Lies or Incompetence?

[ElCodeMonkey]

I am often fascinated by the fact that people cannot come to an agreement about something. I can lay out what I think is solid and rational argument only to find the recipients entirely incapable of comprehending. Similarly, the arguments brought forth to me sound ridiculous and easily defeated, but they can never see how they've been defeated so soundly and logically. It's easy to see them as incompetent or dishonest yet I strongly believe they feel the same about me. They are absolutely just as convinced as I am in the opposite direction. We often think the other side is just being dishonest, evil, or stupid. And yet the other side thinks the same. So how in the world can we ever truly know? Is there a method of knowing if we're lying to ourselves and we're the dumb ones? Has science shown anything in the brain perhaps that can reveal that we truly DO understand something but choose to reject it and so deceive ourselves? What is really going on? Or is one side of an argument actually just evil incarnate like we're led to believe?

[Divine Insight]

Does this kind of superstitious thinking truly have any place in the 21st century?

Then how do you explain why the world is as it is? Why people are the way they are? Do you really think that the holocaust was a result of an misfortunate arrangement of molecules in Hitler's genes? Do you really believe that a person can be produced by a collection of molecules?

I think you are giving genes way more abilities than they actually have.

Evolution by natural selection totally explains why there exists people like Hitler. What would you expect from a process of natural selection? Perfection?

The idea that Hitler was "evil" is utter nonsense. He was just doing what many humans unfortunately try to do. In fact, his extermination of the Jews was actually incited by Christianity.

You don't even know if a God actually exists, much less whether or not it could be understood.

Yes I do.

Yeah, right.

Have a great day in your dreamworld!

A theist who openly confesses that they believe on faith is respectable. A theist who claims to know God exists has actually blasphemed against their own religion.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 50 by mgb]

My objection is that it has not been shown that genes control growth and form.

HOX genes are involved in exactly this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hox_gene

And a lot of progress has been made in understanding exactly they work, along with many other genes and signaling proteins involved in defining body layout and structure.

How up to date are you on the progress in genetics research over the last 30 years? You've made several statements (like the one above) that are clearly outdated.

[mgb]

HOX genes are involved in exactly this:

Yes they are 'involved'. I never said genes don't play a part. But where is the code that is a blueprint of every shape and turn of, say, the spinal column? That form is encoded in the genes is an article of faith, not proven science.

Evolution by natural selection totally explains why there exists people like Hitler.

Totally? ToE is far from 'total'. It is full of cavernous holes. It is a woefully incomplete theory.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 53 by mgb]

That form is encoded in the genes is an article of faith, not proven science.

That is simply wrong. And there is no faith involved ... that is the domain of religion. The fact that you referenced a blueprint-like code is further evidence that you don't really understand how the whole process works. There is no blueprint involved with evolution or the building of something like a spinal column. This is fundamentally different from things that humans construct, or food recipes, etc., where there is a predefined set of instructions to follow to arrive at the final result.

From the Davies' book referenced earlier (p. 10):

"This is where we are forced to abandon the idea of any one of these components being in overall charge of a cell, or of an embryo. To recap: proteins are made only because active genes specify (via mRNA) that they should be made. Those genes are active only because proteins already present make them so. The logic is therefore circular: control is located nowhere, because control is everywhere."

There is a tremendous amount of detailed information in Davies' book on this type of thing, with particular focus on human embryonic development and the details of what we do know (not believe based on faith) of many steps in the process. It is proven science, and there are hundreds or peer-reviewed papers published on this and many related structures during the last 20-30 years, such as these:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12145408

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23996673

just to list a couple. But you should really get a copy of Davies's book. It is pretty easy to read, and has a ton of detailed information that proves what you are claiming is unproven science, is actually solidly proven science.

[mgb]

"This is where we are forced to abandon the idea of any one of these components being in overall charge of a cell, or of an embryo. To recap: proteins are made only because active genes specify (via mRNA) that they should be made. Those genes are active only because proteins already present make them so. The logic is therefore circular: control is located nowhere, because control is everywhere."

But this is more in the spirit of what I am saying. "Control is nowhere and everywhere." This is far from the idea of a rigid code that 'contains' in some sense, the form of a skull or spinal column.

Recent developments in epigenetics show that the environment can influence genes. If that is the case why can't the mind itself play a role? And where does it end? Maybe form and growth are determined by many things.


Re. the link to the Hox gene. Yes, genes get switched on and off and provide proteins at critical moments. But describing that activity of the Hox gene does not explain things: what is switching genes on and off? Why are genes doing what they are doing? What is orchestrating the entire symphony of genes switching and protein production? Science does not understand these things. To answer the question science needs to show where form originates: how it is transmitted from one generation to the next. That is, it needs to explain inheritance. And it IS largely an article of faith that gene codes transmit this information.

