DARWIN's DOUBT - The End of Darwinistic Materialism

[KillCarneyKlans]

It's been a while since I posted ... but this is certainly important enough to mention ... sorry I can't be more engaging in this debate ... but, hopefully I can drop by from time to time ... and say hello ... if time permits

http://www.darwinsdoubt.com/#
http://www.stephencmeyer.org/
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04/three_or_four_r071001.html

There's already quite a bit of buzz around Stephen C. Meyer's forthcoming book, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. Darwin's Doubt is going to be another landmark for the ID movement ... [3 days after publication it's already 9th on the NYT bestseller list, I think] ... I see at least three (or four) major reasons why this book is important, and worth reading:

1). Darwin's Doubt will be by far the most in-depth and mature development of those arguments to date, addressing in detail many ideas and rebuttals and theories advanced by evolutionary scientists, and showing why the theory of intelligent design best explains the explosion of biodiversity in the Cambrian animals. [bioinfo]

2). When published, Darwin's Doubt will be the single most up-to-date rebuttal to neo-Darwinian theory from the ID-paradigm ... Meyer reviews much of the peer-reviewed research that's been published by the ID research community over the last few years, and highlights how ID proponents are doing relevant research answering key questions that show Darwinian evolution isn't up to the task of generating new functional information.

3). e now live in a "post-Darwinian" world, where more and more evolutionary biologists are realizing that neo-Darwinism is failing, so they scramble to propose new materialistic evolutionary models to replace the modern synthesis. (These models include, or have included, self-organization, evo-devo, punc eq, neo-Lamarckism, natural genetic engineering, neutral evolution, and others.) In this regard, Darwin's Doubt does something that's never been done before: it surveys the landscape of these "post-neo-Darwinian evolutionary models," and shows why they too fail as explanations for the origin of animal body plans and biological complexity.

The descriptor "game changer" has been used in reference to Darwin's Doubt -- and I think that's accurate. It will be a very important book ... evolutionary scientists who don't question that fully unguided evolutionary mechanisms ... while they attempt to explain the history of life in unguided material terms ... it nonetheless remains the case that "[a] literal reading of the fossil record" shows a suspiciously consistent non-Darwinian pattern of abrupt explosions of new types of organisms. Darwin's Doubt explains why this explosive pattern is not amenable to explanation by unguided evolutionary mechanisms, but is best explained by intelligent design.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/forbidden_scien073431.html

The importance of the book is also not exhausted by the existential question that lies behind the evolution debate. If Darwin were ever shown to be right, then what psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl called (in his famous book) Man's Search for Meaning would automatically be rendered null and void. In a Darwinian universe, where life's origin and evolution reflect no design or intention, there can be no ultimate meaning to our existence, as candid Darwinists admit.

However, apart from the scientific, philosophical and spiritual meanings, the context of the book in the debate about academic freedom must also not be forgotten. The spark of the idea that Meyer elaborates in Darwin's Doubt was so controversial when it was unveiled in 2004 that it resulted in a spasm of persecution at our nation's leading public scientific institution, the Smithsonian ... Arguably, no ID theorist has aroused more persecutory rage than Stephen Meyer.

Here, you can listen to more than several hours of commentary on Meyers book in an interview with George Noory [Dennis Prager Am870 also did an interview with him also]
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2013/06/19

Darwin believed the appearance of purposeful design in living organisms was a kind of illusion, and explained it as a byproduct of an undirected process such as natural selection. However, Darwin recognized that the abrupt or sudden appearance of the first animals in the fossil record around 530 million years ago (in a period called the Cambrian Explosion) posed a challenge to his theory, which predicted a slow, gradual evolution of life. Darwin thought that future fossil discoveries would fill in the missing gaps, but what's happened is just the opposite-- a wider variety of Cambrian animals with intricate forms have been found, Meyer noted.

In unraveling the mystery of the Cambrian Explosion, Meyer viewed the period as a kind of "information revolution," the first since the origin of life itself. "But I realized there was a cause of which we know from our ordinary experience, our uniform and repeated experience (which Darwin taught was the basis of all scientific reasoning) that is capable of generating information. And that cause is intelligence, it's mind, it's conscious or rational activity," he declared. That led him to develop a rigorous, and scientific argument for intelligent design, using the same reasoning methods that Darwin employed.

One biologist said that 'natural selection does a good job of explaining the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest,' Meyer commented. He differentiated his theory from Creationism, noting that the method of reasoning is different. "The theory of intelligent design is not attempting to interpret scripture, it's rather an inference from biological evidence," he said. Meyer further theorized that no agent from within the cosmos was responsible for the fine tuning of life, and the design of the very fabric of the universe.

Here are a few past references I have made to Meyer's and "Signature in the Cell" [Biological Abacus]
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68852
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68852&page=5
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68852&page=6
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68852&page=11
http://www.christianityboard.com/blog/51/entry-190-more-astonishing-bible-proof/
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killcarneyklansman/722-causation-effectation-intelligence.html
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killcarneyklansman/578-helping-darwinists-understand-origins.html

Metamorphosis [Monarch butterflies and etc]- should also be mentioned here ... but I don't have the time ... google it

[WyattGwyon]

Intelligent design is pseudo-science written for the willfully ignorant by fools and charlatans.

[virtuoso]

Wyatt Gwyon intelligence goes beyond science. The unswerving belief in science allows the biologists and paleontologists to construct a faulty fossil record. Also, to explain the incongruent gaps in biological evolution. Not to mention, the sudden extinction of the evolutionary transition forms in animal and human species. Are we to believe that evolution conceived itself, then organized a structured time table for its implementation. Your vain, antagonistic dismissal of Kill Carney Klans, valid questions are intellectually disingenuous. Thanks for the book review, recommendation, Kill Carney.

[cafolini]

Intelligent design is pseudo-science written for the willfully ignorant by fools and charlatans.

Every scientufic design must use intelligence. What you mean has to do with people's stupidity in thinking that the world is an intelligent design which they have discovered. In this latter case, I fully agree with you.

[Calidore]

It's interesting that Meyer's title is "Philosopher of Science," and his degrees are in earth science and physics, not biology.

What also gives me pause is stuff like this, from the OP: "'I realized there was a cause of which we know from our ordinary experience, our uniform and repeated experience (which Darwin taught was the basis of all scientific reasoning) that is capable of generating information. And that cause is intelligence, it's mind, it's conscious or rational activity,' he declared. That led him to develop a rigorous, and scientific argument for intelligent design, using the same reasoning methods that Darwin employed."

In other words, it sounds like he decided intelligent design must be a thing first, then set about writing questions leading to that answer.

All the arguments I've heard for intelligent design boil down to "I don't understand how natural selection could be, therefore it couldn't be." Or, "If everything is random, then life has no meaning, and I don't like that idea, therefore it can't be true." That's human arrogance, not logic or science.

[WyattGwyon]

Are we to believe that evolution conceived itself, then organized a structured time table for its implementation.

That you could ask this question proves that you understand little about evolution or natural selection. No one needs to conceive evolution. It is the inevitable result of natural selection and it has no structured time table.

[OrphanPip]

The Discovery Institute has a well oiled PR team that loves to bypass dealing with experts to sell their bunk directly to people without the education in math and science required to realize what total BS most of it is.

[virtuoso]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers) or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive). The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws? What about the gaps in the fossil record, and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

[cafolini]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers) or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive). The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws? What about the gaps in the fossil record, and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

Only solution is to put Cacian to design it. It'd be ready instantly.

[Charles Darnay]

virtuoso, you talk about nature like a Romantic. nature is not Nature (if you can follow my designation). Nature did not design evolution. Evolution is not governed by laws. There are observed patterns that help humans understand it (such as Darwin wrote about) - but our attempts to organize and categorize data (which we have been doing since the Pre-Socratics) has no bearing on evolution itself.

The problem with the grand creationist/evolution debate - or the intelligent design debate is that people argue based on human constructs. Both the Bible, and any theories (including Darwin's) on evolution are human constructs: flawed and incomplete at best.

[WyattGwyon]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers)

I have no idea what you mean by interior designer.


or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive).

Designer implies intelligence. The pressures driving natural selection don't require a designer.


The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws?

See Charles Darney's answer to this question. You need to read about evolutionary theory using sources not written by idiots.


What about the gaps in the fossil record

This requires no explanation. Obviously, not every critter or plant that ever lived is going to be preserved in fossilized form, and even the fossils of those that are preserved will not necessarily be found. Gaps are not evidence of anything.


and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

[Calidore]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers) or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive). The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws? What about the gaps in the fossil record, and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

For your first and last question, I'll have to get hold of my microbiology professor friend for specific answers (though your first statement isn't really a question and is correct as written). I asked her something similar about cell nuclei once: whether we knew exactly how they came about, because they seemed too complex a structure to simply mutate into being as is. The gist of her answer as I remember it was that we do in fact know exactly how cell nuclei evolved into being. She went into more detail at the time, but this conversation was more than four years ago, so I'll need my memory refreshed. Your last statement about "extinction of the transitional forms" applies to this also, as there were numerous transitional forms between prokaryotes (no nucleus) and eukaryotes (nucleus), but IIRC they were essentially obsoleted by nature, and now those two bookend forms cover pretty much everything.

It's misleading to say that it took man "millennia" to understand and map DNA, as we didn't know about it and didn't care for most of the millennia of our existence as a species. The existence of DNA was discovered less than 150 years ago. As with everything else, initial findings came slowly, but as technology has developed, so has our learning, and both have grown by orders of magnitude as time went on and will continue to do so.

As Charles said, nature doesn't follow laws, as such--it just is what it is. Humans invent laws and rules to explain as much as possible; these follow events, they aren't followed themselves, like laws of society. Just as weekends and months don't actually exist, just day/night cycles and seasons.

As far as gaps in the fossil record, my understanding is that fossilization needs specific and rare conditions to occur, as well as a creature capable of being fossilized. That's why fossils are so special: Compared to all the creatures that have lived, they are very few and far between. Most of what's left of the dinosaurs are powering our vehicles and lawnmowers now.

[OrphanPip]

Most organelles in eukaryotic cells (those that have nuclei) are thought to be the result of endosymbiosis to some extent or the other. The mitochondria and chlorosomes are definitely the result of a smaller single celled organism evolving a symbiotic relationship with a larger one, since they have their own genetic code. It is thought that the nucleus was the result of a symbiotic relationship with an archaea because its membrane has some analogous structures to Archaean membranes. It is also possible that the nucleus simply evolved gradually because some bacteria have basic proto-nucleic envelopes.

[KillCarneyKlans]

This is a Double Post ... these are my rebuttals ... sorry time constraints
http://historum.com/58371-darwin-s-doubt-end-darwinistic-materialism


More Cambrian species have been discovered now than are known in the mid-19th century,
it's also the case that we've discovered a wide variety of macroscopic pre-Cambrian organisms,
completely unknown in Darwin's day. There's an open-access article here about the biota of
the Lantian formation, which includes 'possible animal fossils with tentacles and intestinal
-like structures reminiscent of modern coelenterates and bilaterians". Note that this is from
a formation about 70 million years older than the Cambrian explosion.

Well, if you had reviewed my review of Darwin's Doubt you would know that in the 4th segment
of open lines, in questions to Meyer's about his theory, you would know that one of the 1st
callers [a biologist of some form, I believe] possed this very question. I don't remember the
exact words, but it went something like this ... Good question, I understand your concerns,
yes, I [Meyer's] know of these forms and talk extensively on them in more than a few chapters
dedicated to this era in my book, Darwin's Doubt, but most of these forms die in the pre-Cambrian,
Cambrian era, whereas the vast majority are new forms [new phylla, not directly related] being
created ...

Meyers answer went on for several minutes at a blistering pace, in lengthy discussion ... I'm sure
the chapters are much more detailed ... In this regard, Darwin's Doubt does something that's never
been done before: it surveys [a] landscape of ["Darwinian and ID models"] and shows why [Darwinian
models] fail as explanations for the origin of animal body plans and biological complexity ... [and]
how ID proponents are doing relevant research answering key questions that show Darwinian evolution
isn't up to the task of generating new functional information ... The descriptor "game changer" has
been used in reference to Darwin's Doubt -- and I think that's accurate. It will be a very important
book.


Well, at least it's in the religion forum where it belongs

Well, where should it be? In the 2nd segment of my review which talks about the Dover case and other
aspects of public sentiment, publicly held institutions, as well as private agendas ... Meyer's drives a
wooden stake into the heart of the debate and puts into context by way of comparison what the scientific
realities really are, which is what ID has been saying all along ... and by way of educational and political
manipulation design the ID debate to fail ... to protect there own interests. To turn it into a religous debate
and ignore and maline the evidence ...

One biologist said that 'natural selection does a good job of explaining the survival of the fittest, but not
the arrival of the fittest,' Meyer commented. He differentiated his theory from Creationism, noting that the
method of reasoning is different. "The theory of intelligent design is not attempting to interpret scripture,
it's rather an inference from biological evidence"

I mean ... when have I ever not sourced my Info by more than several sources ... and not confident enough in its
reasoning to discuss it on a historical basis ... my whole Danites, Sea Peoples, Lost Tribes Wanderings thread
was originally in history ... but because if the context "Israel" comes into play it was moved to Alt History ...
"Bring on The Slingers" [thanks Okimado] ... anyways no matter ... I could never figure out why Historum doesn't
make the religious forum, etc ... public ... there are people missing out on great stuff there [good for advertising
too] ... We still have to abide by the same rules ... an even though my "Helping darwinists understand origins" only
lasted 18 pages, the MoDs said I nailed it ... like the Bible says you can't hid a city on a hill ... It won't be
long before scientific ID will have to be taught in schools parallel to Evolutionary theory ...

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?75544-DARWIN-s-DOUBT-The-End-of-Darwinistic-Materialism

It's interesting that Meyer's title is "Philosopher of Science," and his degrees are in earth science and physics, not biology

1st ... Well, Signature in the Cell was a landmark Book ... I assume you know Darwin was a geologist too, and made monumental fundamental errors and assumptions on geological formations; as well as evolution, here's just a few links ->

http://www.wnd.com/2009/11/116601/
http://www.reviewevolution.com/press/pressRelease_100Scientists.php
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/scientists-to-detail-how-charles-darwin-was-wrong-on-evolution

Geologist Steven A. Austin, Ph.D., has traveled to southern Argentina to document Darwin's geological mistakes. "Let nobody confuse you -- Darwin was a geologist, but he was wrong about geology,"

2nd of all ... If we were to compare Darwin's ability to Meyer's ability to address the issue, Darwin would fall short ... hands down ... having said that ... in the interview with Meyer's, Meyer's still holds admiration for Darwin ... I suggest you actually listen to the interview.

3rd of all ... With the state of science being what it is today, you can't engage in any cosmological argument without referencing philosophy in some context ... impossible

4thly ... this is a Philosophical forum ... I could say the 2 biggest gaps in Darwin's philosophy was that he didn't believe in abrupt environmental changes and evolutionary ones [let alone the transitional fossil records] ... don't forget about Metamorphesis too.

5th ... this is mentioned somewhere [or something to this effect] ... Without engaging in intelligent, conscious, deliberate communicative process these changes could not occur ... Welcome to Jurassic Park

! Here we go again !
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1146357#post1146357
http://www.historum.com/religion/34713-helping-darwinists-understand-origins.html
http://www.historum.com/religion/35617-why-there-conflict-between-creation-evolution-25.html
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killcarneyklansman/722-causation-effectation-intelligence.html

http://www.christianityboard.com/topic/18459-darwins-doubt-the-end-of-darwinistic-materialism/

Wow, thanx guys and dolls for raising my blood-pressure ... feels good, to do, what I love most, again ... Well, I hope I gotta a few laughs, as well as making you think of it ... I just gotta go, seeya ... Keep up the good work ... Dj [KillCarney]

[OrphanPip]

Signature in the Cell is trash sold to the lay masses ignorant of the science.

Here is a detailed review of Meyer's latest junk science by a paleontologist:

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/06/meyers-hopeless-2.html

[Cioran]

Signature in the Cell is trash sold to the lay masses ignorant of the science.

Here is a detailed review of Meyer's latest junk science by a paleontologist:

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/06/meyers-hopeless-2.html

Thanks, I was just going to post that link upon seeing this silly thread.

To the OP: Darwin lived and worked some 150 years ago. He knew very little about evolution compared with what we know now. The Cambrian Explosion is not a problem for biology.

The Discovery Institute and the whole ID crowd are hucksters and frauds, and this is the latest in their line of books aimed at the gullible.

[virtuoso]

Why did the evolutionary chain of the development of species stop? The species evolved and the mutations stopped themselves at a defined point in time. This is ludicrous. A self-sustaining system not guided by a peripheral hand or a set of laws. CHANCE, CHANCE, CHANCE! If you are dumb enough to believe that life can evolve in a vacuum without cause or effect, then I think that you are delirious.

