Posted on 02/12/2005 4:24:09 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
Unfortunately, I have seen tht same arguments applied to evolution, by people who should otherwise know better.
I haven't. Could you point to some examples?
Hey, what about *my* "civil spirit", ya jerk!?!
;-)
Hell, I'd be happily surprised if you'd do it even *once*...
I'll leave the construction of philsophical minutae to those who espouse it. The bigger the edifice, the harder the fall. With 150 years of philosophical details palming themselves off as science I reckon the fall will be somewhat uncomfortable. Of course, there will always remain a handful in their ivory towers who deny reality. I happen to be acquainted with some of them.
LOL. Nice rant. Doesn't pass for an argument; but, did you get it off your chest. I said it before and I'll say it again. Claiming piles of evidence doesn't make it so. Claiming something is evidence for a specific thing requires more than claiming it so. When it's evidence in support of a one or more other possibilities, it is hardly specific support. I'm saying nothing that first week logic students don't know; but, y'all sure don't act like you've ever been acquainted with it. I understand why you're reticent to just admit it's your "belief"; but, that doesn't make your endless claims any less dishonest or more scientific.
Now boys, STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER! (how many thousand times have I said that?) :}
Oooooooooooo I know you've been waiting for that opportunity....He He He
BTW are you the bug variety or the "weasel like" variety?
Until they do, are you going to continue to rely on it as support for your position, or set it aside while awaiting verification?
Nevertheless, even if the additional experiments were to fail in duplicating a "thinking" or "memory" on the part of the amoeba - there would yet remain the "will to live".
Again, while living things obviously employ various methods and strategies to enhance their odds of survival, it's a misnomer to call it a "will" in all cases.
This same "will to live" exists in all kinds of life forms - from bacteria to whales.
With the aforementioned objection to the terminology being employed, I agree.
It is also a collective will in some species, such as ants and bees.
As I've already pointed out, the apparent "collective will" in ants and bees and other hympenoptera is actually a "will" (*cough*) towards *individual* propagation of genes, due to the haplodiploid genetics of that group.
It is cooperative among the molecular machinery (cardiovascular, neural, etc.) required to sustain an organism such as man.
Yes, the various tissues and structures of multicelluar organisms are configured in order to sustain the organism as whole.
The "will to live" is the thrust of my preceding posts about a field-like property (being universal wrt space/time) which must exist in addition to the physical laws and constants relative to biological life to explain what we observe.
There are various false assumptions in this statement. The "will to live" is fully explainable without any "field-like property", nor any "universal with respect to space/time" property, nor "must" such a "universal field" (whatever that might be) exist "in addition" to anything in order to "explain what we observe".
The ubiquitousness of the "will to live" as you call it among living things is entirely explainable as an expected result of evolutionary processes. Individual organisms which have more "will to live" (i.e. properties of various sorts which enhance survival) than their cohorts will have a positively differential survival and reproduction rate, and these traits (the "will to live" properties) will accumulate across generations.
This also explains why the tissues, etc. of multicellular creatures act in concert to enhance survival -- selecting for "survival enhancers" is exactly what natural selection *DOES*.
There is absolutely no need to invoke a "magical", "univeral", "field" which somehow "imbues" life with survival behaviors in order to account for them. Evolution itself ensures that they will be selected and amplified in populations of living things.
But Mooooooommmmmm....
Alas, only "anecdotal"--reading in various half-remembered magazine articles while waiting in airports and such.
Please note I used the word "unfortunate" and I did not say "all too common"...
Cheers!
Dear, dear snarks! You have bet the family farm on space/time and all therein contained.
Don't I wish I had a family farm to bet!
But here's the deal. Space/time is the canvas of creation and not the Creator.
That may be true, but there's no objective, non-anecdotal evidence for it.
True, it is the expansion of space/time which gives rise to fields and thereby energy and matter and the sense of time passing in four dimensions. But space/time has a beginning - regardless of cosmology.
It seems to be the case that our little patch of spacetime had a beginning, but whether the larger arena of what might be called 'physical reality' had a beginning is not known. Here are a few links that provide interesting reading (you don't have to follow all of the math to get the gist of the arguments):
Anthony Aguirre & Steve Gratton, "Steady-State Eternal Inflation" (2002, PDF format)
Let me be clear: I'm far from suggesting that one (or any) of the above papers shows that physical reality had no beginning. All I'm suggesting is that it's possible that physical reality had no beginning. Clearly, we're still investigating the question. Perhaps we'll never achieve a satisfactory resolution of it, perhaps we will. But, meanwhile, it's in no way certain that physical reality had to have had a beginning and so had to have had a creator of some sort. The jury is still out.
When we are speaking "beyond" space/time we are speaking of the uncaused cause, God Himself. There are no spatial/temporal coordinates at this spiritual level. Physical causality is out the window. So are physical laws and constants. There is only being and becoming - harmony. Timelessness, snarks.Timelessness does not have a corollary or even a useful metaphor in space/time.
