Interbane wrote:Yet, evolution is, at it's core, a naturalistic explanation for how information is created naturalistically.

Hi Interbane,How are you? It seems to me that pushing things back to proto-life and diminishing the information required doesn't explain how that information arose naturalistically.
Johnson says, he is happy to admit his ignorance of causes,but surely causes are the big question when it comes to origins of life and the Universe with it's Laws,matter,energy and anything else it contains.It seems to me his explanations are mechanistic,laws,functions, properties.
My appeal to codes like in D.N.A,( which he says I can't claim),are inferential and analogous.In Lennox's words "the only thing we know of capable of producing such codes are mind".No one is saying that human intelligence devised the D.N.A. code. The question remains what the alternative explanation might be.Appealing to mechanisms and laws,to me at least is unsatisfactory.A complex code indicates to me,a concept first.
While Berlinski's essay is old,I think, he still raises serious questions ,for the neo Darwinian hypothesis and it's application in areas of origins. The elephant in the graveyard, transforms itself into the ubiquitous metaphorical one found in all urban dwellings.The fossil record.
Johnson's computer simulated cheetah,suffers from the same fatal deficiences, Berlinski describes in his essay.
Finally the question of design and purpose or lack thereof. All is illusion.The material and immaterial world has neither.It has laws, properties and functions. Johnson's brain was neither purposed nor designed,it merely functions according to laws, properties.chemistry which he can explain better than I.Yet Johnson the man, Houdini like,escapes the vice like grip of the aforementioned material constraints to, plan, purpose and design. Isn't life strange?

Hi Interbane,How are you? It seems to me that pushing things back to proto-life and diminishing the information required doesn't explain how that information arose naturalistically.

Flann, my post directly explained how information arose naturalistically. Look at the complexity of a human, and compare it to a single cell microbe. That vast differential in information was all naturalistically created, by the process of evolution. What parts of my post did you disagree with?

If you want an example of the first life forms, check here.

"the only thing we know of capable of producing such codes are mind.

I'm guessing you missed my last post. We know that evolution created such codes. I explained the process.

O.K. Interbane, I'll have a look.

"I'm guessing you missed my last post. We know that evolution created such codes. I explained the process."

I'm guessing you know this and it may be a bit off topic but darwinian evolution needs life to exist in order to get the ball rolling.

Flann 5 quotes: In Lennox's words "the only thing we know of capable of producing such codes are mind."

Really? Does Lennox explain exactly how "mind" produces complex codes such as DNA?

Robert wrote;

"Of course science considers the question of God. As Laplace told Napoleon, "I have no need of that hypothesis." Laplace did not assert that the theory of a supernatural existent God was disproved, merely that talk of God as existing is superfluous and harmful to any rational or ethical endeavour."


Since your hero Laplace is dead, I'll put you to task here instead of him.

I'm not surprised you'd pull this idiotic comment out from under the mothballs where it belongs.

I'm now convinced you do not know what a hypothesis is. Here:

"A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot satisfactorily be explained with the available scientific theories. Even though the words "hypothesis" and "theory" are often used synonymously, a scientific hypothesis is not the same as a scientific theory. A scientific hypothesis is a proposed explanation of a phenomenon which still has to be rigorously tested." -Wiki


Robert, is God a scientific hypothesis?
Is God a testable hypothesis? If so, how?
Can you provide a link to a legitimate scientific study thats been published in which a God phenomenon has been rigorously tested?
Or was that simply Laplace stating an opinion that you happen to agree with?
You amaze me sometimes, Robert. That was no land-mine, that was a cow-pie you stepped in.

Robert wrote:

"As to the problem of purpose, it is scientifically basic to observe that the protoplanetary disk of the sun five billion years ago contained the potential for intelligence to evolve within it."


Really?
Okay, what is the relationship between confirmation and evidence here based on observation of the sun's Pdisk about 5 billion years ago? Are we taking into account the procedures involved in generating this confirming data?
What were the procedures, Robert?
The data indicates that potential for intelligence existed within the disk? Exactly how was this "potential" tied to observation, Robert?