[virtuoso]

It takes much more faith to believe that matter came from nothing, and evolved into a complex form, than to believe an intelligent person designed it. Think about your experience in the material world that you live in. Does any complex construct come into being without a designer?

[virtuoso]

Orphan, your guru defends the fossil record, which is a spottily, constructed gap of evolutionary forms. He defends, but does not address the genetic anomalies. His rationale is no better than Meyer's thesis. Either you believe in the sloppily constructed fossil chronology or you don't. I think that many of the transitional forms are fakes or mistaken deformities. If you want to believe in the contrived fossil record more power to you. I do not accept it.

[OrphanPip]

Why did the evolutionary chain of the development of species stop? The species evolved and the mutations stopped themselves at a defined point in time. This is ludicrous. A self-sustaining system not guided by a peripheral hand or a set of laws. CHANCE, CHANCE, CHANCE! If you are dumb enough to believe that life can evolve in a vacuum without cause or effect, then I think that you are delirious.

It didn't stop...

You display a great deal of ignorance about basic biology, let alone the complexity of evolution. Organisms continue to evolve continuously because mutations accumulate in the genome regardless, whether it is subject to selective pressure or if change just accumulates randomly through genetic drift. Saying evolution is guided by chance is a bit of misrepresentation, evolution involves an element of chance in what mutations occur and are preserved in the short term, however natural selection is not a random process. Exactly what you mean by a "lack of cause and effect" is unclear as well, since none of the popular hypotheses about abiogenesis involve ignoring causes or effects, and this is beside the fact that evolutionary theory does not address the origin of life but merely how life changes once it does exist.


It takes much more faith to believe that matter came from nothing, and evolved into a complex form, than to believe an intelligent person designed it. Think about your experience in the material world that you live in. Does any complex construct come into being without a designer?

Evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the origin of matter so I don't really care about addressing that issue at the moment (though quantum physics can account for matter coming from nothing). Snowflakes are complex structures which form without a conscious designer.


Orphan, your guru defends the fossil record, which is a spottily, constructed gap of evolutionary forms. He defends, but does not address the genetic anomalies. His rationale is no better than Meyer's thesis. Either you believe in the sloppily constructed fossil chronology or you don't. I think that many of the transitional forms are fakes or mistaken deformities. If you want to believe in the contrived fossil record more power to you. I do not accept it.

Which genetic anomalies and what aspects of the fossil record is spotty, I'm not in the habit of responding to such a high degree of vaguery. Frankly your incredulity, given your apparent complete lack of knowledge about basic biology, does not make for much of an impressive rebuttal.

I simply have a B.S. in microbiology and immunology, I am not an expert in evolutionary biology. However, I know enough about genetics and evolution to tell that Meyer is full of it and that you do not understand the science.

[cafolini]

It didn't stop...

You display a great deal of ignorance about basic biology, let alone the complexity of evolution. Organisms continue to evolve continuously because mutations accumulate in the genome regardless, whether it is subject to selective pressure or if change just accumulates randomly through genetic drift. Saying evolution is guided by chance is a bit of misrepresentation, evolution involves an element of chance in what mutations occur and are preserved in the short term, however natural selection is not a random process. Exactly what you mean by a "lack of cause and effect" is unclear as well, since none of the popular hypotheses about abiogenesis involve ignoring causes or effects, and this is beside the fact that evolutionary theory does not address the origin of life but merely how life changes once it does exist.



Evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the origin of matter so I don't really care about addressing that issue at the moment (though quantum physics can account for matter coming from nothing). Snowflakes are complex structures which form without a conscious designer.



Which genetic anomalies and what aspects of the fossil record is spotty, I'm not in the habit of responding to such a high degree of vaguery. Frankly your incredulity, given your apparent complete lack of knowledge about basic biology, does not make for much of an impressive rebuttal.

I simply have a B.S. in microbiology and immunology, I am not an expert in evolutionary biology. However, I know enough about genetics and evolution to tell that Meyer is full of it and that you do not understand the science.

Some very good points, OrphanPip. A very good view on the actuality of evolution.

[virtuoso]

You choose to ignore the origination of matter. The evolutionary theory relies on a self-originating, self sustaining chain reaction of matter into more complex forms. If you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by Chance. I know that the evolutionary biologists believe that over a lengthy period of time (millions of years) that even unseemly, unlikely sharing of DNA information among species can result in steps forward in the evolution of species. I do not believe this. The idea that chance combinations that have an almost 0% chance of occurring in nature would happen if given enough time is preposterous to me. Evolution seeks to describe the origin of the species without establishing the originator.

[Ecurb]

One point: Although mutations play a role in evolution, the evolutionary "benefit" of sexual reproduction is that it creates genetic diversity even WITHOUT mutation. Darwinian evolutionary principles (genes spread based on descendant leaving success, along with a couple of other factors, given modern sociobiology) are relevant even without mutation.

[cafolini]

You choose to ignore the origination of matter. The evolutionary theory relies on a self-originating, self sustaining chain reaction of matter into more complex forms. If you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by Chance. I know that the evolutionary biologists believe that over a lengthy period of time (millions of years) that even unseemly, unlikely sharing of DNA information among species can result in steps forward in the evolution of species. I do not believe this. The idea that chance combinations that have an almost 0% chance of occurring in nature would happen if given enough time is preposterous to me. Evolution seeks to describe the origin of the species without establishing the originator.

That's not a problem. What do you think we have you for? We'll give you that job. Case solved and closed.

[OrphanPip]

You choose to ignore the origination of matter. The evolutionary theory relies on a self-originating, self sustaining chain reaction of matter into more complex forms. If you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by Chance. I know that the evolutionary biologists believe that over a lengthy period of time (millions of years) that even unseemly, unlikely sharing of DNA information among species can result in steps forward in the evolution of species. I do not believe this. The idea that chance combinations that have an almost 0% chance of occurring in nature would happen if given enough time is preposterous to me. Evolution seeks to describe the origin of the species without establishing the originator.

You are very confused. Lots of things produce complex forms without conscious input: snowflakes, lipid micelles, clay structures, and many chemical compounds under reducing conditions in a closed system with an external energy source.

The idea that "if you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by chance" is just stupid.

Again, what you believe doesn't really matter because you don't seem to know much about anything when it comes to evolution, abiogenesis, or basic genetics. Evolution is an observable fact, new species arise over time and any attempt to deny this is delusional. Evolutionary theory addresses the mechanism of these changes, this does not require establishing any originator.

[cafolini]

You are very confused. Lots of things produce complex forms without conscious input: snowflakes, lipid micelles, clay structures, and many chemical compounds under reducing conditions in a closed system with an external energy source.

The idea that "if you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by chance" is just stupid.

Again, what you believe doesn't really matter because you don't seem to know much about anything when it comes to evolution, abiogenesis, or basic genetics. Evolution is an observable fact, new species arise over time and any attempt to deny this is delusional. Evolutionary theory addresses the mechanism of these changes, this does not require establishing any originator.

Once more, excellent points. The mechanisms seem to appear out of nothing. To be concerned with that is very stupid. We can only talk sensibly about them when they appear and in that context. Obviously it is not necessarily out of nothing. To seek confirmation on that is just as stupid as to presuppose what we have no way of knowing. Even without definite genome mutation, genome changes are seen, and it is absolutely impossible to determine whether it is adaptation the motivation or not. So, as a figure of speech we may say they are configured from nothing simply because we will never be able to see beyond. But we clearly see causes and effects even when causes may be effects and effects causes. This is not a belief. A belief is useless and totally credible in this context. This is incredible, like every truth we discover.

Your Canadian schizophrenia is causing megalomaniac galore in the ignorant virtuoso. LOL

[virtuoso]

You are talking apples and oranges. You compare the structural complexity of a snowflake to the extremely complex DNA Code. As Lee Stroble said, "The data at the core of life is not diaorganized, its not simply orderly like salt crystals, but it is complex and specific information that can accomplish a bewildering task--the building of biological machines that far outstrip human technological capabilities". In the complex language the mistake that gets caught turns out to be one error for every ten billion letters. The DNA Code is an orderly construct. It is not a highly transmutable, transformative network. The chance, transformational mutations would take a lot of chance, luck, and time. I think that the orderly, sequential DNA Code is a big problem for evolutionary biologists.

[OrphanPip]

RNA molecules have been shown to be capable of forming spontaneously in reducing conditions, so it simply isn't true that nucleic acid codes are not analogous to other spontaneously forming ordered structures. The rest of your post is confused gibberish that doesn't really make any sense. "Transformational mutations," assuming you mean some sort of mutation that results in a phenotypic change, have been observed with relative frequency. Your statement about "mistakes that get caught" is just false, given that rates of mutation and repair vary radically between different organisms, with viruses having highly error prone replication, which is why viruses like HIV strains are able to evolve drug resistance relatively quickly to AZT. I don't know what you mean about DNA not being highly transmutable, the actual DNA molecule undergoes frequent chemical modification, depending on the organism the DNA can be snipped, silenced, up or down regulated, etc. The biochemistry of DNA is certainly complex but this has little to do with the fact that evolution is an observable phenomena.

[Ecurb]

The chance, transformational mutations would take a lot of chance, luck, and time.

Millions of years, perhaps?

[Lokasenna]

Oh lord, here we go again...

In the red corner, representing the forces of scientific inquiry and the bleedin' obvious we have... OrphanPip!

In the blue corner, representing the Uri Geller Institute of Advanced Spoon Bending we have... some other people!

For the record, my money is on OrphanPip. That we still call it the 'theory' of evolution continues to amaze me, given that we have actually observed it. Arguing against it is no more realistic than continuing to insist that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe, or for that matter that it is flat.

[cafolini]

RNA molecules have been shown to be capable of forming spontaneously in reducing conditions, so it simply isn't true that nucleic acid codes are not analogous to other spontaneously forming ordered structures. The rest of your post is confused gibberish that doesn't really make any sense. "Transformational mutations," assuming you mean some sort of mutation that results in a phenotypic change, have been observed with relative frequency. Your statement about "mistakes that get caught" is just false, given that rates of mutation and repair vary radically between different organisms, with viruses having highly error prone replication, which is why viruses like HIV strains are able to evolve drug resistance relatively quickly to AZT. I don't know what you mean about DNA not being highly transmutable, the actual DNA molecule undergoes frequent chemical modification, depending on the organism the DNA can be snipped, silenced, up or down regulated, etc. The biochemistry of DNA is certainly complex but this has little to do with the fact that evolution is an observable phenomena.

Now you did it. LOL Now they are going to start again with fluked Aristotle and Turberville Needham spontaneous flies.

But you are correct in the context of the science, where appearance, meaning fact, and truth are the same.

I liked Loka's ring.

[cafolini]

RNA molecules have been shown to be capable of forming spontaneously in reducing conditions, so it simply isn't true that nucleic acid codes are not analogous to other spontaneously forming ordered structures. The rest of your post is confused gibberish that doesn't really make any sense. "Transformational mutations," assuming you mean some sort of mutation that results in a phenotypic change, have been observed with relative frequency. Your statement about "mistakes that get caught" is just false, given that rates of mutation and repair vary radically between different organisms, with viruses having highly error prone replication, which is why viruses like HIV strains are able to evolve drug resistance relatively quickly to AZT. I don't know what you mean about DNA not being highly transmutable, the actual DNA molecule undergoes frequent chemical modification, depending on the organism the DNA can be snipped, silenced, up or down regulated, etc. The biochemistry of DNA is certainly complex but this has little to do with the fact that evolution is an observable phenomena.

LOL Now you did it. Now they are going to start with fluked Aristotle and Turberville Needham spontaneous flies.

But you are correct in the context of the science, where appearance, meaning fact, and truth are the same.

I liked Loka's ring.

[Darcy88]

It takes much more faith to believe that matter came from nothing, and evolved into a complex form, than to believe an intelligent person designed it. Think about your experience in the material world that you live in. Does any complex construct come into being without a designer?

No. It takes the greatest leap of faith to assume the existence of an eternal being with the powers to bring matter into existence and later on ignite the spark of life. What created the creator? The creator simply was just always there? That makes no sense, none at all. It is an article of faith and cannot be the legitimate beginning or end point of rational discussion.

[Ecurb]

No. It takes the greatest leap of faith to assume the existence of an eternal being with the powers to bring matter into existence and later on ignite the spark of life. What created the creator? The creator simply was just always there? That makes no sense, none at all. It is an article of faith and cannot be the legitimate beginning or end point of rational discussion.

Why not? For centuries, it was the "beginning" of many rational discussions (admittedly, not those in this thread).

[virtuoso]

Contrary to biological evolutionists dogma, mutations are more harmful than good. Alex Williams remarked, "directly contradicting mutations central role in life's diversity, we have seen growing experimental evidence that mutations destroy life". In the medical field, most physicians reguard mutations as deletrious. Mutations can effect reproductive cells as well as other types of cells. Also, mutations can cause: cancer, aging, and infectious diseases. The amazing evolution scale relies on selective variation to bring about positive, utilitarian changes in the gradual formation of species. If mutations generally produce more harmful effects than good ones, then evolutionists must rely on fortuitous circumstances whiich would allow a long, productive, sustained pattern of upward mobility. The best that current evolutionary apologists can do is to cite damaging mutations that have beneficial side effects. Is this enough to put together a biological chain of species' development? I think not!

[virtuoso]

I wholeheartedly disagree. Common sense tells you that something cannot come from nothing. Inferior beings presuppose a greater supernatural force, being. Evolutionists really do not believe in a cause. They believe that the effect is married to the cause.

[virtuoso]

Humans live in a finite sphere, and even a genius uses an infinitesimal portion of his brain capacity. We are imperfect beings in an imperfect world thinking that we can solve the mysteries that are not discernible.

[Darcy88]

I wholeheartedly disagree. Common sense tells you that something cannot come from nothing. Inferior beings presuppose a greater supernatural force, being. Evolutionists really do not believe in a cause. They believe that the effect is married to the cause.

Perhaps the world's leading cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, has declared God's existence unnecessary to the universe's beginning. You say "something cannot come from nothing." So again I ask - from whence God?

[virtuoso]

You obviously do not believe there is a plausible cause for the origination of matter. A finite, imperfect human being, Stephen Hawkins, declares God does not exist, and you believe him. You will believe there is no substantive answer, because you do not believe in a higher power.

[virtuoso]

Ecurb, any rational discussion that begins with God is anathema to most neoevolutionists. If their is purposeful design, then their whole theory is baseless.

[virtuoso]

Cafolini, a reputable evolutionist, Leslie Oregel, said, " It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the same place at the same time. Yet it is also seems impossible to have one without the other And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means". You see, Calfolini that spontaneity and complex developments or evolutionary sequences are not that easy! Michael Denton, a famous Australian Biologist, wrote, "To the skeptic, the proposition that the genetic programmes of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of 1,000 volumes, containing in encoded form countless thousands of intricate algorithms controlling, specifying, and ordering the growth and development of billions and billions of cells into the form of a complex organism, were composed by a purely random process, is simply an affront to reason. But to Darwinist, the idea is accepted without a ripple of doubt--the paradigm takes precedence". Complex structures bespeak a designer. Please do not belittle yourself and use the "snowflake" example again.

[virtuoso]

Orphan and Calidore, reputable evolutionist, Steven Stanley, writes, "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that a gradualistic model can be valid". E R Leach further opined, "Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt for sure that they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing, and seem likely to remain so". The gaps in the fossil record will never be filled in, and will never prove evolution!

[OrphanPip]

Contrary to biological evolutionists dogma, mutations are more harmful than good. Alex Williams remarked, "directly contradicting mutations central role in life's diversity, we have seen growing experimental evidence that mutations destroy life". In the medical field, most physicians reguard mutations as deletrious. Mutations can effect reproductive cells as well as other types of cells. Also, mutations can cause: cancer, aging, and infectious diseases. The amazing evolution scale relies on selective variation to bring about positive, utilitarian changes in the gradual formation of species. If mutations generally produce more harmful effects than good ones, then evolutionists must rely on fortuitous circumstances whiich would allow a long, productive, sustained pattern of upward mobility. The best that current evolutionary apologists can do is to cite damaging mutations that have beneficial side effects. Is this enough to put together a biological chain of species' development? I think not!

Simply false, even some of the most radical mutations, like those which cause a frame shift (a complete deletion of a bp rather than a substitution of one nucleotide for another) have been shown to be able to produce beneficial mutations. The famous case of the nylon digesting Flavobacterium strain discovered in Japan was the result of a gene duplication, which caused a redundant copy of a gene to be in the bacterium's genome, followed by a radical frameshift mutation which created a brand new, never before seen enzyme which allowed this bacterium to thrive in the unique niche of a pool of water next to a nylon factory.


Cafolini, a reputable evolutionist, Leslie Oregel, said, " It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the same place at the same time. Yet it is also seems impossible to have one without the other And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means".

