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?

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 29 by DrNoGods]

But we already knew humans were capable of similar constructions, eg. putting lettering of some type onto barrels for trade, etc. So it wasn't a stretch to conclude that putting organized lettering onto a stone was also done by humans.

It was figuring out what the lettering meant that was the challenge for the Rosetta stone ... not that it was designed by an intelligent human. I don't see the analogy to DNA and evolution. We know a lot now about how it works at the molecular level, but not everything, and there's every reason to believe based on what we do know now, that extensions in knowledge along the same path will lead to a fuller understanding ... without any assumptions of ID being behind it.

okay, so it wan't an argument from the gaps, it was based on positive knowledge of the source of information systems.
Same with SETI, the information does not have to be from a human source, Earth, or a medium or format we are familiar with, to conclude ID, no matter how profound the implications. In this case you concede that you 'hope' for the implications of this particular discovery, so you have little motive to challenge the objective test for ID in information systems in this case.

The objective test itself doesn't care what the implications are.

We know that humans can do this, but it doesn't follow that because we don't yet understand 100% of all of biology at the molecular level yet that the default answer is there is some kind of ID behind it that is undefined, unseen, in fact never seen under any circumstances, etc. Again, it is an unsupported hypothesis, and an inference. If any evidence for such an ID came to pass I'd be happy to change my mind, but I think it is safe to say as I type this in late 2018 that there is zero evidence for such an ID entity ... it exists only as a hypothesis with (so far) no evidence. Zilch. On the other hand, we do have a solid groundwork for evolution based on observation (fossil record, genetics, general biology) which can continue to be researched and expanded upon. My opposition to ID is not some mental block against it, but that it has no evidence to support it of any kind other than pure inference. Where's the beef ... as the old

Wendy's commercial said?

if SETI found a tiny fraction of the digital information drifting across space, that would be the only evidence for intelligence, (only with more palatable implications for a materialist world view) because there is no known way to generate such information through natural causes- regardless of whether that information is written in stone, radiowaves, rocks on a beach, pits on a CD- it's the specified information, not the format or medium at issue here

The beef, is that ToE, likewise has no theory of the generative that can currently account for the appearance of so much specified information in so short a time.


ID does- that's what the information is pointing to- using the same criteria as SETI- notice no religious argument here so far

ToE is not just struggling with a few details, but very fundamental principles
Putting aside any philosophical objections, ID can solve a lot of problems which have only gotten progressively worse, the more we delve into the fossil record, DNA, and direct experimental evidence.

like the giraffe's laryngeal nerve an example of a design that you'd expect from evolution

That's another one, and by that rationale- if you have to exit the highway and double back a couple of miles to get to Wendy's, this is evidence that the highway was not intelligently designed.

Same goes for the wiring inside your desktop computer, the RLN mimics known intelligent design strategies.

The larger point here is that ToE, as in your example, relies very heavily on design arguments- very subjective 'bad design' arguments that keep being debunked. Darwin's Origin of Species is full of outdated bad design arguments- Only tragically- the outdated 19th C false assumptions are permissible in classrooms, while the 21st C scientific counter argument is verboten- hence their persistence


by the way- any luck finding that short necked giraffe ancestor yet?

What solid, experimental evidence is there for the existence of an intelligent designer ...apart from as a default explanation for things we don't yet fully

understand?

and again, the inference of a designer comes from what we DO understand about intelligently designed information systems- digital ones in the case of DNA, what we DON'T understand is how natural mechanisms could even hypothetically achieve the same

[mgb]

the question is then, and has always been, how you actually create all the new instructions for variations for natural section to operate on

This is where ToE ultimately relies entirely on pure blind random chance to come up with novel functional specified information-

we had no idea how mathematically problematic this was in the Victorian age, the theory was far less problematic when it was created.

Yes, the foundation of ToE is random and yes, randomness must come up with the goodies if Natural Selection is to have anything to work with. It is hard to see how random mutations could come up with, for example, a ball-and-socket joint. One of the great problems with ToE* concerns growth and form. How do mutations determine, for example, the shape of the skull? How do the curves of the skull emerge from a genetic code if all the cells in the skull have the same code? Different cells in different parts of the skull must know where they are in order to align with adjacent cells to get the correct skull shape. But how does a cell in the jaw bone know it is in the jaw bone and not in the orbit of the eye? Each cell has to know where it is in the emerging form if the correct shape is to emerge so how do they know when they all have the same genetic code?


