how can you say the argument doesn't apply? You are asserting a code where none exists, the so called bible code does much the same thing. you are arbitrarily assigning meaning to something that so far you have yet to establish has meaning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does that mean that you are not interested in the origin of the genetic code? Or does it mean that my thread is misplaced into the wrong category? If you want to move it, that's fine. But I am interested in the origin of the genetic code and I would like to discuss it in this forum.

 

 

What you want to talk about is called abiogenesis... not evolution...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Eclogite, but do I have to get permission? I thought I was at liberty to start new threads on my own. And if I do need permission, how do I "ask"?

Absolutely no permission needed. Start any threads at any time as long as they are in line with forum rules. What I meant was that if this went off topic we could transfer the relevant posts to a new thread, if that seemed appropriate.

 

Certainly. I have no problem agreeing on that point. As I have said, the Darwinian mechanism, or the Modern Synthesis (a new term to me) is a reasonable explanation for many of the changes we see species undergo. I have no problem with any scheme to categorize questions and subject matter. I just want to make sure it does not turn out to be a shell game in which some of the more interesting questions get shoved aside (like consciousness was during the Skinner heyday).

 

If you want to say that the question of origins is not covered by the Modern Synthesis, fine, but then I will not accept the claim that Modern Synthesis is the foundation for all biology. Biology contains interesting and unanswered questions relating to origins and to consciousness, among others, which I am intending to address. How these questions get categorized doesn't matter too much to me.

I am in strong partial agreement with you. I have no desire to avoid discussion of abiogenesis. I just object to it being conflated and confused with evolution. Obviously the two are related, intimately one might say, but they do remain distinct and evolutionary theory really has nothing to say about the origin of life. We need to address it and arguably it is the biggest question in biology, yet - and here is where we differ - I think it makes very little difference to biology since it happened such a long time ago. And there I am being deliberately trite to make a point. Once life had arisen, by whatever means, evolutionary mechanisms took over and determined the future expression of biology.

 

The question addressed by my essay was the question of the origin of a particular biological structure and whether or not a mind was a necessary component of this origin. You seem to confirm my claim that Darwinism, or Modern Synthesis, does not answer this question. But simply pushing it out of the domain of Darwinism doesn't answer it either..

I totally agree with you. If I may use an analogy, at secondary school we were not taught the motion of objects on an inclined plane in chemistry class. This was not because this was not an important basic part of a science education, but because its proper place was in the physics class. So the difficulty here has arisen through the choice of thread title and the intial 'attack' on Darwinism for failing to address abiogenesis.

 

Now that it seems clear that you wish to address the origin of the genetic code, which I see as being pretty close - probably - to being the origin of life, then we can proceed. But lets now leave Darwinism, the Modern Synthesis, or any other name for accepted evolutionary mechanisms to one side, since they are irrelevant to the topic.

 

Does that mean that you are not interested in the origin of the genetic code? Or does it mean that my thread is misplaced into the wrong category? If you want to move it, that's fine. But I am interested in the origin of the genetic code and I would like to discuss it in this forum.

And so we shall. Which means I need to re-read your thoughts on it and do some revision of current thinking on the issue. Don't be concerned if I fail to post on the subject for several days. It will not indicate a lack of interest. (Though an absence of posting for several weeks could indicate an inconvenient death.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

greylorn is there any chance you can refute what i said with anything but derision? I can support what i said.

 

http://www.scienceda...71119123929.htm

 

 

Now either refute that with something other than "I can't understand it so it must be false" or apologize for being so condescending... btw that pic you seem to be obsessing on is 40 years old, my grandfather is dead and I am a white headed old man... go figure huh?

 

Moontan...

 

How are ya, you ornery old coot? Hey, I'd have white hair too, if I had any hair.

 

So what's your problem with derision, except that it's fine when you pass it out, but not so much fun when it comes back around?

 

There are some kinds of refutations that are too trivial to bother with, because as you too might have noticed, life is not growing longer, and perhaps not even better. I highlit two phrases in your comments that would appear to be mutually contradictory.to a logical person. If I have to explain why they are contradictory, you'd never understand a word that I wrote. It would be like trying to explain a Russian joke to someone who had never lived in the U.S.S.R. and did not know a word of Russian.