Again this is a matter of abiogenesis that has nothing to do with evolutionary theory. Nonetheless, quote mining a biochemist like Orgel in this fashion is also intellectually dishonest. The sentences immediately following the one you quote goes on to explain that this initial impression is faulty because RNA could have been self-catalytic and capable of producing proteins without help of other proteins, two predictions that have been corroborated in recent studies of self-replicating ribozymes. Orgel was quite astute in that he was able to recognize the necessary conditions required for RNA to arise before proteins.


Michael Denton, a famous Australian Biologist, wrote, "To the skeptic, the proposition that the genetic programmes of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of 1,000 volumes, containing in encoded form countless thousands of intricate algorithms controlling, specifying, and ordering the growth and development of billions and billions of cells into the form of a complex organism, were composed by a purely random process, is simply an affront to reason. But to Darwinist, the idea is accepted without a ripple of doubt--the paradigm takes precedence". Complex structures bespeak a designer. Please do not belittle yourself and use the "snowflake" example again.

Denton is perhaps a famous biologist, but not a reputable one. He is another shill for the Discovery Institute. Also, I'm not exactly sure what you think this quote demonstrates, other than the fact that a famous ID proponent thinks evolution is improbable, quite the revelation. The ID concept of "information" is so muddled and full of **** that it doesn't impress anyone other than the scientifically ignorant like yourself.


Orphan and Calidore, reputable evolutionist, Steven Stanley, writes, "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that a gradualistic model can be valid".

This is a hilarious quote because clearly you don't know what a gradualistic model is in comparison to punctuated equilibrium. The fact that you think Stanley is criticizing the fossil record is another striking example of your ignorance on this subject.



E R Leach further opined, "Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt for sure that they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing, and seem likely to remain so". The gaps in the fossil record will never be filled in, and will never prove evolution!

Yes, there are gaps in the fossil record but that's not really a problem for evolutionary theory as even with those gaps there are still massive amounts of evidence. Say you set up a camera to take pictures of a stone falling at set increments (say every 20 milliseconds), would you say it would be unreasonable to take the data from that camera and chart the likely path of that falling stone even with those thousands of gaps in your picture album?

[KillCarneyKlans]

Perhaps the world's leading cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, has declared God's existence unnecessary to the universe's beginning. You say "something cannot come from nothing." So again I ask - from whence God?

Yes, Hawking said we got 1000 years to get off this planet ... too recently ... the same time as the milenium ... its already been proved something comes from nothing. Or what the Bible or any reasoning average man would call nothing.

Unless you can tell me why, if we could travel at or near light speed, the mass and energy to move an object becomes more difficult and eventually impossible to achieve, the mass becomes so heavy the universe reaches a 99.99 mass value and space = a NULL value. This Null space is the space they are refering to.

Not all forms of God are measured by your limited standards ... in hebrew, God was merely the catalyst that brings order to chaos ... To the Jews and gentiles he was Alpha and Omega ... most cultures have a creator God ... Shang Di has many spookily similar facets similar to Yahweh or Jehovah, etc ...

You can't measure PI you can only approximate it ... If we know stars can collapse into black holes why can we see them? Do you know gravity can drag space, time and matter into and out of existance? Not really a good question.

[MorpheusSandman]

Common sense tells you that something cannot come from nothing. Inferior beings presuppose a greater supernatural force, being. Modern science (quantum physics, cosmology, biology, neuroscience, even mathematics) has definitively demolished the reliability of our common sense. From neuroscience you can learn how our brains come equipped with millions of reality-distorting biases that innately prevent us from understanding how reality actually works (we are innately illogical). From quantum physics you can learn the counter-intuitive nature of how particles behave; either they randomly collapse into one world because we observe them, or they deterministically decohere into multiple worlds that we can't access. From mathematics you can learn how bad humans are at cognitively producing probabilistic formulas that best model reality (eg, Bayes Theorem). From cosmology you can, indeed, learn how the universe can indeed come from nothing; (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451624468/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=) in fact, Krauss shows that not only can a universe come from nothing, but because nothing (meaning the absence of matter, space, time, and gravity) is so unstable, it will inevitably produce universes, and probably lots more than just ours. Another thing you can learn from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology is that, because of how our brains evolve, we constantly produce false positives with regards to assuming agency behind unexplained phenomena; this means that we are programmed to innately assume that something conscious/willful is behind everything we don't understand, whether it be the universe, or, back in the day, more common things like wind, lightning, rain, etc.

To conclude, our common sense and intuition are just about the worst things you can rely on if what you're after are truths and facts about reality. It has been proven wrong time and again, especially so within the 20th century when our knowledge of the natural world and ourselves has exploded. To sit back and rely on the same thing that people hundreds of years relied on is just willfully ignorant and foolish.


It takes much more faith to believe that matter came from nothing, and evolved into a complex form, than to believe an intelligent person designed it. Think about your experience in the material world that you live in. Does any complex construct come into being without a designer?It takes more faith if you are completely ignorant of the science; if you aren't ignorant of the science then it takes no faith whatsoever. Your claim about our experience in the natural world is simply false (there are plenty of complex structures that arise naturally as has been pointed out to you); but even if it were true, you can't extrapolate our experiences from the natural world and apply it to the universe. Why? Because we live in a universe where matter is governed by the laws of spacetime and gravity, and when you're talking about how the universe came into being you're talking about a point where such laws don't exist. It's a bit like trying to apply the rules of basketball to explain baseball, they're two completely different games. If you're looking to explain the origin of matter and the universe, then you need to find something that isn't governed by the laws of gravity or spacetime, but could actually create them as well as matter. Guess what? We actually have such a thing, and it's called the quantum field.

[cafolini]

Pop, goes the weasel...

[cafolini]

QM is not even worth looking into but after the fact. Considering a-priori design by analogy to events within the fact is even far more stupid.

[virtuoso]

As far as the bacteria mutations from which a lot of you are extrapolating. On the bacterial mutations, Kevin Anderson, said, "Bacteria frequently develop mutations that enable them to survive and adapt to a variety of environmental conditions. These mutations are generated by many different mechanisms, and provide a wide range of phenotypic modifications. However, most of these modifications can be classified as a form of antagoninistic pleiotropy. Some existing systems are sacrificed as a means for surviving certain environments..... If the environmental conditions change, the mutation usually becomes less beneficial and perhaps even detrimental. Hence, these mutations do not provide a genetic mechanism that account for the origin of biological systems and functions".

[cafolini]

True faith was never based, nor it will ever be based but on the mystery at the point where facts begin to appear. We have no way and will never have a way to solve this genuine mystery. O, yes. We write mysteries that we set up to solve in a theater completely divorced from the genuine mystery. To no avail, except to exercise the mind in solving puzzles. Who killed Popoff? Broccoli? Goldfinger? Hollywood? Who discovered Topaz at the end of the story? Wasn't Topaz, like Popoff, already discovered from the very beginning?

[virtuoso]

True Calofini, the facts are made to fit the paradigm. Evolution is a religion, even though its adherents see it as an anti-religion.

[MorpheusSandman]

QM is not even worth looking into but after the fact. Considering a-priori design by analogy to events within the fact is even far more stupid.I don't follow here...

[MorpheusSandman]

True Calofini, the facts are made to fit the paradigm. Evolution is a religion, even though its adherents see it as an anti-religion.I think you just mixed up ID and evolution. No evolutionary facts have been "made to fit the paradigm" at all.

[The Atheist]

There's already quite a bit of buzz around Stephen C. Meyer's forthcoming book, Darwin's Doubt:...

Oooh, I would imagine the only place a buzz will be caused is in the very small, already-believe-ID camp.

You don't really think anyone is going to take it seriously, do you? You know, the 10,000,000 pieces of scientific evidence vs 0 pieces of scientific evidence.

[cafolini]

I don't follow here...

I know. You don't follow here nor there. ROFLMAO

[OrphanPip]

As far as the bacteria mutations from which a lot of you are extrapolating. On the bacterial mutations, Kevin Anderson, said, "Bacteria frequently develop mutations that enable them to survive and adapt to a variety of environmental conditions. These mutations are generated by many different mechanisms, and provide a wide range of phenotypic modifications. However, most of these modifications can be classified as a form of antagoninistic pleiotropy. Some existing systems are sacrificed as a means for surviving certain environments..... If the environmental conditions change, the mutation usually becomes less beneficial and perhaps even detrimental. Hence, these mutations do not provide a genetic mechanism that account for the origin of biological systems and functions".

Well Anderson, whatever his qualifications are because I can only find reference to him on Answering Genesis, is wrong. As I already said the nylonase gene arose from a duplication followed by a frameshift so it is not pleiotropic, we can forgive Anderson for not knowing this because he apparently stopped reading about the bacterium in 2006, we wouldn't want to think he was so dishonest that he deliberately ignored any research that contradicted his asinine apologetics. His entire argument in that article is ridiculous given that we know that very harsh niches promote specialization which makes organisms susceptible to environmental changes, it doesn't follow logically from this observation that these kinds of mutations could not produce new systems and functions (the latter of which is a bizarre statement because new functions are described in his own damn essay). If you took a worm from a hydrothermal vent it would immediately die in any other environment, despite its ability to survive at extremely high temperatures and pressure at the bottom of the ocean.

[Cioran]

Contrary to biological evolutionists dogma, mutations are more harmful than good. Alex Williams remarked, "directly contradicting mutations central role in life's diversity, we have seen growing experimental evidence that mutations destroy life".

Wow, just imagine! Even if the overwhelming number of mutations were harmful rather than just neutral (and they're not) then those mutations are culled out by natural selection, leaving the small number that are fortuitously beneficial to spread through the gene pool. Who knew! :coolgleamA:

[virtuoso]

Fortuitously beneficial, but not nearly enough to form a biological system with complex functions.

[Cioran]

Fortuitously beneficial, but not nearly enough to form a biological system with complex functions.

LOL

Hey, if natural selection weeds out the deleterious mutations, does nothing to the neutral mutations and effectuates the spread of the mutations that give an advantage in a particular environment, can you guess which mutations spread? :coolgleamA:

See the discussion on frameshift mutations and nylon-eating bacteria for a perfect example.

[Cioran]

P.Z. Myers destroys intelligent design in 45 minutes, followed by beer. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba2h9tqNYAo) :wave:

[Darcy88]

If evolution were bogus then the name of the scientist to debunk it would be as famous as Darwin's. It wouldn't have entire university departments devoted to its study. People who don't believe in evolution simply have no conception of how the scientific establishment works. Paradigm shifting research brings with it fame and grants. Dishonestly propping up an existing paradigm provides absolutely no benefit to a scientist at all. People who do not accept evolution are believers in the greatest conspiracy any nut has ever madly postulated.

[The Atheist]

People who don't believe in evolution simply ....

...blame Satan.

(FTFY)

[virtuoso]

Gary Parker noted, "according to the neutral theory of molecular evolution much of the staggering variation in species is due to mutations that are either neutral or slightly deleterious.....Interestingly, says Kimura, the amount of variation within species is too great for selection models of evolution, but too little for the neutral theory".

[Nick Capozzoli]

Intelligent design is pseudo-science written for the willfully ignorant by fools and charlatans.

That judgment seems a bit too harsh and glib. There are quite a few folks who do understand biological science and Darwin's theory of evolution
by means of natural selection but who also keep an open mind about the possibility of a Creator (i.e. God) as somehow involved in the origin
of life.

It does seem that Darwin's general idea that natural selection is the driving force behind the evolution of life forms is correct. It is really a very simple
idea, and it's remarkable that no one was able to come up with such an explanation before Darwin and Wallace figured it out in the mid-19th Century...

There have been many criticisms, by serious academic biologists, about the details of natural selection. Darwin felt that evolution depended on gradual changes,
and some critics point to apparent sudden changes as evidence that Darwin was mistaken. I don't see this as a refutation of the basic rightness of natural
selection. We now have a better understanding than Darwin did about the mechanisms of heredity, whether it occurs None of this new knowledge "refutes" natural selection
as the mechanism of speciation, whether it occurs "gradually" or "suddenly."

That is to say: once "living organisms" appeared on Earth, natural selection does a fine job of explaining how these organisms could have evolved. Natural selection requires only a few very simple things to "work." What you need are the following-- an organism capable of: 1) interaction with its environment; 2) replication...specifically the reproduction of "progeny" with inherited characteristics that are similar to their "parents;" 3) the possibility that progeny may not be exactly identical to their parents; 4) competition between organisms for environmental resources; and, 4) differential survival, based on items #1 and #4, such that some organisms, based on their characteristics, will do better than others at "survival," meaning that these "more fit" organisms will produce more progeny that survive and go on to reproduce themselves.

An interesting thing about natural selection is that it has been shown to work not only for living organisms and "real" environments, but also for such non-living things as self-replicating computer programs that exist only in electronic computers... To me this is a strong indication that the idea of natural selection is a powerful explanation of "life-like" behavior, whether we are trying to understand living organisms or "inorganic" computer programs.

The real problem for a complete understanding of "life" is figuring out how living organisms came into being from the inorganic matter that was available billions of years ago when the Earth was formed. There's been a lot of speculation about this, but we still don't know how this "abiogenesis" occurred. Knowing exactly how this occurred is the deep scientific mystery for those who want a "scientific" explanation of life. I haven't read "Darwin's Doubt," but I suspect that any doubt he had about his explanation would come down to his inability to come up with a good explanation for abiogenesis.

However, once scientists come up with a compelling explanation for abiogenesis, then the Wallace-Darwin idea of natural selection can certainly explain how live evolved on Earth. Lacking such a convincing scientific explanation for the emergence of life from inorganic matter, I think we might be able to excuse folks for hypothesizing that perhaps some supernatural agent (e.g. God) created the first "living things." At that point the Creator stepped back and let those simple critters evolve. This view would be similar to the Deist's idea of God.

[The Atheist]

That judgment seems a bit too harsh and glib. There are quite a few folks who do understand biological science and Darwin's theory of evolution
by means of natural selection but who also keep an open mind about the possibility of a Creator (i.e. God) as somehow involved in the origin
of life.

That isn't "intelligent design". What you've described is how Catholic, Anglican and many other churches see the hand of god in creation - they accept evolution, but believe a creator god gave it the spark.

Intelligent design proponents are a very small, but vocal group of christians who believe the entire living world was designed by a god, without the benefit of evolution, which is anathema to intelligent design. If in doubt, you could try visiting the creation museum.

[Nick Capozzoli]

That isn't "intelligent design". What you've described is how Catholic, Anglican and many other churches see the hand of god in creation - they accept evolution, but believe a creator god gave it the spark.

Intelligent design proponents are a very small, but vocal group of christians who believe the entire living world was designed by a god, without the benefit of evolution, which is anathema to intelligent design. If in doubt, you could try visiting the creation museum.

OK. So is the author of Darwin's Doubt one of these "unscientific" ID'ers, or is he a scientist who is making an argument that God created life and allowed evolution to play out according to physical laws (that he also created when He created the universe? I really haven't studied the ID arguments very much, but I'll take your word that all ID proponents simply reject natural selection as having any explanatory role in organic evolution.

I guess that there is still room for good scientists to believe in God as Creator of the universe and of life. Scientists have certainly not disproven the existence of God. the point I was trying to make in my previous post was that we still have no compelling explanation for abiogenesis, i.e. the emergence of life from non-living matter. Darwin never concerned himself with this essential first step. His theory of evolution by means of natural selection begins with the assumption that self-replicating life exists.

[The Atheist]

OK. So is the author of Darwin's Doubt one of these "unscientific" ID'ers, or is he a scientist who is making an argument that God created life and allowed evolution to play out according to physical laws (that he also created when He created the universe? I really haven't studied the ID arguments very much, but I'll take your word that all ID proponents simply reject natural selection as having any explanatory role in organic evolution.

Stephen Meyer is a rarity - a scientist who denies science to promote intelligent design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer#Intelligent_design

There have been a few actual scientists who promote ID, notably Michael Behe, of Dover fame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe#Court_cases

ID and science are completely incompatible, so it's a bit confusing that some scientists choose to follow that path.


I guess that there is still room for good scientists to believe in God as Creator of the universe and of life. Scientists have certainly not disproven the existence of God.

I agree with you on both counts: firstly that there is room for theists (including scientists) to see a creator causing evolution to begin, and secondly, that science has not (and almost certainly never will) proven the non-existence of god/s.

In terms of a creator god that sparked the big bang or evolution, you nailed it in the previous post when you likened that belief to deism.

As far as proving non-existence, Bertrand Russell called that a century ago when he posited a teapot orbiting Venus - it's hard to prove the non-existence of something, so very few scientists would bother trying. Occam's Razor and some simple logic takes care of that anyway.


the point I was trying to make in my previous post was that we still have no compelling explanation for abiogenesis, i.e. the emergence of life from non-living matter. Darwin never concerned himself with this essential first step. His theory of evolution by means of natural selection begins with the assumption that self-replicating life exists.

