Posted on 11/25/2008 10:22:41 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.
The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature...
(Excerpt) Read more at princeton.edu ...
You are simply repeating the same assertion with trying to understand the flaw.
Let's take an example. Say we observe traffic along a long stretch of highway from a satellite in orbit. We can see that on average the vehicles move along at 60 mph.
Later we make ground observations and we find there are regulatory mechanisms for the speed of traffic. There are stop lights, speed limits, cops enforcing the rules.
None of that matters for our original observation. That is what it is. It was never dependent on the *reasons* traffic flowed the way it did. Only that it did.
So? It’s that “if” we are talking about.
Right. And you do not have the high ground. That is why it is called belief.
The aggregate rate of change (the one you are talking about) can be easily miscomputed if we failed to account for all the factors involved in creating it, particularly those factors that have a frequency of occurrence longer than the period of our measurement.
That doesn't make sense. High ground? Belief?
I'm talking about what you can know. You can believe anything you like. That doesn't mean you can know those beliefs are true.
So evolution has proven with the MOUNTAINS of evidence that has been accrued that a NON-INTELLIGENT process (which cannot be a force, nor can this process be guided either, since that would require a guider, an intelligence behind the process) created every variety of life we see today from a single common ancestor (which cannot be identified) and which came into being by some manner other than natural selection?
I think I understand. I just wish I could read a single article about evolution that would state that all of this complexity and miniature sub-subsystems within the human body comes from a non-guided, non-intelligent process. Or at the very least, admit that any subsystem that does guidance had to be proceeded by a subsystem that was created RANDOMLY, i.e. created without intelligent input. All I read is Nature or Natural Selection given Godlike powers of intelligence (and certainly implied intelligence because of the GUIDING nature of Natural Selection) over and over again as the explanation for every bit of software code or processor found within life itself. Is it the journalists or scientists who are deliberately concealing the fact that the ultimate source of all life is a non-intelligent process? In other words tell them to stop writing this Mother Nature crap and honestly admit that a non-intelligent process is always ultimately responsible for all life forms and their internal (didn't use the word designed here) subsystems.
You've established that evolution means a non-intelligent process created all varieties of species we see today, that a non-intelligent process is the root cause. Something from nothing is much easier to rationalize than a designer. Yep, God made it impossible for the Dawkins of this world to find Him. Your strong logical arguments have convinced my of the fallacy of my beliefs. Thanks for the enlightenment.
Do we now agree, SETI is NOT science?
At the moment there is no good reason to believe we cannot do research on phenomena outside our (big bang) universe. the mater and energy distribution of our universe may suggest research on objects or phenomena that are distinct from our presently known universe.
I’m not presenting this as a done deal, but you have to be careful about defining limits to science.
No you're not. This is about why man uses philosophy. And you don't like that, but of course science is based upon philosophy.
Here is how you entered the discussion ...It's not an answer. An answer is true. It's a supposition, a fantasy, a guess.
You don't have the high ground.
Once again, only if the rate of change was calculated based on the factors involved in creating it. If it was calculated simply based on observing the change over time, it doesn't matter why it changes.
I was going with the hypothetical that was proposed. I said, "for the sake of argument". There was a reason for that qualification.
The question is simple. The answers need to be carefully reasoned.
"I'm talking about what you can know."
"No you're not. This is about why man uses philosophy."
Huh? You're confusing me with someone else. We were talking about knowing what came before the big bang. We were not talking about "why man uses philosophy". Not even close.
I have used philosophical principles in answering the question. Epistemology, which relates to what you can know and how you know it.
You seem to think that if there is a point beyond which we can't know something, then you are free to either invent your own story, or assume a default story involving god.
That's what I'm talking about. If you don't want to talk about that, fine.
If one regresses back to the singularity...then that moment just prior to that singularity, there is no time, space, matter, energy which can be discerned from scientific method. Yet, here we are. So, in the realm where the laws of physics are prohibited...that point beyond which there is no matter upon which physical laws can act...beyond which there is no time for events to occur....beyond which there is no space in which matter can exist....then science can say it had nothing to do with origin of the universe out of nothing. Science says that....not theology. Yet here we are...visiting on the internet. That leaves you with 'something'...some agent...which is nonmaterial...which is nonspatial...which is 'timeless'(since there was no time prior to big bang) which created time, space, matter, energy. Wow...that is powerful....to have created such. A decision was made to create or not create. That agent chose to create.
I do not consider that a default position. Neither does Fred Hoyle when he said, "....it seems some supernatural entity has been monkeying around with physics..." or when Robert Jastrow said, "Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methodology, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos, and on earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover.....That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact." Or Arthur Eddington who found a 'beginning' repugnant because of its implication of a creator, who said the notion was 'repugnant', admitted, "The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural." These are 2 avid atheists and 1 agnostic who have more degrees than a thermometer, who wrote the books in this field, who had an a priori predisposition not to admit what they admitted. I could give you a half-dozen other prominent physisists and astronomers who say essentially the same thing.
You say, "Just postulating it doesn't answer anthing....". Well, it answers this, that you volitionally refuse to examine the evidence, and by logic come to a reasoned conclusion regarding First Cause. You do this for the same reasons as Eddington...for pride....for self. At least Eddington manned-up and was honest in what is, on its face, a reasoned, well thought-out conclusion...not a default position. You want it to be otherwise, but it is not.
How does a materialist naturalist do this using scientific method, which is the only methodology which the materialist beleives is valid? Is this some swampgas theory? When you begin by excluding the laws of physics how can you make this satement?
And you entered by belittling the philosophical answer to the question. You seem to misunderstand the genesis of logic. All logic starts with assumptions(axioms), things that cannot be proven. Science starts with the assumption(or limitation if you prefer) of materialism. The fact that someone posits a god as an answer to the genesis of the universe is not the starting point for your derision. Get it straight. You must start from somewhere. That somewhere involves unprovable things.
As Bill Cosby once asked, "Why is there air"?
The current laws of physics apply. The possibility is that universes outside our own can have a gravitational influence on ours. This would be detected by inconsistencies within ours.
I will let it go. You obviously will not assent to answer a question which I have posited multiple times. If you answer is, “Why is there air?” I have a notion of your position. Thank you.
I ask you to provide any current literature of applied methodologic scientific inquiry stating this is science. Have we tested and verified these theories. Stan Lee has theories too, but there really is not a Spiderman. If detected by our inconsistencies how would we know if it is inconsistencies. Is this really what you call science. Stephen Hawking dreamed of imaginary time, but admitted it was imaginary. People have postulated multiple universe theories, but where is the scientific evidence for them? You are metaphorically 'flinging crap' up on the barn wall to see what will stick. I am not interested in conjecture, superheroes, or make believe time. Scientific methodologic inquiry is the materialists coin of the realm, and I am happy to walk there with you, but not the imaginary.
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