A simple start?

_{Mark

October 20, 2009

Intelligent Design}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

In case we did not know, New Scientist confirms that at the base of the (postulated) tree of life is an extremely complex life form, much like a modern cell.

“There is no doubt that the progenitor of all life on Earth, the common ancestor, possessed DNA, RNA and proteins, a universal genetic code, ribosomes (the protein-building factories), ATP and a proton-powered enzyme for making ATP. The detailed mechanisms for reading off DNA and converting genes into proteins were also in place. In short, then, the last common ancestor of all life looks pretty much like a modern cell.”

It is easy (or not) to imagine something as simple as that arising by natural processes.

here

Comments

#241 vj I understand your point. I am afraid I don't have the biochemical knowledge to respond. I would not be impressed with a theory of evolution that required zillions of ad hoc laws. I believe that experts in this field can trace possible paths at the level of DNA mutation for some major evolutionary developments without requiring ad hoc laws. These may not be the actual paths of mutation but they are plausible hypotheses. However, that requires expertise I don't have. My point is - if we don't know the natural process we should not therefore conclude any ad hoc solution including an invisible, transcendent Designer. It is easy to dream up sky hooks - be they natural or intelligent.Mark Frank_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
09:50 AM
9
09
50
AM
PDT}

I love when people defend, or even extol, the randomness of the universe as if they weren't a part of it, making this judgment, instead, as a rational, independent agent. The irony is almost delightful. But then I observe the arrogance of said individuals and I realize, "Oh...they're actually serious"Berceuse_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
09:20 AM
9
09
20
AM
PDT}

Mark Frank Sorry to intrude again, but after reading your post (#235) I thought I would make one last effort to get my point across. I should admit at the outset that biochemistry was not one of my majors at university, so if I make a complete fool of myself in the illustration that follows because of my abysmal ignorance of protein chemistry, so be it. I really don't care; egg on my face doesn't bother me. I should add that I have not read Dr. Meyer's Signature in the Cell yet; I'm just commenting on Kalinsky's paper. It is an axiom of Darwinian theory that nature does not make leaps. According to Kalinsky (p. 10), "Axe has estimated that the frequency of occurrence of stable, folded functional protein domains, a structurally independent component of a protein, is somewhere between 10^(-64) to 10^(-77)." There are 20 different amino acids, so I'll use the letters a to t to represent them. The point I want to get across in my illustration is that if the islands of amino-acid chain stability are sufficently few and far between, selection won't work, as hopping from one island to the next will require huge leaps, and nature does not make leaps. For instance, let's say you're trying to build a stable 150-amino-acid chain by some sort of selection process, one step at a time. Let's imagine that so far, you've been incredibly lucky: you have somehow managed to generate a 100-amino-acid chain which is stable: hgssifgsqpgteicaqegkaecedjdpeobhrggihfgosdftpcfpogieagphtgjtrffaqpcfanikablctchldbkddqnnonhdsrsligdg You're trying to build your way up to a stable 101-amino-acid chain. Unfortunately, the "nearest" stable one looks like this. dprgtjscallmgqlqhenfsipdlnrlisekcrfdjncispnlmfabqipfptapoekajbtplkminphftggonffdsqtmmrerrlfmgilbitdqa The 101-amino-acid chain looks nothing like your 100-amino-acid chain, so obviously, just adding one extra amino acid won't work: all of the 101-amino-acid chains formed in this way are unstable and collapse immediately. Your 100-amino-acid chain can undergo successive random changes in its amino acids over time, but remember it has to remain stable while doing so. And when are you going to add the extra amino acid, to make the chain 101 units long? If you add it at the wrong time, the chain will collapse immediately. Obviously, it's going to take a mighty improbable sequence of events for your 100-amino-acid chain to "mutate" into the stable 101-amino-acid chain that you want. Even if you have a large number of 100-amino-acid chains like the one above, and a lot of time for amino acid "mutations" and "additions," the vast majority of changes will be catastrophic. It will take you a very long time indeed to get to the 101-amino-acid chain. Now consider the odds of being able to build a 150-amino-acid chain, under circumstances like these. Want to give up? Now, for all we know there might be some magic pathway that we haven't discovered yet, that'll take us to a 150-amino-acid chain, one step at a time. Or there might be a magic sequence of breaks and mutations, followed by additions. For instance, there might be some law of nature which says that when you get to an 87-amino-acid chain like this... ctjxsbicozequmbocrjpgfcorjitufqcp fiweynbmfmgcfiqhnmnkrcslkjyymxagzlumhrnrkvvcpiiukkptwq ... the chain has to split up into one 33-unit chain and one 54-unit chain, like this... ctjxsbicozequmbocrjpgfcorjitufqcp and fiweynbmfmgcfiqhnmnkrcslkjyymxagzlumhrnrkvvcpiiukkptwq ... and then the u in the 13th position on the 33-unit chain has to be substituted with an "m," while the "f" in the 9th position on the 54-unit chain has to be replaced by an "l", and then the two chains have to meet up and be joined by a "d," in order to generate a stable 88-unit chain. That would not be too improbable, given the existence of such a law. But regardless of whether there is a magic pathway to 150, or a sequence of magic breaks and re-makes that takes us there, it looks like we'll have to postulate the existence of some very long, very specific, and very ad hoc natural laws to explain how it is possible to build a 150-amino-acid chain one step at a time, in a space of possible chains where all but a very tiny proportion will collapse immediately. Now you can go ahead and postulate that nature just happens to have zillions (and yes, you would need zillions) of these quirky little laws which (as it turns out) favor the emergence of life, in order to account for the panoply of biomolecules, organelles and cells that exist in the natural world today. But if you do that, then what you have is a Nature that functions as if She were Herself intelligent - in other words, pantheism. Anything that's packed with specified information like that (enabling it to make a living being) might as well be called intelligent, if you consider it to be uncreated (as skeptics do), because it is capable of doing the kinds of complicated jobs that an intelligent being can do. But calling Nature Herself intelligent is one form of ID - which means you're in our camp. Now, I understand that you might not like the notion of an invisible, transcendent Designer. It may sound too vague to suit your metaphysical tastes. But I would put it to you that your alternative - a Nature packed with zillions of highly specific rules enabling it to function as if She were intelligent - is even messier. May I be so bold as to suggest that people who live in metaphysical glass houses should not throw stones?vjtorley_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
08:35 AM
8
08
35
AM
PDT}

Seversky:
“We have no need of the opinion of some deity about what is our aim or purpose or our worth. And we can – and have – worked out morality for ourselves.”
Were you born tabula rasa with respect to morals?Clive Hayden_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
07:31 AM
7
07
31
AM
PDT}

Nak, when the weather computer replicates itself down to every nut and bolt I'll be impressed with the functionality of its information content, until then, as usual you are blatantly ignoring what is apparently obvious to everyone else save for dogmatic materialists such as yourself. You know Nak for once I would love to see you be forthright with the evidence instead of doing your damnedest to be deceptive.bornagain77_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
06:12 AM
6
06
12
AM
PDT}

Mr BA^77, Perhaps you missed the part where M. gen is a parasite that was discovered living in the gonads of human males. Rather than bursting at the seams with functionality (which definitely is an opinion!), it lives a quiet life, as quiet as possible in fact, doing just enough to get by. It does nothing it doesn't have to do. M. gen is a welfare queen. It is of interest exactly because it is small and does nothing, yet survives. It might also help if you learned something about weather forecasting systems. They take in thousands of data points on temperature, pressure, humidity, cloud cover and wind velocity from three dimensions and over time in the atmoshpere, and in the ocean use temperature, salinity, currents in three dimensions of the water column. On the surface the inputs include soil and vegetation types over a three dimansional height field. The output of the model is not what the weatherman is standing in front of. That is just one slice of the data. The forecast has to include all of the input data variables over the same dimensions, and resolution in time and space, because that is how the forecast is rolled forward for several days. I agree with you that Abel and Trevors are focusing on phenotypic measures when estimating technical brilliance. However, I don't think they (or you) have shown as good a basis for an estimate of 'far surpassing' as I have for 'about equal'.Nakashima_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
05:03 AM
5
05
03
AM
PDT}

Nak, the technical brilliance of the Mycoplasmal, which has suffered much Genetic Entropy I might add, comes from the extreme functionality generated by the information inherent in its genome, as Abel and Trevors clearly pointed out, No matter how many “bits” of possible combinations it has, there is no reason to call it “information” if it doesn’t at least have the potential of producing something useful. What kind of information produces function? In computer science, we call it a “program.” Another name for computer software is an “algorithm.” No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. The information in mycoplasmal is bursting at the seams with functionality, dynamically and robustly interacting with its environment, The weather forecasting computer (with far more lines of code", outputs to a single 2 dimensional screen! Even at first approximation it is clear that the programming of the computer program is vastly outclassed in terms of quality of information,,, I suggest that a new measure of information that produces 3-Dimensional functionality may help clarify the issue,,,Perhaps we can call them hilberts!bornagain77_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
04:21 AM
4
04
21
AM
PDT}