Quite right again. Abiogenesis is one of the last refuges of the creator god, but the fact that we can't explain it doesn't bother me too much. It happened 4 billion years or so ago and we can't be sure what the chemical or climatic makeup of the planet was at that stage. The proof will come when we replicate living organisms for ourselves.

It's an interesting subject, but I see no need for the hand of a god in the process. I know one very respectable scientist who has an interesting theory to do with binary input of the sun being the driver of abiogensis. Each day, the sun rises and sets, so we have a binary input of 1,0,1,0,1,0. Then the days change length, so further input is added, and so on. At this stage, I can't say that's wrong, although it seems less likely than some of the options advanced.

The other complication is what constitutes life? Is a virus "alive" even though it may not have a lipid envelope? If it is, then what are prions? They are also pieces of replicating protein, but it would be a stretch to call it alive.

[WyattGwyon]

OK. So is the author of Darwin's Doubt one of these "unscientific" ID'ers, or is he a scientist who is making an argument that God created life and allowed evolution to play out according to physical laws (that he also created when He created the universe? I really haven't studied the ID arguments very much, but I'll take your word that all ID proponents simply reject natural selection as having any explanatory role in organic evolution.

I guess that there is still room for good scientists to believe in God as Creator of the universe and of life. Scientists have certainly not disproven the existence of God. the point I was trying to make in my previous post was that we still have no compelling explanation for abiogenesis, i.e. the emergence of life from non-living matter. Darwin never concerned himself with this essential first step. His theory of evolution by means of natural selection begins with the assumption that self-replicating life exists.

Read the thread, why don't you, before commenting or calling some responses glib? The quality of the author's "science" is addressed at great length by some bright and informed people. What I initially said is borne out in the discussion.

[Nick Capozzoli]

I did read the posts. I also understand the science of evolution, and I understand the criticism of ID by folks like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers. I don't know much about the arguments of the ID'ers, except that they are considered to be scientifically ignorant.

My main point is that the Darwin/Wallace theory of natural selection seems to be almost certainly correct, for reasons that I mentioned in my previous posts. Natural selection certainly can explain the evolution of living things. The big unanswered question is how did a "living thing" come into being from "non-living" matter in the first place? It seems that all life forms now existent derive from a single ancestor, because all life forms we know of have the same 64-bit DNA genetic code for amino acid transcription....

Once we have a self-replicating life form it is no big deal to envision how natural selection would lead to he evolution of what Darwin described in his final paragraph of The Origin of Species:

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

This indicates that Darwin himself accepted the possibility that the emergence of life from "non-life" was somehow "breathed" into non-living matter. The word "creator" was added in the second and subsequent editions of The Origin. Referring to a "Creator" really doesn't matter...the point is that Darwin didn't have a convincing explanation for the emergence of life from non-life, and neither has anyone else since Darwin (and that includes folks like Richard Dawkins).

I have no idea what sort of arguments ID'ers are using to claim that natural selection can't explain evolution. I accept that natural selection provides a very good explanation of how complex organisms, including ourselves, evolved. I also believe that it is acceptable for scientists to assume that the origin of life from non-life (abiogenesis) could be explained by God.

Darwin was certainly a very good and honest scientist. I have little doubt that he understood that his theory of evolution by natural selection could explain how from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The sticking point is that crucial detail of that "simple beginning."

That mystery is something that the anti-ID folks, including Dawkins, have seemed to gloss over.

[The Atheist]

The sticking point is that crucial detail of that "simple beginning."

That mystery is something that the anti-ID folks, including Dawkins, have seemed to gloss over.

I don't think it's glossed over at all - the answer is always an honest "we don't know".

There's no shame in not knowing, but it isn't a good reason to call for a creator.

[OrphanPip]

I'm sorry but creationism does not deserve to be given equal weight as current hypotheses of abiogenesis. There is substantial experimental evidence and models that explain how life could have arisen from non-life, as opposed to no real reason other than faith to believe in a creator's interference. The answer might be a "we don't know," but we have a number of plausible ideas of how it could have happened.

[Cioran]

Evolution has never stopped happening. It is happening right now. Humans continue to evolve. Mutations have never stopped, and happen all the time in all organisms. Finally, evolution is not a chance process. However, the opposite of chance is not design. So you show you have zero knowledge of evoution by this one short post.

[Cioran]

The above was in response to this:



Why did the evolutionary chain of the development of species stop? The species evolved and the mutations stopped themselves at a defined point in time. This is ludicrous. A self-sustaining system not guided by a peripheral hand or a set of laws. CHANCE, CHANCE, CHANCE! If you are dumb enough to believe that life can evolve in a vacuum without cause or effect, then I think that you are delirious.

[Cioran]

It takes much more faith to believe that matter came from nothing, and evolved into a complex form, than to believe an intelligent person designed it. Think about your experience in the material world that you live in. Does any complex construct come into being without a designer?

Seriously? You're using William Paley's watch on the heath argument? Holy ... cow.

Think about this: complex constructs made by people don't reproduce with variation under changing circumstances.

There's a video on the Web that shows how easily a wristwatch could evolve from prior parts, if the parts reproduced with variation and the environment tended to favor watches. It's a really a bloody cinch. The eye evolved with stunning rapdity.

[Cioran]

Orphan, your guru defends the fossil record, which is a spottily, constructed gap of evolutionary forms. He defends, but does not address the genetic anomalies. His rationale is no better than Meyer's thesis. Either you believe in the sloppily constructed fossil chronology or you don't. I think that many of the transitional forms are fakes or mistaken deformities. If you want to believe in the contrived fossil record more power to you. I do not accept it.

You are completely wrong on all counts, and undoubtedly know nothing about cladistics or molecular biology.

[Cioran]

You choose to ignore the origination of matter. The evolutionary theory relies on a self-originating, self sustaining chain reaction of matter into more complex forms. If you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by Chance. I know that the evolutionary biologists believe that over a lengthy period of time (millions of years) that even unseemly, unlikely sharing of DNA information among species can result in steps forward in the evolution of species. I do not believe this. The idea that chance combinations that have an almost 0% chance of occurring in nature would happen if given enough time is preposterous to me. Evolution seeks to describe the origin of the species without establishing the originator.

This is a misrperesentation of biology and abiogenesis, and you don't know what you are talking about.

[Cioran]

I wholeheartedly disagree. Common sense tells you that something cannot come from nothing. Inferior beings presuppose a greater supernatural force, being. Evolutionists really do not believe in a cause. They believe that the effect is married to the cause.

Something comes from nothing all the time, even as we speak. See: quantum mechanics.

That said, life did not come from "nothing."

[The Atheist]

Finally, evolution is not a chance process.

If you mean that the universe is strictly deterministic and that no random events really happen, then the statement can be correct. I remain unconvinced that that is the case.

If "chance" means, as most people would think, that unexpected events like climate change, meteor strikes, solar radiation storms and viral infections are random events, then it doesn't work, because all of those have had an effect on evolution.

[Cioran]

If you mean that the universe is strictly deterministic and that no random events really happen, then the statement can be correct. I remain unconvinced that that is the case.

If "chance" means, as most people would think, that unexpected events like climate change, meteor strikes, solar radiation storms and viral infections are random events, then it doesn't work, because all of those have had an effect on evolution.

No, it's not that. It hasn't got anything to do with determinism.

Evolution is popularly mischaracterized as a chance process by its detractors, who demand to know how we can get the wonderful complexity of life by "chance alone."

The confusion arises in this "random mutation" bit. The "random" part is misleading. All "random" means in this context is that some mutation x is uncorrelated to the environment. As a matter of fact, this is precisely what we would expect from an undesigned process. A designed process, or at least a well-designed one, would minmize or if possible eliminate coying errors (which is what mutations are) or else would try to ensure that they were, in fact, correlated to the environment. Then, for instance, organisms encountering an enviornment getting steadiy colder might, in response, produce mutations that lead to nice fur coats. But that's not what happens. The mutations aren't correlated to the environment, and it is purely fortutious that some number of mutations happen to be beneficial. So there is that "chance" element (again, not what we would expect of a designed system).

But the process as a whole is not "by chance" because mutations are filtered through the sieve of natural selection. The environment "selects for" (not deliberately, of course) those mutations that just happen to give organisms a slight advantage, and over time those will spread throught the population. Thus the process as a whole is not a chance process.

[The Atheist]

Then, for instance, organisms encountering an enviornment getting steadiy colder might, in response, produce mutations that lead to nice fur coats. But that's not what happens. The mutations aren't correlated to the environment, and it is purely fortutious that some number of mutations happen to be beneficial. So there is that "chance" element (again, not what we would expect of a designed system).

But the process as a whole is not "by chance" because mutations are filtered through the sieve of natural selection. The environment "selects for" (not deliberately, of course) those mutations that just happen to give organisms a slight advantage, and over time those will spread throught the population. Thus the process as a whole is not a chance process.

I think you're playing semantics, and will ultimately end up confusing people.

You have the process right, but you need to ditch the word "chance". How about "random mutations, of which some are successful"?

[Nick Capozzoli]

I don't think it's glossed over at all - the answer is always an honest "we don't know".

There's no shame in not knowing, but it isn't a good reason to call for a creator.

Thanks for the response. I can see that we disagree about the need to call for a Creator to explain the very critical point of
abiogenesis but we both agree that the origin of life itself is, so far, a mystery. And I think that we agree that once life
appeared, the theory of evolution by natural selection provides a plausible explanation for the evolution, from so
simple a beginning, to life forms as we know them.

Just because we haven't come up with a plausible physical mechanism for abiogenesis doesn't mean that such
a mechanism doesn't exist. It does however suggest that the origin of life from non-life, if we assume it arose by
natural processes, is extremely unlikely. I mean "extremely unlikely" in a thermodynamic sense, which is to say
in the sense that it would be extremely unlikely for an 8 oz glass of water at room temperature to suddenly turn to
ice. Is it possible? Yes, and you can even calculate the probability that it will occur. Absent any plausible
physical mechanism for life to appear from non-living matter, I'd say that we'd have to view life's appearance as
close to unlikely as the possibility of a glass of room-temperature water turning to ice...

While such a possibility is not zero, it is quite improbable, even when we consider the whole Universe. What it means
is that it is possible that life originated on earth (by pure chance) and nowhere else in the Universe.

[WyattGwyon]

Absent any plausible
physical mechanism for life to appear from non-living matter, I'd say that we'd have to view life's appearance as
close to unlikely as the possibility of a glass of room-temperature water turning to ice...

While such a possibility is not zero, it is quite improbable, even when we consider the whole Universe. What it means
is that it is possible that life originated on earth (by pure chance) and nowhere else in the Universe.

You have no basis for deciding how likely or unlikely it is for life to have appeared from non-living matter. For all you know, given the conditions of the early earth, it might have been absolutely inevitable. It is possible that life is abundant throughout the universe. No one knows. Your speculation on these matters is empty blather.

[Ecurb]

You have no basis for deciding how likely or unlikely it is for life to have appeared from non-living matter. For all you know, given the conditions of the early earth, it might have been absolutely inevitable. It is possible that life is abundant throughout the universe. No one knows. Your speculation on these matters is empty blather.


The "think of the odds against it" argument is used to discuss the improbablility any number of events. Two brothers die in separate plane crashes on the same day -- "Think of the odds". Of course, once an event has happened, the odds of it occuring are 1:1 -- 100%. From the point of view of examining only the Earth from a recent vantage point (say, 1000 years ago), what are the odds of any single event that happens happening? Zillions to one. However, out of the zillions of possibilities, we can clearly predict that ONE of them will occur -- we just don't know which one. From our current vantage point, we DO know which one has occured -- the only reason we are wondering about the two brothers dying in separate plane wrecks (or about life beginning on earth, from whatever cause) is that the odds of those things occuring were 100% -- in other words, they did occur.

Any event that happens was once ALMOST infinitely unlikely.

[WyattGwyon]

The "think of the odds against it" argument is used to discuss the improbablility any number of events. Two brothers die in separate plane crashes on the same day -- "Think of the odds". Of course, once an event has happened, the odds of it occuring are 1:1 -- 100%. From the point of view of examining only the Earth from a recent vantage point (say, 1000 years ago), what are the odds of any single event that happens happening? Zillions to one. However, out of the zillions of possibilities, we can clearly predict that ONE of them will occur -- we just don't know which one. From our current vantage point, we DO know which one has occured -- the only reason we are wondering about the two brothers dying in separate plane wrecks (or about life beginning on earth, from whatever cause) is that the odds of those things occuring were 100% -- in other words, they did occur.

Any event that happens was once ALMOST infinitely unlikely.

Your conclusion does not follow from anything you stated above.

In any case, we are not talking about an event, as in some specific set of molecules in one particular pool of primordial ooze making a transition to self-replication or whatever. We are talking about the chances that it will occur once in several billion such pools over the period of a billion years. It is possible that such an event might be inevitable. So statistically speaking, this problem isn't like two specific brothers dying in separate plane crashes, it is like the chances that in the whole history of human civilization, two brothers will die in similar circumstances — that is to say, more or less inevitable.

[MorpheusSandman]

Very well said, Wyatt. All of the theistic arguments that rely on probability only serve to show what an abysmal grasp most humans have on probability to begin with. EG, a lot of such arguments get specific into arguing the probability against humans being here--ie, against humans being "merely" the outcome of billions of years of evolution. First, this betrays a completely anthropomorphic bias (the entire idea that everything exists only so it can lead to us--is there any claim more self-centered than that?), but, secondly, you can pretty much do this with any singled-out event: the chance you'd walk outside and see any specific cloud formation, or the chance that everything that happens in a Vegas casino on any given night would've happened exactly has it did. The problem is that some perhaps incalculably low event HAD to have occurred, and the notion that because any one happened it had to have a reason/designer/creator whatever is just nonsense.

[Ecurb]

Your conclusion does not follow from anything you stated above.

In any case, we are not talking about an event, as in some specific set of molecules in one particular pool of primordial ooze making a transition to self-replication or whatever. We are talking about the chances that it will occur once in several billion such pools over the period of a billion years. It is possible that such an event might be inevitable. So statistically speaking, this problem isn't like two specific brothers dying in separate plane crashes, it is like the chances that in the whole history of human civilization, two brothers will die in similar circumstances — that is to say, more or less inevitable.

My conclusion follows perfectly from what I said. In addition, I was agreeing with your position, and arguing against Nick. In fact, you are merely restating my position in the above post. Morpheus is also restating my position (I'm not sure if I wrote unclearly, or my readers failed to read carefully).

[MorpheusSandman]

Ecurb, fwiw, I was not following this conversation closely, and I was only echoing Wyatt's statement by giving a few more examples; I wasn't intending to address/rebut anything you had said.

[Nick Capozzoli]

You have no basis for deciding how likely or unlikely it is for life to have appeared from non-living matter. For all you know, given the conditions of the early earth, it might have been absolutely inevitable. It is possible that life is abundant throughout the universe. No one knows. Your speculation on these matters is empty blather.

I disagree. It is certainly possible to calculate the probability of molecular reactions given enough information about the reactants and their environmental conditions. We know a lot about how atoms and molecules behave. What we need to know about the formation of living matter from non-living matter (abiogenesis) is how this occurred. Once a living entity i.e. some assembly of matter able to reproduce itself and interact as such with its environment) appeared, then natural selection provides a very satisfactory explanation of the subsequent evolution of all life forms.

So far as I know no one has been able to come up with a compellingly probable mechanism for abiogenesis (and certainly not one that would make it "absolutely inevitable").

Of course we need to know the early conditions on Earth when abiogenesis occurred. Scientists have a pretty good general idea of these conditions and have even conducted experiments to create organic molecules under those conditions (going back to the 1950's). They have managed to synthesize simple organic compounds, including amino acids,. No one so far has been able to synthesize even the simplest life form. Or even to come up with a convincing physiochemical explanation for how it would be likely to occur... That doesn't mean it is (or was) impossible. Based on the fact that we still haven't come up with a compelling mechanism for abiogenesis does suggest that it was a rather improbable event.

Speculating on such things is not "blather." There are plenty of scientifically sophisticated folk who think the original appearance of life is worth serious discussion. Darwin himself certainly was troubled by the lack of a suitable scientific explanation. Darwin and Wallace came up with a brilliant theory to explain how living things evolve. This theory is almost certainly the correct explanation of the evolution of life, not only on Earth, but anywhere else life exists in the Universe. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it can even explain the evolution of non-living but otherwise "life-like" things like computer programs...

I've tried to be clear in my posts on this thread, but I guess from your response that I didn't succeed.

[Ecurb]

There are dozens of distinct theories about how abiogenesis might have happened. No doubt each of them is improbable (although less improbable if we add them all together) . However, that is a misunderstanding of probability. IF you roll two dice, and "box cars" come up, it would be silly to say "these must be loaded dice, because two 6s are unlikely." Yes, box cars are unlikely (1/36), but that doesn't mean the dice must be loaded.

