Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: js1138
ID uses the same evidence that materialists use, particularly the structure of the DNA molecule. But it evaluates that evidence in accordance with strict mathematical and statistical models and information theory (negative entropy) to compel the conclusion that inanimate matter could not have bootstrapped itself into even the most meager and information-poor cell in the mere 15 billion years the universe has been in existence.

Some very bright people agree or have agreed with this basic conclusion including the former arch-atheist Antony Flew and the late Sir Francis Crick. Crick, especially, didn't like the implications and sought to answer it by appealing to panspermia. But panspermia doesn't answer the question. It just defers it.

123 posted on 01/10/2005 6:12:51 PM PST by JCEccles
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 122 | View Replies ]


To: JCEccles
...inanimate matter could not have bootstrapped itself into even the most meager and information-poor cell in the mere 15 billion years the universe has been in existence.

Devastating. Fortunately, nobody argues such a thing about the first life forms, so I'm not sure what exactly you've devastated, but there you go.

125 posted on 01/10/2005 6:22:23 PM PST by general_re (How come so many of the VKs have been here six months or less?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 123 | View Replies ]

To: JCEccles
But it evaluates that evidence in accordance with strict mathematical and statistical models and information theory (negative entropy) to compel the conclusion that inanimate matter could not have bootstrapped itself into even the most meager and information-poor cell in the mere 15 billion years the universe has been in existence.

Yes, and Zeno proved, with impeccable logic, that nothing can travel from point A to point B. When sane people encounter an apparent paradox, they settle it in favor of evidence that the impossible event happened, and the problem is with the formulation of the logical statement.

Evolution is an observed fact. All the phenomena necessary for natural selection to produce new species are observed, both in nature and in the laboratory. We have rather good lists of species that are currently in transition.

We can observe bacteria evolving to survive antibiotics.

We can observe insertions and duplications of DNA material. We can observe changes in chrosome count. In short, all the individual parts necessary for evolution to work have actually been observed.

What has not been observed is abiogenesis. You get that point. But it looks like a slender thread to me.

126 posted on 01/10/2005 6:23:59 PM PST by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 123 | View Replies ]

To: JCEccles
But it evaluates that evidence in accordance with strict mathematical and statistical models and information theory (negative entropy) to compel the conclusion that inanimate matter could not have bootstrapped itself into even the most meager and information-poor cell in the mere 15 billion years the universe has been in existence.

Whoa there, boss. "negative entropy"? No such thing exists in either mathematics or reality. I made my fame and fortune authoring parts of modern information theory, and much of what passes for "information theory" in these arguments is grossly misapplied and generally just plain wrong. It is one of the most difficult fields of mathematics to wrap one's head around and is very counter-intuitive. Not to worry though, just because you do not grok it does not mean the other guy does either.

And charlatans like Dembski, inventing concepts that both don't exist in math and which directly contradict proven theorems, rightly attract my ire because most people do not know enough about the field to differentiate turds from chocolate. But in a nutshell, if it ain't in Li & Vitanyi (the de facto Principia Mathematica of the field), it is nonsense.

135 posted on 01/12/2005 12:30:47 AM PST by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 123 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson