Do any animals have a true language?, asks the Washington Post

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 25, 2014

Animal minds, Intelligent Design, News}

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And you just know how desperate they are to get to yes:

A new study on animal calls has found that the patterns of barks, whistles, and clicks from seven different species appear to be more complex than previously thought. The researchers used mathematical tests to see how well the sequences of sounds fit to models ranging in complexity.

In fact, five species including the killer whale and free-tailed bat had communication behaviors that were definitively more language-like than random. The study was published online Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

But why would anyone have supposed that the patterns were random?

“We’re still a very, very long way from understanding this transition from animal communication to human language, and it’s a huge mystery at the moment,” said study author and zoologist Arik Kershenbaum, who did the work at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis. “These types of mathematical analyses can give us some clues.”

Maybe, but the big problem isn’t language, it’s rationality.

The reason animal communication is simple is that the animal doesn’t think much and so doesn’t have many different things to say. So the “huge mystery” is still the development of the human mind.

Never fear: Someone will (if they haven’t already) get to yes re animal language just by altering the meaning of “true language.” And telling us all that we are species-ist for doubting that barks, whistles and clicks are languages just like English and Chinese.

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Comments

leodp, thank you and Yes, light and energy, and how they relate to mass, is a fascinating area of study. I'm glad you found brief my comments and links interesting. One could argue that Atheistic materialism, without even appealing to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, is falsified from this one area of study alone: quote: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." William Shakespeare - Hamletbornagain77_{August 27, 2014
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ba77: What an interesting discussion on light and energy. Off the OT, but good. Thanks.leodp_{August 27, 2014
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The reason animal communication is simple is that the animal doesn’t think much and so doesn’t have many different things to say.
Well Dr.It Doolittle, tust be nice to understand what animals think about.Acartia_bogart_{August 26, 2014
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Drawing My Discussion with Laurence Moran to a Close - Michael Behe - August 26, 2014 Excerpt: there's no a priori requirement that Earth contain any life at all, or that any life that does exist be able to successfully traverse a mutational pathway by Darwinian means to give rise to a form of life significantly different from itself. In the absence of an a priori requirement, science is obliged to investigate whether or not such pathways exist. Right now the evidence we have in hand militates strongly against it. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/drawing_my_disc089331.htmlbornagain77_{August 26, 2014
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So Behe responds to Moran today, they are foaming at the mouth over at Sandwalk and UD is silent on the exchange?Jehu_{August 26, 2014
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And then there's "Nim Chimpsky"...
At first, Nim—full name Nim Chimpsky, named after linguist Noam Chomsky who thought language was unique to humans—was raised in a human household. (Washoe had been treated like a person too but had her own trailer.) Later, Nim was removed from the family and his language lessons moved to a lab on Columbia’s campus. In the end, Terrace concluded Nim never really learned language; he had merely been trained to imitate his teachers to get rewards. The sad story of Nim’s life after the project ended is told in the new documentary Project Nim. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/six-talking-apes-48085302/?no-ist
leodp_{August 26, 2014
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"Savage-Rumbaugh studies bonobos -- a relative of ours that, like chimpanzees, shares 98 to 99 percent of human genes. When you spend all day with bonobos, she says, "the differences don't loom very large... They look like us, care like us, smell like us, think like us. They are like us." Smell like us ... a bit like Chanel #5. Think like us... hence Darwinism. Noam Chomsky. What would he know? It's nothing, really. Just look here: http://whyfiles.org/058language/ape_talk.htmlleodp_{August 26, 2014
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Supplemental notes:
Cellular Communication through Light Excerpt: Information transfer is a life principle. On a cellular level we generally assume that molecules are carriers of information, yet there is evidence for non-molecular information transfer due to endogenous coherent light. This light is ultra-weak, is emitted by many organisms, including humans and is conventionally described as biophoton emission. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005086 Are humans really beings of light? Excerpt: "We now know, today, that man is essentially a being of light.",,, "There are about 100,000 chemical reactions happening in every cell each second. The chemical reaction can only happen if the molecule which is reacting is excited by a photon... Once the photon has excited a reaction it returns to the field and is available for more reactions... We are swimming in an ocean of light." http://viewzone2.com/dna.html Coast to Coast - Vicki's Near Death Experience (Blind From Birth) part 1 of 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e65KhcCS5-Y Quote from preceding video: 'I was in a body and the only way that I can describe it was a body of energy, or of light. And this body had a form. It had a head. It had arms and it had legs. And it was like it was made out of light. And 'it' was everything that was me. All of my memories, my consciousness, everything.' - Vicky Noratuk