WE know that the origins of life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did occur, somehow or other. It would be a false dichotomy to say, "because abiogenesis is improbable, there must be a creator." That's similar to saying, "Because box cars are improbable, the dice must be loaded." Why is the creator any more "probable" than abiogenesis? Is there any evidence of other "creations"?

In addition, the notion of a conscious, volitional "creator" is anthropomorphic. Why is conscious volition the only thing that can explain an otherwise extremely improbable occurence? Couldn't life have originated through some other, non-consicious, non-volitional, but unique set of circumstances?

[cafolini]

There are dozens of distinct theories about how abiogenesis might have happened. No doubt each of them is improbable (although less improbable if we add them all together) . However, that is a misunderstanding of probability. IF you roll two dice, and "box cars" come up, it would be silly to say "these must be loaded dice, because two 6s are unlikely." Yes, box cars are unlikely (1/36), but that doesn't mean the dice must be loaded.

WE know that the origins of life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did occur, somehow or other. It would be a false dichotomy to say, "because abiogenesis is improbable, there must be a creator." That's similar to saying, "Because box cars are improbable, the dice must be loaded." Why is the creator any more "probable" than abiogenesis? Is there any evidence of other "creations"?

In addition, the notion of a conscious, volitional "creator" is anthropomorphic. Why is conscious volition the only thing that can explain an otherwise extremely improbable occurence? Couldn't life have originated through some other, non-consicious, non-volitional, but unique set of circumstances?

As I have said many times, it's a mystery. And you are correct: clues are not dues.

[WyattGwyon]

My conclusion follows perfectly from what I said. In addition, I was agreeing with your position, and arguing against Nick. In fact, you are merely restating my position in the above post. Morpheus is also restating my position (I'm not sure if I wrote unclearly, or my readers failed to read carefully).

Sorry Ecurb — It was my mistake. It seems obvious now!

[Nick Capozzoli]

There are dozens of distinct theories about how abiogenesis might have happened. No doubt each of them is improbable (although less improbable if we add them all together) . However, that is a misunderstanding of probability. IF you roll two dice, and "box cars" come up, it would be silly to say "these must be loaded dice, because two 6s are unlikely." Yes, box cars are unlikely (1/36), but that doesn't mean the dice must be loaded.

WE know that the origins of life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did occur, somehow or other. It would be a false dichotomy to say, "because abiogenesis is improbable, there must be a creator." That's similar to saying, "Because box cars are improbable, the dice must be loaded." Why is the creator any more "probable" than abiogenesis? Is there any evidence of other "creations"?

In addition, the notion of a conscious, volitional "creator" is anthropomorphic. Why is conscious volition the only thing that can explain an otherwise extremely improbable occurence? Couldn't life have originated through some other, non-consicious, non-volitional, but unique set of circumstances?

There are dozens of distinct theories about how abiogenesis might have happened. No doubt each of them is improbable (although less improbable if we add them all together).

There are a few (not dozens) of plausible hypotheses (none of which really rise to the level of theory) to explain abiogenesis. I've followed them closely over the years since I was a college and graduate/medical school student. You can find a good on-line summary of them by Googling "abiogenesis." The Wikipedia article is fairly good. The one I find most compelling is the "Clay" hypothesis.

WE know that the origins of life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did occur, somehow or other.

I'll rephrase your statement to "Life (however improbable in a world in which no life exists) did come into being, somehow or other," just to make it more grammatically sensible. Well, that's obviously true, since we know that life somehow appeared on the early Earth out of non-living matter. I never questioned that, nor did I ever question that once life forms came into being they evolved by means of natural selection. I hope that I have been able to make it clear that I am not an unscientific Yahoo who knows nothing about physics, chemistry, and biology.

It would be a false dichotomy to say, "because abiogenesis is improbable, there must be a creator." That's similar to saying, "Because box cars are improbable, the dice must be loaded." Why is the creator any more "probable" than abiogenesis?

I never said any such things. You are creating a straw man argument. My argument is that so far there haven't been any really compelling physiochemical explanations for abiogenesis. I would certainly welcome a good scientific explanation. But given the fact that abiogenesis is still quite mysterious (as opposed to, say, the theory of evolution by natural selection (and all of the other stuff that we know about biology), I think that we should remain open to the possibility of a Creator, maybe along the lines of the God of Spinosa or the Deists... There have been quite a few bona fide scientists who have held such an idea. Darwin himself was apparently troubled by his inability to explain abiogenesis to the degree of certainty he felt with his theory of natural selection, and this was most likely to be the origin of whatever scientific "doubt" he may have had about the evolution of life on Earth.

[Ecurb]

[B]]

I never said any such things. You are creating a straw man argument. My argument is that so far there haven't been any really compelling physiochemical explanations for abiogenesis. I would certainly welcome a good scientific explanation. But given the fact that abiogenesis is still quite mysterious (as opposed to, say, the theory of evolution by natural selection (and all of the other stuff that we know about biology), I think that we should remain open to the possibility of a Creator, maybe along the lines of the God of Spinosa or the Deists... There have been quite a few bona fide scientists who have held such an idea. Darwin himself was apparently troubled by his inability to explain abiogenesis to the degree of certainty he felt with his theory of natural selection, and this was most likely to be the origin of whatever scientific "doubt" he may have had about the evolution of life on Earth.

I agree that we should remain open to any reasonable possibilities in our quest for the truth. However, I don't think that a Creator is a more reasonable possibility than hundreds (even thousands) of other theories (if we are discussing ONLY the origins of life). Of course if there is OTHER evidence for a powerful God, or a Biblical God (personal revelation, as one example), then a Creator becomes more probable.

p.s. I know that I wasn't always speaking specifically to your points; I was making general comments on the issue.

[Billy the Poet]

We often neglect the truth that science has a handful of its limitations, especially when we tend to assume one thing and deny the other.

[Nick Capozzoli]

IF you roll two dice, and "box cars" come up, it would be silly to say "these must be loaded dice, because two 6s are unlikely." Yes, box cars are unlikely (1/36), but that doesn't mean the dice must be loaded... It would be a false dichotomy to say, "because abiogenesis is improbable, there must be a creator." That's similar to saying, "Because box cars are improbable, the dice must be loaded." Why is the creator any more "probable" than abiogenesis?

Since I may not have been clear, I want to make a further comment about your argument comparing the probability of abiogenesis to rolling dice and getting boxcars (or any other same face result), and why I said that you are raising a "straw man" argument. We know the probabilities of rolling dice outcomes. They are easy to calculate using statistics and our knowledge of how dice (6-faced cubes) behave when tossed. Atoms and molecules do not behave so simply as dice, but we have a pretty good understanding of how they do behave. This knowledge allows us to estimate the probability that that certain chemical reactions can occur, given the presence of certain atoms and molecules (or larger assemblages of matter) under specified environmental conditions (such as those on the early Earth). Environmental conditions on the early Earth were certainly different from those today, but we must assume that the laws of physics and chemistry were the same as they are today. We are not going way back to the time of the Big Bang, when one could argue that the laws might have been different...

So the problem for folks who want to explain abiogenesis comes down to hypothesizing a physiochemical pathway for the assembly of living matter from non-living matter. We understand that because life exists now on Earth, abiogenesis in fact did occur at some point. I'll assume it occurred on Earth rather than somewhere else in the Universe to be imported to Earth, mainly because saying life originated elsewhere merely begs the question of abiogenesis.

We also know that the assembly of non-living chemical assemblies into life forms was improbable. How improbable is not clear, but it was certainly more improbable than rolling boxcars, and probably more improbable than winning the Super Lotto. Granted we are talking about a very long time base (e.g. a couple of billion years since the Earth cooled from a molten fireball and the first Pre-Cambrian living things appeared). The main problem for us is to come up with a "plausible" physical mechanism that provides us with some sort of "scientific" explanation (hypothesis) for abiogenesis. We do have some hypotheses (the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis discusses them), but none of them seems compelling enough to command our absolute acceptance.

Furthermore, despite the extensive studies of modern scientists, so far no one has been able to create life from non-life "in the test tube," nor has anyone observed the spontaneous appearance of life from non-life in nature.

All of this is to say the great scientific mystery of life is abiogenesis. Neither the "Creationist" folks nor the "Evolutionists" seem to have focused on abiogenesis as the central mystery that needs either a theological or scientific explanation. They tend to argue about whether or not natural selection can explain the evolution of living things. It ought to be quite clear that the Darwin/Wallace theory of natural selection provides an intellectually compelling explanation for the evolution of living things. As far as scientific theories to explain the behavior of the universe, natural selection is about as certainly "correct" as Maxwell's thermodynamics. No other scientific theories, such as relativity and quantum mechanics, have the same degree of certainty as thermodynamic theory and the theory of evolution by natural selection, IMHO.

I just wanted to clarify what I think about this topic.

[mal4mac]

I think that we should remain open to the possibility of a Creator, maybe along the lines of the God of Spinosa or the Deists... There have been quite a few bona fide scientists who have held such an idea. Darwin himself was apparently troubled by his inability to explain abiogenesis to the degree of certainty he felt with his theory of natural selection, and this was most likely to be the origin of whatever scientific "doubt" he may have had about the evolution of life on Earth.

You can dig out any number of scientists who believe all kinds of wacky things. Every field has its eccentrics.

As there is no absolute truth, then we should remain open to the possibility of all things, so you are right in saying we should remain open to the possibility of a creator God. But we should, then, also remain open to the possibility of the tooth fairy and the flying spaghetti monster. But there is no *evidence* for any of these things. So, in practice, sensible people, today, think believing in unseen things is just too silly.

[MorpheusSandman]

As there is no absolute truth, then we should remain open to the possibility of all things, so you are right in saying we should remain open to the possibility of a creator God. But we should, then, also remain open to the possibility of the tooth fairy and the flying spaghetti monster. But there is no *evidence* for any of these things. So, in practice, sensible people, today, think believing in unseen things is just too silly.Really what we should remain open to is the fact that not all propositions are equally likely to be true, and set about assigning probability rather than resorting to the binary labels of "true" "false." To think about things like God or tooth fairies is to think about things the human imagination is capable of producing without a stitch of valid external evidence, and, historically, we are batting a perfect 0 at confirming the existence of such entities. So I tend to think that anything we imagine existing before we have proof of their existence is extremely unlikely to actually exist... something like 0.00000000000001% or so. OTOH, I think I'm confident putting the sun's existence at 99.99999999999999999999%. So perhaps neither proposition is absolute truth, but they're about as close as we can get. The whole point is to be less wrong, not absolutely right.

[mal4mac]

Really what we should remain open to is the fact that not all propositions are equally likely to be true, and set about assigning probability rather than resorting to the binary labels of "true" "false." To think about things like God or tooth fairies is to think about things the human imagination is capable of producing without a stitch of valid external evidence, and, historically, we are batting a perfect 0 at confirming the existence of such entities. So I tend to think that anything we imagine existing before we have proof of their existence is extremely unlikely to actually exist... something like 0.00000000000001% or so. OTOH, I think I'm confident putting the sun's existence at 99.99999999999999999999%. So perhaps neither proposition is absolute truth, but they're about as close as we can get. The whole point is to be less wrong, not absolutely right.

Some seemingly, at first sight, intelligent & sane & serious people say that witches or gods exist, but none say tooth fairies or Santa Claus exist, so the existence of the former seems more likely than the latter. But I don't think you can assign probabilities to any of these claims, that's treating the claims too seriously! There is *no* reasonable evidence for gods or tooth fairies, so sensible people just get on with life ignoring any possibility of them existing, and don't bother seeking probabilities for their existence, as they have much better things to do.

[The Atheist]

.... the flying spaghetti monster. But there is no *evidence* for any of these things. ...


<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< speak for yourself!



Some seemingly, at first sight, intelligent & sane & serious people say that witches or gods exist, but none say tooth fairies or Santa Claus exist, so the existence of the former seems more likely than the latter.

Only if you count belief as evidence, which would be very silly.

I believe I'll have a beer.

[Calidore]

Only if you count belief as evidence, which would be very silly.

I believe I'll have a beer.

Youtube or it didn't happen.

[mal4mac]

Only if you count belief as evidence, which would be very silly.


I don't believe in the Christian God. But can't there be different levels of disbelief? Some clever people believe in the existence of God, but no one supports the existence of the tooth fairy. I think those "clever people" are wrong, but don't they deserve some respect?

[The Atheist]

I don't believe in the Christian God. But can't there be different levels of disbelief?

I can't see why there should be. Things are either supported by evidence or they are not.


Some clever people believe in the existence of God, but no one supports the existence of the tooth fairy. I think those "clever people" are wrong, but don't they deserve some respect?

Not for their views, no. Why would I respect the views of someone who, in my opinion, chooses to be self-deluded?

I reject the concept of intelligent people really and genuinely thinking there is any reason to think some mythical sky-fairy runs the universe. They choose to believe, then soothe their consciences with tract-explanations for the irrational. Faith is a choice, not a decision.

[MorpheusSandman]

Some seemingly, at first sight, intelligent & sane & serious people say that witches or gods exist, but none say tooth fairies or Santa Claus exist, so the existence of the former seems more likely than the latter. But I don't think you can assign probabilities to any of these claims, that's treating the claims too seriously! There is *no* reasonable evidence for gods or tooth fairies, so sensible people just get on with life ignoring any possibility of them existing, and don't bother seeking probabilities for their existence, as they have much better things to do.I'm not saying we should devote serious time and mental power to assigning accurate probabilities to propositions for which there's no good evidence to suggest they're true, however, in general, it's good, even if as a thought experiment, to think about what kind of evidence WOULD be good evidence and how well any evidence supports the proposition that it's true versus the proposition that it's not true.

If you just push the probability to the pole of 0/false/untrue then that's basically tantamount to saying no evidence would ever convince you, even if God, Santa Claus, etc. showed up at your door and demonstrated their powers to you. Obviously such a thing would be darn good evidence for them existing. Yet, according to Bayes' Theorem, if your prior probability was set at 0 then no evidence could ever move it one fractional integer from 0. If that's not the case, then it's good to consider what the real prior probability actually is. As I said, I think the best prior I could give would be the one assigned to all things we imagined to exist before we confirmed their existence, which would place the probability extremely low as, clearly, the human brain is capable of imagining many things exist that do not.


I don't believe in the Christian God. But can't there be different levels of disbelief? Yes; in fact, I think all there are only levels of belief and disbelief, even though people tend to express their confidence levels in binary terms. That binary thinking isn't reflective of how things actually are because it presumes (among other things) that we know all there is to know. Our knowledge (and mental) limitations should dictate that every belief is merely a measure of our confidence levels given the evidence and how we've cognitively processed that evidence.


I can't see why there should be. Things are either supported by evidence or they are not.
See above; first you'd have a dispute over exactly what constitutes evidence, a further dispute over what constitutes good evidence, and a dispute over how that evidence affects the likelihood of any given proposition. These are not simple matters.

[The Atheist]

...first you'd have a dispute over exactly what constitutes evidence, a further dispute over what constitutes good evidence, and a dispute over how that evidence affects the likelihood of any given proposition. These are not simple matters.

Looks pretty simple to me - evidence that can be counted will conform to scientific investigation: physical, testable, measurable.

Anything supported by anecdotal evidence only can be safely ignored.

[mal4mac]

Yes; in fact, I think all there are only levels of belief and disbelief, even though people tend to express their confidence levels in binary terms.

Don't people have to express their confidence levels in binary terms? If they stopped to evaluate their confidence level for things like 'the sun rising tomorrow' wouldn't they be paralysed? Wondering every night if the sun is going to rise tomorrow would be, surely, an example of extreme silliness, wouldn't it? Unless, perhaps, you were a philosopher specialising in these matters.

[MorpheusSandman]

Looks pretty simple to me - evidence that can be counted will conform to scientific investigation: physical, testable, measurable.That's scientism. There are all kinds of evidence we accept as evidence that doesn't follow the rigors of the scientific method, and there are things like history which require a completely different kind of investigation. What's more, such things don't help us in disputes like the one I'm having with YesNo in the Big Bang thread regarding various interpretations of quantum mechanics in which any number of ideas fit the evidence and there's really no scientific way (right now) of definitively choosing between them, and there may never be. So it's certainly not as simple as all that. How much reading into epistemology have you done? Read through here (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/) and get back to me on how simple it all is. I agree that, perhaps, it's simpler than many make it out to be (http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth), but probably not as simple as you're implying.


