Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[Krsqk]

Geo, that's an excellent representation of my position. Thanks for speaking for me. Now, don't go edit your post to make it say I favor throwing onions at hapless passers-by.

RE: Language as interpretation

E. Albright, you are exactly right. However, if something is written down, it must be interpreted in the context in which it was written.

For example, if I write a book about someone who plays with acid, it makes a major difference if I'm writing it during the 1860s or the 1960s. All language is subject to that change, although not usually in that magnitude.

RE: Design argument in my own words. Here goes (I don't claim to speak for other creationists, but this is the design argument as I understand it)...

Intelligent design requires intelligent designer. Man creates (or more properly, organizes what is already created), based on his intelligence. It's like a child playing with Tinkertoys--he's not truly creating, but rearranging what's already been given him.
Given the fact that we see design and order around us, it is logical to assume there is an intelligent Designer behind it. So far, we're okay with Hume's representation, but here we must part ways.
Hume uses the wording "like results, like effects" to say that the process of creating nature is identical to man's creative process, only several orders of magnitude higher in ability. Thus, God's creative process, like man's, must be imperfect and subject to limitation. This renders God no longer infinite, and few Christians will accept that.
The problem lies in Hume's extension of the principle. To continue our analogy, he extrapolates the child building with Tinkertoys to the factory making the Tinkertoys from other materials (still an imperfect process, but much less limited than the child's ability). The correct analogy from creation would be the child building with Tinkertoys and the factory creating the Tinkertoys out of nothing (an infinite order of magnitude higher). Hume, as a materialist, is operating from the assumption that something had to exist for God to use in creation; otherwise, his analogy falls apart. It's just a fancy straw man.

RE: Why do I believe in God? It all boils down to faith. Belief in no God requires faith, too. If you knew half of everything there was to know, you still couldn't prove that in the other half, there was a God. There is evidence that convinces me of God's existence, but the evidence is totally unnecessary. Welcome, but unnecessary.

RE: Why Christianity? Of course, this comes down to faith as well. One could go to several things in the Bible that have proven true, even after being ridiculed (i.e., the existence of the Hittites), or the historical accuracy, etc.; but no proof for one religion or another exists.

Any worldview is totally based on faith. That is the overall point I've striven for here. There is more than one worldview, but they do tend to boil down into two main types: 1) God made the world and makes the rules, or 2) The world made itself and we make the rules (or power makes rules, or money makes rules, etc.--that varies with interpretation). Several flavors of each exist, and some attempts have been made to marry the two, but they are unwilling partners

If an evolutionist accepts that his worldview is a faith, he's already halfway to becoming a creationist. No one would naturally look at the complexity found in nature and say, "Wow! That happened by chance!" any more than they think the space shuttle happened by chance. We have to be taught to think that way.

[edit: i like to out words ]

[ December 13, 2002, 03:17: Message edited by: Krsqk ]

[President_Elect_Shang]

If I was not getting ready for my Last final I would love to put in my two cents worth.

[jimbob]

Well, well, well� like we don�t waste enough time playing (and modding) SEIV, we have to go and open up this can of Creationist-Evolutionist worms

I may as well jump in. I�ve just read the Last 4 pages of this thread, and I gotta tell you, it�s really Evolved (snicker) beyond Twinkies as the absolute perfection in FTL power supply.

As a practicing biologist, here are my thoughts. I picked out some of the more interesting bits of the Krsqk/IF discussion (from about 2 pages back) and just added my thoughts. As to my biases, I�m not really that interested in Creationism as it pertains to the Young Earth Version, and I�ve got a great regard for micro-evolution, but have strongly questioned the state of science as it attempts to address speciation. Someone (really sorry, can�t remember who) made the analogy that [paraphrase] we don�t know how gravity works, but we still observe it everyday. However the same is not true of evolution. Though this may seem pedantic, it�s important to see that it is a question not of evolution, but the observation of Speciation. So, more correctly we should be saying that we don�t know how species have arisen, but we still observe them everyday. As such, evolution is not an observation, but a theory of explanation for speciation.
With that introduction, I know this post will be long, so if you�re really not interested in my thoughts on the state of evolution, I�d suggest you just save yourself some effort. I don�t discuss Twinkies, FTL or Swiss-Chocolate beyond this point.

6. When, where, why, and how did life come from [Jim: a-biotic] dead matter?

IF: The Earth was not completely covered in perpetual storms when life evolved from primordial goo. All it takes is a cliff-face to block the wind, and there is plenty of stable goo for the organci molecules to form. More complex molecules form out of the basic ones, and this has been proven in laboratory experiments.

Jim: Yes, it has been proven that more complex molecules can be created from our best guesses at a primordial goo (i). The problem is that despite enormous amounts of work, it has yet to be shown that anything beyond �complex molecules� could be formed. That is to say short peptides (proteins in this case of less than 20 amino acid length) could be formed, but nothing even approaching a useful/functional peptide has ever been produced (ii). That said, nothing vaguely resembling any sort of reproducing entity has ever been observed in these experiments. If I�m wrong, please do inform me!! Seeing as I�ll be teaching this stuff, I absolutely need to know if I�m missing something.

My personal side notes:
(i) I think it�s important to note that the in vitro primordial goo experiments typically use much higher concentrations of the putative goo than would be found in nature. This is expected to aid the experiment in terms of time frame (in their defence, it�s awfully difficult to get a 50 year grant from any federal or independent agency).
(ii) typically useful modern proteins begin to weigh in at around 80 � 100 amino acids.

IF: You do realize that the Design Argument has been proven inadequate by people such as Hume, right?

Jim: Really? I�d love a reference for this because I�ve seen a lot of arguments regarding Paley�s (sp) watch, but only by contemporary authors. IMHO, Paley (again, sp.) had a good argument from what I can see, but then went off into hypothetical land on the applications� and his �hypotheticals� got him in trouble.

12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?

IF: Sometimes, the code gets mutated to have a few extra base pairs. Sometimes it is mutated to have fewer base pairs. Often, this does not cause the organism to fail at living, and so goes unnoticed. If that organism reproduces, it's offspring could inherit the extra base pairs, or the fewer ones. Given many generations in which more extra base pairs are added than lost, you get a steadily increasing DNA code. And remember, somewhere over 90% of the DNA is junk, and is NEVER used in replication. So, a few extra base pairs here and there won't hurt much, especially if they are added at the end.

Jim: Yes, it is true that we very often observe point mutations, small lesions, wholesale inVersions, etc. in the genetic code of organisms (i). And yes, often these changes do not cause the organism any harm, or no discernable harm anyway (ii). However, the question is not �can an organism survive genetical damage/degeneration�, but is �can genetical damage result in the production of new species/entire de novotrait.� Junk DNA or no, the burden on evolutionary theory is not to show that organisms can sustain damages, it is to show that this damage can cause the formation of new species.

(i) it has been estimated that huge tracts of the human genome are made up of dead retroviruses and insertion sequences. The human cell response has been to push together large tracts of these �extra genomic parasites� in �grave yards� that are then wrapped up in chromatin, never to be transcribed again!! I love this stuff!!
(ii) an organism that has more junk DNA is going to be more energetically burdened than a counterpart without this energy burden. In lower complexity organisms such as bacteria, especially the gut organisms such as E. coli, this can mean the difference between reproductive success and reproductive failure in a competitive environment. For higher complexity organisms, such as humans, I have never seen any equivalent reports. My guess is that it won�t affect us significantly.

When, where, why, and how did:
1. Single-celled plants become multi-celled? (Where are the two and three-celled intermediates?)

IF: There is no such thing as a single celled plant. All plants are very, very multi-cellular. You are thinking of Protista. Some of them are similar to plants, but they are not plants.

Jim: I�d suggest there is potentially a semantic misunderstanding at one level. If we go back far enough on a phylogenetic tree we will find that plants had an ancestor that was still single celled, and so we could in fact refer to it anachronistically as a single celled plant. The real quandary is this: how does an organism/when did an organism first become multi-celled? The vastly more important implied question is how does a competitive and selfish organism come to cooperate with others of it�s own kind (or non-kind if you Subscribe to the theory that chloropLasts and mitochondria are captured/symbiotic bacteria)

3. Fish change to amphibians?

IF: Build me a time machine, and I will tell you when and where.

