Intelligent Design and the Demarcation Problem

_{Jonathan McLatchie

August 15, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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One common objection which is often raised regarding the proposition of real design (as opposed to design that is only apparent) is the criticism that design is unable to be falsified by the ruthless rigour of empirical scrutiny. Science, we are told, must restrict its explanatory devices to material causes. This criterion of conformity to materialism as a requisite for scientific merit is an unfortunate consequence of a misconstrual of the principal of uniformitarianism with respect to the historical sciences. Clearly, a proposition – if it is to be considered properly scientific – must constrict its scope to categories of explanation with which we have experience. It is this criterion which allows a hypothesis to be evaluated and contrasted with our experience of that causal entity. Explanatory devices should not be abstract, lying beyond the scope of our uniform and sensory experience of cause-and-effect.

This, naturally, brings us on to the question of what constitutes a material cause. Are all causes, which we have experience with, reducible to the material world and the interaction of chemical reactants? It lies as fundamentally axiomatic to rationality that we be able to detect the presence of other minds. This is what C.S. Lewis described as “inside knowledge”. Being rational agents ourselves, we have an insider’s knowledge of what it is to be rational – what it is to be intelligent. We know that it is possible for rational beings to exist and that such agents leave behind them detectable traces of their activity. Consciousness is a very peculiar entity. Consciousness interacts with the material world, and is detectable by its effects – but is it material itself? I have long argued in favour of substance dualism – that is, the notion that the mind is itself not reducible to the material and chemical constituents of the brain, nor is it reducible to the dual forces of chance and necessity which together account for much of the other phenomena in our experience. Besides the increasing body of scientific evidence which lends support to this view, I have long pondered whether it is possible to rationally reconcile the concept of human autonomy (free will) and materialistic reductionism with respect to the mind. I have thus concluded that free will exists (arguing otherwise leads to irrationality or reductio ad absurdum) and that hence materialism – at least with respect to the nature of consciousness – must be false if rationality is to be maintained.

My reasoning can be laid out as follows:

1: If atheism is true, then so is materialism.

2: If materialism is true, then the mind is reducible to the chemical constituents of the brain.

3: If the mind is reducible to the chemical constituents of the brain, then human autonomy and consciousness are illusory because our free choices are determined by the dual forces of chance and necessity.

4: Human autonomy exists.

From 3 & 4,

5: Therefore, the mind is not reducible to the chemical constituents of the brain.

From 2 & 5,

6: Therefore, materialism is false.

From 1 & 6,

7: Therefore, atheism is false.

Now, where does this leave us? Since we have independent reason to believe that the mind is not reducible to material constituents, materialistic explanations for the effects of consciousness are not appropriate explanatory devices. How does mind interact with matter? Such a question cannot be addressed in terms of material causation because the mind is not itself a material entity, although in human agents it does interact with the material components of the brain on which it exerts its effects. The immaterial mind thus interacts with the material brain to bring about effects which are necessary for bodily function. Without the brain, the mind is powerless to bring about its effects on the body. But that is not to say that the mind is a component of the brain.

We have further independent reason to expect a non-material cause when discussing the question of the origin of the Universe. Being an explanation for the existence of the natural realm itself – complete with its contingent natural laws and mathematical expressions – natural law, with which we have experience, cannot be invoked as an explanatory factor without reasoning in a circle (presupposing the prior existence of the entity which one is attempting to account for). When faced with explanatory questions with respect to particular phenomena, then, the principle of methodological materialism breaks down because we possess independent philosophical reason to suppose the existence of a supernatural (non-material) cause.

Material causes are uniformly reducible to the mechanisms and processes of chance (randomness) and necessity (law). Since mind is reducible to neither of those processes, we must introduce a third category of explanation – that is, intelligence.

When we look around the natural world, we can distinguish between those objects which can be readily accounted for by the dual action of chance and necessity, and those that cannot. We often ascribe such latter phenomena to agency. It is the ability to detect the activity of such rational deliberation that is foundational to the ID argument.

Should ID be properly regarded as a scientific theory? Yes and no. While ID theorists have not yet outlined a rigorous scientific hypothesis as far as the mechanistic process of the development of life (at least not one which has attracted a large body of support), ID is, in its essence, a scientific proposition – subject to the criteria of empirical testability and falsifiability. To arbitrarily exclude such a conclusion from science’s explanatory toolkit is to fundamentally truncate a significant portion of reality – like trying to limit oneself to material processes of randomness and law when attempting to explain the construction of a computer operating system.

Since rational deliberation characteristically leaves patterns which are distinguishable from those types of patterns which are left by non-intelligent processes, why is design so often shunned as a non-scientific explanation – as a ‘god-of-the-gaps’ style argument? Assuredly, if Darwinism is to be regarded as a mechanism which attempts to explain the appearance of design by non-intelligent processes (albeit hitherto unsuccessfully), it follows by extension that real design must be regarded as a viable candidate explanation. To say otherwise is to erect arbitrary parameters of what constitutes a valid explanation and what doesn’t. It is this arbitrarily constraints on explanation which leads to dogmatism and ideology – which, I think, we can all agree is not the goal or purpose of the scientific enterprise.