Can someone help me understand Robert here, please?
He's quickly becoming the Tickle-Me Elmo of Weird Science.

ant wrote:... Laplace is ... idiotic

The point of citing Laplace, who was responsible for the clockwork universe theory of universal determinism, is to indicate that we cannot really have a coherent ethical theory that is not based on sound epistemology, ie that if we base our views on convenient imagination about divine entities then as Voltaire said, our belief in absurdities will permit atrocities. Ant's view of Laplace as an idiot is based on ant's bullying of anyone who questions ant's irrational supernatural fantasies.

ant wrote: you do not know what a hypothesis is. ...is God a scientific hypothesis?

Well, yes. The hypothesis is that a unified intelligent entity created our universe. Unfortunately there is no evidence for this hypothesis. It is almost certainly untrue, ranking with the hypothesis that teapots may be orbiting in space.

ant wrote: Is God a testable hypothesis? If so, how?

No, that is why it is probably untrue. It is unethical to promote belief in ideas that appear to conflict with all observation.

ant wrote: Robert wrote: "As to the problem of purpose, it is scientifically basic to observe that the protoplanetary disk of the sun five billion years ago contained the potential for intelligence to evolve within it."
Really? Okay, what is the relationship between confirmation and evidence here based on observation of the sun's Pdisk about 5 billion years ago? Are we taking into account the procedures involved in generating this confirming data? What were the procedures, Robert? The data indicates that potential for intelligence existed within the disk? Exactly how was this "potential" tied to observation, Robert?

Again, ant displays ignorance of simple scientific logic. It is a basic axiom of science that if something did happen then it was possible. Impossible things don't happen. Only possible things occur. Necessary conditions are required for possible events. This is basic to the anthropic principle, the observation that the early universe must have been limited to conditions that would enable life, since life exists. This axiom also helped Fred Hoyle discover the carbon formation process, based on the Sherlock Holmes exclusion principle.

Our solar system contains the necessary conditions for the evolution of life. Therefore, since intelligence exists within our solar system, the alternatives are that intelligence evolved here, or came from somewhere else. Either way, the early earth had the potential to become intelligent, through humans, since it happened. The long existence of liquid water on earth is just one of the necessary conditions that provided a suitable niche for the evolution of intelligent life.

Since it was possible, it is meaningful in some sense to suggest the purpose of the earth was to become intelligent, in Aristotle's sense of a final cause. Even though every acorn does not become an oak tree, that is the telos it contains within it. So too, intelligence is the flowering glory of our planet. Let us hope intelligent life is not a beautiful swan song and prelude to extinction.

OMG!
This is going to be fun, Robert!

What a respnse!

Im swamped now but this is too rich to ignore!

I'm guessing you know this and it may be a bit off topic but darwinian evolution needs life to exist in order to get the ball rolling.

Well then, let's pretend god created the first 8 bit proto-life that I mentioned. Does that satisfy you? Beyond that point, evolution is a perfect model of spontaneously generated information. My point is, we don't need to address abiogenesis in order to conclude that information spontaneously generates.

Compared to the zettabytes of information in our DNA, any hypothetical proto-life is a grain of sand on an endless beach. God is a wimp compared to evolution.

Tell me ant, are you denying that abiogenesis happened?

The building blocks of proto-life are all like magnets. Microscopic forces that cause them to "click" into place when in close proximity. See the link you provided earlier.

How many building blocks are needed for a replicating proto-life form? A hundred, perhaps? Twenty? Ten? And how many of those building blocks would there have been in the pre-life eras? A billion per cubic mile? A billion per cubic kilometer? A billion per cubic meter? A billion per cubic centimeter?

How many years would it take, given the conditions listed above, for a proto-life form to spontaneously generate anywhere across the surface of the planet? Ten years? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand, or a million? Five hundred million?


The conditions are all there for abiogenesis to have happened. But we will never know exactly how it happened unless we invent time travel. In other words, we know it happened at the same time we don't know which of our many models is correct. Perhaps all of them are correct. It's plausible that life spontaneously assembled through a large variety of mechanisms. Some in Asia, some in the Americas. Perhaps some of this life was based on phosphorus rather than carbon. But after a few million years, carbon based life was better suited to the environment, so phosphorus based life went extinct. We can't know which models actually happened during that time period. But at least one of them did, right?

It's rediculous.

The only thing i've really managed to sqeeze out of Ant is that he wants to find something... anything that exists in the universe but is impossible. So, he's regularly claimed just about anything he talks about has an ultimately impossible origin and so is magic and so justifies a belief in god.