Mr BA^77, So Nak, Though it is not cold hard number/fact for precisely “how much more” functional information is present in the Mycoplamal, It is a cold hard fact that more functional/algorythmic information does indeed reside in the Mycoplasmal, Thus it is not an opinion. Thank you for expressing yourself in your own words and with a solid point of view. I really appreciate it. I agree that it is not necessary to come down to a precise number (like 6.7 megahilberts) to create a comparison. We estimate all the time, but we still have a scale or unit of measure that we are using. If someone asked you "Which is bigger?" you'd probably use the Mark I eyeball to estimate length or area or volume. So I agree with you that Abel and Trevors are supplying an estimate, somewhere between opinion and fact. This does lead to the next question, against what scale was the estimate made? M. genitalium has 520 genes and 600,000 base pairs (approx.). As a parasite that lives in the genitals of mammals, it doesn't do much in terms of function except survive. It depends on the host to give it a warm safe environment full of predigested food, and to pass it on through sex to another host. (For some reason, this is technical brilliance, while the malaria parasite does a lot more to hold onto its niche, and people complain that it hasn't evolved to write sonnets. Go figure.) So where would you like to take the comparison? There are gross measures, such as lines of code vs base pairs. If we compare the undoubtedly compressed and optimized base pairs of M. gen to the tar.gz of a system with free download like ARPS or MM5, the models are much bigger. If we look at the number of outputs, M. gen creates 470 proteins, while the model produces thousands of data points. Of course, the genes that create those proteins are connected together in a complex regulatory system, but the models also have thousands of internal functional units in the form of subroutines and functions, connected together in a complex way. If we look at the expected lifetime of a single M. gen, I'm not sure what it actually is, but bacteria don't live very long as a rule. Also, about 50% of the results of a bacteria surviving to divide will themselves die before dividing in a steady state infection (which is the best the infection can hope for). I'll guess that M. gen bacteria (the phenotype) live for a day or two. If we call the forecast the phenotype of the model (a big if, but this is just a place to start the discussion after all), then they also last for a day or two before being beaten by another forcast. The M. gen will suffer point mutations in the genome every thousand replications (very approx.), so there are bugs in the bugs, but there are bugs in the models as well. Those are most of the measures I can think of to try to compare M. gen and a weather forecast system. I've tried to be fair and balanced, striving for the standard set by Fox News. All estimates are open to refinement and debate, but I hope you can see that on this basis, human programming about atmospheric chemistry is approximately equal to M. genitalium's programming of organic biochemistry in "technical brilliance". (No, that is not an opinion or a fact, it is an estimate! ;) )Nakashima_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
04:03 AM
4
04
03
AM
PDT}

#231 To recap. The Kalinsky article was comparing how likely it is that intelligent or mindless processes produced functional proteins. My main point was that there is an asymmetry in the comparison. In the case of mindless processes he (I guess it is a he) tried to assess the likelihood of mindless processes in general to produce functional proteins i.e. given an unspecified mindless process what is the probability it would produce a functional protein. He came up with a very low answer. In the case of intelligent processes he assumed the best possible case - a mind that was capable and wanted to produce functional proteins. Not surprisingly, the probability of producing functional proteins given this assumption is 1. There are two ways to correct this asymmetry - neither very satisfactory. Either consider unspecified intelligent processes and try to produce some reasonable figure for the probability of such a process producing functional proteins (this would mean taking into account all those intelligent processes where the mind was of limited ability or motivation). Or consider the very best assumption for a natural process. The second case is unlikely to produce a probability of 1 but it can do a lot better than keep on throwing amino acids together at random. Having said that - both methods of comparison are meaningless. You can only really do a likelihood comparison if you have two well defined, competing hypotheses which you have independent reasons for supposing might be true. All this thrashing about with probabilities based on really loose concepts like "natural process" and "unspecified mind" proves nothing. To come back to your question. Other conceivable processes for generating proteins include natural selection and an undiscovered chemical constraint that means amino acids are far more likely to combine in an order that creates a folding protein. Of course we have evidence for the first. The second is a fantasy - but no more so than a designer who happened to have the power and motivation to make life from scratch 4 billion years ago.Mark Frank_{October 27, 2009
October
10
Oct
27
27
2009
12:24 AM
12
12
24
AM
PDT}