Comments

PS: Ironically, I would not even NEED the case of the living cell to hold to a theistic worldview, the mind and enconscienced heart within and the starry heavens without are far more than enough to point to an Intelligence beyond the world of matter and energy as the most credible cause of creation. But there it is, lying in the cells of my own body, staring at me and calling to my technical background: a miniaturised complex digital information system using techniques sevferal generations of development beyond where we have reached. Why -- apart from imposition of a priori evolutionary materialism, however disguised -- should I not be permitted to see in such the signs that point to intelligently directed contingency as cause, and beyond that, the intelligences that would be the source of that design? And why should such an inference to design be seen as a roadblock to progress rather than an invitation to reverse engineer and apply to our own technologies?kairosfocus_{August 21, 2010
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F/N: Yesterday, I had an epiphany; triggered by trying to see why the design inference on the dFSCI in the living cell is being so stoutly resisted, and -- almost as important -- the way in which it is being resisted, as we can see above. Reflecting on what has been going on, and walking back from the family car by the rain-dripping Croton row at house front, I suddenly realised just how much the case of the digital information system in the living cell is blatantly obvious as a sign pointing to its credible causal process, and onward to the sort of thing that gives rise to such effects. Denton was right, manifestly right: __________________ >> To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter [[so each atom in it would be “the size of a tennis ball”] and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell. We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines . . . . We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices used for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction . . . . However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equaled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours . . . . Unlike our own pseudo-automated assembly plants, where external controls are being continually applied, the cell's manufacturing capability is entirely self-regulated . . . . [[Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler, 1986, pp. 327 – 331. >> ___________________ If we were to see such an entity in a non-controversial context, we wouldn't have he slightest hesitation in instantly recognising it as an artifact of supreme technology, and of the technologists that make such artifacts. So, it seems the real problem -- the evidence has been speaking loud and clear for decades now -- is not to be found in the evidence or the logic. Instead, it lies in the reigning orthodoxy and what is at stake culturally and maybe even spiritually. So, let us listen for a moment to a warning or two in the NT that seem to be all too relevant to our times:
Jesus, Jn 8:45: "Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!" Paul, Rom 1:19: . . . what may be known about God is plain to [men], because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. [This is strongly echoed in Locke's remarks on the candle that is set up in us in his introduction, section 5, to his Essay on Human Understanding] 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles . . . [This particular selection seems almost prophetic. Back then we had statues in temples and scandalous legends, now we have icons of evolutionary materialism and scientific "just-so" stories.]
________________ So, we need to think again about what is the root of the problem. For if a weed's roots are left in, it will all too soon spring back up. [And BTW, why is it that a weed is almost always so much more vigorous than a useful garden plant? It's genes have not been selected artificially to enhance utility for us, at the expense of ability to survive and thrive in the wilds, where the goats are a going to chew if they can. And, why then -- per survival of the fittest -- are not all plants poisonous . . . . ?] GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 21, 2010
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Mark: I apologize, I thought I had ansered in my #352. "To prove determinism, you shoud demonstrate that, given the circumstances before an action, that action and only that action was possible. If anybody can do that, I will believe in determinism (but not in compatibilism: I will simply believe that I am a complete automaton)." But I understanf now that you probably want an explicit answer to the last question: Would this suddenly mean that you were not exercising true free will but only had the illusion? And my answer is: definitely yes.gpuccio_{August 21, 2010
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AIG: Overnight, I see considerable discussion has happened. In particular BA 77 has raised a whole new realm of issues, on the terra-forming of earth to make a fit habitat for higher life forms and even in support of our economy. Food for thought indeed, delivered in BA's unique style. Now, in 358, you have said something that I think is inadvertently revealing:
Since you haven’t managed to define “intelligence” in any testable way apart from “able to produce FSCI”, then these statements are vacuous. Why is a human intelligent? Because we produce lots of FSCI. Why isn’t a worm intelligent? Because it doesn’t produce much FSCI. How do humans produce FSCI? By using their intelligence! etc.
1 --> Why do you keep arguing like this, on "definition"? This rhetorical point seems to be little more than a strained strawman caricature. 2 --> Already above in the thread, multiple times, we have discussions on how we observe that humans are intelligent and that one of the SIGNS of that intelligence is that we produce dFSCI, which we also observe is never created de novo by things which are not intelligent, in the commonly used sense of that term. 3 --> In the case of especially dFSCI, a subset of CSI that is particularly relevant to our considerations, we have shown over and over that once we pass say 500 - 1,000 bits of information storage capacity, undirected statistical contingency [how I am using "chance"] -- the other observed source of contingency -- loses credibility as not only a logically possible but an empirically feasible explanation. This, as the resources of he observed cosmos will only slightly scratch the surface of the configuration space, making the cosmos-scale search round down to zero. 4 --> Onlookers, FYI: this is very closely related to the statistical justification for the second law of thermodynamics in physics. Cf. Abel's discussion of the plausibility bound. 5 --> Of course, almost by definition, mechanical necessity tracing to the action of lawlike forces, is not a credible source of high contingency. 6 --> Which leaves intelligent choice or unintelligent chance as the two main sources of highly contingent outcomes, and where choice in our observation is a better explanation for being in statistically unlikely -- this harks back to the concept of relative statistical weight of recognisably distinct clusters of states that is so central to statistical mechanics -- functionally convenient specific target zones, which for convenience we have called islands of function. 7 --> But, are we going in circles in attempts to "define" intelligence? Not at all, as inferring inductively from empirically reliable sign to the signified causal process strongly associated with it is not a circular argument. 8 --> That is, AIG, you are actually challenging the credibility of inductive inference, and inadvertently undercutting the epistemological foundation of science itself. At least, if you are going to be consistent in your reasoning; but selective hyperskepticism ever couches at the door. 9 --> Let us briefly revisit why we label certain observed creatures "intelligent." 10 --> Namely, we commonly see a cluster of fairly unique behaviours that gives those creatures -- we happen to have some inside knowledge here, too -- fairly distinctive characteristics. We could have called it "brzippotism," but we have traditionally used the term, "intelligence." As Wiki (cited in the UD glossary summarised c. Jan 2008):
“capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn.”
11 --> I would add to that cluster, things like creativity, originality and imagination, and speak in terms similar to the Wiki "definition" of life that was already brought up in previous exchanges on this favourite talking point of yours: "all or most of . . . " 12 --> That is, we are here applying the root method of real-world definition: pointing out key cases and extending to others by family resemblance. And at some point we may be able to create a convention by which we set a border, and we may even one day adjust that border. (Despite debates, ostensive definition is the basic type, and is the foundation of our confidence in other types: if a definition does not reliably separate credible cases of X from credible non-cases of X, it is back to the drawing board. Notice how Wiki "mysteriously" does not address this part of the issue in the article on the subject. Some would say, predictably. Ostensive definition, rests on the reliability of the evident fact that we are intelligent, situationally aware creatures who can recognise what pointing out cases and non-cases means. Indeed, by and large we acquire much of our vital vocabulary ostensively. So, to try to dismiss this key learning and defining process is self-referentially incoherent. A very familiar outcome of the kind of skepticism that so often obtains today.) 13 --> To clarify the process, let us shift for a moment to a less emotionally loaded case. Astronomers of old used the term "moon" for our satellite, then one day Galileo looked at Jupiter through a telescope and lo and behold, four satellites, so "moon" got extended by family resemblance. 14 --> Planetos-- wanderer -- was the label for certain stars that did not stay "fixed." Then, post Copernicus and Kepler [Galileo was a bit of a side-show], it was realised that we too are on a planet. But this did not stop: currently, there is an attempt to reduce the number of recognised solar "planets" to eight, as it seems Pluto and a great many other trans-Neptunian objects share a common cluster of characteristics so now there is talk of dwarf planets, BTW re-promoting Ceres to a more dignified state. (The alternative seems to have been to have up to hundreds or more of solar planets. And Astronomers seemingly have not heard of grandfathering in a traditional case; which would have reduced the controversy.) 15 --> In short, precising definitions [on whatever technique] and operational definitions anchored on observations [which are again "cases in point"], across time, are flexible and responsive to what happens when we observe key cases and see family resemblance and distinctions. 16 --> It so happens that the "brzippotism" characteristics come in individuated clusters and have utility so we have traditionally labelled them as signs pointing to a common capacity of such individuals, ~~"brzippotism"~~ intelligence. And, since this is a description of a pattern of capacities,extension to other sufficiently similar cases is a reasonable approach. 17 --> In short, if we see an entity exerting all or most of the typical characteristics that are signs of intelligence, we would label that entity "intelligent." And things or processes that show such signs we call ART-ifacts, i.e. produced by art, not by accident. 18 --> As has been much discussed, such intelligence is not credibly traceable to mere embodiment, or even to having a brain. So, we have no good reason to try to confine possible intelligence to ourselves or to entities like us. 19 --> Intelligence is a capacity-cluster thing, not a body thing. 20 --> Q: Why is this issue being debated so stridently then? 21 --> A: because the traditional, otherwise acceptable approach to inductive learning and definition by example and family resemblance, will lead us where the scientific reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary materialism plainly does not want to go. 22 --> For, over the past 60 years,we have come to see that the living cell has in it: coded storage of functionally specific, complex digital information, integrated with an organised, equally functionally specific cluster of complex molecular nanomachines. 23 --> A pattern which we would otherwise -- in any non-controversial context -- immediately recognise as artifacts of intelligent cause. 24 --> But, that otherwise "no-brainer" inference cuts across a dominant ideology that is key to the power base of a particular worldview and cultural agenda. So, it is being stoutly resisted. 25 --> Why? In the end, because of what Lewontin so openly pointed out in his now notorious 1997 article in NYRB:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. [[From: “Billions and Billions of Demons,” NYRB, January 9, 1997. (NB: cf here for some remarks on context, as in a previous thread someone made some rather unfortunate attempts to indict this remark as quote mining, mistaking discreet forbearance for context-twisting.)]