If a 'spiritual actor' is a 'non-physical actor', meaning an actor which somehow 'acts' while standing apart from matter/energy (of any sort), space (of whatever dimensionality and structure) and time, then I simply don't know what this means. If the expression 'spiritual actor' is more than merely flatus vocis, I fail to see why.
Best regards, Alamo-Girl...
It may appear that A-G and I are coming at you from two different directions and maybe we are but it is an tenet of Christianity that objective truth exists and can be found. This truth may not be able to be duplicated in a controlled setting but it is reasonable. The Gospels make the case that Jesus is special. History backs it up.
I would agree that Jesus as he is portrayed in the Bible was a remarkable individual. There's very little in his teaching or his example that I would criticize. If more of us behaved as he did, the world would be a far better place.
Precisely the point, furball4paws!
Indeed, but I think you're overlooking the obvious answer, the one I believe fb4p has in mind: "Nothing -- it evinces no 'will'".
That is why betty boop and I call it "field-like". A field is defined as something which exists at all points in space/time - e.g. gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak atomic.
In what manner is that superior to the null hypothesis of "it ain't got none and don't need none"?
We observe, at bottom, at the most primative levels of life, a field-like "will to live".
We do "observe at bottom at the most primitive levels of life", activities which can be mislabeled as "will to live", but it's not "field-like". Even if it's ubiquitous in living things, that still doesn't make it "permeating all space/time" nor "field-like".
Using information theory to analyze molecular biology, the will is the cause, the inception or beginning of a cascade of successful communication in a living organism to accomplish that will.
No it isn't, especially at the level of amoebas and so forth. Tropisms are *reflexive*, they are *reactive*, they are not "the cause, the inception or beginning" of the "cascade of successful communication".
In the amoeba, the will to live causes it to engulf a prey.
No, chemical tropisms do, which are no more based on "will" than is the way in which surface tension causes water to "climb" a capillary tube. Water does not "will" itself to rise in narrow tubes, nor could it "will" otherwise. And ameobas do not "will" themselves to engulf nutrients.
Insect -- "bugs" are technically a different subset of insects, ;-) -- I didn't learn about the mongoose variety until later, although I am now rather fond of it.
And how many thousand times have you heard: (Whiny voice):"Well he started it!"
When I first saw your name, I couldn't remember if it was flies or wasps so I looked it up and there was this vicious furry thing. I thought, this is neat, but you are not vicious. Phorids are my favorite bug :^}
If ‘science tried’ to blow smoke in order to prove something, what would this mean?
Is the media biased or science? - Both?
I thought you might find this interesting…
What do you mean? Survival is unique and without purpose, due to the mindless universe it ‘emerged’ from?
The old adage “there are none so blind, as those who will not see” comes to mind. Einstein certainly seemed to think so and said it quite eloquently:
Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, page 262
Strange how some of you cannot see the “will to live” when it is plainly obvious to so many, if not most all, of the rest of us.
When we think of a fish pulled out of the water onto the dry land, we observe the will to live as it flops around trying to get back into the water. Drop a bird from a rooftop and it’ll fly away. Step on a snake and it will coil and strike back.
One can hold his breath, try to make his heart stop beating or his brain quit functioning - but he’ll fail until he forcibly overrides the universal “will to live” that permeates every cell in his physical body by committing suicide by an intentional act of self-will.
All of the molecular machinery in the body is organized by function and cooperates together for the survival of the whole organism. When an invading bacteria or mutant cancer cell arrives in the body, it'll struggle to survive too.
Even the single cell amoeba has a will to live as do bacteria and anthrax spores which lay dormant as one of their life cycles until they are breathed into the lungs, where they seize the opportunity to actualize that will to live.
That will to live is the underlying principle of the biosphere, ecological balance. Ignorant plantlife are all caught up in this same "will to live". It applies universally, collectively, in all forms of life. That is why we say it is "field-like" - it is not peculiar to select space/time coordinates or entities.
Y’all seem to object to the “will to live” because you believe is not “needed”. That is a cop-out, a statement of religious faith, like the anthropic principle, i.e. “Nature did it!”
You excuse the amoeba by reason of the bio/chemical actions it takes without pausing to consider why it should take any action at all. Jeepers! Do this thought experiment:
Hint: the answer will not be in an “automatic” response. Only creatures who have a dormant phase in their life cycle will respond to feeding to become active. Try feeding a dead cat.
What is observed in living molecules is a change of states. This changing of states is a reduction of uncertainty (entropy) which is caused by the receipt and decoding of an incoming coded message. That is successful communication, information in biological systems.
There are three possible initiation types for such successful communications: interrupts (sensory) – cycles (like heart beats) – and will (will to live, intent, abstraction, anticipation, etc.)
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