Posted on 01/28/2005 4:28:41 PM PST by metacognative
When you hand pearls to swine, the swine bite your hand. Ad they call it "science". Of course, what swine call "science" is not science at all, but just being an animal.
No, I did not. I considered that difference when I wrote the question. I hope this clarifies.
If you have nothing more substantitive to add than this sort of petulant snottiness, I suggest that you bow out and just watch as those who are more capable of cogent contributions have their conversation.
Was my first question. You answered "B". You rejected C and D because you claim they "safely" don't answer the question "of what occurred, not what is more likely" -- that's your wording. You argue that A requires G-d and random process, and B only random process, therefore the more "logically" likely is B.
Well I can see what algebraic reduction you applied -- that is by you you call in this specific case "logic". While systematic, it is not what is generally called logic.
It is a logic biased by design to exclude G-d, by claiming that G-d is solely the province of belief and not experience or reason. For example many would assert that you cannot have existance without a Creator, nor process without a Designer.
It gets back to an early discussion on this thread about geometry. To create a logical algebra (aka symbolic proof system) about geometry one must first accept as a postulate outside the proof-system a certain small basis set -- that lines parallel at one point never met at another, that the interior angles of a triangle are 180 (euclidean) or over 180 (speherical) or under 180 (hyperbolic). etc. There are various combinations of what constitute the aprior postulates, but there have to be some.
Set theory is similar. Is the null set a set? Is the set of all sets a set?
Thus if you wanted to be most generally logical -- you might have said "Can't be detemined". But you did not -- by that you added a godfree apriori postulate.
However like you, I too, would reject "Don't know". It's a disingenuous cowards' response.
[Schroedinger] This seems to suggest that the higher temperature of the warm-blooded animal includes the advantage of enabling it to get rid of its entropy at a quicker rate, so that it can afford a more intense life process. I am not sure how much truth there is in this argument (for which I am responsible, not Simon). One may hold against it, that on the other hand many warm-blooders are protected against the rapid loss of heat by coats of fur or feathers. So the parallelism between body temperature and 'intensity of life', which I believe to exist, may have to be accounted for more directly by van't Hoff's law, mentioned on p. 65: the higher temperature itself speeds up the chemical reactions involved in living. (That it actually does, has been confirmed experimentally in species which take the temperature of the surroundings.)
[Schroedinger]o the physicist - but only to him - I could hope to make my view clearer ...
No evidence? There's no evidence against it. It is one of the possible states of the universe, and as equally possible as any other.
The "gent" in cogent does not apply in the least to you, Ichy. When you make it so -- when you start acting politely and humbly to those who seem to disagree with your Holy evoCanon, trust that I will respond in kind. Until then I shall more than match you in rudeness.
I don't completely agree, js1138. It seems to me that quite definitely selection is what ever shapes the direction of change. But, contrary to what you suggest, it must really make a difference what causes or produces the change, at least to a neo-Darwinist; for the neo-Darwinist insists that only “nature” – i.e., natural selection, understood as prompts coming in from the external environment – can be a source of selection pressure.
But it seems to me that in highly organized living systems, there are a whole lot of other “selections” that have to be made internally to the system, such that all the gadzillions of its constituting parts can operate together, cooperatively and synergistically, so as to maintain the conditions that can support biological life.
IOW, Darwinist evolutionary theory seems to account beautifully for selections made according to the external, environmental pressures, but is entirely silent about the internal, biologically- or organismically-driven ones. And for that reason I continue to suspect that the theory is somehow incomplete as a comprehensive theory of biological life. JMHO FWIW
Jeepers, bvw. That sounds so harsh. On the other hand, I cannot say the observation is unjust. Thanks for writing!
Your distillation of life and functions and anatomy and change seems to be the result of perceived algorithms. Please provide the mathematic equation for the evolutionary developement of truth, beauty,justice,mind. There are a few others which I would like to have you expound upon. Now the purine and pyrimidine bases change to result in these qualities.................Just fill in the blanks with the algebraic equations. Thank you.
But the second law of thermodynamics refers to non-reversible processes, and only to those.
Actually, Darwin had quite a bit to say about sexual selection. Descent of Man is mostly about sexual selection, not only in mammals generally, but also insects, birds, and man himself.
Good point.
Sorry you think me an animal for trying to give you some pointers.
Your argument was quite effectly argued in 1802 by the Reverend William paley, in "Natural Theology". Darwin was quite familiar with this argument, as are all biologists.
The fact is that mutations are ocurring all the time without destroying life. In plants it is even common to have doublings of chromosomes (not theory, but observation). Life is tougher than you might imagine, and the "design" of living things has more slop and redundancy than you might imagine. Look at all the parts you can remove from a human an still have something that walks around.
Even the brain continues to perceive itself as whole when large chunks of functionality are distroyed by disease or accident.
Indeed.
On the other hand, I cannot say the observation is unjust.
Excuse me??
Yeah, PH but -- good grief! Am I the only one around here to notice that, before sexual selection can be put on the table, there has to be a successfully surviving organism capable of having sex in the first place? This is precisely the part of the problem that Darwin seems to leave out of his theory.
Thousands of years, before Darwin, of breeders breeding via well-chosen sexual pairings for characteristics and yet the closest they ever came to a new species was the mule. And it can't reproduce.
I could hardly ever conceive of you as an "animal," Doc!!!! For heaven's sake, I'd be justly flayed alive, were I ever to think that for even a moment! Which, BTW, i have never done, not least because you have never given me a reason so to do.
Thank you for giving me all the pointers over a very long time by now. I am pretty sure I haven't sufficiently profited from them; but that's not your fault, and I do keep on trying anyway....
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