----seversky: "We have no need of the opinion of some deity about what is our aim or purpose or our worth. And we can – and have – worked out morality for ourselves." Yes, indeed. The atheist life ethic may be summed up as follows: When we want them, babies may live; when we don't want them, they must die. Further, because humans have no inherent dignity, their official worth shall be calculated in terms of their potential to provide a return on the money invested by the state. Thus, those between the ages of 0 - 15, and those over 40, are worth far less than those between the ages of 15 and 40.StephenB_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
10:20 PM
10
10
20
PM
PDT}

Seversky: "simply observing that if the omniscient God of Christianity actually exists then He already knows our innermost thoughts and feelings most probably even better than we do, so attempting to flatter or appease Him would seem to be a pointless exercise." It is a pointless exercise and nothing we could ever offer God would ever "earn" us escape from the curse of death that we are under. That is why God had to offer us the gift of eternal life freely through Christ. If you don't mind a further opinion, the atheists position seems to be no amount of evidence is enough to warrant belief in God, whereas God's position seems to be, believe in me and will provide you with more than enough evidence.bornagain77_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
04:50 PM
4
04
50
PM
PDT}

tgpeeler @ 206
Seversky @171 “This is where I have a problem with a certain form of belief when it holds we are “aimless, pointless, amoral, ultimately worthless” Says who?” Um, naturalism/materialism and thus anyone who is a proponent of those “isms.” I wasn’t aware that I was being controversial here.
No, not us, I'm afraid. We have no need of the opinion of some deity about what is our aim or purpose or our worth. And we can - and have - worked out morality for ourselves.
Aside from the fact that his reasoning skills are barely detectable, he does grasp the point that if one is a naturalist/materialist (both demonstrably false, I’d love to have that out with you) then there is no point and if there is no point, why then, there is no point.
If you think you can demonstrate that naturalism/materialism are false then, by all means, have at it. As for Dawkins' argument, it look perfectly rational to me, although I prefer the the twist put on it by the character of Ranger Marcus Cole in Babylon 5:
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."