Of related interest: If scientists want to find the source for the supernatural light which made the "3D - photographic negative" image on the Shroud I suggest they look to the thousands of documented Near-Death Experiences (NDE's) in Judeo-Christian cultures. It is in their testimonies that you will find mention of an indescribably bright 'Light' or 'Being of Light' who is always described as being of a much brighter intensity of light than the people had ever seen before.
Ask the Experts: What Is a Near-Death Experience (NDE)? - article with video Excerpt: "Very often as they're moving through the tunnel, there's a very bright mystical light ... not like a light we're used to in our earthly lives. People call this mystical light, brilliant like a million times a million suns..." - Jeffery Long M.D. - has studied NDE's extensively http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/beyondbelief/experts-death-experience/story?id=14221154#.T_gydvW8jbI "Suddenly, I was enveloped in this brilliant golden light. The light was more brilliant that the light emanating from the sun, many times more powerful and radiant than the sun itself. Yet, I was not blinded by it nor burned by it. Instead, the light was a source of energy that embraced my being." Ned Dougherty's - Fast Lane To Heaven - Quoted from "To Heaven and Back" pg. 71 - Mary C. Neal MD
Quote of note:
The Easter Question - Eben Alexander, M.D. - March 2013 Excerpt: More than ever since my near death experience, I consider myself a Christian -,,, Now, I can tell you that if someone had asked me, in the days before my NDE, what I thought of this (Easter) story, I would have said that it was lovely. But it remained just that -- a story. To say that the physical body of a man who had been brutally tortured and killed could simply get up and return to the world a few days later is to contradict every fact we know about the universe. It wasn't simply an unscientific idea. It was a downright anti-scientific one. But it is an idea that I now believe. Not in a lip-service way. Not in a dress-up-it's-Easter kind of way. I believe it with all my heart, and all my soul.,, We are, really and truly, made in God's image. But most of the time we are sadly unaware of this fact. We are unconscious both of our intimate kinship with God, and of His constant presence with us. On the level of our everyday consciousness, this is a world of separation -- one where people and objects move about, occasionally interacting with each other, but where essentially we are always alone. But this cold dead world of separate objects is an illusion. It's not the world we actually live in.,,, ,,He (God) is right here with each of us right now, seeing what we see, suffering what we suffer... and hoping desperately that we will keep our hope and faith in Him. Because that hope and faith will be triumphant. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eben-alexander-md/the-easter-question_b_2979741.html
Verses and Music:
1 John 1:5-7 "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." Acts 26:13-15 at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Toby Mac (In The Light) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_MpGRQRrP0
bornagain77_{August 26, 2014
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The main difference between energy and mass, that really stands out for me, is that mass is temporal whereas energy is eternal. i.e. It is shown that time, as we understand it temporally, does not pass at the speed of light:
"I've just developed a new theory of eternity." Albert Einstein - The Einstein Factor - Reader's Digest - 2005 “The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality. Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to know how tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass.” Richard Swenson – More Than Meets The Eye, Chpt. 12
To grasp the whole ‘time coming to a complete stop at the speed of light’ concept a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into e=mc2.
Albert Einstein - Special Relativity - Insight Into Eternity - 'thought experiment' video https://vimeo.com/93101738
Here is another interesting, thought provoking, video along that line:
Science vs God: Bryan Enderle at TEDxUCDavis - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn7YQOzNuSc
Moreover, as the huge particle accelerators that have been built testify, regardless of how much energy we pour into a particle of matter, we can never 'push' the particle of matter to the speed of light:
