The Digital Demise Of Darwinism

[Qdogsman]

Wow! Thank you, Craig, for all the time and thoughtful effort you put into your response. I hope I can do it justice.

 

I think you’re committing a critical “cart before the horse” kind of error in being uninterested the chemistry of self-replicating molecules and abiogenesis in the context of your An Argument from Design essay, because were these subjects well understood, either affirming or negating the hypothesis that self-replicating molecules formed on Earth without artificial, “mindful” manipulation, you would almost certainly not be making the 3-step syllogism argument you make in that essay:

1. Mind is required in order to produce a digital system,
   
2. We find digital systems in living organisms
   
3. Therefore mind was required to produce life
   

 

Once again I must apologize for my sloppy language. Two examples appear in the above quote. First, is my unconventional definition of 'digital'. Near the very beginning of this thread I acknowledged that mistake and took steps to correct it. I no longer stand by my earlier use of the term 'digital' and have replaced it with the terms 'symbol' and 'symbolism' in an attempt to capture my originally intended meaning.

 

Secondly, I unfortunately was too glib in saying that I was "not interested in" self-replicating molecules. I am most assuredly interested in that topic. What I meant by my remark was that I didn't think that topic was directly relevant to the point I was trying to make in my essay.

 

Let me try to clear that up now. The difficult problem I am trying to focus on is the problem of the origination of the genetic code. When I drill down trying to isolate the equivalent of Morse's "codebook", that is a physical structure that contains the collection of symbols (the codons) used in the code, along with the pair-wise mapping from those symbols onto the set of objects they represent (the individual amino acid groups), I learned that it is found in the set of 60 or so sequences within the DNA. So the challenge I present is to explain how that set of sequences came to exist originally. My thesis is that an explanation including the mind of a designer is much easier to accept than a mechanism or process that does not include a mind.

 

Now I have caused confusion in my essay, and in this discussion, by using confusing terminology and by tacitly or otherwise categorizing various related concepts into the wrong categories. I have been accused, for example, of conflating Darwinism with abiogenesis. I stand guilty as charged on that issue, although I am still at a loss as to how to correctly categorize the specific topic I want to discuss.

 

I have learned that the origination of the genetic code is not part of Darwinism or Modern Synthesis. I have been told that it belongs in the category of abiogenesis. Now you seem to be saying that abiogenesis is the origination of self-replicating molecules.

 

The problem, as I see it, is that the term 'abiogenesis', from its etymology, seems to imply that the term refers to the origin of life, and at the moment there is no agreed-upon definition of the term 'life'.

 

If 'life' simply means self-replicating structures, then your interpretation seems to fit. But then again, it does not seem to me to cover the origination of the genetic code. It seems to me that the original self-replicating structures might have been DNA or RNA or maybe even something more primitive. But whatever the case, DNA structures must have existed, and been busy replicating, prior to the establishment of those 60 very special sequences of codons which somehow originally got written into at least one of those early strands of DNA.

 

My point is that even though I want to focus on, and discuss, the possible methods of the origination of those special sequences, I am by no means disinterested in other questions, some of which may fall within the scope of abiogenesis and some of which may fall into other arbitrary categories.

 

So, substituting 'symbolic' for 'digital', where 'symbolism' is defined in an earlier response I made to Buffy, my three statement syllogism becomes,

 

1. Mind is required in order to produce a symbolic system,
   
2. We find symbolic systems in living organisms
   
3. Therefore mind was required to produce life
   

 

 

Again I apologize for causing so much confusion.

 

The science of abiogenesis aims to refute premise 1 of this argument. If any evolutionary biological theory of abiogenesis is true, the argument is vacated of meaning.

 

With my change in terminology, and with my definition of what I mean by 'symbolism', then premise 1 is true by definition and thus can't be refuted by abiogenesis or any other argument.

 

But there is another change to my syllogism induced by one of Buffy's cogent arguments. She has convinced me to change premise 2 to say, "We find what appear to be symbolic systems in living organism." and 3 to say "Therefore it appears to at least some observers that mind was required to produce life." (I didn't say that expressly to Buffy, but if you read our conversation you will see that we came to that agreement.)

 

It may seem that I have caved and weakened my position, and to some extent that is true. But the new version of my syllogism should now be considered by all present discussants to read,

 

1. Mind is required in order to produce a symbolic system,
   
2. We find what appear to be symbolic systems in living organisms.
   
3. Therefore it appears to at least some observers that mind was required to produce life.

 

So, again at Buffy's suggestion, I have softened my appeal. Instead of trying to convince my readers that mind was necessary for the origination of the genetic code, I am now trying to convince you, my readers. that since it sure looks that way to me, I think it would be a good idea for you to look at the possibility and see if it looks that way to you too. I am only asking you to expand your horizon and open your mind.

 

If just throwing elemental water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen into a sterile apparatus, heating and discharging sparks into it (the Miller-Urey experiment) quickly produced RNA and DNA-using biological organisms, rather than just molecules including the 20 amino acid, we would not be having this conversation.

 

If we would not be having this conversation, it would not be for a lack of my trying on my part. I would still be pushing for a conversation discussing the origination of the genetic code.

 

But I'm not sure I understood your scenario. The confusing part is the construction "DNA-using". By that did you mean DNA structures which use biological organisms? Or did you mean that the experiment quickly produced RNA and DNA and your hyphen indicates a condition on the experiment i.e. that it "us[es] biological organisms"?

 

If the former, you might mean that DNA uses biological organisms in the sense of Dawkins in which genes "use" organisms in order to propagate themselves.

 

If the latter, then how do you see biological organisms playing a role in the experiment and wouldn't that qualify for Buffy's always-ready "circular argument" rubber stamp?

 

Whether such a “mindless” experiment, actual or simulated, would, within the time constraint imposed by geological data, produce life, is of direct relevance to the argument that it would not, and that “mindful” procedures must be added to the experiment for it to do so.

 

I agree. It would also force the issue of coming to an acceptable definition of 'life'. But I would still be in there clamoring to know whether the outcome of the experiment established a symbolic genetic code or not.

 

I think we must acknowledge that the term “Darwinism” is used more widely than only as a synonym for the modern evolutionary synthesis, to refer to any process driven by natural selection of an analogous process, such as the fitness function in genetic programming.

 

I have no problem acknowledging that, but in the sense of "disinterest" that I already explained, I am not too interested in how subject matter gets categorized by people who make their living working within their defined bounds.

 

As several hypographers have noted, different people see this thread heading in different directions, due to its mixture of concrete biological and abstract mathematical subjects.

 

Personally I find that delightful. But it appears to annoy some moderators, so I think we should at least try to stay on topic.