Another objection: Most modern life has only developed since the Cambrian Explosion 550 million years ago. If we give and average of 10 years for a generation that means that most modern complex life has only had 55 million generations to evolve. That is hardly enough time for 'random' mutations to come up with the goodies. I'm afraid ToE don't work for me. There are huge missing pieces...

It should also be understood that Natural Selection does not support the idea that the mutations are random. N.S. works as well with intelligently designed systems. For example, if a car manufacturer makes a better version of a car the older version will tend towards extinction while the better version will have a greater survival chance in the market. But none of this means there is no intelligence in the design of the car. Natural Selection and Random Mutations are not mutually supportive premises of each other, because N.S. works as well when there is intelligence in the design.


*I do believe in evolution but not ToE as it is formulated. It relies too much on the Gene-of-the-gaps argument.

[Divine Insight]

Yes, the foundation of ToE is random and yes, randomness must come up with the goodies if Natural Selection is to have anything to work with. It is hard to see how random mutations could come up with, for example, a ball-and-socket joint. One of the great problems with ToE* concerns growth and form. How do mutations determine, for example, the shape of the skull? How do the curves of the skull emerge from a genetic code if all the cells in the skull have the same code? Different cells in different parts of the skull must know where they are in order to align with adjacent cells to get the correct skull shape. But how does a cell in the jaw bone know it is in the jaw bone and not in the orbit of the eye? Each cell has to know where it is in the emerging form if the correct shape is to emerge so how do they know when they all have the same genetic code?

These questions you ask are indeed scientific questions. In fact, there are scientists who are working on answering those very questions. So why don't you become a scientist and look into those questions yourself?

What is your current answer? To just throw up your hands and say, "God must be telling individual cells what to do".

Are you aware that there are huge theological problems with your conclusion? A God who needs to constantly intervene in the workings of every cell in everyone's body would then necessarily also be personally responsible for creating cancer cells.

After all, what could cancer cells possibly be in your worldview? God's errors? Then you have an incompetent God. And if they are done on purpose by God, then you have God personally responsible for everything that goes wrong in anyone's body right down to the cellular level.

One great problem with theism is that theists seem to think that they can dismiss science for various complaints they have, yet they don't seem to realize that this then means that they need to explain how this works in their theology.

But they don't bother with that. Instead they just wave it off saying, "God works in mysterious ways". Or that God's ways are too far beyond human understanding.

In other words, theology is given a free pass to be absolutely nonsensical with no further explanations required.

The theists basically takes that path of least work. I don't understand how it could be explained scientifically, therefore "God did it". No further explanation required.

What a cop-out.

A theist who wants to claim that a God is baby-sitting every single cell in every living creature needs to at least explain how this make theological sense.

Also, why is this God such an inept designer that he couldn't figure out how to make things run on auto-pilot so they don't need constant baby-sitting?

These kinds of religious apologies are not sound theologies. Just saying, "I don't understand it so God must have done it", is not a compelling argument.

[Guy Threepwood]

Yes, the foundation of ToE is random and yes, randomness must come up with the goodies if Natural Selection is to have anything to work with.

absolutely without doubt, this is what they theory relies on as a creative mechanism- yet it takes a skeptic to even openly acknowledge it... that tells you how problematic it is

It is hard to see how random mutations could come up with, for example, a ball-and-socket joint. One of the great problems with ToE* concerns growth and form. How do mutations determine, for example, the shape of the skull? How do the curves of the skull emerge from a genetic code if all the cells in the skull have the same code? Different cells in different parts of the skull must know where they are in order to align with adjacent cells to get the correct skull shape. But how does a cell in the jaw bone know it is in the jaw bone and not in the orbit of the eye? Each cell has to know where it is in the emerging form if the correct shape is to emerge so how do they know when they all have the same genetic code?


Another objection: Most modern life has only developed since the Cambrian Explosion 550 million years ago. If we give and average of 10 years for a generation that means that most modern complex life has only had 55 million generations to evolve. That is hardly enough time for 'random' mutations to come up with the goodies. I'm afraid ToE don't work for me. There are huge missing pieces...

It should also be understood that Natural Selection does not support the idea that the mutations are random. N.S. works as well with intelligently designed systems. For example, if a car manufacturer makes a better version of a car the older version will tend towards extinction while the better version will have a greater survival chance in the market. But none of this means there is no intelligence in the design of the car. Natural Selection and Random Mutations are not mutually supportive premises of each other, because N.S. works as well when there is intelligence in the design.


