Posted on 02/19/2002 2:59:38 PM PST by Cameron
Yes. I am acting that way because you said that producing an example or demonstration of a computer program self-forming in a random environment was "trivial".
Now you seem to be backtracking; perhaps seeking intellectual refuge in the wilderness of potential future engineering breakthroughs...
Let me make this clear: not only were you WRONG to claim that such an exercise was trivial, but you were deceptive when you tried to extrapolate from that alleged triviality the false point that this was mathematically proven.
It is in fact decidedly unproven, and perhaps even disproven by math, Nobel Prize winners, and the lack of infinite time.
Yes, not "trivial" at all...
Congrats, you've also finally managed to agree with Prigogine.
Yes, that's what the Theory of Evolution rests upon. It's a good theory, and might even potentially be correct, but those combinations of chemicals have not been shown to naturally self-form into useful DNA in the lab (or in any lifeless, unintelligent environment). The biases are there in the chemicals, but the emergence of stable sequences of DNA simply hasn't happened.
That's a far cry from "mathematically proven".
Please explain. How does sand process data (i.e., compute)?
The reason is that jurisdiction, more than inherent behavior, becomes a problem when claims of knowledge of good and evil occurs. Often, for example, the jury of peers system in a courtroom is often mistaken to be an agent by which right and wrong is judged, but it is not the case since the jury of peers does not advise nor determine a punishment sentence, it only looks at evidence and come to an agreement about what might have happened. There is no vigilante jurisdiction of the jury against the defendant, and juries are told to be impartial and presume the person innocent for this very reason. If good vs. evil were the jury's concern, then the jury would never be impartial since jury members might have a completely different idea, irrelevant of the case, as to what is right or wrong.
Again, it seems that the more one knows about good and evil, the more one is prone to this political vigilantism that destroys justice and the function of society through jurisdiction violations. Much like quantum mechanics, the more observable is the object in position (a society's state of evilness), the less we know about its speed (a society's direction in controling this evilness).
Mathematicians, many of those I have met, share interest in political systems like communism, invariably making the atheist's error that for society to be ideal, it needs to be controllable, i.e. it needs to be fully observable and it needs to be controlled with improving systems. However the communist is always partial from the get go in such a system, he his adherent to a system of politicaly correct form of vigilante rule, and it is often confusing actions against evil from evil actions that violate people through vigilante lynchings. Hence the communist will often act for his own benefit than for removing what it perceives is evil. After all, what else means a system to improve society through social "justice" but a system by which a person sees a personal benefit through control (a society or socialism that fits their needs), as opposed to really improving society. Social justice is not about justice, it rather is social vigilantism and government/bureaucratic encroachments on a person's jurisdiction.
Note that courtrooms have a jurisdiction of their own, however, as through the judge. But the bringing of a court case is supposed to be initialy a case that aims to shed light on the truth and events so that society may learn from situations. Court cases, originaly, are ex-jurisdiction. Only prosecutors appropriate jurisdiction in accusing the defendant of having themselves gone beyond the bounds of their allowable jurisdiction in society, the crime of all crimes.
It will hence always amaze me when doctors or so called experts claim they benefit society in the case of abortion, when they insist it is a private case that is no one's business to judge but themselves with the patient. That, people, is a refusal to look at an activity in scientific manner through a jury of peers, an activity that violates the jurisdiction and life of the child, a choice of condemnation they make based on their own personal beliefs and ideas, away from the public need to know of this operation done on society. Prosecutors have been having a very hard time winning cases against this jurisdiction infringment because the main witness is never able to speak for itself and because of other difficulties.
The difficulty, again, in attaining justice, is that people have a difficulty understanding justice because we all learn to think with a Matrix of definitions and memories. We control our environement by translating its perception into a language that our brain then translates into lower level impulses (as per the brain lambda computation theory) for mental processing. Seeing a red ball, the child can decompose the content of the object in color components, motion attributes, textures, volumetric shape and dynamic characteristics such as rolling. In order to control the ball the child gives a name to each of these components. Once the ball behaves in expected manner, the child can form sentences with the stored characteristics of the ball. Hence "the ball is rolling" is a form of computer language describing what the child perceives. This language is then processed to lambda calculations that enable the child to react neurologicaly to the situation.
Note that we learn to live by being able to observe and control. Yet the Bible forbids us that expressedly in matters of morals and other taboos for the expressed reason that things like love or morals are not identifyable via computations. Hence the Bible forbids us, IMO, from claiming to digging information from our matrix of knowledge in oder to make a decision on those matters. After all, we may define things which ever way we want in relativistic manner. That makes any of our claims to explain behavior completely ludicrous.
Moreover, the Bible's taboos are jurisdictional taboos, not behavioral taboos per say. Hence, for example, one shall not commit adultery because that causes out of wedlock pregnancies, a situation that violates the child's right. The sexual act in itself is not blamed, it is the violation of jurisdiction.