 

In my first post to it, I tried to steer it toward concrete biology, but now will address what I see as a key mathematical idea: the digital vs. analog dichotomy.

 

With respect, and in the spirit of staying on topic, the digital/analog dichotomy is far enough off topic, especially since I have abandoned the use of the terms in my essay, that I think we should not belabor it.

 

I’ll be somewhat idiosyncratic, but think I can be helpful in clarifying the subject, and steering us toward consensus definitions of the terms.

 

First, the adjectives “digital” and “analog” apply to representations of natural numbers.

 

I think your connotation of the terms is even narrower than my connotation as meaning symbolism. Furthermore, your definition is really that of 'numeral' which, though interesting, is even further off topic for this thread. So even though you have presented an interesting discussion of the approach, I will not comment on it further.

 

. . . (to be continued in a second post)

[Qdogsman]

(Continued from previous post)

 

A key claim made in AAfD is that DNA and RNA, along with the biological systems that transcribe and express them, are digital. By the uniqueness requirement from my definition, it’s clearly not, because the 3-base pair RNA codons that specify the amino acids to added to a protein being assembled by the ribosome, or that the protein is complete and should be released by the ribosome, don’t map one-to-one to the amino acids.

 

Again, because I have abandoned the use of the term 'digital' I think we can step around your claim here. The key claim I made in my essay is that the codons that appear in DNA and mRNA can be seen as symbols, both in the sense of Buffy, as a useful interpretation by microbiologists, and in the sense of my essay as symbols that appear to have been deliberately chosen by a designer and which were mapped to amino acid groups.

 

Of the 61 of the 64 codons that don’t indicate “complete, release”, only one, A[denine],/U[racil],G[uanine][imath]\to[/imath][M]ethionine, maps a single codon to a single amino acid. For the other mappings, from 2 to 6 codons map to each amino acid.

 

One of us is mistaken here Craig, so one of us stands to learn something. If I'm not mistaken, Tryptophan, coded by TGG, also maps a single codon to a single amino acid along with Methionine. Either way, it makes no difference to my argument.

 

More important to the arguments made in AAfD, I think, than whether D/RNA is digital, is whether it is artificial.

 

I agree completely. In fact, that is the only relevant question.

 

AAfD compares Morse code to the D/RNA genetic code in reaching the conclusion that both are artificial. The argument for this is made most directly, I think in this paragraph

Now, finally, we are ready to ask the really important question. How did the assignments in the genetic code get made? What is the equivalent of Samuel F.B. Morse assigning dot and dash patterns to letters? The answer is easy if some mind made those assignments. It is simply a matter of filling out that 64 position grid. For each of the 64 combinations of A, T, C, and G, choose one of the 20 amino acids. Just make sure you use each amino acid at least once. I suppose this could be done by some mindless mechanism, but I don't know where that grid is, or was, nor can I imagine how any physical process could make use of it if it did exist. After all, the filled out grid is digital and its representation has nothing to do with any physical processes.

Here, I think, the author errs. The mapping of codons to amino acids does have something to do with physical processes.

 

Could I ask you to go back and read my paragraph a little more carefully? And, of course you need to revise it and replace 'digital' with 'symbolic'. When I talk about a "grid", I carelessly introduced the term 'grid' without defining it. My apologies for that.

 

What I meant was some abstract imaginary "grid" that I wanted my readers to visualize that would be similar to a page spelling out the Morse code. The "grid" for Morse Code would have a column of letters down the left side and dots and dashes in a corresponding column down the right. But the "grid" for the genetic code would be a grid of 64 boxes, each representing a unique codon and having the name of one specific amino acid in each box. At this point in the discussion I simply wanted the reader to have an image of this "grid" in mind in order to understand the informational requirement for the genetic code.

 

Then I remarked that "I don't know where that grid is, or was,...". By that I meant that this "grid" is simply an imaginary grid I asked my readers to conjure up in their minds, (and of course in the back of my mind, I imagine that an original designer would have had such an imaginary grid also) but when considering what might have been going on physically when the genetic code got established in the DNA in the form of those 60-odd sequences, I don't think there was a sheet of paper lying around anywhere that had that 64-box grid drawn out on it.

 

Next I said that "...nor can I imagine how any physical process could make use of it if it did exist....". By that I meant that if there really did happen to be a primordial sheet of paper lying around with the genetic code described in such a grid drawn on it, I can't imagine how that sheet of paper with its diagram could be useful or instrumental in any chemical process that led to the ultimate construction of those 60-odd sequences. Now you can substitute any other possible physical storage medium to replace my primordial sheet of paper, and it is still unimaginable to me how it could influence or aid in the origination of the genetic code in some strand of DNA or RNA.

 

Finally, the last sentence, to which you objected: "After all, the filled out grid is [symbolic] and its representation has nothing to do with any physical processes."

 

You insisted that, "The mapping of codons to amino acids does have something to do with physical processes."

 

You are absolutely right that the mapping, represented by the correct pairing of codons with amino acid receptor configuration at the end of each tRNA, does indeed have something to do with the physical processes that go on in a ribosome. But what I was talking about was that abstract "grid" that exists only in the observer's mind, or in the designer's mind, or in some diagram on a sheet of paper, or other such representation. That "grid" does not enter into any physical process. That was all I meant.

 

They fragments of molecules, that, when processed by the Ribosome, a “mindless” molecular machine, assemble individual amino acids attached to much larger transfer RNA molecules into larger proteins.

 

We agree here.

 

Referring again to Qdogsman’s paragraph about the stone, “there is nothing symbolic about” the RNA codon. Like the stone, it is not a symbol for itself or the actions it produces in various situations, it “carries around with it” the information that we humans can use to predict its behavior, such as a codon in a messenger RNA molecule binding with the complementary anticodon in a tRNA molecule, and affecting the aaRS enzyme to cause the amino acid mapped to it to bind to the tRNA molecule to which it is bound.

 

I agree. There is nothing symbolic about the RNA codon. There is even nothing symbolic about the entire tRNA molecule including the codon and the receptor configuration with its attached amino acid. There is nothing symbolic in any chemical reaction or process.

 

The only symbolism that occurs is in some conscious mind. That can occur, as Buffy and Moontanman have pointed out, in the mind of an observer like a molecular biologist who finds it convenient to designate certain patterns and configuration as symbols and codes to help in understanding. It can also occur, as I have been pointing out, in the mind of a designer who finds it convenient to define symbols and use them in the design process. Some symbols can even be incorporated into the physical system that is being designed, like numerals and bit patterns in a computer, and like, as I suspect, codons in DNA and RNA.