*I do believe in evolution but not ToE as it is formulated. It relies too much on the Gene-of-the-gaps argument.

I have a very old book on my desk with the full title

The Origin of Species... By Means of Natural Selection'

already begging the question: " of what??'

natural selection originates nothing as you note, it can only select from what is provided-
A more accurate subtitle would have been' by Means of Pure Blind Chance' and saved a lot of confusion!

To be fair, it was quite compelling in a Victorian age/ classical model of reality- where a handful of immutable laws + lots of time and space to randomly bump around in, were bound to produce jolly interesting results eventually!

The cell was a blob of protoplasm which replicated by some presumably simple chemical process, and the Cambrian explosion was a mere artifact of an incomplete record, to be smoothed out later as the theory predicted.

Woollier sheep tended to survive colder winters, so extrapolate this back.. and you can certainly see where he was coming from on a superficial level.

He did NOT have to propose that tiny nano-machines & hierarchical digital information systems with parity bit error checking systems also had to be fluked into existence by accident, or tackle explosive events as they are revealed in the record today- and so I think by his own scientific standards, he would be a firm skeptic today. As would Newton on classical physics.

Steady state and classical physics died hard, with alternative theories facing strong ideological headwinds for decades- especially where some hint of the 'forbidden hypothesis' was perceived. ToE is even more ideologically sensitive, - but we are seeing some progress in the last couple of decades I think.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 32 by mgb]

One of the great problems with ToE* concerns growth and form. How do mutations determine, for example, the shape of the skull? How do the curves of the skull emerge from a genetic code if all the cells in the skull have the same code? Different cells in different parts of the skull must know where they are in order to align with adjacent cells to get the correct skull shape. But how does a cell in the jaw bone know it is in the jaw bone and not in the orbit of the eye? Each cell has to know where it is in the emerging form if the correct shape is to emerge so how do they know when they all have the same genetic code?

A lot more is known about these kinds of processes than you seem to be aware of. There is a great book called "Life Unfolding: How the human body creates itself" (Jamie A. Davies, Oxford University Press, 2014, available on Amazon) that describes in significant detail exactly how various signaling proteins and enzymes (usually with cool names like sonic hedgehog, desert hedgehog and indian hedgehog) control some of the early stages in human development. Some of the questions you ask above are answered directly, such as how various cells "know" not only where they are, but what they are supposed to do, and when. The sequences for release of certain signaling proteins are controlled by the actions of others, and by the progress of the development itself. It is this complex regulatory process that is important, and issues like you bring up in the quoted section above are understood a lot more than you may think.

If you're really interested in answers to your questions in this area, grab a copy of Davies' book and enjoy reading it ... a lot is now known about this sort of thing. The Wikipedia page on sonic hedgehog has a little info on this (but not nearly as much as Davies' book which covers far more processes and proteins involved in development). Here are some useful links:

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

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4817553/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5144105/

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 34 by Guy Threepwood]

To be fair, it was quite compelling in a Victorian age/ classical model of reality- where a handful of immutable laws + lots of time and space to randomly bump around in, were bound to produce jolly interesting results eventually!

Why do you always reference the state of ToE back in Victorian times as if nothing has been done to advance it since then? Or make comparisons to classical physics vs. QM, or pintos vs. mustangs, or the Rosetta stone, as if these were somehow relevant to ToE?

You should grab a copy of the Davies' book I mentioned in the reply to mgb ... a lot has happened since the mid 1800s!

[DeMotts]

[Replying to post 21 by Divine Insight]

Again we already have a known mechanism capable of organizing complex information systems; creative intelligence, you are using proof of that right now.

Interesting example. Does it matter that our only sample of a "creative intelligence" is one that emerged from a more primitive state? If god exists, does this also mean that he evolved from more primitive gods?

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 34 by Guy Threepwood]

To be fair, it was quite compelling in a Victorian age/ classical model of reality- where a handful of immutable laws + lots of time and space to randomly bump around in, were bound to produce jolly interesting results eventually!

Why do you always reference the state of ToE back in Victorian times as if nothing has been done to advance it since then? Or make comparisons to classical physics vs. QM, or pintos vs. mustangs, or the Rosetta stone, as if these were somehow relevant to ToE?

You should grab a copy of the Davies' book I mentioned in the reply to mgb ... a lot has happened since the mid 1800s!

That was my point yes, a lot has happened, a lot more than originally met the 19th C eye, to have to keep putting down to blind luck, It's difficult to imagine how much more definitively Darwin's doubts could have been validated.

The specific hierarchies of development you mention described by Davies are a case in point, it's those very processes that are causing increasing problems for Toe, and scientists are increasingly recognizing this.

a little 'random variation' works fine within the range of a control genes ability to alter hair length or beak size- but apply this to part of the gene regulatory system and you're sunk.

Exactly like the difference between randomly altering the text attributes in this software- and randomly altering the source code, you cannot simply extrapolate one to the other, that's the same mistake classical physics was making in Darwin's day.

You need a lot of specified information and hardware that already supports random variation, before you can even have a mechanism that can make use of random variation. Just as gravity could never be explained by classical laws..when you try to explain a design feature by that same design feature- you are doomed to paradoxical failure

[mgb]

These questions you ask are indeed scientific questions. In fact, there are scientists who are working on answering those very questions. So why don\'t you become a scientist and look into those questions yourself?

They are working on them but they have not come up with the answers. I'm simply pointing out that fact. We are constantly told that 'genes done it' but scientists cannot show this to be the case in many instances.

What is your current answer? To just throw up your hands and say, "[i:295324eb2e]God must be telling individual cells what to do[/i:295324eb2e]".

I am pointing out the difference between established scientific fact and hypothesis. Scientists should not present hypothesis as fact.

Are you aware that there are huge theological problems with your conclusion? A God who needs to constantly intervene in the workings of every cell in everyone\'s body would then necessarily also be personally responsible for creating cancer cells.

I don't see why it is necessary to work with each cell individually. Cancer is not from God, it is a result of the fall.

After all, what could cancer cells possibly be in your worldview? God\'s errors? Then you have an incompetent God. And if they are done on purpose by God, then you have God personally responsible for everything that goes wrong in anyone\'s body right down to the cellular level.

They can be the malice of evil. Evil has intervened in evolution.

One great problem with theism is that theists seem to think that they can dismiss science for various complaints they have, yet they don\'t seem to realize that this then means that they need to explain how this works in their theology.

I never dismiss science. I make a distinction between scientism and science: https://www.peele.net/lib/atlcgene.html

But they don\'t bother with that. Instead they just wave it off saying, "[i:295324eb2e]God works in mysterious ways[/i:295324eb2e]". Or that God\'s ways are too far beyond human understanding.

Yes, they are.

In other words, theology is given a free pass to be absolutely nonsensical with no further explanations required.

I think essential theism is coherent.

The theists basically takes that path of least work. I don\'t understand how it could be explained scientifically, therefore "[i:295324eb2e]God did it[/i:295324eb2e]". No further explanation required.

That is simplistic. Theists are not mindless, they just have a different rationale.

A theist who wants to claim that a God is baby-sitting every single cell in every living creature needs to at least explain how this make theological sense.

I am not saying God is baby sitting. I am saying that the genetic code is not a convincing answer to the problem of growth and form; there are huge holes in ToE and plugging in a gene to fill the gap - well, that's the Gene of The Gaps Theory.

Also, why is this God such an inept designer that he couldn\'t figure out how to make things run on auto-pilot so they don\'t need constant baby-sitting?

Evil has infiltrated everything.

[mgb]

(Jamie A. Davies, Oxford University Press, 2014, available on Amazon) that describes in significant detail exactly how various signaling proteins and enzymes (usually with cool names like sonic hedgehog, desert hedgehog and indian hedgehog) control some of the early stages in human development.

Yes, I have no doubt that genes provide proteins and enzymes. Genes must be switched on and off during the whole process. But how can this vastly complex orchestration of switching and protein production be constructed by random mutations? It is one thing to 'describe' something, it is another to explain it.

Some of the questions you ask above are answered directly, such as how various cells "know" not only where they are, but what they are supposed to do, and when. The sequences for release of certain signaling proteins are controlled by the actions of others, and by the progress of the development itself.

Again, I have no doubt that there are signals. But this is just shifting the question back; how is this signalling process determined by the genetic code - if such a code is really responsible? How was this enormously elaborate system constructed? Random mutations? And almost all of it happened since the Cambrian Explosion only 55 million generations ago? By a blind watchmaker?