______________ So, AIG, the use of dFSCI as a sign pointing to its routinely and reliably observed cause is NOT a case of empty circularity. It would be appreciated if in future you would attend to the points that have been made about how definitions work, and what types are credible. Indeed, if you succeed in making a robot that shows sufficient family resemblance to the cluster, we would be happy to accept it as intelligent. It would also be -- surprise [NOT] -- a demonstration case that intelligently directed contingency is capable of creating a new intelligence. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 21, 2010
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#352 Gpuccio You didn't answer my question at #343 - but I appreciate you are responding to many conversations at once on this thread and others. So let's leave it there.markf_{August 21, 2010
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above (#364): thank you for this sensible, pertinent, deep and very pleasant post. I specially liked the following: This was a very interesting discussion to read and it makes me really glad to be part of this community. That's my feeling too. And yes, this thread was specially good. And this: Finally, I believe much of the literature on free will/determinism is ridden with definitional and semantic issues and gimmicks as well as false dichotomies which exacerbate the problem instead of alleviating it. It’s precisely for that reason that I find it more fruitful to use simple language in addressing the matter. How true! And, obviously, all the considerations about the limits of science. The beauty of it is that its limits its glory, rather than a flaw. The worst enemies of science are those who try to change it into a philosophy or a religion... gpuccio_{August 20, 2010
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molch: Do you doubt that? Yes, absolutely. Please show me how a computer could output any page of Hamlet, or any equivalent page with new original consistent (and possibly interesting and beautiful) meaning, the way you describe. Regarding the nylonase example, I just showed you that the change achieved though random mutation is not complex. Therefore, no new CSI has emerged, even if the existing complex algorithms have used that change to implement a new higher level function. Isn't that clear? To have CSI, you need both new specification and new complexity. Here you have new specification (at least at higher level), but not new complexity. Again, if nylonase had emerged the way darwinists have so long believed, you would have both. But that's not the case. That's why darwinists for so long have used nylonase as an issue. Because they believed a wrong thing about it (the origin by frameshift mutation). Now that we know the right thing, it would be better for them to avoid the issue at all.gpuccio_{August 20, 2010
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aiguy: Now you are calling information intelligent, which makes no sense at all to me. How can information be intelligent? Honestly I think your terms are getting more, rather than less, confused. aiguy, please be compassionate! This is a blog, I often write in a hurry, late and tired. I cannot aòlways be careful to use only term you would not object to. If you have already understood my approach, please be flexible and try to understand waht I mean. Here with intelligent information I was obviously referring to the CSI already stored in the genome, which guides the development of every single biological being. I call that intelligent information because I believe that it is the product of intelligent design, that's all. There are times I am arguing the details, and times that I am just expressing my point of view, hoping that the interlocutor will understand the difference. We have no examples of FSCI that does not come from biological organisms. There is a difference: conscious beings create new CSI. The biological information written in the genome just perpetuates itself. Humans have produced Hamlet. That is different from the fact that all biological beings, including humans, acquire some behaviours, like walking, in a repetitive way, using their genetic potential, even if with the contribution of external inputs. Hamlet is CSI that had never existed before. We don't find that except as an output of human consciousness (always with the single exception of the emergence of new CSI at OOL and during evolution, which is the issue at stake). Finally, I agree with you that research about the mind body relationship can be useful for ID, but not that it is necessary for it. You seem to believe that the issue is for the moment set in the other sense. That's not true. Believing that consciousness is a product of physical objects is as arbitrary as the opposite (and, IMO, vastly more inconsistent). So, at worst, ID has as much right to go its scientific way as any phisicalist scientific theory. Research about those issues is a duty for all thinking persons, but there is no reason to attribute that duty specifically to ID.gpuccio_{August 20, 2010
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I wrote: Thus, if an ancient hunter constructs a spear, his activity would be classified as a natural cause [by your definition] indistinguishable from wind, air, and water, which are also natural causes. ---aiguy: "Uh, no. Not all natural causes do the same thing. Gravity does not do the same thing as the the strong nuclear force. Termites do not do the same things as crows. I really don’t know where you are going with this." You have classified the ancient hunter's creative effort to build a spear as the same kind of cause as wind, water, and air, defining the word "natural" in a very unnatural way and in a decidedly irrational way. [anything not created by humans]. By your definition, the human mind, which was not created by humans, is a "natural cause." If you want to say that Mozart's creative effort to write a piano composition is the same kind of cause that makes the piano strings resonate, fine. But it makes no sense. If you want so say that the tornado which wreaks havoc on a house is the same kind of cause as a burglar who ransacks a house, that's alright. But it makes no sense. If you want so say that messages coming from Mars in the form of Morse Code is the same kind of cause the forms a super Nova, I guess you are entitled to your opinion. But it makes no sense.StephenB_{August 20, 2010
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bornagain: I'll take some time to read in detail and address your monumental post tomorrow, but just some brief observations: 1) it's molch, not mulch (amphibian, not fertilizer) ;) 2) your points are very interesting, but have nothing to do with the point I was discussing with gpuccio 3) they also don't address 367, but seem to rather culminate in your invocation of the anthropic principle. that's fine, and I'll give you some of my thoughts on that soon.molch_{August 20, 2010
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mulch complete; Since oxygen readily reacts and bonds with many of the solid elements making up the earth itself, and since the slow process of tectonic activity controls the turnover of the earth's crust, it took photosynthetic bacteria a few billion years before the earth’s crust was saturated with enough oxygen to allow a sufficient level of oxygen to be built up in the atmosphere as to allow higher life: New Wrinkle In Ancient Ocean Chemistry - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: "Our data point to oxygen-producing photosynthesis long before concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere were even a tiny fraction of what they are today, suggesting that oxygen-consuming chemical reactions were offsetting much of the production," http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091029141217.htm Increases in Oxygen Prepare Earth for Complex Life Excerpt: We at RTB argue that any mechanism exhibiting complex, integrated actions that bring about a specified outcome is designed. Studies of Earth’s history reveal highly orchestrated interplay between astronomical, geological, biological, atmospheric, and chemical processes that transform the planet from an uninhabitable wasteland to a place teeming with advanced life. The implications of design are overwhelming. http://www.reasons.org/increases-oxygen-prepare-earth-complex-life As well, Plate tectonics are shown to be finely-tuned and thus tied to the 'terra forming' intelligent design perspective in this following paper: Evidence of Early Plate Tectonics Excerpt: Plate tectonics plays a critical role in keeping the Earth’s temperature constant during the Sun’s significant brightness changes. Almost four billion years ago, the Sun was 30 percent dimmer than it is today, and it has steadily increased its light output over the intervening period. This steady increase would have boiled Earth’s oceans away without plate tectonics moderating the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere. http://www.reasons.org/evidence-early-plate-tectonics Once sufficient oxygenation of the earth's mantle and atmosphere was finally accomplished, higher life forms could finally be introduced on earth. Moreover, scientists find the rise in oxygen percentages in the geologic record to correspond exactly to the sudden appearance of large animals in the fossil record that depended on those particular percentages of oxygen. The geologic record shows a 10% oxygen level at the time of the Cambrian explosion of higher life-forms in the fossil record some 540 million years ago. The geologic record also shows a strange and very quick rise from the 17% oxygen level, of 50 million years ago, to a 23% oxygen level 40 million years ago (Falkowski 2005, 2008). This strange rise in oxygen levels corresponds exactly to the abrupt appearance of large mammals in the fossil record who depend on those high oxygen levels. Interestingly, for the last 10 million years the oxygen percentage has been holding steady around 21%. 21% happens to be a 'very comfortable' percentage for humans to exist. If the oxygen level was only a few percentage lower, large mammals would become severely hampered in their ability to metabolize energy; if only a few percentage higher, there would be uncontrollable outbreaks of fire across the land (Denton; Nature's Destiny). The interplay of the biogeochemical (life and earth) processes that produce this balanced. life enabling, oxygen rich, atmosphere are very complex: The Life and Death of Oxygen - 2008 Excerpt: “The balance between burial of organic matter and its oxidation appears to have been tightly controlled over the past 500 million years.” “The presence of O2 in the atmosphere requires an imbalance between oxygenic photosynthesis and aerobic respiration on time scales of millions of years hence, to generate an oxidized atmosphere, more organic matter must be buried (by tectonic activity) than respired.” - Paul Falkowski http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev200810.htm#20081024a The Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide Cycle - video http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/7942-abiotic-factors-the-oxygen-carbon-dioxide-cycle-video.htm This following article and video clearly indicate that the life sustaining balanced symbiosis of the atmosphere is far more robust, as to tolerating man's industrial activities, than Global Warming alarmist would have us believe: Earth's Capacity To Absorb CO2 Much Greater Than Expected: Nov. 2009 Excerpt: New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110141842.htm Because of this basic chemical requirement of complex photosynthetic bacterial life establishing and helping maintain the proper oxygen levels necessary for higher life forms on any earth-like planet, this gives us further reason to strongly believe the earth is extremely unique in its ability to support intelligent life in this universe. What is more remarkable is that this balance for the atmosphere is maintained through complex symbiotic relationships with other bacteria, all of which are intertwined in very complex geochemical processes. All of these studies of early life, and processes, on early earth fall directly in line with the anthropic hypothesis and have no rational explanation, from any materialistic theory based on blind chance, as to why all the first types of bacterial life found in the fossil record would suddenly, from the very start of their appearance on earth, start working in precise harmony with each other, and with geology, to prepare the earth for future life to appear. Nor can materialism explain why once these complex bacterial-geological processes had helped prepare the earth for higher life forms, they continue to work in precise harmony with each other to help maintain the proper balanced conditions that are of primary benefit for the complex life that is above them: Microbial life can easily live without us; we, however, cannot survive without the global catalysis and environmental transformations it provides. - Paul G. Falkowski - Professor Geological Sciences - Rutgers http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/~ilozada/SOMA_astrobiology/taller_astrobiologia/material_cds/pdfs_bibliografia/Biogeochemical_cycles_Delong_2008.pdf Interestingly, when Dr. Ross factors in the probability for 'simple' bacterial life randomly happening in this universe, which is necessary for more advanced life to exist on any planet in the first place, the probability for a planet which can host life explodes into gargantuan proportions: Does the Probability for ETI = 1? Excerpt: In another book I wrote with Fuz, Who Was Adam?, we describe calculations done by evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala and by astrophysicists John Barrow, Brandon Carter, and Frank Tipler for the probability that a bacterium would evolve under ideal natural conditions—given the presumption that the mechanisms for natural biological evolution are both effective and rapid. They determine that probability to be no more than 10-24,000,000. The bottom line is that rather than the probability for extraterrestrial intelligent life being 1 as Aczel claims, very conservatively from a naturalistic perspective it is much less than 10^500 + 22 -1054 -100,000,000,000 -24,000,000. That is, it is less than 10-100,024,000,532. In longhand notation it would be 0.00 … 001 with 100,024,000,531 zeros (100 billion, 24 million, 5 hundred and thirty-one zeros) between the decimal point and the 1. That longhand notation of the probability would fill over 20,000 complete Bibles. (As far as scientific calculations are concerned, determining how close a probability is to zero, only Penrose's 1 in 10^10^123 calculation, for the initial phase-space of the universe, is closer) Dr. Ross points out that extremely long amount of time it took to prepare a suitable place for humans to exist in this universe, for the relatively short period of time that we can exist on this planet, is actually a point of evidence that argues strongly for Theism: Anthropic Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity By Hugh Ross Excerpt: Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term “anthropic principle” (1974), noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years “preparing” for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).,, Carter and (later) astrophysicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for virtually any conceivable intelligent species under any conceivable life-support conditions. Roughly 15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of “just right” conditions reflect miraculous efficiency. Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth’s rotation period lengthens, Earth’s plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth’s atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now. http://christiangodblog.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.htmlbornagain77_{August 20, 2010
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cont. mulch; Bacterial 'Ropes' Tie Down Shifting Southwest Excerpt: In the desert, the initial stabilization of topsoil by rope-builders promotes colonization by a multitude of other microbes. From their interwoven relationships arise complex communities known as "biological soil crusts," important ecological components in the fertility and sustainability of arid ecosystems.( Of note: Phylogenetic analyses performed by the researchers have further shown that the evolution of the trait occurred separately in three different genera; an example of "convergent evolution" (read evolutionary miracle story), rather than a tie to a single common rope-building ancestor.) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091116203140.htm Materialism simply has no answers for why these different bacterial types, and biogeochemical processes, would start working in precise concert with each other preparing the earth for future life to appear from the very start of their appearance on earth. n further related note, several different types of bacteria are found to be integral for the nitrogen fixation cycle required for plants: nitrogen fixation - illustration http://www.bio.miami.edu/dana/pix/nitrogencycle.gif nitrogen fixation - video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVbHIR2xZ0E Just how crucial, and finely tuned, the nitrogen cycle is is revealed by this following study: Engineering and Science Magazine - Caltech - March 2010 Excerpt: “Without these microbes, the planet would run out of biologically available nitrogen in less than a month,” Realizations like this are stimulating a flourishing field of “geobiology” – the study of relationships between life and the earth. One member of the Caltech team commented, “If all bacteria and archaea just stopped functioning, life on Earth would come to an abrupt halt.” Microbes are key players in earth’s nutrient cycles. Dr. Orphan added, “...every fifth breath you take, thank a microbe.” http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201003.htm#20100316a Planet's Nitrogen Cycle Overturned - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: "Ammonia is a waste product that can be toxic to animals.,,, archaea can scavenge nitrogen-containing ammonia in the most barren environments of the deep sea, solving a long-running mystery of how the microorganisms can survive in that environment. Archaea therefore not only play a role, but are central to the planetary nitrogen cycles on which all life depends.,,,the organism can survive on a mere whiff of ammonia – 10 nanomolar concentration, equivalent to a teaspoon of ammonia salt in 10 million gallons of water." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930132656.htm Moreover, the overall principle of long term balanced symbiosis, which is in fact what we have with the overall biogeochemical cycles of the earth, is a very anti-random chance fact which pervades the entire ecology of our planet and points powerfully to the intentional craftsmanship of a Designer: Intelligent Design - Symbiosis and the Golden Ratio - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4669633 God's Creation - Symbiotic (Cooperative) Relationships - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4023110bornagain77_{August 20, 2010
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cont. mulch; Proteins prove their metal - July 2010 Excerpt: ‘Nearly half of all enzymes require metals to function in catalysing biological reactions,’ Kylie Vincent, of Oxford University’s Department of Chemistry tells us. ‘Both the metal and the surrounding protein are crucial in tuning the reactivity of metal catalytic centres in enzymes.' These ‘metal centres’ are hives of industry at a microscopic scale, with metals often held in a special protein environment where they may be assembled into intricate clusters inside proteins. http://www.physorg.com/news197728929.html As well, in conjunction with bacteria, geological processes helped detoxify the earth of dangerous levels of metal: The Concentration of Metals for Humanity's Benefit: Excerpt: They demonstrated that hydrothermal fluid flow could enrich the concentration of metals like zinc, lead, and copper by at least a factor of a thousand. They also showed that ore deposits formed by hydrothermal fluid flows at or above these concentration levels exist throughout Earth's crust. The necessary just-right precipitation conditions needed to yield such high concentrations demand extraordinary fine-tuning. That such ore deposits are common in Earth's crust strongly suggests supernatural design. http://www.reasons.org/TheConcentrationofMetalsforHumanitysBenefit And on top of the fact that poisonous heavy metals on the primordial earth were brought into 'life-enabling' balance by complex biogeochemical processes, there was also an explosion of minerals on earth which were a result of that first life, as well as being a result of each subsequent 'Big Bang of life' there afterwards. The Creation of Minerals: Excerpt: Thanks to the way life was introduced on Earth, the early 250 mineral species have exploded to the present 4,300 known mineral species. And because of this abundance, humans possessed all the necessary mineral resources to easily launch and sustain global, high-technology civilization. http://www.reasons.org/The-Creation-of-Minerals To put it mildly, this minimization of poisonous elements, and 'explosion' of useful minerals, is strong evidence for Intelligently Designed terra-forming of the earth that 'just so happens' to be of great benefit to modern man. Clearly many, if not all, of these metal ores and minerals laid down by these sulfate-reducing bacteria, as well as laid down by the biogeochemistry of more complex life, as well as laid down by finely-tuned geological conditions throughout the early history of the earth, have many unique properties which are crucial for technologically advanced life, and are thus indispensable to man’s rise above the stone age to the advanced 'space-age' technology of modern civilization. Metallurgy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy Inventions: Elements and Compounds - video http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/20809-invention-elements-and-compounds-video.htm Bombardment Makes Civilization Possible What is the common thread among the following items: pacemakers, spark plugs, fountain pens and compass bearings? Give up? All of them currently use (or used in early versions) the two densest elements, osmium and iridium. These two elements play important roles in technological advancements. However, if certain special events hadn't occurred early in Earth's history, no osmium or iridium would exist near the planet's surface. http://www.reasons.org/BombardmentMakesCivilizationPossible Mineral http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral As well, many types of bacteria in earth's early history lived in what are called cryptogamic colonies on the earth's primeval continents. These colonies dramatically transformed the primeval land into stable nutrient filled soils which were receptive for future advanced vegetation to appear. CRYPTOBIOTIC SOIL - Excerpt: When moistened, cyanobacteria become active, moving through the soil and leaving a trail of sticky material behind. The sheath material sticks to surfaces such as rock or soil particles, forming an intricate web of fibers throughout the soil. In this way, loose soil particles are joined together, and an otherwise unstable surface becomes very resistant to both wind and water erosion. http://www.nps.gov/archive/jotr/nature/plants/crust/crusts.html http://jimswan.com/111/cryptogamic.htmbornagain77_{August 20, 2010
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cont. mulch; More interesting still, the byproducts of the complex biogeochemical processes involved in the oxygen production by these early bacteria are (red banded) iron formations, limestone, marble, gypsum, phosphates, sand, and to a lesser extent, coal, oil and natural gas (note; though some coal, oil and natural gas deposits are from this early era of bacterial life, most coal, oil and natural gas deposits originated on earth after the Cambrian explosion of higher life forms some 540 million years ago). The resources produced by these early photosynthetic bacteria are very useful, one could even say necessary, for the technologically advanced civilizations of today to exist. The following video is good for seeing just how far back the red banded iron formations really go (3.8 billion years ago). But be warned, Dr. Newman operates from a materialistic worldview and makes many unwarranted allusions of the 'magical' power of evolution to produce photosynthetic bacteria. Although to be fair, she does readily acknowledge the staggering level of complexity being dealt with in photosynthesis, as well as admitting that no one really knows how photosynthesis evolved. Exploring the deep connection between bacteria and rocks - Dianne Newman - MIT lecture video http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/496 These following articles explore some of the other complex geochemical processes that are also involved in the forming of the red banded iron, and other precious ore, formations. Banded Rocks Reveal Early Earth Conditions, Changes Excerpt: Called banded iron formations or BIFs, these ancient rocks formed between 3.8 and 1.7 billion years ago at what was then the bottom of the ocean. The stripes represent alternating layers of silica-rich chert and iron-rich minerals like hematite and magnetite. First mined as a major iron source for modern industrialization, BIFs are also a rich source of information about the geochemical conditions that existed on Earth when the rocks were made. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091011184428.htm Rich Ore Deposits Linked to Ancient Atmosphere - Nov. 2009 Excerpt: Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091119193640.htm Interestingly, while the photo-synthetic bacteria were reducing greenhouse gases and producing oxygen, and metal, and minerals, which would all be of benefit to modern man, 'sulfate-reducing' bacteria were also producing their own natural resources which would be very useful to modern man. Sulfate-reducing bacteria helped prepare the earth for advanced life by detoxifying the primeval earth and oceans of poisonous levels of heavy metals while depositing them as relatively inert metal ores. Metal ores which are very useful for modern man, as well as fairly easy for man to extract today (mercury, cadmium, zinc, cobalt, arsenic, chromate, tellurium and copper to name a few). To this day, sulfate-reducing bacteria maintain an essential minimal level of these heavy metals in the ecosystem which are high enough so as to be available to the biological systems of the higher life forms that need them yet low enough so as not to be poisonous to those very same higher life forms. Bacterial Heavy Metal Detoxification and Resistance Systems: Excerpt: Bacterial plasmids contain genetic determinants for resistance systems for Hg2+ (and organomercurials), Cd2+, AsO2, AsO43-, CrO4 2-, TeO3 2-, Cu2+, Ag+, Co2+, Pb2+, and other metals of environmental concern. http://www.springerlink.com/content/u1t281704577v8t3/ http://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/26/m026p203.pdf The role of bacteria in hydrogeochemistry, metal cycling and ore deposit formation: Textures of sulfide minerals formed by SRB (sulfate-reducing bacteria) during bioremediation (most notably pyrite and sphalerite) have textures reminiscent of those in certain sediment-hosted ores, supporting the concept that SRB may have been directly involved in forming ore minerals. http://www.goldschmidt2009.org/abstracts/finalPDFs/A1161.pdf Man has only recently caught on to harnessing the ancient detoxification ability of bacteria to cleanup his accidental toxic spills, as well as his toxic waste, from industry: What is Bioremediation? - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSpjRPWYJPg As a side note to this, recently bacteria surprised scientists by their ability to quickly detoxify the millions of barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico: Mighty oil-eating microbes help clean up the Gulf - July 2010 Excerpt: Where is all the oil? Nearly two weeks after BP finally capped the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, the oil slicks that once spread across thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappeared. Nor has much oil washed up on the sandy beaches and marshes along the Louisiana coast.,,, The lesson from past spills is that the lion’s share of the cleanup work is done by nature in the form of oil-eating bacteria and fungi. The microbes break down the hydrocarbons in oil to use as fuel to grow and reproduce. A bit of oil in the water is like a feeding frenzy, causing microbial populations to grow exponentially. Typically, there are enough microbes in the ocean to consume half of any oil spilled in a month or two, says Howarth. Such microbes have been found in every ocean of the world sampled, from the Arctic to Antarctica.,,, Joye has shown that oxygen levels in parts of the Gulf contaminated with oil have dropped. Since microbes need oxygen to eat the petroleum, that’s evidence that the microbes are hard at work. (Thank God) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews_excl/ynews_excl_sc3270 Here are a couple of links showing the crucial link of a minimal level of metals to biological life: Transitional Metals And Cytochrome C oxidase - Michael Denton - Nature's Destiny http://books.google.com/books?id=CdYpDRY0Z6oC&pg=PA203&lpgbornagain77_{August 20, 2010
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actually mulch, bacteria have dramatically terra-formed the environment of this planet to make it fit for higher life forms. Higher life forms that the bacteria could care less about: notes; From 3.8 to .6 billion years ago photosynthetic bacteria, and to a lesser degree sulfate-reducing reducing bacteria, dominated the geologic and fossil record (that’s over 80% of the entire time life has existed on earth). The geologic and fossil record also reveals, during this time, a large portion of these very first bacterial life-forms lived in complex symbiotic, mutually beneficial, colonies called Stromatolites. Stromatolites are rock like structures the photo-synthetic bacteria built up over many years, much like coral reefs are slowly built up over many years by the tiny creatures called corals. Although Stromatolites are not nearly as widespread as they once were, they are still around today in a few sparse places like Shark’s Bay Australia. Michael Denton - Stromatolites Are Extremely Ancient - Privileged Planet - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4023098 Ancient Microorganisms Helped Build 3.4-billion-year-old Stromatolite Rock Structures http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716141221.htm Both the oldest Stromatolite fossils, and the oldest bacterium fossils, found on earth demonstrate an extreme conservation of morphology which, very contrary to evolutionary thought, simply means they have not changed and look very similar to Stromatolites and bacteria of today. Odd Geometry of Bacteria May Provide New Way to Study Earth's Oldest Fossils - May 2010 Excerpt: Known as stromatolites, the layered rock formations are considered to be the oldest fossils on Earth.,,,That the spacing pattern corresponds to the mats' metabolic period -- and is also seen in ancient rocks -- shows that the same basic physical processes of diffusion and competition seen today were happening billions of years ago,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100517152520.htm AMBER: THE LOOKING GLASS INTO THE PAST: Excerpt: These (fossilized bacteria) cells are actually very similar to present day cyanobacteria. This is not only true for an isolated case but many living genera of cyanobacteria can be linked to fossil cyanobacteria. The detail noted in the fossils of this group gives indication of extreme conservation of morphology, more extreme than in other organisms. http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2007/03/amber-looking-glass-into-past_23.html Bacteria: Fossil Record - Ancient Compared to Modern - Picture http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/bacteriafr.html Shark's Bay - Modern Stromatolites - Pictures http://seapics.com/feature-subject/marine-invertebrates/stromatolite-pictures.html Contrary to what materialism would expect, these very first photosynthetic bacteria found in the fossil record, and by chemical analysis of the geological record, are shown to have been preparing the earth for more advanced life to appear from the very start of their existence by producing the necessary oxygen for higher life-forms to exist, and by reducing the greenhouse gases of earth’s early atmosphere. Photosynthetic bacteria slowly removed the carbon dioxide, and built the oxygen up, in the earth’s atmosphere primarily by this following photosynthetic chemical reaction: 6H2O + 6CO2 ----------> C6H12O6+ 6O2 The above chemical equation translates as: Six molecules of water plus six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar plus six molecules of oxygen Interestingly, the gradual removal of greenhouse gases corresponded to the gradual 15% increase of light and heat coming from the sun during that time (Ross; Creation as Science). This 'lucky' correspondence of the slow increase of heat from the sun with the same perfectly timed slow removal of greenhouse gases from the earth’s atmosphere was necessary for the bacteria to continue to live to do their work of preparing the earth for more advanced life to appear.bornagain77_{August 20, 2010
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bornagain: "once the nylon is cleaned/removed from the environment the parent strain is found to be more fit for survival than the sub-species nylon strain is. i.e. In fact to prove a gain in functional information/complexity above what was already present in the parent strain, neo-Darwinists must pass the ‘fitness test”." You seem to completely miss the point of the fitness test that you yourself propose. A fitness test is only meaningful in a particular environment, most importantly the one the organism in question currently lives in. In the environment that contains nylon, the nylon-eating strain is obviously a lot more fit than the strain that doesn't eat nylon. And that the vice versa scenario is also true is not just unsurprising, it would be surprising if it were otherwise. IF there were any organism on this earth that was equally superbly fit in any environment, then that organism would have already out-competed every other organism in any environment there was and is, and we would have a single species of organism left. Humans have gotten pretty successful in out-competing many other species in a variety of environments. But they are obviously not equally fit in all existing environments, because if a human ends up in the middle of the Pacific without a boat, he/she is obviously awesomely unfit in that environment, and will most likely die very quickly. Plankton, on the other hand, are doing just fine out there.molch_{August 20, 2010
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i.e. mulch, if neo-Darwinian evolution can't even pass the first step for increasing complexity/information above what was already present in the parent strain in the fitness test, why in blue blazes should we presuppose that it could produce countless volumes of encyclopedias of functional information that vastly surpasses man's ability to code? Three Subsets of Sequence Complexity and Their Relevance to Biopolymeric Information - David L. Abel and Jack T. Trevors - Theoretical Biology & Medical Modelling, Vol. 2, 11 August 2005, page 8 "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?" http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1742-4682-2-29.pdf The Coding Found In DNA Surpasses Man's Ability To Code - Stephen Meyer - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050638 Bill Gates, in recognizing the superiority found in Genetic Coding, compared to the best computer coding we now have, has now funded research into this area: Welcome to CoSBi - (Computational and Systems Biology) Excerpt: Biological systems are the most parallel systems ever studied and we hope to use our better understanding of how living systems handle information to design new computational paradigms, programming languages and software development environments. The net result would be the design and implementation of better applications firmly grounded on new computational, massively parallel paradigms in many different areas. http://www.cosbi.eu/index.php/component/content/article/171 The human genome, according to Bill Gates the founder of Microsoft, far, far surpasses, in complexity, any computer program ever written by man. The data compression (multiple meanings) of some stretches of human DNA is estimated to be up to 12 codes thick! (Trifonov, 1989) No line of computer code ever written by man approaches that level of data compression (poly-functional complexity). There are about three-billion letters of code on the six feet of DNA curled up in each human cell. The amount of information in human DNA is roughly equivalent to 12 sets of The Encyclopaedia Britannica—an incredible 384 volumes worth of detailed information that would fill 48 feet of library shelves! If you were to read the code aloud, at a rate of three letters per second for twenty-four hours per day (about one-hundred-million letters a year), it would take you over thirty years to read it. The capacity of a DNA molecule to store information is so efficient all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand-millionths of a gram. The information needed to specify the design of all species of organisms which have ever existed (a number estimated to be one billion) could easily fit into a teaspoon with plenty of room left over for every book ever written on the face of the earth. For comparison sake, if mere man were to try to 'quantum teleport' just one human body (change a physical human body into "pure information" and then 'teleport' it to another physical location) it would take at least 10^32 bits just to decode the teleportation event, or a cube of CD-ROM disks 1000 kilometers on 1 side, and would take over one hundred million centuries to transmit all that information for just one human body even with the best optical fibers conceivable! (A fun talk on teleportation - Professor Samuel Braunstein - http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/braunstein.html) On top of that the entire digital output of the entire world is only 10^21 bytes or 10^22 bits and Werner Gitt observes that the storage capacity of just “1 cubic cm of DNA is 10^21 bits. (DNA – deoxyribonucleaic acid.)” https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/zetabytes-by-chance-or-design/ "To the skeptic, the proposition that the genetic programmes of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of 1,000 volumes, containing in encoded form countless thousands of intricate algorithms controlling, specifying, and ordering the growth and development of billions and billions of cells into the form of a complex organism, were composed by a purely random process is simply an affront to reason. But to the Darwinist, the idea is accepted without a ripple of doubt - the paradigm takes precedence!" - Michael Denton Psalm 139: 14-15 "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;,,, When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body."bornagain77_{August 20, 2010
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This is for everyone! I think people that support the free will thesis such as myself will find this video of John Conway (mathematician from Princeton) very interesting. The Free Will Theorem as he calls it. Video: http://hulk03.princeton.edu:8080/WebMedia/flash/lectures/20090427_conway_free_will.shtml Article: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0807/0807.3286v1.pdf Enjoy!above_{August 20, 2010