 

Qdogsman, I get the impression you are ascribing special significance the different molecular machines – DNA, RNA, tRNA, mRNA, ribosomes, enzymes, etc. – involved in protein expression.

 

I'm not sure what all you include in your category of "molecular machines", but the only molecular structure to which I ascribe special significance in this sense is the special codon in the middle of a tRNA molecule which is the one used by the ribosome to match the codon in the mRNA. That, to me is best understood as a symbol, both by observers like us who use it as a key in the genetic code, and by the original designer who used it for the same purpose and who actually built it into the tRNA antecedent in DNA.

 

Continuing the stone analogy, you seem to me to consider the mRNA to be a description of a formed stone, tRNA to be an unformed stone, and the ribosome to be a mindful sculptor working from the description. However, these molecules aren’t like that.

 

I'm afraid you have stretched my failed "stone analogy" beyond any usefulness. It didn't work all that well when I tried to use it to explain a point about information. But I don't consider the stone to be analogous to any molecule of any type in any way. I agree—molecules aren't like that.

 

This is not to say that a mindful being could not have, through artifice, assembled simple chemical compounds to create this mindless molecular machinery.

 

Good.

 

That a machine is complicated, however, doesn’t inherently prove that it was made by a mindful being.

 

True. I have never appealed to complexity in my arguments.

 

The argument that “nobody has ever seen a mindless process create a complicate machine, therefore it is not possible” asserts this,

 

I have not made that argument or that assertion.

 

but is logically incorrect, just as much as the argument “nobody has ever seen a mindful being create a self-replicating machine, therefore it is not possible.”

 

I agree.

 

Perhaps I quibble in the preceding paragraph, but I think it’s good to point out technical inaccuracies, even small ones, in a science forum like hypography.

 

On the contrary, I think it is good that we critically examine what each other writes. That's the only way we can learn. Thank you for writing.

[Qdogsman]

Horse feathers, i mean seriously, you are saying you actually had this exchange, yourself?

 

Yes, I actually had that exchange myself with the people I named and two or three others.

 

You are not quoting something you read some place else or someone else said or something some one told you?

 

Absolutely not.

 

Respect goes both ways dude,

 

I agree, respect goes both ways.

 

this is horse feathers...

 

It appears to be going in only one direction at this point. Since you doubt my credibility, there seems to be no reason for me to say anything further to you. But thanks anyway for your comments.

[Moontanman]

Yes, I actually had that exchange myself with the people I named and two or three others.

 

 

 

Absolutely not.

 

 

 

I agree, respect goes both ways.

 

 

 

It appears to be going in only one direction at this point. Since you doubt my credibility, there seems to be no reason for me to say anything further to you. But thanks anyway for your comments.

 

 

No, i do more than doubt your veracity, what you state is demonstrably not true...

 

I had the occasion to work closely with a group of high-powered scientists helping them apply as much computer power, as was then possible, to their quantum chemistry problems. I worked among them for several weeks and got to know some of them quite well. I once asked some of them whether or not there were any express or implied prohibitions against subjects they could discuss in their formal work.

 

Dr. Detrich looked up at me from his desk, slowly opened a file drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. He said to me, "Yes, I keep a running list of them to make sure I don't slip and accidently get myself into trouble." I didn't read the list in detail but I happened to notice that FTL travel was on the list. At the mention of this, Prof. Roothan chimed in and said something like, "Oh pooh. That's baloney. I published a paper myself discussing FTL travel."

 

Then Detrich, or someone else asked him, "Have you published anything since?"

 

Roothan, paused, looked up, then down, and then as if surprised, said, "Well, no." But then he quickly added, "But that was about the time I switched my interest from chemistry to computers." A few people murmured, "Mmmm hmmmm."

 

The point is that constraints of this type tend to move science dangerously close to becoming a religion. I'm afraid it's already happened in the area of climatology.

 

FTL travel has been under investigation for a great many years, decades and in fact NASA is currently planning an experiment to see if space time can be warped in a such a way to allow for FTL.

 

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

 

your assertion fails on so many levels it's difficult to decide where to start. suffice it to say if you had credible evidence of UFO's being alien space craft you could present it with no fear what so ever as long as you stayed with verifiable evidence. No area of investigation is forbidden or discouraged, your assertion or should we say homespun anecdote is simply not true...

[Moontanman]

Now qdogsman how about going back and answering the questions you tried to put up a smoke screen of "anecdotes" to keep from actually answering my questions...

[Qdogsman]

I had the occasion to work closely with a group of high-powered scientists helping them apply as much computer power, as was then possible, to their quantum chemistry problems. I worked among them for several weeks and got to know some of them quite well. I once asked some of them whether or not there were any express or implied prohibitions against subjects they could discuss in their formal work.

 

Dr. Detrich looked up at me from his desk, slowly opened a file drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. He said to me, "Yes, I keep a running list of them to make sure I don't slip and accidently get myself into trouble." I didn't read the list in detail but I happened to notice that FTL travel was on the list. At the mention of this, Prof. Roothan chimed in and said something like, "Oh pooh. That's baloney. I published a paper myself discussing FTL travel."

 

Then Detrich, or someone else asked him, "Have you published anything since?"

 

Roothan, paused, looked up, then down, and then as if surprised, said, "Well, no." But then he quickly added, "But that was about the time I switched my interest from chemistry to computers." A few people murmured, "Mmmm hmmmm."

 

The point is that constraints of this type tend to move science dangerously close to becoming a religion. I'm afraid it's already happened in the area of climatology.

 

No, i do more than doubt your veracity, what you state is demonstrably not true...

 

 

 

FTL travel has been under investigation for a great many years, decades and in fact NASA is currently planning an experiment to see if space time can be warped in a such a way to allow for FTL.

 

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

 

your assertion fails on so many levels it's difficult to decide where to start. suffice it to say if you had credible evidence of UFO's being alien space craft you could present it with no fear what so ever as long as you stayed with verifiable evidence. No area of investigation is forbidden or discouraged, your assertion or should we say homespun anecdote is simply not true...

 

For the benefit of you readers who might have been following Moontanman's attack on my credibility, let me add a few details.

 

The conversation I related in my anecdote took place in an IBM laboratory in Kingston, NY between January 20, 1985, when I first arrived at that laboratory, and May 11, 1985 when I left for the final time. That was a great many years ago, decades in fact.

 

When Dr. John Detrich pulled that sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, he referred to it as his "list of sacred cows". I admit that he did not use the terminology of "FTL". I regrettably chose that term for brevity and familiarity. The actual term written on John's sheet was "superluminal". I don't remember the noun it modified, but it was something like 'travel', or 'velocity'. (As I said, it has been many years.) Professor Roothan did his work at the University of Chicago.

