Posted on 01/12/2009 7:23:26 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Yes, and yes.
Seems that the non-creator view makes a lot of unsupportable assumptions about what did and did not happen.
IF, and that’s a big if, those complicating factors weren’t part of the initial conditions, then they might have a leg to stand on.
The complexity of biochemistry alone would render chance as an improbable mechanism for life to spontaneously arise. To think of the information that is coded into DNA, the complex chemical reactions in ATP and at the hormonal level to keep the individual alive, much less successfully reproducing, is mind boggling.
It doesn’t seem that the non-creation/ID side has provided sound enough evidence to support their contention that it could have arisen without an intelligent cause, which, as scientists they are bound to do to have their naturalistic explanation have any merit.
Scientists performing carefully controlled and designed experiments in the lab only support the ID/creation side. They provide NO evidence that those same chemical reactions could have happened in nature on their own.
ANYTHING they set up disproves their contention, because anything they set up is designed, by presumably intelligent scientists, even if all they do is throw stuff at random in a beaker, so to speak.
[[The fact that the effect of a higher principle over a system under dual control can have any value down to zero may allow us also to conceive of the continuous emergence of irreducible principles within the origin of life.]]
Polanyi’s ‘thoughts’ do not matter- the scientific reality does- He claims reducing the levels shows it emerged, and that simply is not so scientifically- Wallace wasn’t ‘misrepresenting’ anything- The impossibility still exists, and Wallace went on to explain in more detail why it does in his paper- Polanyi can personally beleive anythign he likesm, but if somethign is naturialistically biologically or chemically impossible, it is just that- Impossible! and no opinion can undo that fact
Polanyi goes on to suggest that learnign to speak shows somehow shows emerging complexities- however, what he is leavbing out aas far as I understand Wallace’s claims, is that the person is endowed already with the METAInformation already that allows the emergence of language
[[Polanyi also says, by the way, that “The principles additional to the domain of inanimate nature are the product of an evolution the most primitive stages of which show only vegetative functions.”]]
This is scientifically not true- what we find are an explosion of fully ofrmed creatures, and nothign ut hypothesis beyond that point- what was once htought to be ‘primitive worm tracks’ in the ‘precambrian age’ is now, beleive it or not, thought to be grape tracks that rolled across the mud
“I did. The proof was 'cause and effect', I showed where that was wrong.” [excerpt]Did you just say 'proof'?
Williams is not misrepresenting Polanyi in the slightest. He is taking Polanyi’s argument and extending it to cover new information. For intance, during Polanyi’s time, DNA was thought to be “linear, one dimensional, one-way, sequencial code”—and mostly junk. Now we know that DNA is an “overlapping-multi-layered and multidimensional sequence that can be read forward and backward, and that the “junk” is actually “far more functional than the protein code” itself. This means that the so-called “fossilized” history that was read into “junk DNA” is now itself junk. Polanyi had no knowledge of this, and would undoubtedly concur that this makes the hurdle for naturalistic explanations for evolution even that much more impossible. But even back then, according to the paper you just cited, Polanyi recognized life’s irreducible structure. From the conclusion of the paper you just cited:
Summary
“Mechanisms, whether man-made or morphological, are boundary conditions harnessing the laws of inanimate nature, being themselves irreducible to those laws. The pattern of organic bases in DNA which functions as a genetic code is a boundary condition irreducible to physics and chemistry. Further controlling principles of life may be represented as a hierarchy of boundary conditions extending, in the case of man, to consciousness and responsibility.”
It doesn’t get much clearer than that—GGG
You have not falsified that God created life.
Well let me restate it as simply as possible.
In archaeology we recognize human artifacts by comparing found objects with objects known to be human artifacts. Because we have living cultures at various stages of technological sophistication, we can observe people making pots and arrowheads using techniques passed down from generation to generation. In other words, we know what kinds of things people make and we can directly compare made objects with found objects.
In biology, we do not have the privelege of directly observing the Creator making living things. So we have inferred the creation by analogy with human invention and manufacture. Hence the use of the word "intelligent."
But the analogy with human invention, design and manufacture fails in biology. Living things designed and manufactured by humans have footprints in their genomes that indicate they were designed by humans.
When humans modify a food crop, they use genetic material form outside the lineage of the crop. They make things whose genomes do not fit the nested hierarchy that non-engineered things share. It is easy to spot the difference between a living thing whose genome fits the nested hierarchy and one that doesn't.
One fits the mandatory constraint on descent with modification, and one does not.
So the question is, why is it so easy to spot the things that we know to have been designed? why is that when designers who are around and whose work we can observe do their thing, their work differs dramatically from work that could be the result of incremental change?
[[And yet they do not become non-viable.]]
I expalined htis to you in earlier post- every species or living thing does not necessarily becoem completely non viable, BUT they do move towards non viability them ore it gets corrupted. Species DO ahve DESIGNED systems to help deal with becoming non viable, however the trend is to move toward it. The amount of mutaytions that would have been needed to produce even ‘positive mutaitons’ far far exceeds the mutaitosn we see today, AND it would have compeltely overwhelmed species that were ‘in hte process of’ macroevolution Were it even possible biologicaslly for mutaitons to add new non species pwecific informaiton in the first place- Again, We see that entropy enters the picture preventing the whole process UNLESS you can show some naturalistic means for nature to create soemthign that overrides entropy?
Wow...miracle of miracles. Amen!
PS You notice everything!!!
Was that your reworded question btw?
The scientists are intelligent, NO?
They designed the experiment, NO?
How does that controlled experiment done in the lab demonstrate that those same reactions would occur in nature without any intelligent interference?
Do you have a link to the whole paper. I’m willing to bet that they have to intelligently set the initial conditions for this to happen. Link please.
[[Williams is not misrepresenting Polanyi in the slightest. He is taking Polanyi’s argument and extending it to cover new information.]]
Thank you- that’s states it better than I could- Wallace also said “Something “I” will refer to as a ‘polanyi impossibility” which conveys that the polanyi assertion is now somethign that Wallace has extended.
I’m going to continue asking why single celled organism do not become non viable when their generations are thousands of time shorter than human or animal generations.
A microbe population has as many mutation or copy error events in a year as a human population would encounter in a million years, and yet microbes do not become extinct.
==It doesn’t seem that the non-creation/ID side has provided sound enough evidence to support their contention that it could have arisen without an intelligent cause, which, as scientists they are bound to do to have their naturalistic explanation have any merit.
You are quite right. We both know if the other side had a leg to stand, they would be all over it in a heartbeat (as would I, if I were on their side of the debate). Instead, they are confining themselves to nipping around the edges. It’s not like I broadsided them with these papers, as I passed them out so they could prep several days ago.
Just for openers, let me observe that many biologists today evidently think that describing living entities as “machines,” or as exhibiting “machine-like” behavior, somehow restricts the entities to purely naturalistic causes. The irony here is that there is no example of a “machine” that human beings can point to that does not imply the prior existence of a designer or builder who planned and built the machine — with a purpose in mind for it. Without that purpose, the machine would not have been built in the first place.
Back to Polanyi’s statement above. For the immediately stated reason, it should be obvious that a “machine” which is living cannot be reduced to the laws of physics and chemistry. For if it’s a “machine,” (1) it must be in some fashion a “design,” implying a designer; (2) and it must be purposeful — that is, it is intended toward securing a specified goal or function. [Of course, Darwin denies goal-direction, indeed, any purpose to evolution; for that which is “random” (in the limit of natural selection) cannot be, at the same time, “purposeful.”]
On my view, Polanyi is certainly right: Living organisms cannot be explained or “reduced” to the physics and chemistry of the matter of which they consist as physical bodies. There’s more to life than “matter” in any case. And that more consists of information — which as far as we know is not “naturalistic” in origin.
As Alex Williams writes, “Most origin-of-life researchers agree (at least in the more revealing parts of their writings [he cites Nobel prize-winning biologist Christian de Duve here, 2005]) that there is no naturalistic experimental evidence directly demonstrating a pathway from non-life to life. They continue their research, however, believing that it is just a matter of time before we discover that pathway.”
To find that “pathway,” it seems obvious to me that one must discover the cause that can translate inert, inorganic matter into "living," or "animate" matter. And so we are speaking of the fundamental requirements that would allow abiogenesis to take place.
To me, the single greatest challenge to origin-of-life researchers dedicated to the hypothesis of abiogenesis is to identify and characterize the “threshold” at which matter “finds a way” to postpone the action of the second law of thermodynamics. Non-living matter in all its combinations is inexorably subject to this law. Living beings, on the other hand, obviously have “strategies” for evading it, at least for a time (i.e., the time in which they are living. When they’re dead, the law reasserts itself).
Certainly the process which Williams designates “autopoiesis” is not only a universal phenomenon common to all living beings, but it is essentially involved with “holding the second law at bay.”
Autopoiesis as defined by Williams has a five-manifold hierarchical structure:
(i) components with perfectly pure composition [i.e., material elements]Each of the hierarchical levels specifies the unique information pertaining to it. For instance, at levels (i) and (ii), it seems that the physical laws by themselves can explain what’s going on. The interesting thing here, however, is that the “algorithmic complexity” of the physical laws (based on Chaitin’s calculations) is about 1000 — 103bits. Considered as a measure of information, 1000 bits doesn’t get you very far; i.e., it doesn’t “explain” very much about the evidently “irreducible” complexity of biological entities. For instance, the algorithmic complexity of the human brain has been calculated (Grandpierre, 2008) as ~109 bits. Accordingly, there are six orders of magnitude difference between the “complexity” of the physical laws and the “complexity” of the human brain. I do not believe that the materialist supposition of science has any way to address, let alone solve, this extraordinary disparity.
(ii) components with highly specific structure [i.e., material elements combined in such a way that they may serve as “sub-components” of the biological “machine”]
(iii) components that are functionally integrated [i.e., the relation of the various subcomponents to one another in ways capable of serving a biological purpose]
(iv) comprehensively regulated information-driven processes [i.e., which “tell” the subcomponents “how” they are to work together to serve a biological purpose]
(v) inversely-causal meta-informational strategies for individual and species survival [i.e., the biological purpose itself — be it metabolism, cell repair, reproduction, “the maintenance of distance from entropy,” etc., etc.]
It’s at level (iii) where biological life begins to announce its possibility. With (iv) and (v), we know we’re “looking at it,” first in prospect (iv), and then in full actualization (v).
Williams is right to say, it seems to me, that no “lower” level of the hierarchy can exhaustively explain the properties of the next level “above” it — singly or in any combination of levels lower than the “target” level we wish to examine. That is to say, level (v) really cannot be exhaustively explained by levels (i) to (iv).
But level (5) expresses the way biological beings of all descriptions actually behave. That is, they don’t behave like “matter, obeying the physical laws.”
Well, I’ll wrap up for now. Though certainly we have only “scratched the surface” of the problem that Williams proposes here….
Thank you for posting this EXCELLENT, thought-provoking article, GGG!
He is trying to simply use logical deduction to falsify evolution, that isn't how it works. Science depends on evidence to falsify hypothesis and theories.
It is possible to invalidate a theory with a better theory. If you think that ID is a better theory (fits all the facts better) then why don't you present it? I for one would be happy to embrace a superior theory : ) Creation theory does a very poor job of fitting the facts.
And if you are ruling out deductive reasoning with respect to historical inference, you have just ruled out Darwinian evolution.
Deductive or inductive reasoning, cause and effect (interactions), guesses, questions, math, observations, etc. are all tools that scientists use to formulate and verify hypothesis and theories.
In the end though it is experimental falsification that is the deciding factor. Any theory can be logically supported or refuted depending on the assumptions. Experimental evidence on the other hand is a pretty good decider.
If ID theory is correct, then there should be a mechanism by which it operates. Find that mechanism and TOE will be disproved. Good luck : )
The paper is up at ScienceExpress. Unfortunately, that’s a subscription site. It will be published in the next issue or two of Science magazine, as well. The title is “Self-Sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme”
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.dtl
The background information: materials and methods, references and such are available free at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/1167856/DC1/1
It exists, thus God's statement to us that he created it is affirmed.
It should have been moved to either the Philosophy or Culture fora (or both), there not being an explicit "science" forum on FR. I am very sad to say....
GGG, this is a very fine article that I think people interested in the relations between science and society would find most thought-provoking. FWIW
[[So the question is, why is it so easy to spot the things that we know to have been designed? why is that when designers who are around and whose work we can observe do their thing, their work differs dramatically from work that could be the result of incremental change?]]
I’m still not gettign htis again- I’ll look at it again when I get up- but briefly, how are you determining that somethign is incremental when it coems to Macroevoltuion moves?
[[In biology, we do not have the privelege of directly observing the Creator making living things. So we have inferred the creation by analogy with human invention and manufacture. Hence the use of the word “intelligent.”]]
Agreed
[[But the analogy with human invention, design and manufacture fails in biology. Living things designed and manufactured by humans have footprints in their genomes that indicate they were designed by humans.]]
How is this a failure? Can not the human fignerprints and Intelligent causation fignerprints in purely natural examples be distinguished one fro mthe other?
[[It is easy to spot the difference between a living thing whose genome fits the nested hierarchy and one that doesn’t.]]
Nested to what? Dissimilar kinds? Or the same kinds? Again, remember, we are missing transitionals to prove beyond reasonable doubt that species are linked in a neat little nested hiearchy
[[One fits the mandatory constraint on descent with modification, and one does not.]]
Which one are you suggesting somehow moved beyond it’s own kind and shows ‘descent wit modification’? Is the biologically modified corn still not corn? Again, perhaps I’m missing hte intent of your question?
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