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This was a very interesting discussion to read and it makes me really glad to be part of this community. I just want to briefly comment on a few points that I disagree with. -“rejected the ‘agent-causal’ view of libertarianism because the idea that a substance, rather than a property of the substance, can cause anything is unintelligible.” I’m sorry but there is absolutely nothing unintelligent about a substance causing something. This merely seems like a semantic issue than anything else… a property of a substance is a good explanation while a substance is not? Come on. I think gpuccio is absolutely right in referring to it as the transcendent self (or ‘I’). Whether we call it a substance, a pumpkin or the big bad wolf (given the unwarranted and militant stance some philosophers hold against dualism) is irrelevant. In short, what we call it is of no importance. I also think that O’Connor is perfectly within his right to insist on the irreducibility of the agent. It is not the case that for an explanation to be acceptable one must provide a reductionist or a mechanomorphic analysis of the object in question. Furthermore, I believe this approach is very misguided as the agent is in fact a subject and not an object and ought to be addressed as such. -“Agent-causal libertarianism seriously undermines human rationality because it leads to the conclusion that humans make choices for no reason whatsoever.” No. O’Connor defends the position that according to agent causality a framework is provided in which an agent may chose to utilize a specific reason, although the reason itself is not sufficient in determining behavior. Also, just because some actions of the agent might be spontaneous it does not necessarily follow that all the actions will be. So agent causality does not undermine rationality whatsoever. I also noticed that you say that the ability to act without reason is irrational. If by that you mean that the action itself is irrational then we’re fine. But if by that you mean that the notion that one can act spontaneously without specific reason to do so, then no. There is nothing irrational about the ability to act irrationally. If fact I believe that our ability to act knowingly and willfully in an irrational way (for example jump on the bed, repeat the words ‘good morning’ in 3 different languages and then kiss the palm of your right hand – something that I assume you’ve never done before nor have any specific motive in doing so) is perfectly coherent and if anything supporting of the view of agent-causation. Finally, I believe much of the literature on free will/determinism is ridden with definitional and semantic issues and gimmicks as well as false dichotomies which exacerbate the problem instead of alleviating it. It’s precisely for that reason that I find it more fruitful to use simple language in addressing the matter. -“Nobody knows if human brains do anything that is not by “law and chance”. If we do, that would mean dualism is true, and that is a metaphysical speculation that is not supportable scientifically.” The term chance is a very loosely defined term, and as I have explained in a previous thread it is often a mere substitute for human ignorance. Also, it would be more accurate to state that currently, the discipline of science is incapable of addressing the matter and furthermore, it is unknown if it may ever will. The reason I say this is not to sound rude but rather to remind all, myself included, of the limits of science and how it is not the ultimate decider of warranted knowledge. It is very far from being that actually – in fact, it will never be that – and the reason I explicate it is not so much to undermine the scientific enterprise but rather to keep it honest and grounded as so it doesn’t turn into self-refuting scientism.above_{August 20, 2010
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molch, the primary reason to presuppose that nylonase is not the random generation of functional information is because it rapidly adapts to detoxify the nylon from the environment, strongly suggesting a designed mechanism,but more importantly, once the nylon is cleaned/removed from the environment the parent strain is found to be more fit for survival than the sub-species nylon strain is. i.e. In fact to prove a gain in functional information/complexity above what was already present in the parent strain, neo-Darwinists must pass the 'fitness test". For a broad outline of the 'Fitness test', required to be passed to show a violation of the principle of Genetic Entropy, please see the following video and articles: Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? - 'The Fitness Test' - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3995248 Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria - 2008 http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/darwin-at-drugstore Thank Goodness the NCSE Is Wrong: Fitness Costs Are Important to Evolutionary Microbiology Excerpt: it (an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/thank_goodness_the_ncse_is_wro.html List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria: http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp Nylon Degradation – Analysis of Genetic Entropy Excerpt: At the phenotypic level, the appearance of nylon degrading bacteria would seem to involve “evolution” of new enzymes and transport systems. However, further molecular analysis of the bacterial transformation reveals mutations resulting in degeneration of pre-existing systems. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v4/n1/beneficial-mutations-in-bacteriabornagain77_{August 20, 2010
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gpuccio: "When you say that degrading penicillin and digesting nylon are different functions, you are right, but you arer talking of a higher level function: not the direct function of the molecule, but the function of an existing system in which the molecule is integrated." Yes, I am indeed talking about what you call the "higher level function' - because that is the function that in fact confers the survival value to the individuals that carry the trait. The molecule's activity in the cell is the mechanism behind the actual functional, survival-relevant trait. If that kind of function is not the one addressed by CSI or FCSI or dFSCI or whatever the current flavor is, then I don't know what these concepts could possibly mean at all. If the fact that "we see in this case that two similar molecules (two esterases) are integrated into two different pre-existing systems (defense, nutrition)" does not, according to you, constitute a novel function, then I don't know what in the world would. "Even if you calculate the combinatorics for words, and not for letters (which is not the case in protein domains, where the single aminoacid is the unit), a long enough phrase or discourse is certainly beyond the threshold I have given, even starting form existing sentences." Well here is your inconsistency: you want me to start assembling meaningful sentences from random words, but you know very well that, just like in the Nylonase example, where "this adaptive change happens in the context of already existent, highly structured systems, and requires a very limited random search", sentences are not developed from searching random words, but using rules of grammar and word sequences in the context of already existent, highly structured systems. No matter how "intelligent" or "complex" or "forseeing" you are, you would be completely unable to write a single meaningful english sentence WITHOUT the previous knowledge and practice of all these already existent, highly structured systems. So, you make pre-existing words fit into pre-existing grammatical frameworks by pre-existing rules every day, and you claim that the resulting function of the sentence, it's meaning, has CSI. "Just to make an extreme (but not too extreme) example, could you please show me hoe you can get the text of Hamlet from a pre-existing text with changes simple enough not to be considered CSI?" Your example in this context is, in fact, too extreme, because I have never claimed that anything as complex(referring to it's length)as Hamlet has ever come about in one single evolutionary step. However, a page out of Hamlet could easily be obtained by a reasonably small number of simple re-combinations, "point-mutations", and frame-shifts (all within the existing complex, highly structured set of rules) from other existing english sentences. Do you doubt that?molch_{August 20, 2010
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UB,
Reading your description, you make the distinction [between what humans can do and nature] based upon the idea that we have all seen what humans do, and we can tell from that. So if I understand your description correctly as you have stated it, should an instance come up where we find a (pick your own scenario) set of markings in a volcanic formation, we would start to assess the issue by first asking around to see if anyone had seen a human do it? Or is there something more substantial you’d like to add?
I'm trying my best to understand what you're asking here. Whenever we see something that is familiar to us from some animal we know of, we believe that that animal was responsible. If we see a spider web, we figure a spider was responsible. Termite mound? Termites. Bee hive? Bees. If we see some sort of "markings" in a volcanic formation, it depends what sort of markings they were. If it was recognizable as human writing, we would figure some human did it. If the markings looked like a lava flow, we would figure it was lava. If the markings didn't look like anything we'd ever seen, then we wouldn't know what caused them. This all seems pretty obvious.
My question was how would you know if you recieved a signal that “looks like a life form sent it”?
I think I've gone over this. If you read SETI papers, they discuss the various things they look for. First, they look at everything we see that is not caused by life forms and eliminate those from what they're looking for. So they don't interpret the cosmic background radiation as a sign from a life form, for example. Next, they look for things that a life form would send if they wanted (like us) to communicate over long distances. These would be narrow-band signals that don't arise from any known astrophysical events. SETI doesn't look for codes or languages or anything that looks complex - they look for simple, narrow-band E-M transmissions. Finally, if they do pick up some signal like that, they would attempt to locate its origin to see if it comes from a place hospitable to life as we know it. If it did, they might claim that they really do have evidence for astrobiological signals. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to say what it was caused by. Of course SETI hasn't found anything like that so far, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Again, my question was how would this person know what you were referring to? [when you describe something as intelligent]
Again, my answer is there may very well be disagreement about what some people think should be called "intelligent". It is a very loose, informal, subjective label. I may say something is "beautiful", for example, and somebody might agree with me while somebody else might disagree. We could provide some operational definition of "beauty" of course. We might say a face is beautiful if the features are symmetric to within some tolerance, or if the skin is smooth, etc... but these metrics would be arbitrary (not theory-driven) and also they would only apply to faces and not to landscapes for example. Same with "athleticism". We all might agree Micheal Jordan is athletic, but we might disagree about Tiger Woods. And would we call a gorilla athletic? How about a flea? A worm? There are no right or wrong answers here - they are just subjective, descriptive labels we use informally. Same with "dextrous" or "interesting" or... "intelligent". People use these words all the time and we have a general, subjective, intuitive sense of what they refer to. But none of these concepts have rigorous meanings, so none of them can ever be used in a scientific context as an explanation of some phenomenon. In order to provide a scientific explanation of something, we need to provide a precise description of it that will enable independent researchers to reliably agree on when they are observing it and when they are not.
I’d also like your clarification of something you stated earlier. You said “We in AI don’t have any need to define” intelligence. I find that facinating. Is that similar to Biology, where no universal, uncontested definition for Life can be found, but everyone gets on with it anyway?
Exactly so, yes.
Tell me, is this lack of a definition the result of no one trying to establish any characteristics associated with intelligence, or is it the result of a discipline-wide ackowledgement that no such characteristics of intelligence are necessary in order to artificially replicate them?
It simply isn't of any utility to even attempt it. Who cares what label somebody applies to my program? AI programs do what they do - they design circuits, or they recognize faces, or they learn to categorize documents, or they play chess, or they play Jeopardy. If you'd like to call these systems "interesting" or "cool" or "awesome" or "intelligent", that's fine, but it doesn't tell us anything new about these systems! "Intelligence" is not a thing, not a cause, not a force. It is a property of complex systems... but it isn't a well-defined property like mass or charge or Kolmogorov complexity. It is a property of complex systems that is a subjective, informal, descriptive label, like "interesting" or "athletic" or "dextrous" or "awesome". Have a good weekend, UB!aiguy_{August 20, 2010