 

The laboratory was run by Dr. Enrico Clementi, an IBM Fellow.

 

I suspect that just as the much-ridiculed term 'continental drift' was replaced by the acceptable term 'plate tectonics' by the scientists who were forced to accept a paradigm shift, the term 'superluminal' might have been replaced by 'FTL' after a similar shift.

 

This is my first experience at being called a liar to my face in public, and it does not sit well with me. (My ex-wife called me a liar in public, but she did it behind my back. That didn't sit well with me either.)

 

I fully expect that any idea I express will, and should, be doubted, questioned, challenged, and debated. That, to me, is the useful purpose of a forum like this one. But I don't expect to be insulted by having my personal integrity impugned.

 

At the first hint that Moontanman's poison has influenced other contributors, you will have heard the last from me on this forum.

Edited February 19, 2013 by Qdogsman

[Moontanman]

For the benefit of you readers who might have been following Moontanman's attack on my credibility, let me add a few details.

 

The conversation I related in my anecdote took place in an IBM laboratory in Kingston, NY between January 20, 1985, when I first arrived at that laboratory, and May 11, 1985 when I left for the final time. That was a great many years ago, decades in fact.

 

When Dr. John Detrich pulled that sheet of paper out of his desk drawer, he referred to it as his "list of sacred cows". I admit that he did not use the terminology of "FTL". I regrettably chose that term for brevity and familiarity. The actual term written on John's sheet was "superluminal". I don't remember the noun it modified, but it was something like 'travel', or 'velocity'. (As I said, it has been many years.) Professor Roothan did his work at the University of Chicago.

 

I suspect that just as the much-ridiculed term 'continental drift' was replaced by the acceptable term 'plate tectonics' by the scientists who were forced to accept a paradigm shift, the term 'superluminal' might have been replaced by 'FTL' after a similar shift.

 

This is my first experience at being called a liar to my face in public, and it does not sit well with me. (My ex-wife called me a liar in public, but she did it behind my back. That didn't sit well with me either.)

 

I fully expect that any idea I express will, and should, be doubted, questioned, challenged, and debated. That, to me, is the useful purpose of a forum like this one. But I don't expect to be insulted by having my personal integrity impugned.

 

At the first hint that Moontanman's poison has influenced other contributors, you will have heard the last from me on this forum.

 

 

I have heard that story from so many different people so many different times, all of them as a personal anecdote, it flies in the face of reason that you would be the originator. If this doctor exists give us a link to his work, the papers he has published, I am calling you out on this, show something to back up this story or retract it, I see no other choice for such an blatant misrepresentation of science, the scientific method, and an individual scientist...

 

On top of all this your anecdote does nothing to show that science is dogmatic, science by definition is not dogmatic, I stand my ground, you sir have at best misrepresented the facts to support your contention of a creator, there is no evidence of special creation, evolution is the most viable explanation of the facts and you are doing nothing but trying to obfuscate the details to support a theistic belief that ads nothing to the investigation and cannot add anything to the investigation...

[clinkernace]

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."

 

blamski,

I apologize for the delayed reply to you, but had to take some time off for installation of a nice aftermarket hip. Qdogsman did a fine job of addressing this, but I'd like to put my two cents worth in.

 

In the course of writing my theories down I found it necessary to include my own demolition of Darwinism, and spent a year studying microbiology stuff and related issues before formulating my arguments (which were surprisingly easy to construct). No where did I find anything that might be called scientific support of abiogenesis. The few theories advanced in pop-science magazines (I do not read many peer-reviewed things either) and on internet sources are of the vague, hand-waving sort that professors employ when they haven't the slightest idea what they are talking about, but need to garner grant money.

 

Many people confuse the standards for a genuinely scientific theory with mere agreement. Just because a scientist proposes a theory does not make it a "scientific theory." It is simply a theory bandied about by a scientist. Should a number of other scientists jump on his bandwagon, they lend his theory the credibility of agreement, but do not make it the more scientific. It is through agreement that religions are made, not good science.

 

What I did find amid my studies was a wealth of data that seems rather difficult to reconcile with purely random abiogenetic forces. A favorite is a little beastie noted in an issue of Discover a few years back, notable for having the smallest known genome size. The number was either 160,000 or 106,000 base-pairs, so let's use the smaller number. Discover noted that with such a tiny genome, the critter could not survive on its own. It is a parasite which cannot live without its host.

 

This made me wonder. It seems to imply that abiogenesis must be capable not only of building a cellular structure from raw non-living materials, it must also be capable of constructing DNA, RNA, tRNA along with the yet-undiscovered intercellular mechanisms that Michael Behe describes so effectively, plus the decoding ribosomes at the focus of Qdogsman's essay, plus a genome larger than 106,000 base-pairs, before the first beastie can thrive and reproduce. Moreover, none of this primeval development process can benefit from "natural selection," because there would not yet have been other critters from which to select.

 

If ever a job cried out for a few good biological engineers, this is it.

 

And that thought brings me to another point. I feel that in most, if not all of my efforts here on Hypography, I'm competing with religious rather than honestly scientific perspectives. Posters keep bringing up the notion of the impossibility of a creator, but the creator they are thinking of is the traditional almighty God of conventional religions.

 

I agree completely that if, as I proposed, ours is an engineered universe, the omnipotent God of religion is not the engineer. My creator-concept is much richer and open than that, and is itself an engineered concept-- designed to fit all the facts.

 

Someone on this thread also implied the notion that any creator must necessarily exist outside our universe and be able to transcend the laws of physics. I regard that opinion as completely absurd, a leftover tidbit of religious nonsense that some would-be atheist seems to have left on his plate. IMO any creators of the universe are as bound by the laws of physics as we are.

 

I do presume, however, that those creators have a better understanding of those laws than we do. We are working on that.

 

I hope to receive your thoughts on these notions.

[Buffy]

greylorn,

 

Congratulations on the new hip. My mom got two a couple of years ago and their miracles of technology.

 

And that thought brings me to another point. I feel that in most, if not all of my efforts here on Hypography, I'm competing with religious rather than honestly scientific perspectives. Posters keep bringing up the notion of the impossibility of a creator, but the creator they are thinking of is the traditional almighty God of conventional religions.

 

I agree completely that if, as I proposed, ours is an engineered universe, the omnipotent God of religion is not the engineer. My creator-concept is much richer and open than that, and is itself an engineered concept-- designed to fit all the facts.

 

I want to thank you for your post above which contains such a great self-referential explication of exactly what so many of us in this thread have been trying to get across to both you and Qdog.