 

Once upon a younger time I enjoyed conversations with Witlesses and various dogmatic individuals whose conversations are either about the weather, or about the reiteration of their programmed beliefs. I've found that there are a few (very few) individuals who can actually have coherent conversations about new ideas, because they will take the trouble to educate themselves in those ideas. Even better are those who have actually had new ideas of their own, and who have the cahones to express their thoughts in a public forum. So far you do not, for me, meet any of these criteria. I hope that this is our final exchange of posts, and that you find someone who believes the same dogmas that you do, with whom you can exchange the same old beliefs, getting old together, like old hunters and fishermen retelling the same old stories, with nothing changing except that the fish grow larger and the bears more fearsome.

 

I understand that you believe the dogmas you've been taught, and that they are important to you. Well, that's fine with me. I really do not care if you continue to believe in whatever dogma-set you've chosen until the day you die. I know that you can never read my book, and that's fine with me too. I'm not writing about anything that you want to know. Do what you want, but for Thor's sake, learn to be at peace with it and get off my case. Please.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Moderator Warning: greylorn, the cute country bumpkin image, concealing the razor sharp mind role playing is wearing very thin. If you wish to continue participation cease and desist the snide comments masquerading as bonhomie. Challenge dogma by all means, but first demonstrate it is dogma, then justify your assertions with evidence. You could learn a great deal on how to conduct yourself on a forum from Paul.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

... if we are to consider this mind / creator scenario there are definitely questions that need to be asked that are thrown up by paul's above post. these are questions relating to the origin of the mind (the perennial creator problem), the length of time this mind was experimenting, and whether there are or have been other of these minds.

 

 

Yes. I agree that these questions need to be asked and investigated using rigorous scientific methods. Speculation is fine for fun or for searching out novel approaches, but serious science needs to be done on these hard questions. Categorically rejecting the possibility of a mind being involved limits the chances of finding the right answers.

 

if we accept that this mind created life, and maybe the universe itself, where did it come from? we have to consider the idea that at some point there is an absolute origin. something had to spontaneously or randomly appear.

 

Good question. As I see it, there are a couple obvious options. One is an absolute origin as you suggest. Another is eternal existence. I suspect there might be some other possibilities. But I'll leave those speculations for another time.

 

... if the fossil record shows a pattern of trial and error does it also show the point at which the mind stopped experimenting? or is it still experimenting? and if so, how can we sense it?

 

Excellent questions. They need to be explored.

 

as the search for exoplanets is revealing (or at least strongly suggesting) that planetary systems are the norm and not a rarity, we can extrapolate that there must be a huge number of rocky planets in stars' habitable zones and therefore conducive to life. might the same mind that made life on earth also have made life on those planets? or are there more of them? or did the one mind randomly choose planet earth?

 

 

More good questions. I suspect that as we learn more about exoplanets we will be gathering evidence that will help us answer some of those questions.

 

Thanks for your comments, and don't underestimate yourself. You are plenty smart and you ask good questions.

 

Paul

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A white headed old man LOL, very interesting. It just shows to go ya how you really never know who you converse with in these forums. This should also serve to show no one should assume anything about a person.

 

greylorn-You seem to be fairly intelligent with some good concepts to offer, but the unprovoked insults bring your personal standing down whenever you feel the need to resort to them. Stating Moontanman has "limited wisdom" is false, immature, and only serves to reduce your integrity. Beyond that it does nothing to move the conversation forward.

 

I know others have brought this to your attention. At some point one must ask, is it more likely that everyone else is wrong except me? All that said I have a rhetorical question for you. When is the last time you truely admitted to being wrong about anything? Think about it.

DW6,

 

Curious questions, but what the hell? Around the onset of puberty I undertook being liked. Knowing that this would be a new experience and would require new social tactics, I went from exemplary student to petty hoodlum, carrying a set of brass knuckles in the front pocket of my leather jacket and becoming a fairly competent car thief. The teachers who once loved me changed their mind, but the kids and girls I was trying to impress continued to see me as a nerd, albeit a useful nerd when they needed a ride. So that did not work. Throughout the rest of my life I undertook various strategies in an attempt to be liked, or even get laid. No luck, meaning no success, meaning failure. I hate failure.