Gollum: Fish?!
fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish

Jim: We can do it cheaper than that. We can see exactly when amphibious species appear in the fossil record. If you believe that they evolved from fish, you�ve got your answer! I�m still big on the time machine though, cause I�m wantin� me some of that primordial soup! Yummm�
Krsqk, I�m not actually sure why the time frame is really important though�

6. How did the intermediate forms live?

IF: You are assuming there was a magical jump from a Carp to a Frog. Well, there wasn't. The intermediate forms were only slightly different form what came before them. They lived the same as their parents did. Evolution does not occur over night.

Jim: And this is the problem� the fossil record clearly shows that there are indeed �magical jumps� between species (your words, not mine ). Unfortunately this IS the state of affairs. This is so obviously true that Gould and Sflkghfv (I can�t remember his name, for shame ) invoked Punctuated Equilibrium to account for these leaps, without abandoning the concept of evolution altogether. There are some that charge that Punctuated Equilibrium is simply a non-Supernatural Version of Saltation (ii).

(ii) Yeah, I could use a little Saltation with my primordial soup too. I�m more of a salty snack kinda guy than the sweet/twinky kinda guy. Oh! there it is, I couldn�t resist bringing up twinkies.

IF: You are still assuming a magical jump between a lion with no lungs to a lion with lungs. Well, that never happened. ALL multi-cellular organisms have always had the bulk of the systems you mentioned.

Jim: Err� well that�s a little extreme, but I see your point. Unfortunately that is dealing with entire systems of advanced organs. If we step down to a molecular level, that is to say we look at just a few gene products working in concert, there still is this nagging sense of irreducible-ness (i). I�m currently working on a single protein product (RpoS) that is regulated by no less than 28 other gene products, and itself� and that�s just what we know so far! Knocking out just one of these players has extreme effects on the cell responses (capacity to survive starvation, cause disease, etc.), so it is difficult to imagine an organism with mutations in any of these other genes being stable/functional within their environment. Or more to the point as we look at evolution, the converse is hard to believe - that there would be a mutation of another gene such that it�s product now regulates my protein without whacking out the entire system (ii). Irreproducibility is a sticking point, especially when living creatures are more complex than Formula 1 cars � and I�m just talking about bacteria here!

(i) sorry, it�s getting late, and I�m beginning to make words up.
(ii) my protein is not the best example of the irreproducibility problem though. There are some real doozies out there.

My take home from all this is that biology is by far the most fascinating subject, and that there are some significant problems with evolution as it currently stands. Punctuated equilibrium is a good first start in explaining the fossil story. Unfortunately the real game is in the genes (though being a geneticist I�m perhaps a little biased here). I really wish that some of the bigger problems such as the problems/failures of a-biotic evolution research and irreproducible systems would be addressed by the scientific community with more research/thought, rather than cries of �heresy!� though.

IF and Krsqk, thanks for opening up a very fun thread. I hope that there are no hard feelings about any of this. Coming from a mixed faith family, I can appreciate the frustration that can come when trying to communicate very different world views.

Cheers,(Skol!)
jimbob

[ December 13, 2002, 04:46: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[Will]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
If an evolutionist accepts that his worldview is a faith, he's already halfway to becoming a creationist. No one would naturally look at the complexity found in nature and say, "Wow! That happened by chance!" any more than they think the space shuttle happened by chance. We have to be taught to think that way.

Hmmm... Well, I say my worldview is largely based on my faith that there is/are no god(s). I understand that it is impossible to prove one way or the other, and thus would fall into the catagory of faith or belief. However, I am in no way "halfway to becoming a creationist". There have been numerous attempts by others to show me the "light", or the "way", or the "truth", or the "good news", or whatever else the current fad of a term is, and all of them failed (to borrow from the bedroom floor analogy, it always has failed, and I always expect it to fail). An "intelligent designer" does not fit well in my mind, it violates the principle of Occam's Razor... it seems like it is a layer of complexity from ages past when anything that wasn't understood was "God".