 

That last sentence is the crux of the reason *any* theory that tries to involve a creator is actually quite pointless: It's always possible to simply redefine the capabilities of the creator to fit any objection concerning any proposed proof of the creator's "involvement". As you say you've "designed" her to "fit all the facts!"

 

Inside/outside the universe, obeys laws/performs magic, and any other qualification on the notion of "creator" doesn't really matter if you can freely change the theory to simply "match anything", which by definition you can with the notion of "creator".

 

It's anything you want it to be, and therefore not scientific.

 

 

Hunger is the best sauce in the world, :phones:

Buffy

[blamski]

hi greylorn. welcome back and try to resist the urge to disco dance til that hip is bedded in.

 

your post didn't address any of the questions i asked, but again raised what you perceive to be the problems with abiogenesis. i agree that its an almost unbelievable thing, but i have enough faith in science (which, like you, i also struggle to define adequately) to bit by bit answer some of the questions.

 

i don't think the argument of the earliest and most basic things not having enough about them for natural selection to take place really stands up. graham cairns-smith in his clay hypothesis proposed a mechanism whereby natural selection occurs in clay crystals - well known for their lack of even a single base pair. self-replication as a precursor or contemporary of natural selection will rapidly provide enough basic critters for more complex processes to get going.

 

for what its worth, i pretty much got a general sense of yours and qdogsman's creator concept from the start. its more of some kind of 'event' than a 'being', right? some freak occurrence of physics, yet bound by the laws of physics, that was able, somehow, to 'willfully' alter and reconstruct matter. i still don't see it as solving any of the questions related to the appearance of life though. and i still don't see anyone attempting to write down some of the mechanisms by which it carried out those acts.

[Moontanman]

 

 

What I did find amid my studies was a wealth of data that seems rather difficult to reconcile with purely random abiogenetic forces. A favorite is a little beastie noted in an issue of Discover a few years back, notable for having the smallest known genome size. The number was either 160,000 or 106,000 base-pairs, so let's use the smaller number. Discover noted that with such a tiny genome, the critter could not survive on its own. It is a parasite which cannot live without its host.

 

 

the bold part of the above paragraph is where you fail greylorn, first of all the chemistry of abiogenesis is not random, why do you continue to say this? Random has nothing to do with this, chemistry is deterministic not random...

 

This made me wonder. It seems to imply that abiogenesis must be capable not only of building a cellular structure from raw non-living materials, it must also be capable of constructing DNA, RNA, tRNA along with the yet-undiscovered intercellular mechanisms that Michael Behe describes so effectively, plus the decoding ribosomes at the focus of Qdogsman's essay, plus a genome larger than 106,000 base-pairs, before the first beastie can thrive and reproduce. Moreover, none of this primeval development process can benefit from "natural selection," because there would not yet have been other critters from which to select.

 

Behe lost his bid for any real authority in a court of law in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District trial

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity

 

Biochemistry professor Michael Behe, the originator of the term irreducible complexity, defines an irreducibly complex system as one "composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning".[5] Evolutionary biologists have demonstrated how such systems could have evolved,[6][7] and describe Behe's claim as an argument from incredulity.[8] In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."[2

]

 

If ever a job cried out for a few good biological engineers, this is it.

 

And that thought brings me to another point. I feel that in most, if not all of my efforts here on Hypography, I'm competing with religious rather than honestly scientific perspectives. Posters keep bringing up the notion of the impossibility of a creator, but the creator they are thinking of is the traditional almighty God of conventional religions.

 

I agree completely that if, as I proposed, ours is an engineered universe, the omnipotent God of religion is not the engineer. My creator-concept is much richer and open than that, and is itself an engineered concept-- designed to fit all the facts.

 

Someone on this thread also implied the notion that any creator must necessarily exist outside our universe and be able to transcend the laws of physics. I regard that opinion as completely absurd, a leftover tidbit of religious nonsense that some would-be atheist seems to have left on his plate. IMO any creators of the universe are as bound by the laws of physics as we are.

 

I do presume, however, that those creators have a better understanding of those laws than we do. We are working on that.

 

I hope to receive your thoughts on these notions.

 

No what you are competing with is that your idea of a creator adds nothing to the argument but yet another layer of complexity on an already mysterious process, it adds nothing but obfuscation... do I detect a hint of Rael in there greylorn? If not then i apologize but even if life on earth had a creator who created the creator? Is it turtles all the way down?

[clinkernace]

greylorn,

 

Congratulations on the new hip. My mom got two a couple of years ago and their miracles of technology.

 

 

 

I want to thank you for your post above which contains such a great self-referential explication of exactly what so many of us in this thread have been trying to get across to both you and Qdog.

 

That last sentence is the crux of the reason *any* theory that tries to involve a creator is actually quite pointless: It's always possible to simply redefine the capabilities of the creator to fit any objection concerning any proposed proof of the creator's "involvement". As you say you've "designed" her to "fit all the facts!"

 

Inside/outside the universe, obeys laws/performs magic, and any other qualification on the notion of "creator" doesn't really matter if you can freely change the theory to simply "match anything", which by definition you can with the notion of "creator".

 

It's anything you want it to be, and therefore not scientific.

 

 

Hunger is the best sauce in the world, :phones:

Buffy

 

Buffy,

 

I appreciate your agreeable style of disagreeing. Indeed we are coming to the crux of an issue. As an ex-Catholic who got into an unprofitable argument with a priest during 4th grade religion class over God's ability to make a rock so big that he could not move it, believe me, I know the futility of applying logic to any discussion with an omnipotent God in the loop, or even lurking just beyond the conversation--- as he has been throughout this entire thread.

 

The same futility would apply to any intelligence that was engineered to suit a particular argument, as you want to claim that I've done (without reading my book). But that is not what I've done.

 

When I set out long ago to re-examine the entire question-set involving the origin of the universe and ultimately my own conscious mind and the body to which it seems attached, a suitable creator-concept came first. I have modified it but once in 50 years. That happened 10 years ago when I realized that creators (I call them "beons") could not be composed of any form of energy. Other than that my definition has remain fixed. It seems a fair and workable definition which does not run afoul of your complaints. Here are the specifics. I will use my coined word, "beon," in hopes of distancing these ideas from those which both you and I have already eschewed.

 

1. There are a lot of beons. I assume that there are a finite quantity of them.

 

2. Beons did not always exist. They are the byproduct of a collision, or more likely a sideswipe, between two different simple and previously independent spaces.

 

3. Upon coming into existence, beons are neither intelligent nor conscious. They have only the potential for it.

 

4. Beons possess a single necessary property other than existence. They can freely violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

 

In other words, a beon is akin to a Maxwellian Daemon, except that beon is not composed of energy in any form.