Question: If a particle with rest-mass were to, in theory, travel at the speed of light, would its mass actually be infinite, or just very, very, very, large, just like it would supposedly take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate the particle to the speed of light in the first place? How can you calculate this? Answer 4: A particle with non-zero rest-mass cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. Put in other terms, the energy of a moving particle with rest-mass m equals E=(r-1)mc2, where the factor r=1/sqrt(1-(v/c)2), with v the speed of the particle and c the speed of light. You can use this formula in an Excel sheet to try different values of rest-mass m and speed v. This equation tells you that you need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a particle to (exactly) the speed of light, however, you can always take it to, say 99.99999% the speed of light with a finite (but huge) amount of energy. http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1571 "By special relativity, the energy needed to accelerate a particle (with mass) grow super-quadratically when the speed is close to c, and is infinite when it is c. Since you can't supply infinite energy to the particle, it is not possible to get (a particle with mass) to 100% c."
The reason why there is such a sharp division between the temporal realm of mass and the eternal realm of energy is that energy is of a higher dimensional value than matter is. To illustrate this 'higher dimensional' point, please note what happens at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape around the direction of travel as a 'hypothetical' observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light,,
Approaching The Speed Of Light - Optical Effects - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5733303/ (Of note: This preceding video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.)
Here is the interactive website, with link to the relativistic math at the bottom of the page, related to the preceding video;
Seeing Relativity http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/Searle/
It is also important to note higher dimensions would be invisible to our physical 3 Dimensional sight. The reason why ‘higher dimensions’ are invisible to our 3D vision is best illustrated by ‘Flatland’:
Dr. Quantum in Flatland – 3D in a 2D world – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWyTxCsIXE4
It is also very interesting to note that this strange higher dimensional, eternal, framework for time, found in special relativity (and also in general relativity), finds corroboration in Near Death Experience testimonies:
'In the 'spirit world,,, instantly, there was no sense of time. See, everything on earth is related to time. You got up this morning, you are going to go to bed tonight. Something is new, it will get old. Something is born, it's going to die. Everything on the physical plane is relative to time, but everything in the spiritual plane is relative to eternity. Instantly I was in total consciousness and awareness of eternity, and you and I as we live in this earth cannot even comprehend it, because everything that we have here is filled within the veil of the temporal life. In the spirit life that is more real than anything else and it is awesome. Eternity as a concept is awesome. There is no such thing as time. I knew that whatever happened was going to go on and on.' In The Presence Of Almighty God – The NDE of Mickey Robinson – video https://vimeo.com/92172680
The tunnel to a higher dimension is also noted in Near death experiences:
"I started to move toward the light. The way I moved, the physics, was completely different than it is here on Earth. It was something I had never felt before and never felt since. It was a whole different sensation of motion. I obviously wasn't walking or skipping or crawling. I was not floating. I was flowing. I was flowing toward the light. I was accelerating and I knew I was accelerating, but then again, I didn't really feel the acceleration. I just knew I was accelerating toward the light. Again, the physics was different - the physics of motion of time, space, travel. It was completely different in that tunnel, than it is here on Earth. I came out into the light and when I came out into the light, I realized that I was in heaven." Barbara Springer - Near Death Experience - The Tunnel - video https://vimeo.com/79072924 "Regardless, it is impossible for me to adequately describe what I saw and felt. When I try to recount my experiences now, the description feels very pale. I feel as though I'm trying to describe a three-dimensional experience while living in a two-dimensional world. The appropriate words, descriptions and concepts don't even exist in our current language. I have subsequently read the accounts of other people's near-death experiences and their portrayals of heaven and I able to see the same limitations in their descriptions and vocabulary that I see in my own." Mary C. Neal, MD - To Heaven And Back pg. 71
bornagain77_{August 26, 2014
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“We’re still a very, very long way from understanding this transition from animal communication to human language, and it’s a huge mystery at the moment,” It isn't a mystery, it's a fairtytale. Since humans were never anything other than human, and no evidence exists to prove otherwise, a link from animal communication to human language will never be found. This is nothing more than sophistry from the Darwin faithful.humbled_{August 26, 2014
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@ba77 What is the difference between matter and energy if e=mc^2VunderGuy_{August 26, 2014
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In fact by using a ‘quantum information channel’ of entanglement, such as they use in quantum computation, physicists have reduced material to quantum information. (of note: energy is completely reduced to quantum information, whereas matter is semi-completely reduced, with the caveat being that matter can be reduced to energy via e=mc2).