If they stopped to evaluate their confidence level for things like 'the sun rising tomorrow' wouldn't they be paralysed? Hehe, this reminds me of the William Blake quote in Augeries of Innocence that "If the sun and moon should doubt, they'd immediately go out." The simple answer is that NO, people do not and SHOULD not think of their confidence levels in binary terms. The only way to accurately polarize such beliefs is if we knew everything, and we do not. It's our lack of omniscience that creates probability and prohibits absolute certainty. Hence the goal of being "less wrong" and learning to tune our biases accurately by what we experience, believe, and what we expect to experience based on that belief. However, we don't need absolute, ontological certainty to behave as if we're certain; but then we're talking about the difference between beliefs and actions based on beliefs. IE, the absolute consistency of the sun rising means we can act as if we're certain it will rise tomorrow without ruling out the remote possibility that will not. You don't need to worry over things that have a 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of happening.

[mal4mac]

Looks pretty simple to me - evidence that can be counted will conform to scientific investigation: physical, testable, measurable.

Anything supported by anecdotal evidence only can be safely ignored.

Doesn't that "do away with" most of history? Did Henry VIII actually exist? There is no "physical" Henry VIII in existence to test or measure, all we have are anecdotes.

Surely you have to have a sliding scale for belief, not just a binary switch. Markers on that scale from "most confident of existence" to "least", for me, might be "me, keyboard, Henry VIII, || Shakespeare, Jesus Christ, Buddha | , God, tooth fairy"

I believe in everything to the left of "||", and nothing to the right of '|'. Between || and | are guys I tend to believe existed, but might pause to doubt their existence, now and again.

[The Atheist]

That's scientism. There are all kinds of evidence we accept as evidence that doesn't follow the rigors of the scientific method, and there are things like history which require a completely different kind of investigation.

I can't agree at all, historical evidence is still physical and verifiable, and mal has a good example:


Doesn't that "do away with" most of history? Did Henry VIII actually exist? There is no "physical" Henry VIII in existence to test or measure, all we have are anecdotes.

No, we do not just have anecdotes. There are thousands of pieces of physical evidence that show Henry 8 existed and was King of England, and we even know where he was buried.


Surely you have to have a sliding scale for belief, not just a binary switch.

Obviously, some things go in the "not sure" category, and Morpheus' quantum mechanics are a good example. I don't have a problem with not knowing.

[MorpheusSandman]

I can't agree at all, historical evidence is still physical and verifiable, and mal has a good example:Yeah, some historical evidence is, but are you really suggesting we don't ever rely on anecdotal evidence in trying to piece together history? We don't always have access to such hard, physical evidence. However, even outside history, has there never been a time you've had a friend tell you a story and you believed it without asking for more evidence? You may say "well, yeah, but those stories weren't making extraordinary claims that required such evidence," but then I'd say that the entire notion of the "extraordinary claim" is rife with epistemological problems such as what exactly constitutes one and how we know one without appealing to personal experience, social norms, anecdotes, etc.

[The Atheist]

Yeah, some historical evidence is, but are you really suggesting we don't ever rely on anecdotal evidence in trying to piece together history?

Not rely on, no. Take Socrates as an ideal example; did he live, or was he a fictional character? We don't know and never will, but it doesn't actually matter, because what was said shaped the world, not who said it.


However, even outside history, has there never been a time you've had a friend tell you a story and you believed it without asking for more evidence? You may say "well, yeah, but those stories weren't making extraordinary claims that required such evidence," but then I'd say that the entire notion of the "extraordinary claim" is rife with epistemological problems such as what exactly constitutes one and how we know one without appealing to personal experience, social norms, anecdotes, etc.

That's not really compatible with the subject. If a friend tells me he's done a currency deal, I accept it without evidence because it is irrelevant to me and I know that his job is doing currency deals. Some things aren't worth having evidence of.

On the other hand, if he tells me he's caught a 20 kg kingfish and wants me to believe it, he'd better show me the fish.

I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases. Why should the burden of proof for dark energy be higher than that for water freezing at 0C? The evidence exists, or we are making educated guesses based upon what we know so far.

I actually came back in to add this very good list of unanswered (mostly) scientific questions:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/01/20-big-questions-in-science

[mal4mac]

Not rely on, no. Take Socrates as an ideal example; did he live, or was he a fictional character? We don't know and never will, but it doesn't actually matter, because what was said shaped the world, not who said it.

He lived! Boy did he live :)

This is clear from other writings and historical artifacts.

Socrates was not simply a character, or an invention, of Plato. In studying "the philosophy of Socrates" we can't say, for certain, that any philosophical views that Plato attributes to Socrates are actually those of the historical Socrates. That said, some (most?) scholars attribute the views expressed by the character Socrates in the early dialogues as almost certainly closer to the views of the historical Socrates than those expressed in the Republic and other, later dialogues. I believe these scholars, but I don't believe them as strongly as those who say "Plato's dialogues were written by Plato". Again we see the sliding scale of belief.



If a friend tells me he's done a currency deal, I accept it without evidence because it is irrelevant to me and I know that his job is doing currency deals. Some things aren't worth having evidence of.


What if he's using your money in the currency deal? If he's a good friend, you may accept the deal without evidence, you "believe in him". But your father is likely to insist that you get evidence!



On the other hand, if he tells me he's caught a 20 kg kingfish and wants me to believe it, he'd better show me the fish.


What if he's renowned for telling the truth? He might be upset if you question his honour. Shouldn't you believe him without evidence?



I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases. Why should the burden of proof for dark energy be higher than that for water freezing at 0C? The evidence exists, or we are making educated guesses based upon what we know so far.


What about claims that really matter? For instance, shouldn't you have extraordinary evidence, i.e., "beyond reasonable doubt", in a murder case?

[MorpheusSandman]

I've never really subscribed to the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" position because it demeans the value of evidence in other cases.Actually, one could argue that Bayes' Theorem supports that saying mathematically. If you have a proposition whose prior is set at, say, a 1% likelihood, then it DOES take some "extraordinary" evidence to get it from 1% to 99%. Of course, you may ask where we get our priors from to begin with, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Anyway, as you seem to agree regarding your friend's currency deal, there are things for which you accept far less evidence for before you assume its truthfulness. Well, the thing is that people naturally disagree over what those things are and how good any given evidence is. Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions, but we aren't very good at using the scientific method intuitively, and how many things do we come to believe before we even come to know about it? Nature handicaps us from the beginning, and even the most skeptical of us tend to acquire any number of erroneous beliefs because of a lack of vigilance.

[mal4mac]

Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions.

Can it? Then why is everyone still arguing about most of them? Like the "hard problem of consciousness", the mind-body problem, and "ultimate origins".

[cafolini]

Actually, one could argue that Bayes' Theorem supports that saying mathematically. If you have a proposition whose prior is set at, say, a 1% likelihood, then it DOES take some "extraordinary" evidence to get it from 1% to 99%. Of course, you may ask where we get our priors from to begin with, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Anyway, as you seem to agree regarding your friend's currency deal, there are things for which you accept far less evidence for before you assume its truthfulness. Well, the thing is that people naturally disagree over what those things are and how good any given evidence is. Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions, but we aren't very good at using the scientific method intuitively, and how many things do we come to believe before we even come to know about it? Nature handicaps us from the beginning, and even the most skeptical of us tend to acquire any number of erroneous beliefs because of a lack of vigilance.

Not a handicap at all. No lack of vigilance at all. No one is born knowing. So one believes until one finds out from science, or never finds out. Nature cannot be blamed.

[The Atheist]

He lived! Boy did he live :)

This is clear from other writings and historical artifacts.

I don't doubt it, but I also could not accept the proposition that we have definitive proof that he lived.



What if he's using your money in the currency deal? If he's a good friend, you may accept the deal without evidence, you "believe in him".

Not me; I'd have the paperwork every time.


But your father is likely to insist that you get evidence!

Apart from the fact that he's been dead for 30 years, he was far more likely to trust people on a handshake than me.


What if he's renowned for telling the truth? He might be upset if you question his honour. Shouldn't you believe him without evidence?

This is fishing we're talking about, not the nature of the universe. Any fisherman worth salting his bait will know for a certainty that evidence must be provided.


What about claims that really matter? For instance, shouldn't you have extraordinary evidence, i.e., "beyond reasonable doubt", in a murder case?

Beyond reasonable doubt is a long way from extraordinary evidence, which is lucky, because juries being made of humans means they're highly susceptible to screwing up. I know of at least a couple of murder cases where the evidence for the prosecution has consisted of reliable scientific evidence that has been completely ignored by juries. On the other hand, there are numerous examples of innocent people being executed or locked up on no believable evidence.

[The Atheist]

Actually, one could argue that Bayes' Theorem supports that saying mathematically. If you have a proposition whose prior is set at, say, a 1% likelihood, then it DOES take some "extraordinary" evidence to get it from 1% to 99%. Of course, you may ask where we get our priors from to begin with, but that's a whole other can of worms.

I think we're just giving different meanings to the phrase, because that claim may require an extraordinary amount of evidence, but there's nothing extraordinary about the evidence itself.

I think you're also using probabilities incorrectly, because if something has a 1% likelihood, then it is 99% unlikely to be proven, no matter how much evidence exists. If the evidence exists but we just haven't found it yet, then it's not a question of lacking probability at all.


Anyway, as you seem to agree regarding your friend's currency deal, there are things for which you accept far less evidence for before you assume its truthfulness.

No, it really is just that it is so irrelevant I have no need to waste time checking. Whether it's true or not is immaterial to me - much like Socrates' life & death. I conditionally accept the propositions on the basis that it doesn't matter, but in no way would I base anything on the assumption that it is really true and verifiable.

Those things do not meet the standard of evidence.


Well, the thing is that people naturally disagree over what those things are and how good any given evidence is.

Which is exactly why the rules of evidence must be constant. Like mathematics, evidence isn't a flexible concept. 2+2 will always equal 5.


Science can certainly help on the "biggest" questions, but we aren't very good at using the scientific method intuitively, and how many things do we come to believe before we even come to know about it? Nature handicaps us from the beginning, and even the most skeptical of us tend to acquire any number of erroneous beliefs because of a lack of vigilance.

Here, I agree with you. Lots of the most fervent battles I've had have been against self-proclaimed skeptics who believe things for which no evidence exists. Love is probably top of the list.

[mal4mac]

Here, I agree with you. Lots of the most fervent battles I've had have been against self-proclaimed skeptics who believe things for which no evidence exists. Love is probably top of the list.

But isn't love a feeling? To deny it would be like denying tiredness.

[The Atheist]

It isn't the existence of love, but what it actually is that causes the argument.

I know of many, many mostly skeptical and rational people that think love is something more than the sum of its parts.

[MorpheusSandman]

Can it? Then why is everyone still arguing about most of them? Like the "hard problem of consciousness", the mind-body problem, and "ultimate origins".Because a lot of time we invent unanswerable questions based on ill-defined terms with no singular referents. It would be like asking "Is a blorkendorker green?" and then complaining that science can't answer it. Just because we have a word like "consciousness" and create a "mind-body duality" doesn't mean they're actually coherent questions. See here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/


Not a handicap at all. No lack of vigilance at all. No one is born knowing. So one believes until one finds out from science, or never finds out. Nature cannot be blamed.No one is "born knowing," but we are born with innate cognitive biases (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0444884130/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=) that lead us to believe we know all kinds of things that aren't true. If one becomes aware of those biases they can learn to be more vigilant about not picking up false beliefs, or, more accurately, any beliefs based on bad reasoning.

[MorpheusSandman]

I think we're just giving different meanings to the phrase, because that claim may require an extraordinary amount of evidence, but there's nothing extraordinary about the evidence itself.No, it's not just about the amount. I agree we may disagree over what constitutes extraordinary, but I simply think of "extraordinary" as meaning "something that almost certainly wouldn't happen if the proposition was untrue," and the more unlikely something is to be true, the more unlikely that its confirming evidence would be encountered.


I think you're also using probabilities incorrectly, because if something has a 1% likelihood, then it is 99% unlikely to be proven, no matter how much evidence exists. If the evidence exists but we just haven't found it yet, then it's not a question of lacking probability at all.I'm not quite sure why you think what you write here contradicts what I said. You're right that if something has a 1% chance of being true then it's 99% unlikely to be proven, hence how "extraordinary" it would be if we actually found evidence to prove it. I'm not sure what you mean by your second sentence; probability is always predicated on our combination of knowledge and ignorance of the world. As I explained to Callidore in the Big Bang thread, a coin-flip being 50/50 is only 50/50 because we know about the two sides of the coin and can't calculate the physics involved in the flip. If we could apply General Relativity to the flip immediately as the flip happened, the probability of the coin landing on the side it does would be 100/0, not 50/50. So probability is always an expression of our combined ignorance and knowledge.


No, it really is just that it is so irrelevant I have no need to waste time checking. Whether it's true or not is immaterial to me - much like Socrates' life & death. I conditionally accept the propositions on the basis that it doesn't matter, but in no way would I base anything on the assumption that it is really true and verifiable.Again, I'm not sure where you think we're disagreeing. You think its truthfulness is irrelevant so you accept anecdotal evidence on the basis that "it doesn't matter." The basis you accept it on is really immaterial to my initial point. As for the last bit, would you not be willing to accept a bet on the basis that it was true? Let's say I offered a wager of $100 that your friend does what he does for a living. Would you accept that wager? If so, then you must admit that you have assumed the truthfulness of the proposition to at least more than a 50/50 degree based solely on anecdotal evidence. What would be the limits of that bet? Would you lay your $100 to my $50? Your $100 to my $10? How sure are you? All of a sudden, I'm giving you a good reason to care about the truthfulness of your assumptions and the evidence they're based on, which goes to show they were based on something, even though you never bothered to pursue it farther because it was "irrelevant."

One problem with the "irrelevant" argument, though, is that so many relevant beliefs can flow from the same place that irrelevant ones do. Yes, maybe your specific case is irrelevant, but can you really say you've never accepted any relevant propositions as being true on no better evidence? I can't say for sure I haven't. Human brains are not good at keeping up with their beliefs and what assumptions/bases they rest on.


Which is exactly why the rules of evidence must be constant. Like mathematics, evidence isn't a flexible concept. 2+2 will always equal 5.I'm not sure what you mean by the "rules of evidence" being constant. What are the "rules for eye witness evidence?" Also, math isn't really "evidence" per say but a model of reality for which we can often construct tests that we consider to be evidence. But Godel had a little something to say about the completeness and consistency of mathematical models.


Love is probably top of the list.Well, I'd say we have evidence that we feel something for other people that we call "love." As to what that feeling actually is and what causes it, that's another matter. This is what I've been arguing about with YesNo in the Big Bang thread, that feeling/experiences are evidence only for feelings and experiences, not the ontological assumptions we make based on them (IE, there's an inferential leap from saying "I feel love" to saying "love is X".)

[mal4mac]

Because a lot of time we invent unanswerable questions based on ill-defined terms with no singular referents.

How does that apply to the "hard problem of consciousness"? What's wrong with asking "What is Consciousness?"?

"It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does." - David Chalmers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

[MorpheusSandman]

How does that apply to the "hard problem of consciousness"? What's wrong with asking "What is Consciousness?"?Since when does "science doesn't know everything right now" equate to there being a "hard problem?" I'm quite certain that when we're able to fully map the human brain and understand how everything works such questions will only exist in the minds of people who don't like materialistic answers. Dennett's response to the whole thing seems dead on, to me.

[The Atheist]

Just because we have a word like "consciousness" and create a "mind-body duality" doesn't mean they're actually coherent questions.

Music to my eyes!


No, it's not just about the amount. I agree we may disagree over what constitutes extraordinary, but I simply think of "extraordinary" as meaning "something that almost certainly wouldn't happen if the proposition was untrue," and the more unlikely something is to be true, the more unlikely that its confirming evidence would be encountered.

I think you're overcomplicating things to a large degree. You're ascribing probabilities to unknowns, which just doesn't work. Take a look at the bit I bolded; you're talking about probabilities that are just unknown. You're saying it wouldn't happen if the proposition were untrue - but you can't give a probability for it until it is known.

Smacks of too much Dawkins. :)


You think its truthfulness is irrelevant so you accept anecdotal evidence on the basis that "it doesn't matter."

No, I'm not saying I accept it, I'm saying that it isn't worth knowing. For the purpose of conversation and interaction with other people, I will conditionally take words at face value, but I'm not accepting them as factual.

To me, it has no truth value at all, so I don't give it one.


The basis you accept it on is really immaterial to my initial point.

Actually, it's the only bit that matters.


As for the last bit, would you not be willing to accept a bet on the basis that it was true? Let's say I offered a wager of $100 that your friend does what he does for a living.

Sure, because I have physical proof of that.

If you're asking whether I'd accept a bet on what he said he'd done that day was true, no.


One problem with the "irrelevant" argument, though, is that so many relevant beliefs can flow from the same place that irrelevant ones do. Yes, maybe your specific case is irrelevant, but can you really say you've never accepted any relevant propositions as being true on no better evidence? I can't say for sure I haven't. Human brains are not good at keeping up with their beliefs and what assumptions/bases they rest on.