 

5. Beons are bound by the 1st and 3rd Laws of Thermodynamics.

 

6. Beons can use their ability to violate the 2nd Law to create structures made of energy, which by the 2nd Law must be temporary in nature. (Beons do not make the 2nd Law go away.)

 

Beons create structures from raw energy analogous to the way that we create structures from materials. Science and experience tell us that in time, anything we build will go away. There is no long-term escape from the 2nd Law, but for beings with a short lifespan, a short term respite works.

 

7. I assume that some beons, after considerable trial and error, created our universe from raw, or dark energy. They did not create energy, which would have violated the First Law of Thermodynamics. They probably created matter, and the structural parameters that we know as physical laws which determine what matter can do, and what can be done with it. Upon committing themselves to a particular structure, they are themselves constrained by the structure's properties.

 

Moreover, since the big old "E" term appears at the left side of so many physics definitions that everything seems to be made of it, I assume that pre-existing raw energy was the only clay available for their assembly process.

 

By analogy, consider an Erector Set. It is a kit that contains toy girders of various lengths, punctuated with openings, plus screws, nuts, and washers that fit through these openings and can be used to connect the girders in various geometries. The parts are fabricated from mild steel and plated. This is enough to create static structures, a process that quickly becomes boring. Advanced Erector Sets come with a motor, plus gears, pulleys, and other structural widgets that enable the construction of mobile toys.

 

Users of an Erector Set are constrained by the type, quantity, and properties of the set's components. Note that the designers of an ES are similarly constrained. This analogy applies perfectly to my notion of "creators," who, upon settling on a particular design concept, are thereafter constrained by their own design rules. The most powerful creator can no more whisk the sun out of its galactic orbit than can the designer of a 747 fly it to the moon.

 

I perceive two different kinds of physical law-- A. The laws of thermodynamics, which are basic properties of energy and cannot be changed; and B. All other laws of physics. I think it notable that the primary laws are time-independent, whereas the other laws include time as a parameter. I do not know what that means, and am seeking bigger minds who might find deeper insights. So far, I'm finding mostly minds much like my own, except bound by their beliefs. Anyone interested is invited to come up with a time-independent form of energy, i.e. a working mathematical definition of the heretofore mysterious dark energy.

 

8. Beons do not perform magic or miracles in the sense that humans interpret such forms of mysterious action. It is fair to assume that those who participated in the engineering of matter know quite a bit more about matter than any human scientist, and can manipulate it in ways that we cannot.

 

After but a few centuries of scientific toying with the laws of physics, any modern engineer can create things that would boggle the minds of 17th century humans, and would surely be regarded as miracles.

 

A little such knowledge can produce interesting results. As a kid, I once connected the a/c motor shaft in a friend's Erector Set to a small hand crank, and wired the plug to a pair of metal girders. After getting my friend to hold a girder in each hand, I turned the crank. His mother kicked me out of their house and banned me for a month. The friend forgave me, but wondered how I figured out a way to deliver an electric shock from something that was not plugged into a wall outlet. No magic, no genius--- I simply read the instruction book that came with the set. Last I knew, the friend, who did not like to read, thought I was a genius.

 

9. Speaking of reading, there is more detail in my book. I would love to kick ideas around with someone else who has actually read it, and will make it available to any Hypography poster at my cost plus shipping plus $2 for gas to drive to my post office.

 

------------------------

 

I must address these faulty complaints of yours: "Inside/outside the universe, obeys laws/performs magic, and any other qualification on the notion of "creator" doesn't really matter if you can freely change the theory to simply "match anything", which by definition you can with the notion of "creator".

 

It's anything you want it to be, and therefore not scientific." .

 

The definition of "creator" does not freely allow a change of theory, as you falsely state. You are doing exactly what I complained about, implicitly replacing my definition of "creator" with religion's "omnipotent God." Your complaint applies to that traditional concept, but certainly not to mine. My creator-concept is fixed, and is that of an intelligence limited by logic and physics-- exactly as human intelligence is limited.

 

There is no definitive scientific explanation for human consciousness. Yet, surely you do not regard the reality of human consciousness and creative thought as non-scientific? If you do, there is no point in arguing with you because you will simply declare everything that you cannot explain as non-scientific, thus putting yourself in the no-fun-at-all category. I shall assume that you accept the reality of your own mind and the minds of others, while also accepting the notion that just because scientists are still trying to figure out consciousness does not cast its worthiness as a scientific reality into doubt.

 

Finally, I wish to point out that there are occasions in science and engineering where the assumption of limited intelligence is essential to solving a problem. Back in WWII we were forced to leave a functional B-29 in the hands of the Soviets. They took it apart and reverse engineered it, thus enabling them to build a duplicate version, the Tupolev TU-4. In the process it served them well to realize that the B-29 had been engineered by a large number of beings possessing limited intelligence. They knew that every part had a purpose, that each was part of a whole, and that some parts might have been designed better than others. (We do not know if they took the opportunity to improve on any of our designs.)

 

I've done reverse engineering and know that it is essential to understand the mind of the original designer, because when you can do that (not easy) you can think in the same groove, follow the same purpose, and thus replicate his thought process. .

 

Analogously, since I believe that critters are engineered by limited minds, were I to tackle the abiogenesis problem I would do so from that perspective. I would look for the hand of different designers in different parts, and consider the problem from the perspective of a mind that was capable of seeing and manipulating matter at the atomic level, needing to assemble various levels of microbiological machinery leading up to the final automated assembly of cellular structures.

 

You don't build a B-29 with a set of mechanics tools or even a well-equipped garage. You need a construction building to keep the climate under control, plus lathes, milling machines, factories to refine and shape metal alloys, scaffolding, jigs, and welding tools. I suspect that the first cells required the equivalent of these assembly facilities, and if I am right, beginning with that assumption would greatly facilitate the entirely scientific study of abiogenesis.

 

After all, it is unscientific to assume that mind is involved in some process only if mind is not, and cannot possibly be involved. Here, I am only trying to open the closed collective mind of science to what has been, thanks to religionists, a forbidden yet intriguing possibility.

[Moontanman]

Greylorn, I am impressed, that is a very creative fiction, no I am not being insulting, it is very creative but absolutely lacking in any evidence what so ever. you propose all sorts of imaginary things to support other imaginary things, a very complex house of cards and all of it depends on your wild imaginative assertions having some actual reality when in fact as i and others have said before all you really have is, "I don't understand evolution so I'll substitute what ever my imagination can come up with that makes me comfortable..."

 

Unless you can support this assertion with some empirical evidence all you have is wild speculation based on nothing but your own inability to understand... send you $2... nah I don't think so... I'll tell you what send me the book and $100 and I'll review it for you and point out your logical fallacies one by one in detail...