Atom takes a quantum leap – 2009 Excerpt: Ytterbium ions have been ‘teleported’ over a distance of a metre.,,, “What you’re moving is information, not the actual atoms,” says Chris Monroe, from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland in College Park and an author of the paper. But as two particles of the same type differ only in their quantum states, the transfer of quantum information is equivalent to moving the first particle to the location of the second. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2171769/posts Quantum Teleportation – IBM Research Page Excerpt: “it would destroy the original (photon) in the process,,” http://researcher.ibm.com/view_project.php?id=2862
In fact an entire human can, theoretically, be reduced to quantum information and teleported to another location in the universe:
Quantum Teleportation Of A Human? – video https://vimeo.com/75163272 Will Human Teleportation Ever Be Possible? As experiments in relocating particles advance, will we be able to say, "Beam me up, Scotty" one day soon? By Corey S. Powell|Monday, June 16, 2014 Excerpt: Note a fascinating common thread through all these possibilities. Whether you regard yourself as a pile of atoms, a DNA sequence, a series of sensory inputs or an elaborate computer file, in all of these interpretations you are nothing but a stack of data. According to the principle of unitarity, quantum information is never lost. Put them together, and those two statements lead to a staggering corollary: At the most fundamental level, the laws of physics say you are immortal. http://discovermagazine.com/2014/julyaug/20-the-ups-and-downs-of-teleportation
Thus not only is information not reducible to a energy-matter basis, as is presupposed in Darwinism, but in actuality both energy and matter ultimately reduce to a information basis as is presupposed in Christian Theism (John1:1). It also interesting to point out that the foundation of reality itself is found to be ‘information theoretic’ in its basis, not materialistic in its basis
John Wheeler (1911–2008) summarizes his life in physics – February 2014 Excerpt: “I think of my lifetime in physics as divided into three periods. In the first period, extending from the beginning of my career until the early 1950?s, I was in the grip of the idea that Everything Is Particles. I was looking for ways to build all basic entities – neutrons, protons, mesons, and so on – out of the lightest, most fundamental particles, electrons, and photons. I call my second period Everything Is Fields. From the time I fell in love with general relativity and gravitation in 1952 until late in my career, I pursued the vision of a world made of fields, one in which the apparent particles are really manifestations of electric and magnetic fields, gravitational fields, and space-time itself. Now I am in the grip of a new vision, that Everything Is Information. The more I have pondered the mystery of the quantum and our strange ability to comprehend this world in which we live, the more I see possible fundamental roles for logic and information as the bedrock of physical theory.” – J. A. Wheeler, K. Ford, Geons, Black Hole, & Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics New York W.W. Norton & Co, 1998, pp 63-64. Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.” Anton Zeilinger – a leading expert in quantum teleportation: http://www.metanexus.net/archi.....linger.pdf Conversations with William Dembski–The Thesis of Being as Communion – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAsaU9IvnI
Thus the fact that the universe is ‘information theoretic’ in its basis, and the fact that the ‘spiritual differences’ that most drastically separate us from the animals, i.e. our ability to use and create information, both correspond, is striking confirmation for the Theistic claim that we are made in God’s image: verses and music:
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” Isaiah 45:18-19 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.” Psalm 66:19 but God has surely listened and has heard my prayer. Dive – Steven Curtis Chapman http://myktis.com/songs/dive/
bornagain77_{August 26, 2014
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As to the competing hypothesis that we actually were 'made in the image of God' and that there actually may be profound 'spiritual' differences that separate man from animals, no less than Ian Tattersall, emeritus curator of the American Museum of Natural History, expresses wonder at the stark ‘spiritual’ differences between man and apes,,,
Evolution of the Genus Homo – Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences – Ian Tattersall, Jeffery H. Schwartz, May 2009 Excerpt: “Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species. They are certainly what give us our strong subjective sense of being qualitatively different. And they are all ultimately traceable to our symbolic capacity. Human beings alone, it seems, mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities. When exactly Homo sapiens acquired this unusual ability is the subject of debate.” http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100202
here are a few more notes along this line;