 

A few ticks back in time a wise man with a horse told me that the easiest way to ride that critter was in the direction that it wanted to go. I got that. Since I look like Quasimodo without makeup, but think of things that others miss, I've always been good at alienating people. Being disliked and disrespected is, for me, riding my horse back to the barn from whence it came. I've learned to do the things at which I am competent, and see no reason to repeat childhood mistakes. This choice has proven to be greatly freeing. It is inherently honest, for I do not need to try to be someone I'm not. For the first time in my life, my social relationships are now successful. They work out exactly the way I planned. Well, not exactly. My approval rating of -14 on this forum is nowhere near my -1000000 target.

 

The last time I admitted to a mistake was this afternoon. Years ago I had a loaded self-built computer that crashed in a power outage. I figured that the power supply had died, and replaced it, solving the problem. But, feeling poor at the time, I had installed a cheap power supply. Come rainy season and the inevitable power outages and surges, the box died again. This time I bought the finest power supply I could find and installed it, but unlike before, the replacement heart did not resurrect my computer. I figured that the cheap PS blew the motherboard on its way out, and just gave up on the box. --- Until last week our little town manifested a really good computer technician, and for the fun of it I brought that box in to him. He called this afternoon to inform me that the machine ran perfectly--- after he plugged in a little 4-pin connector that I'd ignored. Dumb! What could I do but laugh?

 

Look, I've been making a living for a half century using computers in one way or another, including exotic classified projects, and not a day of work went by without a machine with an IQ of zero, that did nothing but what amounts to counting (rapidly and accurately) on what amounts to two fingers, telling me that I'd screwed up again. Machines and people have been telling me for most of my life what a nitwit I am, and I am in no position to disagree. I look up into the night sky, again, and see thousands of tiny lights fixed on the inside of the great iron globe that surrounds the solar system, and wonder who or what did the wiring. I listen to or read diverse opinions about every subject that I can study, and must conclude that I don't know squat about what's going on.

 

But instead of feeling sorry for my ignorance, I have decided not to try to correct it by adopting the ignorant ideas of others. That tendency, not my ornery personality, is what really annoys people. I've looked around this forum enough to see that there are many more abrasive people than me. They are accepted because their beliefs are mainstream.

 

Look around your intellectual universe and you will see multiple sides to every subject--- thousands of different religions (atheism included) whose members have but one thing in common--- the certainty that they are right. I look at Darwinists and religionists and find both sides and all sects thereof pretty much F.O.S. Each side ignores a different data-set than the other side. I insist upon a theory that embraces all data-sets. And I will not adopt a belief system that is clearly wrong just to be in agreement with a gang of intellectuals who ignore half the information at their disposal.

 

I cannot accept atheism because I've had way too many psychic experiences that atheists claim cannot happen. I can even create such experiences in others, when important for them. I cannot accept any known religious system because I am logical, and believe (one of few beliefs) that logic is independent of all possible manifestations of reality.

 

Of the things that tire me greatly, top of the list is chosen ignorance. Stupidity I can deal with, and usually do so by ignoring the stupid person, or teaching him if appropriate. It is the persistently ignorant who annoy me the most, and I seek ways to get them out of my life. That can be difficult, because I appear to have arrived on this crummy planet with a built-in dogmatic-nit magnet. Telling them simply that you wish them to go away and ignore you works about as well with such people as with blow-flies. Annoying them more than they annoy you is the only solution I've found, short of termination, a strategy that has not been widely approved for critters smarter than blow-flies.

 

I hope that this helps you to understand that my attitude is more defensive than personal. I've developed a keen sense of insult detection. A straight-up person or street person will lay his insults out clearly, for all to see. Forums like this, and university faculties, are well-populated with pseudo-intellectuals who hide their insults within sneaky innuendos. I will not let that crap pass. What might appear to you as an unprovoked insult from me is simply a reaction intended to induce the snarky insulter to get upfront with his complaints.