So one may ask then how can we judge even a violation of jurisdiction if it cannot be judged. Well, we are not talking about judging here, we are talking about a fact finding mission from a jury of peers. We also are talking about a prosecution justifying itself behind the counterprosecuting argument: the defendant prosecuted, so we will prosecute back, both opposite parties are obviously checking each other and making partial judgmental claims of their own, and now a jury of peers will come in between and look at what is happening in impartiality.
Hence, since life is not perfect and that crimes and prosecutions are inevitable, these crimes and prosecutions need to balance and check each other so that the community can be served by this conflict in intelligent manner. A communist system would essentialy do away with that and implement daily controls on people's lives to work toward a goal in militarist prosecution. In fact any system with a goal out there is prosecuting, save for those systems that understand that the "goal" is not prosecuting a goal, but checks and balances to serve society, a sort of goaless goal.
Another angle on Biblical novelty is the term love. Love is essentialy a claimless claim, much like above's goaless goal. Love is more tactical than the strategic checks and balances. Solomon, after all, did not cut that baby in half, not because he knew in his Matrix of perceptions that the baby belonged in fact to that harlot as opposed to the other, but because that one lady showed love. She did not make a claim on the child, nor did she characterise or define anything in particular, characteristics derived from one's intelligence and knowledge matrix, no, she just accomplished by inserting herself between the blade and the child, as opposed to actuated her surroundings through persuasive talk or blames.
She did not even counter prosecute Solomon nor criticised him, but acknowledged that no one's personal definition of the situation was justified, including her own definition of the child as hers, as well as the other woman's claim. In fact she would rather die as a sinner herself and let the child live with the other woman. She makes a claimless claim. She claims for the child's own life out of love; she does not give up the child willingly to the other harlot out of love; yet she would rather die and have the child taken away from her by force out of love; she does not claim the life of the child either, seeing to it that the child is not the object of the dispute but lack of love. She claims without claiming. She claims without claiming a particular object that can be palpable or memorable in one's matrix of definitions.
We see hence, as in many other compromises in the Bible that can be interpreted one way or the other, that there is a definite vital message there that cannot be compromised in the end, and the main ones listed above can be concluded as follows. Judgment of people, as opposed to judgment of things or animals, transcends sought out knowledge, and those who seek judgment of people and institutions of people are to be judged themselves with a counterprosecution. Love too transcends sought out knowledge, and those who love should be rewarded with the stewardship they prove, for they do not give up this stewardship, yet would rather die and lose stewardship in front line battles while protecting the object of stewardship, than seeing the oject of stewardship being ravaged by the enemy, let alone by their own cowardice.
Because you have a life :)
Perhaps it's because the regular evolution vs. creationism crew isn't participating yet.
I don't understand why the two stances must be mutually exclusive. Is life a series of coincidental circumstances or is life the product of intelligent design? As it stands right now, both positions require fairly large leaps in faith since science has yet to recreate the "soup of life", and God has not favored us with a second Adam.
Well, if there were no other evidence for evolution, I suppose we'd all have to go out and chase the "soup of life," (which seems to be the new "missing link," now that so many pre-human species have been found). But since there are literally mountains of evidence for evolution, I don't think there's all that much faith involved. Just reasoning.
I don't think "pre-human" ancestors have been established. Since man is the relative newcomer in the evolutionary cycle it would seem to me that the evolutionary trail would be the clearest and yet, there has been no clear evidence that man is the product of macro-evolution.
My friend, VadeRetro, can provide you with numerous links to a load of such evidence, and he probably will, as soon as he gets this ping. The progression of skulls from the early homonids to our own wonderful species will astonish you. And it's beyond dispute that we share a tremendous amount of our genetic material with other homonids, more so than with any other species on earth. But even if you don't find such evidence persuasive, it's still the only game in town. There's literally zero evidence for any other origin for man. (Mythology and conjecture aren't evidence, I'm sure you'll agree.)
Can you give an example of an on-going, cross-species evolutionary process that is under scientific study or has natural evolution ended?
I whole-heartedly agree with you here. If all physical processes were deterministic, then intelligence and free-choice are illusions. Well, maybe they are, but I don't think so.
From a (deterministic) physics perspective, we are nothing more than a very large collection of mutually interacting particles. The particles of which we are made don't have minds of their own, and must obey the laws of physics. Although it is beyond our comprehension to know the precise state of every particle, every atom, every electron, etc., in our bodies (and the surrounding nvvironment), in principle, every action, every thought, every decision is pre-determined. Because the interactions between every particle of which we are made must obey the laws of physics. That is, in a deterministic perspective.
Maybe, when God said he gave us free-choice, this is what he meant. maybe he could easily have made a perfectly deterministic universe, but instead he included these few non-deterministic interactions precisely for this reason.
In any case, I agree that 'mind' and 'consciousness' are manifestations of the randomness of which you speak.
I've found some other good links lately but these two will give you the overall picture.
Forgive me if this is old hat, but you click on the thumbnails for the bigger picture.
I'm really not sure what you're asking for. Surely you don't expect me to point out some insect that is in the current process of transforming itself into a moose. If that's the kind of "evidence" you're looking for, you're going to "win" this little debate. But all that you've won is a victory in a game that doesn't exist.
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