Origin of the Mind: Marc Hauser – Scientific American – April 2009 Excerpt: “Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement footprint of the skyscraper that is the human mind”,,, http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/?/~mnkylab/publications/rec?ent/mindSciAm.pdf Darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. – 2008 Excerpt: Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as “one of degree and not of kind” (Darwin 1871).,,, To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18479531 Young Children Have Grammar and Chimpanzees Don’t – Apr. 10, 2013 Excerpt:,, He found further evidence for what many scientists, including Nim’s own trainers, have contended about Nim: that the sequences of signs Nim put together did not follow from rules like those in human language. Nim’s signs show significantly lower diversity than what is expected under a systematic grammar and were similar to the level expected with memorization. This suggests that true language learning is — so far — a uniquely human trait, and that it is present very early in development. “The idea that children are only imitating adults’ language is very intuitive, so it’s seen a revival over the last few years,” Yang said. “But this is strong statistical evidence in favor of the idea that children actually know a lot about abstract grammar from an early age.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130410131327.htm
Even Alfred Wallace, co-discoverer of Natural Selection, who certainly had far more field work observing animals than Charles Darwin did, conceded, spiritually speaking, that “The difference between man and the other animals is unbridgeable”,,,
“Nothing in evolution can account for the soul of man. The difference between man and the other animals is unbridgeable. Mathematics is alone sufficient to prove in man the possession of a faculty unexistent in other creatures. Then you have music and the artistic faculty. No, the soul was a separate creation.” Alfred Russel Wallace – An interview by Harold Begbie printed on page four of The Daily Chronicle (London) issues of 3 November and 4 November 1910.
And it is also interesting to note that the exact place where Man most drastically differentiates from animals, i.e. in this ability to produce information, is the exact place where Darwinian evolution has failed to achieve empirical validation. i.e. the failure to demonstrate the generation of information by purely material processes.
The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel - Null Hypothesis For Information Generation - 2009 Excerpt of conclusion pg. 42: "To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it: “Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration.” A single exception of non trivial, unaided spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would falsify this null hypothesis." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662469/ Can We Falsify Any Of The Following Null Hypothesis (For Information Generation) 1) Mathematical Logic 2) Algorithmic Optimization 3) Cybernetic Programming 4) Computational Halting 5) Integrated Circuits 6) Organization (e.g. homeostatic optimization far from equilibrium) 7) Material Symbol Systems (e.g. genetics) 8) Any Goal Oriented bona fide system 9) Language 10) Formal function of any kind 11) Utilitarian work LIFE’S CONSERVATION LAW - William Dembski - Robert Marks - Pg. 13 Excerpt: Simulations such as Dawkins’s WEASEL, Adami’s AVIDA, Ray’s Tierra, and Schneider’s ev appear to support Darwinian evolution, but only for lack of clear accounting practices that track the information smuggled into them.,,, Information does not magically materialize. It can be created by intelligence or it can be shunted around by natural forces. But natural forces, and Darwinian processes in particular, do not create information. Active information enables us to see why this is the case. http://evoinfo.org/publications/lifes-conservation-law/ On Algorithmic Specified Complexity by Robert J. Marks II - video (All Evolutionary Algorithms Have Failed) - Marks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No3LZmPcwyg
It should not be surprising that the material processes of Darwinian evolution would be found to be grossly inadequate to generate information. Information simply cannot be reduced to a material basis:
“Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.” Norbert Weiner – MIT Mathematician -(Cybernetics, 2nd edition, p.132) Norbert Wiener created the modern field of control and communication systems, utilizing concepts like negative feedback. His seminal 1948 book Cybernetics both defined and named the new field. “One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce. In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires. Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.” -Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Intelligent design: Why can’t biological information originate through a materialistic process? – Stephen Meyer – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiXNxyoof8 John Lennox – Is There Evidence of Something Beyond Nature? (Semiotic Information) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6rd4HEdffw
bornagain77_{August 26, 2014
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#1 follow-up How can we know our pets' worldview? by the way they treat us? ;-)Dionisio_{August 25, 2014
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Well, perhaps they're right on that - my children have a dog and a cat that seem to communicate better than I do with people I talk to ;-) Also, if we look at some discussions in this blog, we notice a kind of poor communication between two opposite irreconcilable worldview positions :( I don't recall seeing that kind of misunderstanding between my children's pets, hence their language must be pretty advanced. ;-) Unless that has to do with the pets sharing the same worldview? Could that be it? Anyway, this subject is above my pay grade ;-)Dionisio_{August 25, 2014
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PM
PDT}

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