 

Now, I realize that the "last time wrong" admission I offered earlier is pretty trivial. Here is another. I began writing the best of my ideas down about 50 years ago, and have been working on the project with the goal of getting the ideas right, ever since. I actually did publish about 30 years ago, but because my presentation context was fiction, the only notable person who paid them any attention was Douglas Hofstadter. My limited insights have actually been used in several university classes about the nature of human consciousness. Back to point--- Ten years ago I was halfway through another book, 200,000 words already on page, when I realized that I'd made a fundamental error. Really fundamental! So I downloaded a pint of whiskey, staggered into bed, and the next morning my old ideas looked just as wrong as the night before. So I threw out everything I'd written and began again.

 

Now before we both go to sleep, I must write Eclo and correct another error. Thank you for your feedback. I'm kind of sorry that it was such a waste of your time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes. I agree that these questions need to be asked and investigated using rigorous scientific methods. Speculation is fine for fun or for searching out novel approaches, but serious science needs to be done on these hard questions. Categorically rejecting the possibility of a mind being involved limits the chances of finding the right answers.

 

But no one categorically rejects the possibility of a creator, it is just not supportable by the available evidence. We can spin scenarios about what is possible forever, only that which is supported by evidence can really be debated...

 

 

 

More good questions. I suspect that as we learn more about exoplanets we will be gathering evidence that will help us answer some of those questions.

 

Thanks for your comments, and don't underestimate yourself. You are plenty smart and you ask good questions.

 

Paul

 

 

What do you think the discovery of life on other planets would say about the idea of a creator?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@greylorn

Taking up your objection to Moontanman's points, I am perplexed why you would disagree with him if you have ,as you imply, a reasonable understanding of conventional evolutionary theory.

 

Simply put the source of evolutionary change, largely from mutations, is essentially random.

The overall process of evolution is certainly not random, since it is directed (priamrily) by natural selection.

 

These two points are very straightforward, lie at the heart of the Modern Synthesis, and form the consensus view of the vast majority of biologists. If you wish to challenge these you have to do considerably more than denigrate the intellect of a member who is simply reminding you of these points. I look forward to seeing your justification for rejecting these cornerstones of the Modern Synthesis.

Eclogite,

 

Get ready to be displeased with the following reply.

 

Yes, I know the current theory reasonably well. And, I've taken 6 credits in probability theory, with a B grade. Maybe it was B-. And I adore common sense.

 

It does not make sense to me that a random sequence of events, e.g. the arrangement of DNA molecules and magical appearance of a functional living cell, full of nifty little cellular mechanisms needed to make it work, can give rise to a larger-scale non-random process. It makes no sense whatsoever, but even worse, the math simply does not work.

 

The probability for the random occurrence of a smallish 900-base-pair gene is a trivial calculation---1.4x10-542. That is a generous calculation. When complexities are included, it becomes more difficult to calcuclate, but yields an uglier result. I would have thought before I joined any science forums that any honest and competent scientist, who knows that the "Can't happen" level is one shot in 10-40, would immediately see the absurdity in the notion that a single useful gene could evolve by random processes so as to produce a single useful protein, but that is not the case. When the brain gets to running a program, it keeps running that program, whether it is the brain of a scientist, educated science camp-follower, or Jehovah's Witness.

 

I'd have thought that the further application of math would totally void any rational man's belief that random events could produce living bodies. The average size of a human gene is not 900 base-pairs, but 1200, and they max out at around 1500 bp's. Naturally the probability for any of the larger genes gets even uglier. Must I do the calculation?

 

But suppose that we make the simplifying assumption that the average gene size is only 900 bp's. There are about 23,000 genes in the human body. From basic math theory we know that probabilities multiply. Thus the probability for the random arrangement of all the protein-making genes in the human body (only 2% of the entire genome) is 8.8x10-12,462,640. How anyone capable of understanding the negative magnitude of such a number can say, "Yep, that could have happened, given enough time," is, in my completely disrespectful opinion, either a fool or an idiot or some combination thereof. If that applies to you, kindly do not take it personally--- instead, look at the numbers for yourself. Do your own research. Perform your own calculations.

 

Now I am willing to believe in miracles, but not in Harry Potter magic. I think that we are all compelled to accept the reality of at least one miracle--- that anything at all exists. After that miracle-admission, cosmology becomes (by my theories anyway) a matter of finding the fewest and simplest set of miracles from which a universe might come into being. But that is another topic, so...