[clinkernace]

Thanks for giving an example computation that convinces you.

 

Let me disabuse you of the argument.

 

It is quite obvious from both your result and the fact that you state that it is a "trivial calculation" that you are using simple combined probabilities of INDEPENDENT EVENTS.

 

"Independence" in probability means that the individual events are unrelated and do not effect one another. An example of this is coin-flips: while the chance of getting heads on 1 flip is 50% (0.5 probability) the chances of getting 10 heads in a row is very very low, [math] 0.5^{10} = 0.0009[/math]. That's how you get the absolutely astronomical odds upon which you base your argument in this quote.

 

 

You are correct. I did assume that DNA mutations were the result of random mutations of base-pairs that occurred independently, or mostly independently, of the existing DNA structure. Extensive study of the subject gave me no reason to demand more rigorous computational styles. As I point out in Digital Universe -- Analog Soul, I was aware that a more precise calculation would require taking account of other variables, gene-swapping, etc. However, it became clear that doing so would worsen the odds by several orders of magnitude.

 

Frankly, I did not have sufficient data to make some of these compensations, and could not find it in literature available on the internet.

 

I also compensated by basing my computation on small genes, 900 base-pairs in length. My studies indicated that most genes are considerably larger, up to 1500 base-pairs long, the average being around 1200. I noticed that a friendly poster proposed a much larger number, but I've not yet tried to find his sources. Despite that, I would stick with the smallish genes by way of attempting to mollify opponents. So far this tactic does not seem to help.

 

Next you offer some reasons why my simple, linear calculation is inadequate. Let's get it on!

 

The problem is that changes to DNA are not at all independent:

 

• Changes to one base pair in a single generation are highly correlated to other base pair changes because they come from a common underlying cause. The changes can come from a flaw in the tRNA which causes similar transcription errors to occur during the transcription process.

From this statement I must conclude that you are presenting only a small portion of a larger argument, or that you are unqualified to make such an argument.

 

My computation assumes the simplifying assumption that only a single-base pair changes. You speak of a correlation to other base-pair changes. What changes are you talking about? Including a double or triple change would also shift the calculation in my favor.

 

tRNA is used by ribosomes to decode messenger RNA and construct proteins, as per Qdog's essay and all other sources of information that I know of. It does not even interact with DNA directly. Perhaps a ribosome might misinterpret a particular tRNA molecule, but this would merely produce the wrong protein. How can tRNA possibly be responsible for a genetic mutation?

 

 

• Similarly, changes in environment in the cell, can cause common transcription errors that cause changes in multiple locations.

Perhaps you could provide us with a handy article for reference?

 

Aside from that, here is something else of which you might be mindful. My simple calculation was the most simple calculation possible, in that it did not account for the usefulness of a particular mutation. I assumed that a gene would mutate linearly, growing new base-pairs, bing, bing, bing, until it was complete, producing either a useful or at least a non-detrimental protein at each step in the process. Of course such a process is impossible; I chose it for simplicity, and to produce the most favorable possible Darwinist result.

 

 

A real computation must take into account the start/stop codons at the end of each gene. It is highly probable that the insertion of a single base-pair into the gene would destroy either or both of those essential codons, leaving the gene incapable of producing any useful protein whatsoever. A real computation must require that a gene be extended three (or multiples of three) base-pairs at a time. Of course this would be less probable.

 

My simple calculation implied the absurd assumption that each mutation would produce a useful protein that could then be favorably acted upon by "natural selection," so as to preserve it for future generations. In order to make such a computation I would need some currently unavailable biological data about the percentage of favorable mutations. Were I to account for the selection factor, my number would be considerably less favorable to the flailing Darwinist cause.

 

BTW it seems to me that the real physical environment in which a critter must survive is far more likely to affect mutations than an intercellular environment, but I am probably wrong about that as well.

 

Returning to and closing your point, multiple mutations are less probable than single-point mutations. Your point would seem to produce worse odds than mine.

 

• Most importantly however is the need to recognize that DNA operates as if it has "subroutines", where there are different versions of subroutines throughout the DNA, normally in "junk DNA" segments. Changes to a single base pair can switch entire segments of DNA on and off.

I appreciate this point and addressed it in my book. However, I used this argument in my case for an engineered DNA molecule, more or less as follows.

 

I used to do a lot of machine language programming using very small computers for instrumentation control. Our target instrument was a space telescope that had a variety of functions, each controlled with a subroutine. A technique I often employed while testing the code was to write a first-pass subroutine with an option switch that would cause it to return immediately without executing. This was a useful tool when I had to debug multiple-interaction problems. I could throw front-panel switches to engage or disengage these individual subroutines without a tedious (punched paper tape) recompilation. This proved to be an invaluable debugging tool. Later, as the spacecraft began to deteriorate, operators could use similar switching code to disengage components that were failing.

 

My argument was that such a subroutine switching mechanism is almost an inevitable design component of any complex instrumentation control program, and that its appearance within DNA is strongly suggestive of deliberate engineering. However, Qdog's argument, which I discovered too late to include in my book, is superior.

 

Bottom line, I feel that your subroutine argument favors the intelligent engineering scenario more so than the random, Darwinian scenario. However, you will follow your beliefs and disagree nonetheless.

 

As a result, a single base pair change can cause a cascade of not only other changes, but changes that have seemingly "intelligent" consequences because of their sophistication. In the terminology of probability, the "random changes" to base pairs are NOT independent, and thus must apply Bayes Theorem to compute the combined dependent probabilities.

 

 

After you first mentioned the need for a Bayesian approach, I undertook a little study of it and returned an example from my experience, which you promptly shot down, claiming that I do not understand Bayesian probability. It is likely that you are correct. Therefore, would you be so kind as to show how a proper Bayesian computation would be made on the simple 900 base-pair gene problem?

 

 

To try to be brief, what Bayes is all about is that you end up with sets of dependent events where if they were independent would be virtually impossible, while when you take into account their dependence upon one another, the "impossible" outcome becomes "nearly certain to happen."

 

But the important point here is that the application of "trivial" combination of independent probabilities is wholly and completely inappropriate to calculating the probabilities in the evolution of DNA.

 

 

I hope that I made my awareness of this perfectly clear in the above comments. In those I did not even mention things like the little protein motors that run up and down DNA strands, locating and correcting transcription errors. With those little buggers on patrol, it would seem than any mutation is impossible, favorable or otherwise.

 

(Unless, of course, there was a handy switch that turned off the DNA patrols while some genetic engineer was experimenting with new code!)