Well, I can say with 100% confidence I haven't accepted anything on such flimsy evidence since my early teens at least.


I'm not sure what you mean by the "rules of evidence" being constant.

Really? I am surprised. Physical, testable, verifiable. You even called it scientism above, although I prefer the term scientific scepticism.


What are the "rules for eye witness evidence?"

There's only one:

That it is least-reliable form of evidence available. As it happens, I've conducted literally hundreds of tests with thousands of people to show how utterly useless they are at giving accurate eyewitness accounts.


Also, math isn't really "evidence" per say but a model of reality for which we can often construct tests that we consider to be evidence. But Godel had a little something to say about the completeness and consistency of mathematical models.

I think you mean "per se".

I didn't say maths was evidence, I said it was constant. Maybe that was a little ambiguous. The hypotenuse is always the sum of the square of the other two sides; a circle's area is always pi x D. Godel is talking about maths being inconsistent in analysis, not computation, which is constant. (Douglas Adams channeled Godel beautifully.)


Well, I'd say we have evidence that we feel something for other people that we call "love." As to what that feeling actually is and what causes it, that's another matter. This is what I've been arguing about with YesNo in the Big Bang thread, that feeling/experiences are evidence only for feelings and experiences, not the ontological assumptions we make based on them (IE, there's an inferential leap from saying "I feel love" to saying "love is X".)

On this, we agree entirely - a perfect example of what I mean by people giving it credit for more than the sum of its parts.

[The Atheist]

Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

[The Atheist]

I'm quite certain that when we're able to fully map the human brain and understand how everything works such questions will only exist in the minds of people who don't like materialistic answers.

There's another one I've been banging my head against brick walls with for years.

Unfortunately, the list of people who don't like materialistic answers is very, very long.

[MorpheusSandman]

You're ascribing probabilities to unknowns, which just doesn't work.You may not can give precise probabilities, but you can certainly estimate based on related and relevant knowns. I should know because I do this all the time in my profession of online poker. Whenever I play with a new player I don't just say "well, he's an unknown so I can't assume any probabilities about his actions," I say "I'll assume some basic things based on playing with many players and then adjust them based on what I see from him." Let's take something like the existence of God. We can easily put God into the category of "things man has imagined to exist before they have unanimous sensory or scientific proof of their existence." If you consider things in that category, the vast majority of them we have still not found any evidence/proof for despite the attempts, which would suggest that most don't actually exist (Bayes tells us this: if X didn't exist, you'd expect to see no evidence for X; but if X did exist, then you'd only expect to see no evidence for X some of the time).

What's more, every time we learn and discover new things, this makes the existence of those entities less likely as it's one less thing we don't know. So we have to assume that since our ignorance is shrinking (by how much we're not sure, but it certainly is), that the probability of their existence is shrinking as well. By how much precisely? Well, there's where the estimating comes in. Of all the things in that category, about the only thing I can think of we once imagined to exist and ended up being right about was atoms. So that would be one thing amidst how many that we still have no evidence/proof of? You could further adjust such probability by considering other conditional probabilities ala Bayes. Assuming God was real, there would be some probability besides zero for which he would've revealed himself to us in a completely unambiguous and objective manner. OTOH, if he didn't exist we'd have precisely what we have, a lot of people making claims about him without proof or solid evidence.

One could continue to do this for a good long while, and it would all lead to a point where you'd have to assign the probability of God's existence a really low number. We could debate (a lot) over precisely what that number is, but to say we can't make some kind of educated guess is just wrong. After all, if you disbelieve in God then you have to believe that the evidence favors the proposition that "God doesn't exist," and unless you are absolutely certain about that non-existence, then you'd have to simply say that the evidence favors some extremely low probability (even if you're not precisely sure what it is) that's enough for you to say "I don't believe he exists."


For the purpose of conversation and interaction with other people, I will conditionally take words at face value, but I'm not accepting them as factual.You may not accept them as factual when pushed (like I'm doing), but I bet your brain in those moments doesn't consciously think "Hmm, how likely is what they're saying actually true?" Our brains make short cuts, and one of those short cuts is polarizing things (like beliefs) as non polarized things creates chaos in the system and takes too much processing power. So I'm guessing that when you're dealing with those people your brain is polarizing away their statements as "true," and you probably only question that "true" in a situation like this, where you have a pesky online guy bugging you about it. ;) What's more, even with that pesky online guy bugging you about it, you have to realize that, based on what they've said, you've assigned some kind of imprecise probability to those statements being true. I asked you what you'd wager on one of their statements, which should give you a good idea of how truthful you really think they are. Trust me, when you make a living assigning probabilities to such things, you gain an appreciation for how it works in all situations, how difficult it is, how artful it is, how to better be more precise about it, and the dangers of assuming too much or too little.


To me, it has no truth value at all, so I don't give it one. You may not have given it one, but don't mistake that for it not having one. That's the mind projection fallacy.


If you're asking whether I'd accept a bet on what he said he'd done that day was true, no.So if I laid you $100 to your $1 you wouldn't bet on what he said he did that day was true?


Well, I can say with 100% confidence I haven't accepted anything on such flimsy evidence since my early teens at least.Color me skeptical.


Really? I am surprised. Physical, testable, verifiable.But what are even the rules of evidence for those things? You do realize that verificationism (a kind of logical positivism) has been out of favor in scientific philosophy for a good long time now, right? Most people today prefer Popper's notion of falsifiability. I prefer the Bayesian take on falsifiability. Nonetheless, I can't think of any "rules of evidence" for any of these things as different fields of science have different ways of handling and assessing tests and evidence. I mean, history is a very different can of worms than physics, which is a very different can of worms than biology.


That it is least-reliable form of evidence available.OK, but precisely how (un)reliable is it?


I didn't say maths was evidence, I said it was constant.Ok, but evidence is not constant, not in any way remotely similar to math (and even with math it's only constant within a set of parameters). Math only remains constant because as a model it seems to match what we experience and, what's more, it allows us to predict and constrain experience quite precisely. Evidence is really what tells us how to adjust our models. If what we experienced (evidence) didn't match what our model told us to expect (math), then the problem may be with one or the other, we wouldn't always be sure which. The math of General Relativity is very precise, and it seems to accurately model what we experience of physics in every day life (and beyond), but that mathematical model breaks down inside black holes and other extremely small scales. So is the problem with the model or in the evidence, or, more precisely, is it how we're looking at the evidence? Physicists aren't sure yet.

[mal4mac]

Since when does "science doesn't know everything right now" equate to there being a "hard problem?" I'm quite certain that when we're able to fully map the human brain and understand how everything works such questions will only exist in the minds of people who don't like materialistic answers. Dennett's response to the whole thing seems dead on, to me.

Chalmers seems dead on, to me. This seems a really hard problem, to me. I don't even see how science could begin to answer it. You are making a big assumption when you think that science, however broadly conceived, will ever have an answer.

Are you really sure we can fully map the human brain? The Ordnance Survey can't even make a great job of mapping my locality, so I'm not holding out much hopes.

Do you really think we will ever understand how everything works?

You seem to have raised science up to the level of a God who can and must explain everything, if you just click your heels and wish hard enough. Not that I'm saying science will *certainly* never explain everything, of course, I don't want to fall into the same error as you, in the opposite direction.

[The Atheist]

You may not can give precise probabilities, but you can certainly estimate based on related and relevant knowns. I should know because I do this all the time in my profession of online poker.

Not compatible in any way with the scenario I gave.

No matter who plays or how they play, you're dealing with an insanely small set of probabilities, against real unknowns, which have infinite probabilities.


What's more, every time we learn and discover new things, this makes the existence of those entities less likely as it's one less thing we don't know. So we have to assume that since our ignorance is shrinking (by how much we're not sure, but it certainly is), that the probability of their existence is shrinking as well. By how much precisely? Well, there's where the estimating comes in.

Not at all - there's no need to estimate, not that it's even vaguely possible.

The statement that originally started all this was the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and all claims for god are super-extraordinary, because they posit an entity that can suspend the laws of physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics at will.

Yet I don't believe it requires extraordinary evidence, just some evidence.

I think we're approaching the same question from opposite ends - you're trying to assess the probability of something occurring, while I'm sitting back and say "show me the evidence", until which time I'm happy to ignore the hell out of it.

Think Russell's teapot.


You may not accept them as factual when pushed (like I'm doing), but I bet your brain in those moments doesn't consciously think "Hmm, how likely is what they're saying actually true?"

You'd lose that bet.


So if I laid you $100 to your $1 you wouldn't bet on what he said he did that day was true?

That bet, I would take in an instant. This is where your understanding of probabilities is flawed - gambling probabilities don't work in the real world because they are limited. And while I might not be a professional gambler, I have worked as a bookmaker in the past, so I do have rather a complete understanding of probabilities and odds.

I'd take 10:1, but nothing less, which should give you an indication of how seriously I treat casually-obtained information.


You do realize that verificationism (a kind of logical positivism) has been out of favor in scientific philosophy for a good long time now, right? Most people today prefer Popper's notion of falsifiability. I prefer the Bayesian take on falsifiability.

Falsifiability doesn't affect the status of evidence, because if it's false, it's not evidence any longer.


OK, but precisely how (un)reliable is it?

How long is a piece of string? The unreliability is related to each individual. Some are better than others, and people can be trained to be more observant, but there isn't a singular measure of the probability of eyewitness reports being reliable. Sensible people just ignore them entirely; pity the courts don't take that approach.


Ok, but evidence is not constant, not in any way remotely similar to math (and even with math it's only constant within a set of parameters).

Well, we're going to have to disagree here, because I believe evidence is entirely constant. Like god, until there's evidence to show otherwise, I won't worry too much about it, and I don't think the next bit is a problem at all:


The math of General Relativity is very precise, and it seems to accurately model what we experience of physics in every day life (and beyond), but that mathematical model breaks down inside black holes and other extremely small scales. So is the problem with the model or in the evidence, or, more precisely, is it how we're looking at the evidence? Physicists aren't sure yet.

Correct: we don't know. I have confidence that CERN and other projects will answer the questions in time, along with dark energy/matter, but there is as yet no suggestion that what happens at sub-atomic levels actually affects the molecular level and above in ways that are not constant, or consistent with relativity.

[mal4mac]

I have confidence that CERN and other projects will answer the questions in time, along with dark energy/matter, ...

Which questions? You seem to imply *all* questions! Why do have such belief in science? Just because you've lost faith in God that doesn't mean you need to have faith in something else, like a heap of metal in Switzerland. It's suggested we will need a particle collider the size of earth's orbit to test some of the ramblings of string theorists, and even that is far away from answering *all* questions. I doubt CERN or similar projects will do anything to solve the hard problem of consciousness. Will we have enough time to answer the questions before something kill us all? Aren't there always further questions?

[MorpheusSandman]

I don't even see how science could begin to answer it.Well, maybe that's just your lack of imagination and why you're not a great scientist! Answering seemingly impossible questions is kinda the domain of science, you know. Plus, the whole "I don't see how" argument is nothing but an argument from incredulity fallacy.


You are making a big assumption when you think that science, however broadly conceived, will ever have an answer.I don't see why that's a big assumption. One merely has to look at how far we've come in just the past few hundred years since the dawn of modern science. If that's how much we've learned in a few hundred years, how much do you think we'll know in 1000 years?


Are you really sure we can fully map the human brain? I don't see why not. The human brain is a just a complex physical organ with a very large number of small physical objects (particles) moving along other physical constructs like synapses. We already know a great deal about how much of it works, and with the advent of quantum computing I don't see why we'd have difficulty modeling/mapping the rest.


Do you really think we will ever understand how everything works? I don't know about "everything." I'm skeptical of our ability to know much about other universes/worlds if they exist, but I'm not about to bet against us knowing anything specific, since some very smart people have looked very stupid in the past whenever they've said "we'll never know about X." I mean, less than 400 years ago the motions of the planets was a complete mystery to man, one that many thought would and could never be solved. People couldn't even imagine how to go about asking about it... yet, look what happened.


You seem to have raised science up to the level of a God who can and must explain everything, if you just click your heels and wish hard enough.I don't know why you think I'm doing this, I'm merely saying that our current ignorance on a subject doesn't create a "hard problem" that is somehow incapable of being solved. As I said, human history is full of such problems that WERE solved, and certainly not by the people talking about what "hard, impossible problems" they were.

[The Atheist]

Which questions? You seem to imply *all* questions!

I don't see how you come to that implication when I was specifically discussing quantum physics and mentioned CERN, which is exclusively studying sub-atomic physics.

Nothing to with anything outside that very narrow field of study.


Why do have such belief in science?

I get asked that a lot, so I'll give you the standard answer:

I turn on my power switch each morning, turn on the computer, both of which do exactly the same thing every day, thanks to science. I then watch the sun's rays arriving here exactly 8 minutes & 20 seconds after it left the sun, just the same as it has for the past 4 billion years. I then go and drive my car, use a cellphone and write stuff on my screen which I then broadcast around the world on the internet.

When science stops working, I'll stop having confidence in it.


Just because you've lost faith in God that doesn't mean you need to have faith in something else, like a heap of metal in Switzerland.

I don't know where you get the crazy notion that I have faith in anything. I trust scientists to publish results and have them reviewed by their peers, but I don't have faith in them.

I have a high confidence level that the results achieved so far at CERN (and other LHCs) shows that they can crack the questions they're working on.


It's suggested we will need a particle collider the size of earth's orbit to test some of the ramblings of string theorists, and even that is far away from answering *all* questions. I doubt CERN or similar projects will do anything to solve the hard problem of consciousness. Will we have enough time to answer the questions before something kill us all? Aren't there always further questions?

As you can see from above, most of what you've said here doesn't apply, but like Morpheus, I don't have a problem with consciousness, so I can't see too much work needed there. Some humans are conscious, some are not. C'est la vie.

Will something kill us all? Indubitably. I don't imagine we will seriously challenge the reign of the dinosaurs, let alone genera that have existed virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.

(And yes, there are an infinite number of questions, so they cannot all be answered. It must be noted though that many of them won't be worth asking, far less answering.)

[MorpheusSandman]

No matter who plays or how they play, you're dealing with an insanely small set of probabilities, against real unknowns, which have infinite probabilities.You're basically just exalting our ignorance and saying that we can't make any probabilistic inferences based on what is known combined with some hypothetical conditionals about how things might be if they were one way or another, and this is just false.


The statement that originally started all this was the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and all claims for god are super-extraordinary, because they posit an entity that can suspend the laws of physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics at will.

Yet I don't believe it requires extraordinary evidence, just some evidence.Ok, but if you encountered strong evidence for a being that suspended the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, and math, how would that evidence NOT be extraordinary? The whole idea of God being "extraordinary" is that it is outside the realm of "ordinary" physics, biology, chemistry, etc., so any evidence FOR that "extraordinary" being would also have to be "extraordinary" in order to suspend/transcend those "ordinary" laws, no? What's more, because those things are so ordinary, because they seem to hold in every facet of our life, the entire reason we set God's existence at a low probability is because if all of those laws were suspended/transcended, it would be the very first time in our existence that such things happened!

So what can one say for the probability argument? Well, something along the line of Bayes: If God doesn't exist, then these natural laws would hold all the time and never be broken; if God does exist, there's some non-zero probability that we'd see those natural laws suspended/transcended in order to give us evidence of his existence; so, because the evidence we do have fits the former proposition 100%, and the latter proposition some undefined non-zero percent of the time, it decreases the likelihood of the latter proposition that God exists. We don't know HOW much it decreases it, but it's clear that the evidence on its face favors the former.


...you're trying to assess the probability of something occurring, while I'm sitting back and say "show me the evidence", until which time I'm happy to ignore the hell out of it.

Think Russell's teapot.No, I'm not trying to access the probability of something occurring, I'm merely showing that because those things which would provide evidence for something like God don't occur, we can make certain ill-defined probabilistic arguments against God's existence. Further, we can show that if those things were to occur, they would be probabilistically unlikely, ergo extraordinary. One doesn't have to define the probabilities exactly to say some general truths about propositions via Bayes. Russell's Teapot is easily addressed via Occam's Razor, which is itself a mathematically supported probabilistic argument. One could have some (entirely useless!) fun figuring out how probable it is that a teapot could ever come to orbit the sun!


This is where your understanding of probabilities is flawed - gambling probabilities don't work in the real world because they are limited... I'd take 10:1, but nothing less, which should give you an indication of how seriously I treat casually-obtained information.I don't know what you mean by "gambling probabilities." What makes "gambling probabilities" any different than "real world probabilities?*" Plus, proof that such things do work in the real world is here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300169698/sr=1-3/qid=1378288035/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1378288035&seller=&sr=1-3 Besides, if you're saying you'll take "10:1" then you are basically saying you think your friend's story is trustworthy more than 9% of the time. So, congrats! You have just put a probability (range) on real world event, and you've made your beliefs pay rent (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/) (literally!). You could also press this to really think about at what point you'd expect to start losing money over such bets. However, I must say that if you don't have any more confidence than that in your friends on casual information, I think you need more trustworthy friends!

*Your "real world" probabilities sounds like the Frequentist interpretation of statistics, and I've been talking about Bayesianism. Bayesians and Frequentists are mortal enemies! You may be thinking along the lines of Callidore in the Big Bang thread that the probability of a coin landing on either side is ACTUALLY 50/50 (frequentist), as opposed to the ACTUAL probability being 100/0 and the 50/50 just being an expression of our knowledge of the coin (its two sides) and ignorance of the deterministic physical processes (Bayesian). Probabilities are ALWAYS an expression of our combined knowledge and ignorance, which is why I feel comfortable in talking about probabilistic arguments for things like God's existence even when there are so many unknowns. Under Bayes, we can take what we do know and show how that favors propositions for and against God's existence, even if we can't assign the probabilities precisely.


Falsifiability doesn't affect the status of evidence, because if it's false, it's not evidence any longer.Falsifiability doesn't mean something was proven false, it means something is capable of being falsified: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability If you apply Bayes to Falsifiability what you get is evidence that favors or disfavors the likelihood of a prior proposition.


but there isn't a singular measure of the probability of eyewitness reports being reliable.Well, not a single one, no, but you could find an average and then get more precise with people who are demonstrably better and worse at it.


I believe evidence is entirely constant.Would you not say we had good evidence for thinking the Earth was flat until we discovered evidence that it wasn't?


Correct: we don't know.Right, but either way it goes to show that either math or our evidence is not consistent (or, perhaps incomplete rather than inconsistent).


there is as yet no suggestion that what happens at sub-atomic levels actually affects the molecular level and above in ways that are not constant, or consistent with relativity.Actually, all the evidence we currently have favors the notion that the "Molecular level and above" behave precisely how we'd expect if Quantum Mechanics worked consistently all the way up. So far, we've managed to put 2424 particles (AFAIK) in superposition without finding any "split" between the quantum and macro worlds. The problem of quantizing GR is a slightly different problem, though, because GR is local, deterministic, and real, while the classic interpretations of QM are none of these things. If you look to the interpretations that ARE those things, even though they offer the possibility of reconciliation with GR, there are no signs as to how that would happen (yet).

[mal4mac]

Answering seemingly impossible questions is kinda the domain of science, you know.


Mostly it isn't. For instance, "Is there life on Mars?" is a current scientific question of great interest to many people, but it's certainly possible to see how it might be answered.



Plus, the whole "I don't see how" argument is nothing but an argument from incredulity fallacy.


"I don't see how" is often used in science circles, and is usually met with a nod and a, "let's try something else, then". So it's a perfectly valid, and useful, argument.



I don't see why that's a big assumption. One merely has to look at how far we've come in just the past few hundred years since the dawn of modern science. If that's how much we've learned in a few hundred years, how much do you think we'll know in 1000 years?


The way things are going we might not even know how to open the can of soup we dig out of the rubble.



I don't see why not. The human brain is a just a complex physical organ with a very large number of small physical objects (particles) moving along other physical constructs like synapses. We already know a great deal about how much of it works, and with the advent of quantum computing I don't see why we'd have difficulty modeling/mapping the rest.


Getting a detailed map down to the levels of individual elementary particles may be an intractable problem. I certainly think it's worth attempting to get more and more detailed maps, though, even if the finest level of detail can't be obtained. I don't think you need a "we can solve everything" attitude to do the best science.

For instance, CERN is providing a map of particle interactions at the finest detail possible today. But each map involves, and can only involve, mapping a few particles. How could you do that for a brain? Stick a brain in a planet size super-super-collider? There might be some ethical problems :)

Even if civilisation survives for a million years, and maps of ultimate detail are made, I still don't see how that would solve the "hard problem". OK, I'm not the greatest scientist conceivable, so I might have limited vision, compared to the "super Einstein" who actually solves the "hard problem". I give you that :)



I don't know about "everything." I'm skeptical of our ability to know much about other universes/worlds if they exist, but I'm not about to bet against us knowing anything specific, since some very smart people have looked very stupid in the past whenever they've said "we'll never know about X."


I'd never say that, or believe it. I'd only ever go as far as saying, "I don't see how we'll ever solve X". I might say that from a position of little knowledge in a forum, but actually have considered the "hard problem" at some length, in the company of Chalmers, McGinn et.al, which gives a harder edge to this particular, "I don't see how we'll ever solve X".

By the way, Dennett was caught lying about Chalmer's views, very naughty!

http://fragments.consc.net/djc/2006/07/dennett_changes.html

Chalmers allows that Dennett might have forgotten what Chalmers said, but I think he's just being nice. On this particular topic, with this particular philosopher, Dennett should have really checked his facts carefully. This shows a remarkable lack of wisdom (i.e., at least momentary stupidity) on Dennett's part, if nothing else.

[MorpheusSandman]

Mostly it isn't. For instance, "Is there life on Mars?" is a current scientific question of great interest to many people, but it's certainly possible to see how it might be answered.Ummm, OK, I really don't see what that has to do with what I said. Past civilizations would've asked a seemingly impossible question like "How could we get to Mars?" while now we actually do now how to get there, so we're asking different questions about Mars.


"I don't see how" is often used in science circles, and is usually met with a nod and a, "let's try something else, then". So it's a perfectly valid, and useful, argument.No, it's not a "perfectly valid" argument as it's a logical fallacy. (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity) In science there are unknown questions for which "we don't know/see how..." is already assumed and their job IS to figure out the how. They don't go around repeating the fact that they don't currently know! It would be like a football coach going "I don't see how we can get into the end-zone against that defense!" Well, THAT'S HIS JOB to figure out how!


The way things are going we might not even know how to open the can of soup we dig out of the rubble.Global apocalypse is always a very real possibility, but I'm assuming that that hasn't happened. There's no reason to assume science will regress, or we'll know less then than now.


Getting a detailed map down to the levels of individual elementary particles may be an intractable problem. I certainly think it's worth attempting to get more and more detailed maps, though, even if the finest level of detail can't be obtained. I don't think you need a "we can solve everything" attitude to do the best science.Such detailed maps just require greater computing/processing powers, and we already have quantum computing, so it's only a matter of developing it even further. There are already people working on things like Friendly AIs (Eliezer Yudkowsy, whose Lesswrong blog I link to constantly, researches Friendly AI for a living). I don't know what you mean by a "we can solve everything" attitude. I didn't say anything about that, all I said was that a "science doesn't know something yet" doesn't equate to an argument that "science will never know about that something," especially in light of the history of such things.


Even if civilisation survives for a million years, and maps of ultimate detail are made, I still don't see how that would solve the "hard problem". OK, I'm not the greatest scientist conceivable, so I might have limited vision, compared to the "super Einstein" who actually solves the "hard problem". I give you thatRemember that Einstein said imagination was more important than knowledge. What he meant by that is that knowledge can only tell you about what is, but it can't help tell you about what we're unsure of. Einstein's imaginative way of thinking about problem is what provided his biggest breakthroughs, so, yeah, it does require a great imagination to solve such problems. I mean, I'm not a great scientist either, so I can't "envision" a solution either, but I consider my ignorance and lack of imagination as a statement about myself and my limitations, not as a statement about those problems. As Yudkowsky says, a blank spot on a map (our understanding) doesn't correspond to a blank spot in the territory (reality).


By the way, Dennett was caught lying about Chalmer's views, very naughty!

http://fragments.consc.net/djc/2006/07/dennett_changes.html

Chalmers allows that Dennett might have forgotten what Chalmers said, but I think he's just being nice. On this particular topic, with this particular philosopher, Dennett should have really checked his facts carefully. This shows a remarkable lack of wisdom (i.e., at least momentary stupidity) on Dennett's part, if nothing else.I doubt seriously Dennett would've knowingly lied in an interview that was going to be published. What would be the point since he would know someone would point it out to Chalmers? Nonetheless, I still think Dennett is right on the issue.

[mal4mac]

... like Morpheus, I don't have a problem with consciousness, so I can't see too much work needed there. Some humans are conscious, some are not. C'est la vie. (And yes, there are an infinite number of questions, so they cannot all be answered. It must be noted though that many of them won't be worth asking, far less answering.)

So you don't have an interest in the "hard problem of consciousness". But many people do have such an interest. So why do you think that questions about it are not worth asking? Is it that you see consciousness as an epiphenomenon. So just as the steam coming from a steam train is of no interest to most passengers on the train, you are not interested in consciousness? Watching & thinking about the steam does not entertain you, or improve your journey in any way. Again, fair enough. But some other passenger might watch the steam and find a way to make a better steam engine. So in ignoring the epiphenomenon of consciousness you might be missing something.

Also, surely any such fundamental questions about the mind are worth asking? Thinking about every kind of basic question has been key to civilisation's advance since Aristotle.... and he certainly thought a lot about the mind/soul, even devoting a book or two to the subject. So how can you just dismiss the "hard problem" so easily?

There *are* an infinite number of questions, but surely the "hard problem" is a really big question, the biggest on the frontier between subjective consciousness and brain science. All the fuss made by Dennett, Chalmers, et.al. about it surely indicates there is a big question here. A question up there with "What is dark matter?" Penrose, for instance, has looked at both areas and spent a lot of time on both questions; and I don't know of any physicist who has dismissed the "hard problem" so readily.

[mal4mac]

They don't go around repeating the fact that they don't currently know! It would be like a football coach going "I don't see how we can get into the end-zone against that defense!" Well, THAT'S HIS JOB to figure out how!


I think your example doesn't work, the situation is more like the coach saying "I don't see how we can get into the end-zone but the quarterback making a long pass!" A perfectly admissable statement, but he then better add, something like, "but I can see how we can get there by him making a short pass". In the same way a scientist might not see how to proceed in one way, but he better see how to proceed in another way, or lose his job. As science is more difficult, he's allowed to shift goal as well, to aim for the hamburger stall rather than the end zone, say.



Remember that Einstein said imagination was more important than knowledge. What he meant by that is that knowledge can only tell you about what is, but it can't help tell you about what we're unsure of. Einstein's imaginative way of thinking about problem is what provided his biggest breakthroughs, so, yeah, it does require a great imagination to solve such problems. I mean, I'm not a great scientist either, so I can't "envision" a solution either, but I consider my ignorance and lack of imagination as a statement about myself and my limitations, not as a statement about those problems. As Yudkowsky says, a blank spot on a map (our understanding) doesn't correspond to a blank spot in the territory (reality).


But there might be a blank spot in the territory. You can't know until you cross that territory.



I doubt seriously Dennett would've knowingly lied in an interview that was going to be published. What would be the point since he would know someone would point it out to Chalmers? Nonetheless, I still think Dennett is right on the issue.

Maybe he was tired, or being a bit flip. I can't see why Chalmers would give away all his ground to Dennett, then take it back! I don't see how he can withstand Chalmers' attack, here for instance:

http://consc.net/papers/moving.html#2.1

Key sentence:

"Dennett might respond that I, equally, do not give arguments for the position that something more than functions needs to be explained. And there would be some justice here: while I do argue at length for my conclusions, all these arguments take the existence of consciousness for granted, where the relevant concept of consciousness is explicitly distinguished from functional concepts such as discrimination, integration, reaction, and report."

[The Atheist]

So you don't have an interest in the "hard problem of consciousness".

Not lacking interest, just not seeing it as too much of a problem.

Which parts don't you understand?


Also, surely any such fundamental questions about the mind are worth asking?

They sure are, but if you study the subject a little I bet you'd find that many of the questions have been answered satisfactorily. Even to the extent that we can now tap directly into the brain to command another person's brain: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=11118093

[The Atheist]

You're basically just exalting our ignorance and saying that we can't make any probabilistic inferences based on what is known combined with some hypothetical conditionals about how things might be if they were one way or another, and this is just false.

No. GIGO is not an answer and that's what you get if you try to work out any probability using unknowns.

The best example is Spinosa's deist god. You cannot pick a single hypothetical that can give you probability of that one, since it doesn't interact with the physical universe, hence any expression is simply GIGO.


Ok, but if you encountered strong evidence for a being that suspended the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, and math, how would that evidence NOT be extraordinary?

The result would be extraordinary, but the evidence would be quite ordinary - something that could be measured & tested, just like all other evidence.


... it would be the very first time in our existence that such things happened!

So, the first time Pythagoras figured out the square on the hypotenuse it was an extraordinary event?


No, I'm not trying to access the probability of something occurring, I'm merely showing that because those things which would provide evidence for something like God don't occur, we can make certain ill-defined probabilistic arguments against God's existence.

The bolded bit answers your own assertion.


Further, we can show that if those things were to occur, they would be probabilistically unlikely, ergo extraordinary.

So,because the vast majority of triangles are not right-angled, Pythagoras' theory is extraordinary?


I don't know what you mean by "gambling probabilities." What makes "gambling probabilities" any different than "real world probabilities?*"

I did point it out already, but I'll repeat it: gambling probabilities deal with a finite number of inputs & outcomes, real-world probabilities often do not.


Plus, proof that such things do work in the real world is here:

I'm not denying the probabilities work the same way, it's just that the two aren't compatible, as you'll find when comparing any finite number to infinity.


Falsifiability doesn't mean something was proven false, it means something is capable of being falsified:

I know that, I was making a semantically correct joke that fell over.


Would you not say we had good evidence for thinking the Earth was flat until we discovered evidence that it wasn't?

No. There wasn't any evidence at all that the earth was flat - it was pure supposition based on a lack of evidence.

[Ecurb]

.


The result would be extraordinary, but the evidence would be quite ordinary - something that could be measured & tested, just like all other evidence.

.

Not all evidence can be measured and tested. Eye witness testimony has not yet been excluded from the Court Room, for example. Are you suggesting that it should be?

[The Atheist]

Not all evidence can be measured and tested. Eye witness testimony has not yet been excluded from the Court Room, for example. Are you suggesting that it should be?

See above:


Sensible people just ignore them entirely; pity the courts don't take that approach.

[Ecurb]

See above:Sensible people just ignore them entirely; pity the courts don't take that approach.

So if 500 witnesses see someone shoot and kill another person, and if all of them swear they witnessed the shooting in court, “sensible people” (and the courts) should” ignore them entirely”? That seems to me to be lacking in good sense. It also opens up a can of worms about scientific evidence, which, after all, involves the eye witness testimony of the scientists who did the testing and measuring.

[The Atheist]

http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s97/TheAtheist/Blackstones-ratio_zps37265071.jpg (http://s150.photobucket.com/user/TheAtheist/media/Blackstones-ratio_zps37265071.jpg.html)

[Ecurb]

That’s a reasonable position, Atheist, but change the ten to ten thousand and (given the imperfection of ANY human Justice system) nobody would be punished. Again, it’s reasonable to oppose all state-imposed punishments. I’m just curious if that’s what you are suggesting.

[mal4mac]

That’s a reasonable position, Atheist, but change the ten to ten thousand and (given the imperfection of ANY human Justice system) nobody would be punished. Again, it’s reasonable to oppose all state-imposed punishments. I’m just curious if that’s what you are suggesting.

Is there is any way of calculating the actual number that would lead to the happiest outcome, overall? If ten murderers go free and two murder again isn't it better for those ten to go to prison, along with that one unfortunate innocent?

Need people suffer in prison? They achieve the Epicurean minimum of food and shelter. I guess the neighbours are a problem, finding friends might be difficult, and the surroundings aren't great. Maybe the potentially innocent could be sent to "garden prisons", with less nasty neighbours? Or Montaigne's tower?

[Nick Capozzoli]

That’s a reasonable position, Atheist, but change the ten to ten thousand and (given the imperfection of ANY human Justice system) nobody would be punished. Again, it’s reasonable to oppose all state-imposed punishments. I’m just curious if that’s what you are suggesting.

This is a very old problem. The Talmud (which is basically a collection of opinions by Jewish scholars about what the Torah means vis-à-vis God's behavioral commandments) has a lot to say about how religious judges should go about dispensing "justice" in criminal and civil matters. One very noteworthy thing about Talmudic law is that it is very difficult to impose severe (e.g. capital) punishment. For example, conclusive evidence of a criminal's"intent" was required, a "supermajority" of the judges was required, and there was even a rule that a judge who initially voted to "acquit" could not change his opinion, but a judge who initially voted to "convict" could change his opinion... all of which set pretty high standards for imposing severe penalties. So much so that a Talmudic court that imposed just one death sentence in a seven year period was considered a "hanging court"...

Talmudic scholars recognized that this state of affairs could leave society defenseless against the acts of malicious criminals. One way they got out of this bind was by allowing for a parallel "secular" justice system, which in those days was "the law of the king."

The trial of Jesus Christ is perhaps the best-known historical example of how this religious/secular justice conflict worked out in practice, at least in one famous case.