 

Back to point. Belief in an occasional Miracle (I prefer three, personally) is required, but belief in absurd magic is for children. No matter how adept at psychic skills one might be, there is a line. I do not believe that any number of Gods can wave magic wands and turn rats into teacups, or "nothing" into a universe. The very notion is disrespectful of basic physics as well as common sense. My unwillingness to believe in absurd levels of magic, or repetitive complex miracles, means than I will not accept a theory that tells me that the mechanisms leading to my existence stood such an absurdly tiny level of actually happening.

 

And in this simple presentation I've ignored the complexification of accounting for the other critters to which our planet plays, and has played host, including the humble fern which has a larger genome than humans. The numbers yielded from keeping it simple are absurd enough for me.

 

So, I completely reject the notion that critters evolve as a result of random DNA mutations. You or someone else once claimed (as I've heard elsewhere) that there are other processes which serve to reduce the absurd probabilities I've presented here. But, no one has detailed these processes, or demonstrated a different mathematics.

 

I recall that someone said that here is a process whereby an entire long chain of genetic material can substitute for a different chain within a gene. I knew that. It does not change the probabilities except to make them worse by figuring in the likelihood of a successful large-scale genetic swap, an event that seems to be chemically akin to transposing two adjacent villages, complete with villagers-- but I've not run the math on that one.

 

The issue of "Natural Selection" is the Darwinists' red herring. It is as irrelevant as it is inevitable. Let us suppose that an Almighty God created every critter on the planet, and its predecessors. They would still be subject to natural selection. If God made a beastie that was mostly blind, could not hear, had four tiny slow-moving legs, no instincts for self preservation, was highly efficient at turning grass into delicious meat, and placed it in the heart of Africa, would we ever know?

 

N.S. applies irrespective of the creation process. It applies to every product that appears in any marketplace, including the marketplace of biological life.

 

Now, just because I find that the agreed-upon mechanisms for evolution are absurd does not imply that I am a creationist. I do not believe that creationism vs. Darwinism is an either-or choice. I have a much more credible alternative, IMO. If my ideas are ever examined and disproven, then I or someone smarter will find the truth. It does not lie in Darwinism, or in the shmoo-like amalgamation of ideas that continue to ignore the evidence, no matter how mealy-mouthed a name the amalgam is given.

 

You have been challenged. I hope that you reply with real numbers if you want to contradict mine, not a reference to a hand-waving agreement system that is essentially just another religion. I don't care if you like me or approve of my style-- this is supposed to be a science based forum. So show me some science. Refute my numbers with numbers.

 

Ultimately I wish to see a refutation of the evolutionary back-tracking problem that Michael Behe explained in The Edge of Evolution. Another conversation, perhaps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have read the essay. I have also read the title of this thread, which I take to be an executive summary of the topic. The origin of the genetic code is not about Darwinism, or biological evolution, or the Modern Synthesis. If Paul, or you, wish to debate about the competing hypotheses for the origin of life I am happy to entertain this, but do not call it a discussion about Darwinism, etc. It wouldn't be.

 

Eclogite;

 

My butt is sore and my face is beet red. You are exactly right.

 

Here are some excuses:

1.) It was late at night when I posted the OP,

2.) My head was up my dorsal orifice,

3.) I was looking for a catchy title for the OP.

 

Looking at this thread from my new perspective, thank you, it is clearly about abiogenesis. Yet, is it not also about Darwinism, and whatever processes might be involved in the creation of life? The existence of life in all its complex and interconnected forms remains a mystery, and it is that mystery I want to examine, inviting others to do the same. It is way too late to redo the OP, but perhaps this will address my sense of what this thread, or related ideas, must ultimately examine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

lets look at the problem from the other side then. those of us who see more sense in the natural / random appearance of life (for want of a better term) have offered all sorts of theories and hypotheses from the fields of mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics that support the claims. the fact that greylorn and qdogsman have rejected these theories is by the by. however, the alternative they both offer is that there has been some kind of mind or creator or intelligence that put together the building blocks for life. fair enough. how about we get to hear some theories about how that actually happened. by what mechanisms do you propose that life was intelligently and mindfully created? just continually stating that it happened is not enough.

 

as greylorn stated above... "this is supposed to be a science based forum. So show me some science."

Edited by blamski
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...