I will grant you this: J Michael Straczynski is a better dialogue writer and story-teller than Richard Dawkins.
This sounds like you are pissed off at God for some reason and therefore have decided to stamp your foot in anger and deny Him.
I'm no more pissed of with God than I am with the Evil Emperor from Star Wars or Sauron from Lord of the Rings. You don't get pissed off with mythical characters. All I get pissed off with is people who think their pet mythical character somehow makes them more special than everyone else.
In a 14 billion year old (give or take) universe of which you will occupy for 70 years, plus or minus, you matter?? I matter?? Ha. The fact of it is, IF there is no God then there is no point and there is no value, nothing of intrinsic worth. NOTHING. There is no morality. There is no meaning to anything. In the blink of a cosmic eye we appear and disappear (in your alleged universe) and that’s it. No accounting, no judgment, no owning up, nothing but oblivion.
Quite right, that's pretty much how I see it. It's a bleak, terrifying and hopeless prospect, isn't it? What Christianity has to offer is a lot more comforting and hopeful. Ever think that maybe that is why such beliefs exist? Ever think that maybe when faced with such a daunting choice many people prefer to hide in a comforting fantasy rather than face harsh reality? But then why should we think that the Universe was set up just to suit us?
“I am quite prepared to believe in the existence of such a being if you can provide evidence for it or if He/She/It is prepared to step forward and do the same.” What would you consider evidence? That’s a serious question. I thought I had a clue but bornagain77 has swamped everyone with evidence, with able assistance from others, and you and Nak and others just will not get it.
As I see it, evidence is data which can be fitted into the framework of an explanation and thus becomes support for the explanation. For example, imagine police being called to the scene of a shooting. They find the front door open with a broken lock. Inside, they find a body on the floor with one bullet-hole in it, a spent cartridge case on the floor and a wall-safe open and empty. Those are all items of data. When the detective forms an explanation based on that data, such as that a robber armed with an semi-automatic pistol broke in, forced the owner to open the safe, took the contents and then shot the owner dead, that data becomes evidence for that explanation. BA77 has bombarded this thread with mined quotes, yes, but when others have taken the time to look at the papers he is citing they do not always say what he is claiming they say. They also include pieces from sources such as The Journal of Creation, publicity pieces from Creation Ministries International and YouTube videos. As evidence goes, when you look closely at it it's a pretty mixed bag, to put it mildly.
In other words, if there is a God then there can also be a Word of God. If you will read it and ARGUE with my argument I will prove to you that God exists with an exercise in pure reason that will make a prediction that has been empirically confirmed in the last few decades of science.
Go ahead.
Are you sh… kidding me??? The only reason atheists didn’t kill more in the past was because they didn’t have nukes, CBUs, and automatic weapons??? That’s good. No really, it is genuinely funny. I’m LMAO as I type. And your point would be… what??
My point would be the one you apparently missed completely. Maybe I didn't write it clearly enough. What I was trying to say was that the only reason believers hadn't killed many more over the past centuries was because they lacked modern weapons technology and the number of potential targets we have today.
Your worldview doesn’t allow for good and evil but yet you make reference to those things. That’s called a self-contradiction where I come from. You can’t have it both ways. That’s a rule of logic called the law of non-contradiction. There is either evil or there isn’t.
Evil being what exactly? What is its ontological status? Is it like beauty? Does beauty exist somewhere out there or is it, as the old saying goes, in the eye of the beholder? In yet other words, are you thinking of evil as some kind of objective entity out there like an evil spirit or is it rather the judgement we make about the acts of others that exists nowhere but in our minds?
I’ll go the extra mile here. Tell me what your basic philosophical assumptions are (I’ll give you mine in a minute) and we can figure out what is the correct way to view things. My assumptions are as follows: 1. Reason is the ultimate authority in matters of truth. (To argue against that statement is to use reason to deny the efficacy of reason and therefore irrational.)
Not quite. Reason is a tool like a computer, a set of rules for manipulating data. But, like a computer, it depends on good data to produce good results or it's a case of garbage in/garbage out. So, reason, yes, but also good, reliable, replicable observations to work with as well. As Sherlock Holmes warned: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
2. There is a way that the universe is. There is a way that “things are.
Okay, yes, there is an objective reality out there of which we have a limited perception.
3. Propositional statements (truth claims) that correspond to the way that things are, are true. Those that do not, are false. This is the definition of truth. You may recognize it as the correspondence theory of truth but it is the definition of truth.
I can go along with that.
4. Since certain abstract things are indisputably real, such as the laws of physics, economics, and logic, mathematics, and information, then I am justified to think, a priori, that it is possible for other abstract things to exist – that is, minds and God.
This is more problematic since it depends on what you mean by "real" and "exist". To go back to a previous example, a flower like a red rose could be said to have objective existence because it is there, we assume, whether or not we are looking at it or thinking about it. But what of its red color? We now understand that we see it as red because the petals reflect only a very narrow band of visible light frequencies which are represented in our minds as the color red. Does the red color have objective or only subjective existence? The same with beauty, can that be said to exist anywhere outside our minds? I am coming to the view, based on arguments by Australian philosopher of science John Wilkins, that information exists only in our minds although that is very much a minority opinion of which mine counts for little. For the rest, I am content to go along with it for the present, simply observing that if the omniscient God of Christianity actually exists then He already knows our innermost thoughts and feelings most probably even better than we do, so attempting to flatter or appease Him would seem to be a pointless exercise.

Seversky_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
03:58 PM
3
03
58
PM
PDT}

Mark Frank, I read your comments. I cannot figure out on what grounds we should ignore what the evidence is telling us in favor of what can be imagined (regardless of what the evidence is telling us). Quite honestly, when you made the comment in #215 I was wondering "really...what are they?" Since, as you suggest, we all agree that random processes cannot build molecular protein machines (and I assume we also agree that those same processes cannot integrate them once they are built) then what exactly is the non-random process at work in their rise and integration?Upright BiPed_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
02:43 PM
2
02
43
PM
PDT}