 

I made it painfully clear that my simplifications were not realistic, and were made solely to allow any kind of computation at all to be made. I tried to make it clear that by including the other known problems and mechanisms for change, the result would be significantly more detrimental to the Darwinian cause.

 

I eagerly await your improved Bayesian computations, fully expecting them to greatly enhance the odds in your favor. Bottom line-- instead of whining about what's wrong with my numbers, let's see yours.

 

Doing so makes every conclusion you draw from such an argument utterly meaningless and invalid.

 

 

Unless you can demonstrate better numbers and even a rough justification for your methodology, my conclusions are perfectly valid.

 

Just because Behe and Dembski follow this path does not make it legitimate, in fact it is at the core for why most people who understand these things think of them as charlatans.

 

I've read enough of Dembski to think that he may just be incapable of accepting that he's wrong. I've read enough and seen enough video of Behe to be convinced that he knows he's wrong but he also knows that if he admits it, his whole body of work comes tumbling down, and he's gotten very good at avoiding the issue and dissembling and sidelining when people try to pin him down on it. Some of the video of the Kansas court case is pretty amusing and if I have time to go back and look at it again, I'll try to point out some cases of this.

 

 

I got it that you have probably read enough of Dembski to dismiss his arguments rather effectively. As I stated elsewhere, I've not read him. From comments and reviews, he seems to be a typical Christian apologist, else Christians would not be so keen on him. If he follows the usual pattern, he'll torque some facts and twist some arguments so as to prove that a single omnipotent God created the universe. If I'm wrong and need to read him, please let me know.

 

However, Behe is a different kind of person and I feel that you do him an injustice by dismissing his arguments on the basis of hearsay and a rigged trial. He does not have Dembski's avid following. I played around on the Catholic Answers Forum while writing certain sections of my book and found many of the site's least thoughtful, knee-jerk dogmatic participants lauding Dembski to the heavens and promoting his book. However, I found only a single participant who had read Behe, and that person did not seem to understand him.

 

I watched a PBS hour-long summary of the infamous trial, and regret failing to record it. What a dreadful, incompetently-managed debacle! It was presided over by a simpleminded judge who was not capable of understanding any of the abstruse and complex arguments. (Only a few were shown, partially, in the TV piece. No doubt they were the tip of the iceberg.) As the trial wore on, the judge's increasing stupefaction became painfully evident. He was clearly incapable of evaluating the arguments and reaching a decision.

 

At that point the Darwinist attorneys dug up a common ploy that almost always works on a befuddled judge (I'd had the same style of ploy used upon me, to my detriment, so it was painfully easy to recognize.) They extracted one simple issue from the melange of data, used it out of context, and hung their entire case on it. Snide, snarky, and effective, given that the Christian attorneys on Behe's side made the judge look like an M.I.T. professor.

 

Behe's book Darwin's Black Box used, purely as a teaching tool, the concept of "irreducible simplicity." He showed examples of this in the form of microbiological mechanisms, and to assist the neophyte reader he used a basic, old fashioned five-piece mousetrap, showing how the five components of a trap--- base, spring, clamp, trip-lever, and some staples, could not be made more simple while still killing the mouse. None of the individual parts would do the job. He offered this as a simple illustrative example of irreducible complexity.

 

The clever attorneys then bought some mouse traps and removed the trip lever, then wore the results to court, using them as tie clips. They claimed that this showed how the mouse trap could be made simpler and still serve a (quasi) functional purpose, engendering laughs from the judge and dismay from Behe's stupid attorneys who could not muster the wit to defeat the false, out-of-context argument by showing its lack of context.

 

At another point in the trial the Darwinist attorneys laid a stack of microbiology textbooks in front of Behe and asked if he had read them all. Of course he had not. Once again his mindless Christian attorneys sat on their hands. All they would have needed to do is go to a law library and return with a similar stack of lawbooks to set before the judge.

 

The TV segment also showed, I believe, a microbiological device similar in structure to a motor that Behe had described, showing that it was simpler. But it was not a motor, and some proteins were different from those in the motor. The judge almost fell asleep during that expository to and fro.

 

My point is that someone with your intelligence should read both of Behe's books, "...Black Box" and "The Edge of Evolution," (more complex, and better), before passing judgment.

 

I think that it may be helpful to point out that Behe does not follow the agenda of typical creationists. He acknowledges that he is a conventional (12 kids) Catholic but does not mention God or claim that his arguments prove the existence of a creator. He does not do theology. His arguments show definite problems in trying to interpret elements of the microbiological evidence (no doubt there are many more that went unmentioned) in terms of Darwinism, but he does not go beyond that. He does not propose a belief system or theory of his own.

 

Of course, a technical work like his opens the door for theorists like myself.

 

The point I'm making here though is that the argument you make in the paragraph above is in the realm of "not even wrong" and will bring you nothing but grief around here, or any place else, because it indicates that either you wasted that 6 credits in probability and really didn't understand the section on "independent" probability and the application of Bayes Theorem, or you do understand it and like Behe, you're just trying really hard to repeat the same falsehood enough times so that the folks that don't understand it will think it's true.

 

 

I do not think that you will find me (or Behe) repeating a falsehood. Repetition deadens the mind. Here I tried to explain the rationale and purpose behind the computation that you find inapplicable. It is not my only anti-Darwinist argument. My book contains many others that are better, but they are also more difficult to present on a forum such as this. Any discussion of them should be with someone who has read the book and perused them in context. The same is true for the calculatory argument that you and I are having, but I must work with whomever I have to work with, suitably up to speed on the subject or not.

 

 

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people, :phones:

Buffy

[Rade]

Behe's book Darwin's Black Box used, purely as a teaching tool, the concept of "irreducible simplicity." He showed examples of this in the form of microbiological mechanisms, and to assist the neophyte reader he used a basic, old fashioned five-piece mousetrap, showing how the five components of a trap--- base, spring, clamp, trip-lever, and some staples, could not be made more simple while still killing the mouse. None of the individual parts would do the job. He offered this as a simple illustrative example of irreducible complexity.

Well, Behe is wrong, it is rather simple using known laws of physics to take the 5 part snap mouse trap of Behe and engineer it to do the same function by taking away one or more of the five parts. Edit: last sentence removed due to factual error.

 

http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/oldmousetrap.html

Edited March 15, 2013 by Rade

[Turtle]

The foundational argument is irreducibly flawed. As if...:rolleyes:

 

 

... rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable. ~ John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

Edited March 15, 2013 by Turtle

[Eclogite]

My point is that someone with your intelligence should read both of Behe's books, "...Black Box" and "The Edge of Evolution," (more complex, and better), before passing judgment.

I have. He's wrong.