The space shuttle analogy is flawed. I know how it was created, off the top of my head, it was during the 1970s, designed by engineers at Boeing, built by Boeing on a NASA contract. I don't recall any details, really, and don't feel like googling it right now. But I know about its recent creation, by humans, from my junior high history courses. It is very probable that some of the people who designed and built it are still living. The same cannot be said for the Universe or the Earth. Nobody was around for that, and even if the inconsistant and contradictory information that the various "prophets" dictated actually were from a divine source, it has gone through the interpretations of far too many people over far too long of a time. Most elementary school students play a game, where one person makes up a message, and whispers it to someone else. That person whispers what he/she heard to another person, who whispers what he/she heard to another... etc. The Last person tells everyone what he/she heard, and the first person tells everyone what he/she originally said. I have not yet experienced a perfect transmission, or even one that was reasonably close. I see religious teachings in much the same way. Most of the substantiation for religious claims come from the claims themselves (I have stopped counting the number of times I've encountered a person who uses circular reasoning to justify the Bible... "The Bible is Truth because God says so." "How do you know that God said so?" "It says it right here in the Bible." "Well, how do you know the Bible is Truth?" "Because God says so."... etc.). The prophecies contained in religions, to me, reads a lot like daily horoscopes; very ambiguous, and anyone who wants to believe them will find a way to distort the facts of their existance to fit what is said.

As for this worldview being what I was taught... hardly. I grew up in an area that is approximately 40% Catholic, 30% Presbyterian, 30% Methodist, and largely hostile. I know of only three Jewish families. My school had an angry (extremist Christian) parents group that tried to block a field trip by a small group of students to the Andy Warhol Museum because the students would surely be corrupted and return as Satan-worshiping homosexuals. I am sure that many congregations still periodically pray for my soul. The threats made to me that said that the God-fearing Christian who wrote about his/her wish to speed me on my way to my false god, Satan, in Hell... those slacked off after the first few months. I think it's more because the writers found other things to be self-righteous about, rather than me endlessly explaining that athiests (as I later discovered the term to be) don't believe in Satan, either.
No, atheism was not something I was taught. I came to the conclusion that I didn't believe all that "God" nonsense on my own, thank you. Despite the many and varied attempts to teach me something that was not atheism, both before and after I actually knew what the word meant. The first atheist I met face to face (that I knew was an athiest, at least) I met about four months ago. In Los Angeles, not Pennsylvania (where I grew up, and formulated my worldview).

Hmm... I think I need to go to the Cantina for a while...

[geoschmo]

That is twice now that Occam's Razor has been mentioned in this thread. And I have heard it many times before as an explanation by people who don't believe in God. And to be honest with you it has always struck me as a little odd that people would use it as such.

If you assume, as most scientific types do I suppose, that everything (and by everything I mean everything ) is ultimatly understandable to us given enough time to study and test our hypotheses, then I suppose once we (us as a speices) reach the point of complete understanding (a long time from now of course) then an eternal divine creator is a "more complex" option, and thus would be logically discarded.

However if your assumption is a belief in a creator, and that there are things in life which are the domain of the creator that we as a species are incapable of understanding without revalation of some sort, then your two options are just as clear. And the divine creator is much less complex one than the incredible string of random circumstances that would be required to produce life as we know it.

So to use Occam's Razor in defense of either argument, you basically have to decide which side you are on first. It is useless as tool in determining the truth of the matter.

(EDIT: Don't you love it when you come up with something totally off the cuff and then find something afterwards that appears to support it? Of course you have to accept my assumptions to agree, but here's an intersting link for what it's worth. http://skepdic.com/occam.html)

Geoschmo

[ December 13, 2002, 13:50: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[dogscoff]

No one would naturally look at the complexity found in nature and say, "Wow! That happened by chance!"

So where did the first atheist come from?

[Krsqk]

"So where did the first atheist come from?"

If you're a creationist, he was created on either the 4th, 5th, or 6th day of creation. If you're an evolutionist, he evolved from his distant ancestor Eoatheist. Eoatheist is either a member of the animal or vegetable family, again depending if you're an evolutionist or a creationist.

Or maybe he/she/it came from disgust at watching two religions squabble.

In all seriousness, my statement was not meant as a logical argument. Common sense, though, requires a designer for each design, a creator for each creation. It takes involved thought and argument to move away from that. I would submit that it is the reason why we have so many creation legends and so few evolution legends--creation is the natural starting point for the human mind. Whether that's by accident or design depends on your worldview.

[Fyron]

RE: Design argument in my own words. Here goes (I don't claim to speak for other creationists, but this is the design argument as I understand it)...

Intelligent design requires intelligent designer. Man creates (or more properly, organizes what is already created), based on his intelligence. It's like a child playing with Tinkertoys--he's not truly creating, but rearranging what's already been given him.
Given the fact that we see design and order around us, it is logical to assume there is an intelligent Designer behind it. So far, we're okay with Hume's representation, but here we must part ways.
Hume uses the wording "like results, like effects" to say that the process of creating nature is identical to man's creative process, only several orders of magnitude higher in ability. Thus, God's creative process, like man's, must be imperfect and subject to limitation. This renders God no longer infinite, and few Christians will accept that.
The problem lies in Hume's extension of the principle. To continue our analogy, he extrapolates the child building with Tinkertoys to the factory making the Tinkertoys from other materials (still an imperfect process, but much less limited than the child's ability). The correct analogy from creation would be the child building with Tinkertoys and the factory creating the Tinkertoys out of nothing (an infinite order of magnitude higher). Hume, as a materialist, is operating from the assumption that something had to exist for God to use in creation; otherwise, his analogy falls apart. It's just a fancy straw man.

Thank you for answering more than I asked.

But anyways, no, that is not really the design argument. I have never heard anyone use a tinkertoy before, and that just makes the analogy even worse than it has to be. Instead, I will use a house, as houses aren't built wholesale in factories (the tinkertoy technically works too, but not quite as you used it). A house does not just appear naturally, someone had to have designed and built it. A house is relatively ordered. Looking around the world, it appears ordered and so appears designed. So, an analogy is used to infer that since the house had a designer, the world (universe) must have had a designer. It has nothing to do with "creative processes" or anythign like that.

The first problem with this is that it is an analogical argument. For analogies to work, the things being compared must be nearly identical to each other. The universe and a house (or a clock, tinkertoy, ship, whatever) are absolutely nothing alike. They arent even in the same domain. eg: You could use an analogy comparing a dog to a cat, as they are both mammals. It wouldn't be very good, because cats and dogs are very differen't animals. But, the analogy works on a basic level because they are both mammals (and animals). You could say, a cat has a heart, so a dog, which is kind of like a cat, must also have a heart. But, you could not compare a cat to a tree or a rock, as there is no basis of similarity. There is no basis of similarity between the universe and a house/tinkertoy. So, the argument by analogy does not work here.

Secondly, the design argument can not say anything about the perfection, infiniteness or unity of God, assuming you still want to say that it proves some sort of intelligent designer exists. Architects (or those that design tinkertoys) do not only design 1 house. They do not work alone. So, you can not use the design argument to say that there is only one universe, or that there is only 1 god. Also, architects design some bad houses before they become good. So, is this universe a bad universe that God made while still learning to make a universe? You have no way to tell. You would have to have another universe to compare it to. Of course, it is assumed that God is perfect and made no mistakes when designing the universe, and so he did not have to make any "test" universes. But, this can not be infered from the design argument.

Continuing to expand upon the flawed analogical argument, the architect (or designer of a tinkertoy) does not stick around to care for the house (or tinkertoy). So, you can not infer that there is a benevolent God from the design argument.

At best, the design argument shows that there could be many gods, they/it are not necessarily perfect, they/it are not necessarily benevolent, and not necessarily infinite.

[Krsqk]

I realize any analogy will be flawed, given the vast difference between human creation and the universe. This flaw is inherent to Hume's criticism as well, though. He argues that God and man must be similar since their results are similar (house~universe). The design argument (ok, at least my understanding of it) infers the infinity of God from the infinite magnitude of the difference.

[Fyron]

No, Hume does not argue that God and Man are similar. He said that the creations are entirely different, so you cannot assume anything about the creator of the universe based on the design argument, if there was one.

The "infiniteness" of God does not come from the design argument. That is taking the belief you already hold an using it as evidence to support itself. You cannot do that.