Seversky states: "I don’t see “poly-functional DNA” as a problem for materialism. Why don’t you tell us why you do?" My first thought is that you, as a dogmatic materialist, don't/wouldn't see anything as a problem for evolution even if you witnessed, first hand, almighty God creating a new species/kind from His primary/highest transcendent realm (His heavenly kingdom) right in front of your eyes. The primary problem that poly-functional complexity presents for neo-Darwinism is this: To put it plainly, the finding of a severely poly-functional/polyconstrained genome by the ENCODE study has put the odds, of what was already astronomically impossible, to what can only be termed fantastically astronomically impossible. To illustrate the monumental brick wall any evolutionary scenario (no matter what “fitness landscape”) must face when I say genomes are poly-constrained to random mutations by poly-functionality, I will use a puzzle: If we were to actually get a proper “beneficial mutation’ in a polyfunctional genome of say 500 interdependent genes, then instead of the infamous “Methinks it is like a weasel” single element of functional information that Darwinists pretend they are facing in any evolutionary search, with their falsified genetic reductionism scenario I might add, we would actually be encountering something more akin to this illustration found on page 141 of Genetic Entropy by Dr. Sanford. S A T O R A R E P O T E N E T O P E R A R O T A S Which is translated ; THE SOWER NAMED AREPO HOLDS THE WORKING OF THE WHEELS. This ancient puzzle, which dates back to 79 AD, reads the same four different ways, Thus, If we change (mutate) any letter we may get a new meaning for a single reading read any one way, as in Dawkins weasel program, but we will consistently destroy the other 3 readings of the message with the new mutation. This is what is meant when it is said a poly-functional genome is poly-constrained to any random mutations. The puzzle I listed is only poly-functional to 4 elements/25 letters of interdependent complexity, the minimum genome is poly-constrained to approximately 500 elements (genes) at minimum approximation of polyfunctionality. For Darwinist to continue to believe in random mutations to generate the staggering level of complexity we find in life is absurd in the highest order!bornagain77_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
02:03 PM
2
02
03
PM
PDT}

#227 LOLMark Frank_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
02:01 PM
2
02
01
PM
PDT}

bornagain77 @ 189
Seversky, only in your fertile imagination is finding virtually 100% poly-functional DNA of no concern to materialists. Furthermore your post hoc excuses for evolutionists never really predicting Junk DNA falls on deaf ears considering I have over the years debated several evolutionists about Junk DNA with them consistently maintaining it was Junk,,,even after the ENCODE findings!
I don't see "poly-functional DNA" as a problem for materialism. Why don't you tell us why you do?Seversky_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
01:23 PM
1
01
23
PM
PDT}

#225 "In this context we were talking about what can be conceived not what the evidence suggests" ...boing...boing... (sorry, couldn't resist)Upright BiPed_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
11:57 AM
11
11
57
AM
PDT}

vjtorley, Many thanks for the links.Dave Wisker_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
10:40 AM
10
10
40
AM
PDT}

#221 tgpeeler So this is what we’ve come to. If there are “conceivable” processes, then that’s good enough. I suggest you read all the comments leading up to my comment. In this context we were talking about what can be conceived not what the evidence suggests.Mark Frank_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
10:37 AM
10
10
37
AM
PDT}

Mr. Nakashima, According to this link, the UK Met Office uses a million lines of code in its model for making weather forecasts. The Met Office's one-day weather forecasts are right six days out of seven, and today’s four-day forecasts are as accurate as one-day forecasts were 20 years ago. Hmm. They've still got a way to go before they catch up to the complexity of DNA coding, I'd say.vjtorley_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
09:49 AM
9
09
49
AM
PDT}

Dave Wisker I was impressed by your candid admission that you are not at peace on the abortion issue. From a totally non-religious perspective, here are some links you might want to check out. Articles by Libertarians for Life. Libertarians for Life was founded by an atheist, Doris Gordon, in 1976. The arguments against abortion on this Website are secular, philosophical arguments which do not in any way appeal to religion. Was I Ever a Fetus? by Professor Eric Olson. Professor Olson is a non-believer, yet he marshalls powerful arguments to utterly discredit the standard view among philosophers, that my life as a person began when I first became sentient (able to feel pleasure or pain), about six months after conception. Femninists for Life. "Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been for me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them." - Susan B. Anthony, pioneer of the American suffragette movement and an ardent pro-lifer, who once described abortion as "child murder." It may come as a shock to realise that the early feminists, some of whose names are very familiar to you, and others whom you have yet to meet, were overwhelmingly pro-life. This Web site has been created to offer pregnant women a genuine choice.vjtorley_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
09:39 AM
9
09
39
AM
PDT}

