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To: BroJoeK
Yes - I disagree.... Physicist Rob Sheldon explains why front-loading won’t work in his article, The Front-Loading Fiction (July 1, 2009):

Historically, the argument for front-loading came from Laplacian determinism based on a Newtonian or mechanical universe — if one could control all the initial conditions, then the outcome was predetermined. First quantum mechanics, and then chaos-theory has basically destroyed it, since no amount of precision can control the outcome far in the future. (The exponential nature of the precision required to predetermine the outcome exceeds the information storage of the medium.)

But “front-loading” permitted Deists to say that God designed the Universe, and then stepped back and let “natural” forces operate, thereby removing any “supernatural” interference of the sort that Lucretius fumed about in 50 BC. So if Newtonian determinism was now impossible, perhaps there could be some sort of algorithmic determinism (which I’ll call Turing determinism) which could step in and permit a Deist to avoid the supernatural. That is, God doesn’t have to create the oak from the acorn anymore, but the biological program He inserted in the acorn can handle all the intermediate steps. So perhaps, God didn’t have to create humans, but the biological program in the first living cell He created, started the ecosystem that eventually evolved humans…

Ian Turing himself addressed a number of algorithmic dilemmas with the thought experiment of the deterministic computer now called a Turing machine. He asked if the outcome of such a computer can always be predicted, and demonstrated several examples of completely unpredictable behavior. Applying this to our biological example, it says that some organisms may act/evolve unpredictably, though perhaps not the ones God programmed.

But Turing went beyond this existence proof, and demonstrated necessity — a computing machine with feedback, where the output tape went into the input, was always unpredictable. In our biological example, we have to define the input and the output. TE [theistic evolution] tells us that the input is an organism, and the output is more organisms, and the computer is the organism too. In other words, the type of algorithmic determinism required by TE is not weakly, but strongly recursive, and therefore doubly unpredictable.

Even should God have infinite knowledge of the outcome of such a biological algorithm, the information regarding its outcome cannot be contained within the system itself. Therefore if the system is determined, it must be determined externally, with constraints outside of biology, which is exactly the definition of the supernatural that the TE “front-loading” was intended to remove!


503 posted on 06/24/2017 5:34:58 PM PDT by Heartlander (Prediction: Increasingly, logic will be seen as a covert form of theism. - Denyse O'Leary)
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To: Heartlander
[[and then stepped back and let “natural” forces operate, thereby removing any “supernatural” interference]]

Except supernatural interference would still be needed because in order for evolution to take place, it must violate the natural laws- that is what makes it biologically, chemically and thermodynamically impossible- mathematically, it's impossible EVEN IF natural laws were suspended because there are no real world examples of higher species receiving new non species specific info which adds positive information to the coding which would be an absolute musty in order for evolution to be possible- none- and it would take billions of positive additions- yet we can't find any- because that is not how nature works- period- in order to believe evolution happened. we would have to suspend all logic and believe nature somehow supernaturally overcame it's own limits billions of times IN THE PAST, and somehow stopped completely before any records of it happening were formed in fossils-

[[but the biological program in the first living cell He created, started the ecosystem that eventually evolved humans…]]

IF that were true, there would be ample evidence that shows nature is able to violate it's own laws- There is no evidence, only a hypothesis which operates on pure faith

[[Ian Turing himself addressed a number of algorithmic dilemmas with the thought experiment of the deterministic computer now called a Turing machine.]]

There was another computer model (A supposed mouse evolution model) created by a recent scientist which attempted to show how evolution 'could happen'- it was much touted for awhile, until it was closely examined at which point it proved that intelligent design was needed to guide the program to avoid the natural limits imposed on it, as well as intelligent design needed to control the environment in order to favor the process and avoid thermodynamic breakdown- the program also artificially selected only those results which helped it achieve a desired end outcome- ie the system was rigged by intelligent design to result in a desired outcome The following shows that Genetic Algorithms fail to make the case for random evolutionary life:

[[While some evolutionists claim genetic algorithms as evidence that microbe to man evolution is possible, the claims are flawed on several points.

GAs can not effectively solve problems in which there is no way to judge the fitness of an answer other than right/wrong, as there is no way to converge on the solution. These problems are often called "needle in a haystack" problems.[6]

http://creationwiki.org/Genetic_algorithm

[[Therefore if the system is determined, it must be determined externally, with constraints outside of biology, which is exactly the definition of the supernatural that the TE “front-loading” was intended to remove!]]

Bingo! That's exactly what the above software proved-

504 posted on 06/24/2017 10:53:42 PM PDT by Bob434
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To: Heartlander
Heartlander: "Therefore if the system is determined, it must be determined externally, with constraints outside of biology..."

So in your long-winded way, you do agree with me.

Thanks!

514 posted on 06/25/2017 5:25:27 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)
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