[Guy Threepwood]

"This is where we are forced to abandon the idea of any one of these components being in overall charge of a cell, or of an embryo. To recap: proteins are made only because active genes specify (via mRNA) that they should be made. Those genes are active only because proteins already present make them so. The logic is therefore circular: control is located nowhere, because control is everywhere."

But this is more in the spirit of what I am saying. "Control is nowhere and everywhere." This is far from the idea of a rigid code that 'contains' in some sense, the form of a skull or spinal column.

Recent developments in epigenetics show that the environment can influence genes. If that is the case why can't the mind itself play a role? And where does it end? Maybe form and growth are determined by many things.


Re. the link to the Hox gene. Yes, genes get switched on and off and provide proteins at critical moments. But describing that activity of the Hox gene does not explain things: what is switching genes on and off? Why are genes doing what they are doing? What is orchestrating the entire symphony of genes switching and protein production? Science does not understand these things. To answer the question science needs to show where form originates: how it is transmitted from one generation to the next. That is, it needs to explain inheritance. And it IS largely an article of faith that gene codes transmit this information.

Bingo, that's the revelation of the last couple of decades- random mistakes being made in the gene sequence- is nowhere near being adequate to explain how you turn a single cell into a human being, (which skeptics of ToE have been pointing out all along) though this is still the overwhelmingly predominant pop-science understanding.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 55 by mgb]

But describing that activity of the Hox gene does not explain things: what is switching genes on and off? Why are genes doing what they are doing? What is orchestrating the entire symphony of genes switching and protein production? Science does not understand these things.

This is exactly why I keep referencing Davie's book ... it has a lot of the answers to these kinds of questions but I obviously can't reproduce that entire book in a few posts here. That book is just one of many, and it was at least 1-2 years behind the cutting edge of research when it was published in 2014 due to the time it takes to prepare a book. So even that is ~5 years behind the times now, and the field of genetics is moving so fast that 5 years is very significant.

Science DOES understand much more about these processes now than it did 20 years ago, which seems to be where your comments are coming from when you say things like in the quote above, such as "what is orchestrating the entire symphony of genes switching and protein production." I can only reiterate to grab a book like Davies', or similar, and read it to get more detailed answers. This is far more understood than you seem to be aware of.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 56 by Guy Threepwood]

Bingo, that's the revelation of the last couple of decades- random mistakes being made in the gene sequence- is nowhere near being adequate to explain how you turn a single cell into a human being

And that is a gross simplification of what actually happens, of course. Describing it as random bumbling of mindless molecules turning a single cell into a human being sounds good as an evolution-bashing tactic, but it is a completely wrong description of how evolution, natural selection, and genetics actually does work.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 56 by Guy Threepwood]

Bingo, that's the revelation of the last couple of decades- random mistakes being made in the gene sequence- is nowhere near being adequate to explain how you turn a single cell into a human being

And that is a gross simplification of what actually happens, of course. Describing it as random bumbling of mindless molecules turning a single cell into a human being sounds good as an evolution-bashing tactic, but it is a completely wrong description of how evolution, natural selection, and genetics actually does work.

I agree entirely, that most certainly is not how life evolved- yet that's still the popular (mis)understanding as taught in schools and pop-science TV shows.

That random bumbling mindless mistakes are the creative mechanism behind everything. We already agreed natural selection can create exactly nothing, it can only select from something- that something is random bumbling mistakes according to mainstream ToE

believers and skeptics of ToE alike are looking for a better explanation at the cutting edge of all this, but any attempt to come up with a solution under the arbitrary rules of materialistic naturalism, is forced to sweep the information creation problem under the rug, push it back in time, make it some other unguided process' unsolved problem e.g. chemical evolution

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 59 by Guy Threepwood]

We already agreed natural selection can create exactly nothing, it can only select from something- that something is random bumbling mistakes according to mainstream ToE.

But there is a lot more to ToE than simply getting lucky with random mutations and ending up with legs from fins. Legs can develop from fins with no direct DNA mutations at all, via natural selection gradually changing the action of signaling proteins and enzymes (eg. their levels, and when/where they act in the growth process). This does not necessarily require any new mutations which create new proteins, but rather a change in the specifics of the growth process driven by a continued new use of the fins where a stronger supporting structure, and more coordinated and different muscle movements, are beneficial. This eventually leads to new structures called legs. It is this "pressure" from continued use of the fins in a new way that drives the process.

ToE includes this sort of thing naturally (ie. natural selection). You are describing a situation where the only way to get change such as fins becoming legs is to have random mutations which, by pure accident, cause legs to sprout where a fin was there previously. But ToE is not limited to only that kind of process ... natural selection also includes change such as the fins to legs example above, that can occur without any direct mutations in DNA.