Well Nak let's look at the context of the statement, Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information Excerpt: Bioinformation has been selected algorithmically at the covalently-bound sequence level to instruct eventual three-dimensional shape. The shape is specific for a certain structural, catalytic, or regulatory function. All of these functions must be integrated into a symphony of metabolic functions. Apart from actually producing function, "information" has little or no value. No matter how many "bits" of possible combinations it has, there is no reason to call it "information" if it doesn't at least have the potential of producing something useful. What kind of information produces function? In computer science, we call it a "program." Another name for computer software is an "algorithm." No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. Mycoplasmas are the simplest known organism with the smallest known genome, to date. How was its genome and other living organisms' genomes programmed? FSC is a succession of algorithmic selections leading to function. Selection, specification, or signification of certain "choices" in FSC sequences results only from nonrandom selection. These selections at successive decision nodes cannot be forced by deterministic cause-and-effect necessity. If they were, nearly all decision-node selections would be the same. They would be highly ordered (OSC). And the selections cannot be random (RSC). No sophisticated program has ever been observed to be written by successive coin flips where heads is "1" and tails is "0." We speak loosely as though "bits" of information in computer programs represented specific integrated binary choice commitments made with intent at successive algorithmic decision nodes. The latter is true of FSC, but technically such an algorithmic process cannot possibly be measured by bits (-log2 P) except in the sense of transmission engineering. Shannon [2,3] was interested in signal space, not in particular messages. Shannon mathematics deals only with averaged probabilistic combinatorics. FSC requires a specification of the sequence of FSC choices. They cannot be averaged without loss of prescriptive information (instructions). Bits in a computer program measure only the number of binary choice opportunities. Bits do not measure or indicate which specific choices are made. Enumerating the specific choices that work is the very essence of gaining information (in the intuitive sense). When we buy a computer program, we are paying for sequences of integrated specific decision-node choice-commitments that we expect to work for us. The essence of the instruction is the enumeration of the sequence of particular choices. This necessity defines the very goal of genome projects. Algorithms are processes or procedures that produce a needed result, whether it is computation or the end-products of biochemical pathways. Such strings of decision-node selections are anything but random. And they are not "self-ordered" by redundant cause-and-effect necessity. Every successive nucleotide is a quaternary "switch setting." Many nucleotide selections in the string are not critical. But those switch-settings that determine folding, especially, are highly "meaningful." Functional switch- setting sequences are produced only by uncoerced selection pressure. There is a cybernetic aspect of life processes that is directly analogous to that of computer programming. More attention should be focused on the reality and mechanisms of selection at the decision-node level of biological algorithms. This is the level of covalent bonding in primary structure. Environmental selection occurs at the level of post-computational halting. The fittest already-computed phenotype is selected. We can hypothesize that metabolism "just happened," independent of directions, in a prebiotic environment billions of years ago. But we can hypothesize anything. The question is whether such hypotheses are plausible. Plausibility is often eliminated when probabilities exceed the "universal probability bound" [132]. The stochastic "self- organization" of even the simplest biochemical pathways is statistically prohibitive by hundreds of orders of magnitude. Without algorithmic programming to constrain (more properly "control") options, the number of possible paths in sequence space for each needed biopolymer is enormous. 10^15 molecules are often present in one test tube library of stochastic ensembles. But when multiple biopolymers must all converge at the same place at the same time to collectively interact in a controlled biochemically cooperative manner, faith in "self-organization" becomes "blind belief." No empirical data or rational scientific basis exists for such a metaphysical leap. Certainly no prediction of biological self-organization has been realized apart from SELEX-like bioengineering. SELEX is a selection/amplification methodology used in the engineering of new ribozymes [133-135]. Such investigator interference hardly qualifies as "self-organization." All of the impressive selection-amplification-derived ribozymes that have been engineered in the last fifteen years have been exercises in artificial selection, not natural selection http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:kU_lL-3_URMJ:www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1742-4682-2-29.pdf+Three+subsets+of+sequence+complexity+and+their+relevance+to+biopolymeric+information&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us So Nak, Though it is not cold hard number/fact for precisely "how much more" functional information is present in the Mycoplamal, It is a cold hard fact that more functional/algorythmic information does indeed reside in the Mycoplasmal, Thus it is not an opinion. But of course you knew this and only seek to distract from a design inference. If you actually had any scientific integrity in you, you would seek to clarify exactly how much more functional information is present in life than in computers instead of trying to find a way to deny what is plainly obvious to everyone. Everyone that is save for dogmatic materialists such as yourself who apparently could care less about the truth.bornagain77_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
09:14 AM
9
09
14
AM
PDT}