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Aig,
If we found some English writing inside a volcano...
I didn't ask you if we found some words written in a volcano, I asked if we found some markings, how would you decide the cause of those marking (human or natural) based upon your definition:
" I defined “nature” in that statement to mean whatever is NOT the product of human activity. Obviously we know what is the result of human activity because we all observe ourselves and other humans every day,"
The question is - based upon your definition, how would you decide? And if your definition needs additional flushing out in order to begin to answer the question, then by all means do it.
Someone very may well not know, or disagree! It happens all the time…
How would someone disagree if they did not know what you meant to begin with? My question, again, is how would they know what you meant?Upright BiPed_{August 20, 2010
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Ciao GP, KF, SB, WJM, and others... Aig, I hope you'll take a minute over the weekend and answer the three questions I asked.
Reading your description, you make the distinction [between what humans can do and nature] based upon the idea that we have all seen what humans do, and we can tell from that. So if I understand your description correctly as you have stated it, should an instance come up where we find a (pick your own scenario) set of markings in a volcanic formation, we would start to assess the issue by first asking around to see if anyone had seen a human do it? Or is there something more substantial you’d like to add?
- - - - - - -
My question was how would you know if you recieved a signal that “looks like a life form sent it”?
- - - - - - -
Again, my question was how would this person know what you were referring to? [when you describe something as intelligent]
- - - - - - - I'd also like your clarification of something you stated earlier. You said "We in AI don’t have any need to define" intelligence. I find that facinating. Is that similar to Biology, where no universal, uncontested definition for Life can be found, but everyone gets on with it anyway? Tell me, is this lack of a definition the result of no one trying to establish any characteristics associated with intelligence, or is it the result of a discipline-wide ackowledgement that no such characteristics of intelligence are necessary in order to artificially replicate them?Upright BiPed_{August 20, 2010
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gpuccio,
I have already cvommented on the subconscious mins. As for really unconscious processes, or automatic ones, they are obviously based on intelligent information already present in our body and nervous systen structure, and that comes form the genome, os it is included in the set of biological information.
Now you are calling information intelligent, which makes no sense at all to me. How can information be intelligent? Honestly I think your terms are getting more, rather than less, confused. In any event, information comes from heredity, yes, but it also comes from the environment.
You still have to give one single example of intelligent processes which do not originate form conscious beings, or from biological information.
We have no examples of FSCI that does not come from biological organisms.
Frankly, I think that the belief that there is no evidence that consciousness can exist out of a physical framework is only a prejudice of reductionism. For centuries human cultures have believed differently. I and many others believe differently today. And I think I have many evidences, but certainly most of them would not make any sense to reductionists.
Oh, come on! They woud certainly make sense to me... and I have actively sought exactly that evidence! The best I can find is from people like Robert Jahn, and it isn't very good evidence at all. If you know of any better evidence, please provide a reference. But without that, you are projecting your unsupported beliefs onto others! Human cultures have believed all sorts of nonsense for centuries... that doesn't make it true!
BA has often cited NDEs, for example. To me, NDEs are very strong evidence of many things, including a significant independence of conscious experiences from the physical brain. Mario Beauregard has collected many valuable arguments in favor of the spiritual nature of consciousness in his book.
I have consistently pointed out that if ID wants to turn to paranormal research that would indeed make it a scientific endeavor. You ought to notice, however, that most ID proponents deny that paranormal research has anything to do with ID! If you wish to base ID on the strength of current evidence for mind/body independence, then simply say so, and be clear that ID is only scientific to the extent that your evidence for these things is scientific. I'll leave it at that - but someday we can have another thread about how sadly confused Dr. Beauregard (and his cohort Ms. O'Leary) are about these issues! (hint: placebos do not in any way discount physicalism!)
But nothing of that would ever seem meaningful to a true reductionist. True reductionists are really dogmatic people. I respect their views, as I respect those of all, but I cannot accept that their views be considered a reference for what can be true and what cannot.
I don't care about this. This is not an argument about anything. I suggest you begin to argue what you've laid out here, then. You're position is that mind can operate independently of mechanism, and your evidence comes from the "spiritual nature" of mind and from evidence like NDEs. That's fine - I'm all for it. Just be clear where your evidence really comes from. **************** UB,
AIGUY: SB asked me for a definition of what I meant by “nature” in my description of why SETI was virtually the opposite of ID. I defined “nature” in that statement to mean whatever is NOT the product of human activity. Obviously we know what is the result of human activity because we all observe ourselves and other humans every day, and we know quite well what we build. UB: This doesn’t like a rigorous delineation between what nature can accomplish versus what humans can do.
That's right - it isn't. I wasn't attempting to provide a rigorous definition of what humans can do, because nobody is attempting to explain anything by saying humans were responsible. On Earth the questions regarding who sets fires, cheats on lotteries, and commits crimes are easily solved because humans are the only animals that exist here with these sorts of abilities.
Reading your description, you make the distinction based upon the idea that we have all seen what humans do, and we can tell from that.
Of course - we all have a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience regarding the abilities and proclivities of human beings! How could you doubt this?
So if I understand your description correctly as you have stated it, should an instance come up where we find a (pick your own scenario) set of markings in a volcanic formation, we would start to assess the issue by first asking around to see if anyone had seen a human do it? Or is there something more substantial you’d like to add?
Sorry, I don't follow. If we found some English writing inside a volcano, we would obviously imagine some English-speaking human being managed to put it there. If instead we imagined something else - like another sort of animal, or a disembodied spirit - it would be pretty ridiculous, right?
AIGUY: We in AI don’t have any need to define this general descriptive term, because we aren’t trying to say that it is a scientific concept at all. It is just what we call our discipline UB: Again, my question was how would this person know what you were referring to?
Someone very may well not know, or disagree! It happens all the time... I build a system and show it to somebody, and they say "Hey - that is really intelligent!", while I think to myself actually this was a pretty trivial hack. Or, I might say "Look at this program - it's really intelligent!" and my audience says "Oh, I don't think it's so intelligent". In the end it couldn't matter less, because my systems do what they do, and they are either useful or not, and whether we subjectively label them "intelligent" or not makes no more difference than whether we choose to call them "cool" or "interesting" or "awesome". *********** William,
It is not tautological to define fsci-production as an aspect of intelligence, nor to conclude that fsci-production requires intelligence.
Correct. However, it is tautological to define intelligence soley by reference to its ability to produce FSCI, and then attempt to explain the existence of FSCI by appeal to intelligence.
One might argue that intelligence is poorly defined overall, but fsci cannot be accomplished, insofar as we know, without teleological decision-making; it’s the hallmark of fsci, it’s definining characteristic – functionally specified complex information – information that is specified for a particular function that cannot be arrived at without consideration of the target function being applied to the design process.
Human beings manage to produce FSCI by using their brains. We don't know how brains work. Maybe they operate according to laws we already understand (physics and chemistry) or maybe they operate according to laws we do not understand, or maybe there is some irreducible mental substance involved with libertarian free will too. Who knows?
I don’t think it’s reasonable to quibble that this necessarily teleological, purposeful, goal-oriented manipulation of materials and processes cannot be defined at least as one aspect of intelligence, even if it is not a comprehensive definition.
Perhaps this process you describe does not occur as you think it does. Perhaps (this is a theory of many neuroscientists, including Nobel-winning Gerald Edelmann) the brain operates by random-variation and test, in a massively parallel search. As our consciousness and narrative brain functions gain access to the results, it seems as though we have somehow arrived at our solutions as if by magic - or by res cogitans. Nobody knows how brains work. We do know, however, that we never see FSCI come from anything that does not have a functioning brain (i.e. a complex FSCI-rich mechanism).
Thus, since the only thing we currently know produces such FSCI is FSCI-rich intelligent organisms (ourselves); whereas other FSCI-rich organisms, that don’t appear to be as “intelligent”, or intelligent at all (even if poorly defined) when compared to humans, do not produce FSCI-rich product.
Since you haven't managed to define "intelligence" in any testable way apart from "able to produce FSCI", then these statements are vacuous. Why is a human intelligent? Because we produce lots of FSCI. Why isn't a worm intelligent? Because it doesn't produce much FSCI. How do humans produce FSCI? By using their intelligence! etc. You must EITHER define "intelligence" in terms of what it does (operationally) or in terms of how it does it (functionally). If you define it operationally, then your definition is "that which produces FSCI"... but you can't then attempt to prove FSCI comes from intelligence, because you have simply defined it so. Otherwise, you define it functionally (it uses this or that mechanism, neural networks or microtubules or immaterial mindstuff or whatever). If you do this, then you can attempt to demonstrate that these functions do indeed account for FSCI. Unfortunately, nobody has succeeded in this project. 30 years ago I thought we in AI would make progress toward this, and we have made some very interesting computer systems, but it is very clear that we still do not understand how FSCI is produced by human beings. And saying that we do it by being "purposeful" or "goal-oriented" says nothing at all - how do I know that a river isn't "purposeful" when it finds a path to the sea?
Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that since humans are apparently the only reliable, consistent producers of FSCI-rich product out of tens of millions of species of FSCI-rich organisms,
Well no, I think other animals do produce FSCI-rich products. Termites and bees and wasps and spiders all produce artifacts which are astronomically unlikely to occur by any other means, even if they obviously lack the sophistication of human artifacts. Other animals that we often refer to as "intelligent" because of their learning and problem-solving abilities, like dolphins and chimps, don't produce much FSCI at all!
...and unless one wishes to quibble terms, the significant difference between humans and those other animals is our intelligence-based ability to produce FSCI-rich product;
??? Intelligence is defined as the ability to produce FSCI, and you are trying to explain why we are able produce FSCI by saying it's because we are intelligent? What am I missing here?
...and since FSCI-rich organisms cannot be their own explanation, then it is reasoable to at least provisionally conclude that FSCI-producing intelligence **might** necessarily exist somehwer besides in FSCI-rich organisms.

None of that is “tautological”
These explanations are always tautological as long as you define "intelligence" in terms of what it creates (FSCI, the exact thing you are trying to explain) instead of how it works. And since we don't know how we think, you can't define intelligence in terms of how it works.
...it is reasonable to infer that the production of FSCI, at least in the case of humans, requires intelligence;
Tautologically true, again. Let's pick one, single, clear definition of the term "intelligence" in the context of ID and then stick with it. Otherwise we'll all be going around in circles forever. You can't equivocate between the functional and operational defintions... unless you're goal is to keep the debate as confused as possible :-) ***************** CJY,
First, I’m a little confused as to why you keep sneaking in the term “physical” since you have on a couple occasions stated that you physical can’t be properly defined.
Fair enough; let's just stick with "FSCI". If FSCI is an objective concept (and I do accept that, at least arguendo) then that will suffice.
So, then you agree with ID Theory proper, that intelligence (foresight, as I have defined it) — with the caveat that it is complex and FSCI rich — is required to produce FSCI?
The one thing we know that can produce FSCI is an animal with neurons, cells, sense organs, etc. We do not have any way of explaining how animals produce FSCI, so "foresight" is nothing but another way of saying "however we manage to produce FSCI". But logically, this can't be the cause of FSCI in biology. So the answer is that nobody knows how FSCI originally came to exist. ********************** StephenB, AIG: “Fair enough: “Nature” here means “anything that is NOT the product of HUMAN activity.” SB: OK. That is a good, precise definition. That would mean, however, that both the human mind, which many believe to be non-material, and the human brain, which is obviously material, are both natural. Yes.
Thus, if an ancient hunter constructs a spear, his activity would be classified as a natural cause indistinguishable from wind, air, and water, which are also natural causes.
Uh, no. Not all natural causes do the same thing. Gravity does not do the same thing as the the strong nuclear force. Termites do not do the same things as crows. I really don't know where you are going with this. This started with my explanation of why SETI was different from ID: SETI looks for things not found in nature (i.e. they look for things that are not known to occur outside of human activity), and if they find it, they will infer life (i.e. an FSCI-rich biological organism). ID looks for things found in nature (i.e. things that human beings did not produce) and finding those they attempt to infer non-life (i.e. something that is not itself an FSCI-rich biological organism).aiguy_{August 20, 2010
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molch: what you say about words and sentences is simply wrong. Even if you calculate the combinatorics for words, and not for letters (which is not the case in protein domains, where the single aminoacid is the unit), a long enough phrase or discourse is certainly beyond the threshold I have given, even starting form existing sentences. Just to make an extreme (but not too extreme) example, could you please show me hoe you can get the text of Hamlet from a pre-existing text with changes simple enough not to be considered CSI?gpuccio_{August 20, 2010
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molch: The biochemical fucntion of both molecules is very similar: they are both esterases. And the difference in structure is very small. So, there is no variation of CSI. When you say that degrading penicillin and digesting nylon are different functions, you are right, but you arer talking of a higher level function: not the direct function of the molecule, but the function of an existing system in which the molecule is integrated. Now, we see in this case that two similar molecules (two esterases) are integrated into two different pre-existing systems (defense, nutrition) through a small twik in the structure of the first which allow a shift in affinity for a substrate. But the information for the defense system or the nutrition system has not been created de novo: it was already there. As already there was the plasmid system, which is probably an active agent in the generation and utilization of the molecular change. IOW, the only real change which is (probably) attained through a random search is the mutation of those few aminoacids which tweak the penicillinase structure so that it gets higher affinity for nylon. This adaptive change happens in the context of already existent, highly structured systems, and requires a very limited random search, which is perfectly in the range of microevolution, and implies no creation of CSI. If nylonase, as darwinists have declared for a long time, had originated from a frameshift mutation of a completely different pre-existing sequence, then you would be right. But that was only a false theory.gpuccio_{August 20, 2010
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aiguy: Frankly, I think that the belief that there is no evidence that consciousness can exist out of a physical framework is only a prejudice of reductionism. For centuries human cultures have believed differently. I and many others believe differently today. And I think I have many evidences, but certainly most of them would not make any sense to reductionists. BA has often cited NDEs, for example. To me, NDEs are very strong evidence of many things, including a significant independence of conscious experiences from the physical brain. Mario Beauregard has collected many valuable arguments in favor of the spiritual nature of consciousness in his book. But nothing of that would ever seem meaningful to a true reductionist. True reductionists are really dogmatic people. I respect their views, as I respect those of all, but I cannot accept that their views be considered a reference for what can be true and what cannot. So I stick to my empirical position: if all that we know shows that biological information has the same properties as designed objects, those properties that no non designed object exhibits, I maintain that for me the best explanation is that some conscious intelligent being has designed that information. Reductionists may refuse that explanation a priori, but that is only evidence of their dogmatism. So, my science will continue to tell me that we have to look for a designer, and to gather as much information as possible about him form facts.gpuccio_{August 20, 2010
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gpuccio: molch said: "So, in your opinion, the ability to digest Nylon is the same “function” as the ability to resist Penicillin? Do you realize that that is about as absurd as claiming that a horse’s ability to digest grass is the same function as it’s ability to kick a mountain lion in the head?" gpuccio said: "You are simply wrong. Both molecules are esterases, and share the same fold" I know that both molecules are esterases and share the same fold. What that means is that the two FUNCTIONS share a similar MECHANISM. The functions themselves however, are vastly different. If you can't see that, then your interpretation of the term function must be very different from the conventional use of the term. molch said: "Moreover, your criteria for the existence of CSI would mean that your composition of an english sentence requires no CSI, because it has the same function as a french sentence, and the difference of any particular sentence you composed from at least one of all the other english sentences in existence before this one is vastly above the threshold of complexity for CSI." gpuccio said: "I really can’t understand what you mean here. Could you please clarify?" You stated that the difference between Nylonase and a previously existing enzyme, that is assumed to be the predecessor to Nylonase, is small enough to be "vastly above the threshold" of what you consider to constitute CSI. Under this definition of CSI, your composition of an english sentence requires no CSI, because the difference of any sentence you compose from at least one of all the other english sentences in existence before this one is above the threshold of complexity for CSI.molch_{August 20, 2010
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351 continued: Thus, if an ancient hunter constructs a spear, his activity would be classified as a natural cause indistinguishable from wind, air, and water, which are also natural causes.StephenB_{August 20, 2010
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