Posted on 10/15/2009 8:15:58 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
LOLOL!
Darwin couldn't have known anything about information theory (Shannon, successful communication) or geometric physics or quantum mechanics or the myriad advancements in molecular biology.
The general criterion would be something like this: Taxonomically, the people who comprise this category are those who only admit naturalistic causes as explanations of natural phenomena because they absolutely reject any other possible hypothesis. And this rejection is not "negotiable."
That is to say they are hardcore adherents of the "Anything But God School!!!" (Up to and including such delicious novelties as panspermia theory in the area of scientific cosmology....)
The statement God is Truth — as you may know — has not only Judeo-Christian, but also classical roots and heritage. So for a Neo-Darwinist to say "Anything but God!!!" is tantamount to saying "Anything but Truth!!!" to some of us observers out here in the heartland of America.
But really, all I wanted was to have a discussion of ToE on the scientific merits, and it seems we just cannot get to that at all, we're too busy being distracted by pesonalities and politico/religious disputes. Sigh....
What do you find scientifically onerous about the proposition that God created life with the ability to evolve?
Nothing. I don't have a problem with the idea of evolution in general.
Then I don't understand the opposition to the theory that it has happened, based on the available physical evidence.
It seems to me the entire universe is evolving. The fact of evolution seems pretty clear to me. But the devil's in the details, as they say. I have no confidence in a theory of evolution that is premised on a random process, or as Jacques Monod put it, "on pure, blind chance." For I think there is abundant evidence that there are guides to the system at work. But this is the very thing that Darwin's Dogma rejects in principle.
What is "Darwin's Dogma", and does it involve personalities and/or political/religious disputes?
Do you have any confidence in radiometric dating, premised on random decay events?
One cannot say something is random in the system when he does not know what the system "is."
And the number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable. Thus, when the term random (which is a math term) is used in the sciences it actually means "unpredictable."
I see no justification for the existence of the term "random" in the Dogma of Darwin.
Indeed. Consider the case of Brownian motion. For some reason, it is convenient for people to think that this phenomenon is a demonstration of "random behavior." The term refers to the observable "jiggles" of a material particle suspended in a liquid or gas. Multiply that one particle by a seemingly almost-infinite many others comprising the system under study, and then you notice you have a problem: One cannot simultaneously account for the causal behavior of each particle comprising an incalculably many-N system on the basis of direct (and simultaneous) observation. All we know is that particles are "mass-y" objects; and thus have both gravitational and inertial properties. That is, they can affect each other, both "actively" and "passively." So, given the seeming endless complications pertaining to an even quite simple system, what one has to do is invoke stochastic methods just in order to make the problem tractable.
But just because we are forced into stochastic methods — e.g., combinatorial, Bayesean, etc. statistical formalisms — doesn't mean that we are entitled to forget that the behavior of individual particles in the system obey causal laws. And because they do, it seems to me we are not entitled to say that their behavior, either individually or in the collective, is "random."
It only looks so, to us, as observers, largely because of a limitation of human mental capabilities. We need statistical science in such cases because otherwise we could not form an impression of what we are observing.
And so, at times, we find that statistics is our friend.... It's kind of like a crutch that we sometimes need to support our native intellectual lameness.
If I might put it that way. JMHO FWIW
It's very clear to me that the invocation of stochastic methods does not necessarily imply "randomness" in the system under study.
And so, I totally agree with you, dearest sister in Christ, that there is no justification for "the existence of the term 'random' in the Dogma of Darwin."
It only looks so, to us, as observers, largely because of a limitation of human mental capabilities. We need statistical science in such cases because otherwise we could not form an impression of what we are observing.
I'll submit that brownian motion is not the only place where something is described as "random" based on limited information.
In the case of evolution, Darwin having done that seems to have been latched onto as a convenient handle to assert that the entire theory is fundamentally flawed because of it. I agree that the term "random" is misused, but I question the significance that's being assigned to it in the case of ToE.
Well if you have a question about that, I'm probably the wrong person to ask for an explanation. Ask Jacques Monod. Ask Richard Lewontin. Ask Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al. Ask the people who are invested in "randomness" as if their lives depended on it.
I didn't create this problem. So don't ask me to explain or justify it.
I thought we wanted to leave personalities out of it.
I hate to keep coming back to communications but that is what's at stake here. In common usage, the term "random" to Joe Sixpack means a roll of the dice - pure, blind, chance.
It removes any notion of a guide to the system and yet order never arises in an unguided physical system. Genetics is not Yahtzee. There are variations, yes, but the information content of Joe Six-Pick's DNA was not the result of a random sequence generator, i.e. for the most part his traits are inherited.
"Joe Sixpack" knows a roll of the dice produces a random result, but he also know it's more likely to produce a seven than a two, and that it's not going to produce a one. In the context of this conversation, I think we all understand that those same kinds of conditions apply when talking about genetic mutations and recombinations. It produces an unpredictable result, but the conditions and mechanisms involve dictate that not all results are possible, and some are much more probable than others.
We understand that in an absolute context it is a misnomer, yet we commonly and frequently do the same thing ourselves with that and other terms in different contexts. We understand those limitations and implicitly apply them to try and discern the correct meaning. In the context of evolution, I think there is some degree of "randmoness". If I say that genetically, I am a "random" child of my parents, I believe you would understand what I mean.
If you argued that if it was "random" I could have just as easily been a dalmation, so the idea of genetics is just wrong, I'd think you were being intentionally disingenuous.
betty boop wrote an excellent essay on the differences between combinatorix and Bayesian probability.
When scientists use the term "random mutations" in reference to the dogma of Darwin, they do not mean combinatorix - that the DNA content of the offspring of a human man and woman is as likely to be a cat as a human child.
They mean Bayesian probability, i.e. percentage of likelihood that the offspring will inherit certain traits of the parents - and then also the percentage of likelihood that the child will obtain a novel allele, etc. and survive to pass that along to future offspring.
In math, the term "random" literally means what Joe Six-Pack understands it to mean, i.e. combinatorix.
There is no auto-correlation in a random string. The string 123123123 is not random.
The digit at any position in a random string must be equally probable. In base ten the digit must be equally probable to be 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 or 9.
The extension of pi may appear random but it is not. It is only pseudo-random. The digit in any position of the extension of pi is caused by the calculation of a particular circle's circumference divided by its diameter. It will be the same digit in the same position no matter how many times it is calculated or on what circles.
And even if the digit at a position in the string is mostly unpredictable, it is still pseudo-random when it is caused, e.g. Chaitin's Omega random number generator. Indeed, most every random number generator uses a "seed" number thereby making the result only pseudo-random.
In the dogma of Darwin, Bayesian probability (not "randomness") makes sense once life exists in a biosphere because of the cause/effect relationship of inherited traits and variations.
However, in abiogenesis (life from non-life) combinatorix ("randomness") is always at issue. As Shroeder put it (quoting from betty boop's article):
But as Schröeder further describes the problem:
"Dice" is plural, and commonly refers to a pair. That was the initial proposition, and what my arugment was based on. I submit that it still stands, and is accurate. "A roll of the dice" is a different proposition than "A roll of a die".
Are we really having that much trouble communication, or is that important that there be some way for any argument I make to be wrong?
Only if you want it to be.
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