Mark @ 215 "There are other conceivable natural processes for generating proteins." So this is what we've come to. If there are "conceivable" processes, then that's good enough. Never mind that no one has demonstrated, found, or thought of one that could actually work. Dawkins frequently references arguments from incredulity as an example of how impoverished the imaginations are of ID proponents. I take the other tack and say the argument from credulity (it's "possible") shows how utterly gullible anyone positing naturalistic evolution is. It's conceivable so I'll take that over mountains of evidence that show it didn't happen that way. Hee hee. Good one.tgpeeler_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
09:00 AM
9
09
00
AM
PDT}

Dave @210 "If you recall, I said I choose to live in a society where the majority feel pretty much the same way about those issues. Human behavioral variation being what it is, there will be some who don’t think that way. But the only way to keep the level of human misery at a minimum within such a society is to codify those agreed-upon issues into a justice system." No, I get that. What I don't get is WHY and what's the basis for that WHY? Doesn't that require explanation within a Darwinian worldview if that is what you hold to? And what if I move into your neighborhood? And I have a less charitable view of things? Who's right? Is that a question that even makes sense to ask? What do you do then? How do you defend yourself and on what basis? Am I "wrong" to oppress or try to oppress you or anyone else or am I just being my evolved self??tgpeeler_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
08:52 AM
8
08
52
AM
PDT}

Mr BA^77, (Sorry if this appears twice. UD hiccuped when I sent it the first time.) It is a distraction. Try to answer the question. Opinion or fact?Nakashima_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
08:03 AM
8
08
03
AM
PDT}

Nak, Is this an opinion or a fact: Missed Opportunities There they are smiling as they pass you by You smile back and wave a courteous hi You blink, and they laugh in that peculiar way as they melt into the brick wall of yesterdaybornagain77_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
07:51 AM
7
07
51
AM
PDT}

----Dave Wisker: "Frankly, I’m not at peace with the abortion issue. I doubt that makes me the exception either." I have no doubt of it. Aren't you even a little curious about how I had already figured out your position on abortion? I have had many discussions with those who embrace a morality based on their personal preferences, and those preferences invariably include libertinism and its friendly companion, abortion on demand. Take note: No one person's subjective morality ever includes the regulatory hard sayings that he does not like and yet needs to hear. ---"If you recall, I said I choose to live in a society where the majority feel pretty much the same way about those issues. Human behavioral variation being what it is, there will be some who don’t think that way. But the only way to keep the level of human misery at a minimum within such a society is to codify those agreed-upon issues into a justice system." Notice the contradiction. On the one hand, you are positing a civil law which depends on "agreed upon issues." On the other hand, you acknowledge that "some will not feel that way." What do we do with the latter group? Subjective morality always leads first to a tyranny of the minority by the majority, followed by a tyranny of everyone by a few. It is not possible to establish civil laws based on subjective preferences, because subjective preferences vary, based as they are on the convenience of the one doing the preferring. Civil law can only be grounded in a higher law. There are only two possibilities: [A] The natural moral law, which promotes a well-ordered society and [B] Might makes right, which leads to tyranny. Moral subjectivism always leads to [B].StephenB_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
07:48 AM
7
07
48
AM
PDT}

Mr BA^77, I am aware that I must be a tiresome conversationalist. Thank you for your patience. let's try again from here" No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. Do you agree that this is phrased as a statement of opinion?Nakashima_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
07:22 AM
7
07
22
AM
PDT}

#194 vj I cannot resist a final response. 500 million years, and an entire planet composed of amino acids and nothing else. If that’s not a “best possible” assumption for the evolution of proteins, then I don’t know what is. This is very far from being the best possible because it assuming that the evolution of proteins is done by throwing together amino acids in chains at "random" until you get lucky. We all accept this will not work. There are other conceivable natural processes for generating proteins.Mark Frank_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
07:08 AM
7
07
08
AM
PDT}

Nak, please tell me of what possible use it would be for me to clarify your distractions since you never listen when corrected?bornagain77_{October 26, 2009
October
10
Oct
26
26
2009
03:44 AM
3
03
44
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 12 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply